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Objective: To review and synthesise research related to the ageing farming workforce influence on the health and sustainability of agricultural communities. Design: Using the PRISMA framework as a guide, the CINHAL and Medline databases were searched. Search 1 used the key search terms of ageing OR aging, farm*, workforce. Search 2 used health, sustainability and 'agricultural OR farm communit*. Search 3 combined Searches 1 and 2. Search 4 followed journal citations to identify other relevant articles. A process of narrative synthesis was applied to the results through the prism of rural social capital that described the current state of knowledge and understanding under four themes. Result: Database searches and searching of citations identified 16 contemporary articles. Seven of the papers were from Australia, and the balance from five other high‐income countries. The four that themes emerged are: vulnerabilities of ageing farmers; economic and climatic drivers; social capital and sustainability; and integrative strategies, that might offer a way forward. Conclusion: Integrating these forces of nature, economics and sociology to address the ageing farming workforce and the associated health and sustainability of agricultural communities remains a major challenge for researchers, governments, the agricultural sector and rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of attempts at endogenization and indigenization in the history of sociology in Japan. The author begins by presenting a short history of Japanese sociology. While the issues of endogenization and indigenization had been raised in the 1910s, imperialism and the militarization of the Emperor state and society blocked this form of development. Japanese social sciences have thus mainly followed the model of Western social sciences. The issue of indigenization gained attention after World War II and especially after the late 1960s, which was a time of reflection on the extreme influence of American sociology. In this context, this paper investigates the development of Kazuko Tsurumi's sociology, which is one of the best examples of work that deals with the issue of indigenization. Tsurumi analyzes social change from pre‐World War II to post‐World War II Japan by drawing on sociological functionalism. However, Tsurumi suggests that Kunio Yanagita's theory of folklore and ethnology provides a stronger explanatory framework than functionalism, and contends that Kumagusu Minaka has developed an approach rooted in East Asia. Tsurumi advances this indigenous development theory based on the work of Yanagita and Minakata, and at the same time internationalizes this theory. This paper concludes that Tsurumi's theory is an important medium between Western sociology and Eastern sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing multiracial population in the United States necessitates a shift in research attention to include mixed‐race youth. While racial‐ethnic socialization (RES) research has predominantly focused on family contexts, this review highlights the role of schools in shaping the RES socialization of mixed‐race youth in the United States. Existing literature indicates that RES plays a vital role for multiracial children and adolescents by helping them navigate their complex identities, promoting a sense of belonging, and enhancing mental health outcomes. However, studies explicitly exploring RES for mixed‐race children in elementary and secondary schools are limited, and RES is often theorized without structural conceptualizations of race and racism. Using Critical Multiracial Theory (MultiCrit) as a theoretical lens, this review investigates the content and messages conveyed to mixed‐race youth at school. It considers transmissions from various sources (e.g., curriculum, teachers, peers) to uncover implications for the well‐being of mixed‐race students. This paper contributes to scholarship on school RES by considering how the process unfolds for the fastest‐growing demographic of students in the US (multiracials) using a sociohistorical approach (MultiCrit). The review concludes with future directions for researchers studying multiracial youth in K‐12 schools and considerations for practitioners working with multiracial students in school settings. Keywords: multiracial youth, mixed‐race, K‐12 schools, RES, MultiCrit [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the 'trajectory' can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Enhanced Interrogation programme was a medicalised interrogation programme that was designed by the United States in the wake of 9/11. It is now widely recognized that the Enhanced Interrogation programme engaged in some activities that were, at the least, tantamount to torture. The programme was designed by Psychologists and overseen by other professionals, including medical professionals. This article argues that the Enhanced Interrogation programme displayed many of the features of what Sociologists refer to as Edgework. It demonstrated voluntary risk‐taking by health and other professionals; this risk‐taking pressed up against catastrophic outcomes across multiple dimensions; risks were taken for the purposes of escaping a death‐saturated macrosocial context; and the health professionals in the programme were highly skilled. The article argues that a new form of Edgework can be detected by studying the programme, which the article refers to as 'Institutional Edgework'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of physician dominance are a foundational contribution of medical sociology to the study of health care, but must be revisited in the light of ongoing changes in medicine. As non‐physician specialists like nurse practitioners grow in number and acquire more autonomy, increasing medical profession differentiation presents a challenge for traditional physician dominance theories. After evaluating potential theoretical explanations for subordinate occupations' autonomy gains, we conduct a state‐level quantitative analysis of variation in nursing policies across U.S. states. We construct our dependent variable, nursing autonomy, using seven state‐level advanced practice nursing policies adopted from 2001–2017. Using an ordered scale, we code nurse practitioner, nurse anaesthetist, nurse midwife and clinical‐nurse‐specialist practice and prescription polices according to each policy's autonomy level. We then use time‐series regression to examine theory‐driven propositions regarding nursing autonomy change. Nursing autonomy has increased over time, signalling a general erosion of physician dominance. However, we find differential patterns of policy adoption, indicating that erosion is not uniform. Physicians have maintained dominance in relatively prestigious specialties (e.g. anaesthesiology) while dominance declined in others (e.g. obstetrician). Factors external to the profession, such as consumer power, continue to influence within‐profession dynamics. Examining ongoing professional differentiation in medicine illustrates how physician dominance depends on shifting social and professional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the anthropology and education. It mentions the importance of focusing on learners as active agents who differ in their selective and partial cultural learning, a corrective to the tendency in studies of "cultural transmission" to overlook variety and change in cultural communities. It discusses the narratives of social criticism had developed in the "new sociology of education" in Great Britain and in revisionist history of education in the U.S.

Although numerous studies have confirmed the separate effects of economic and cultural capital on arts participation, research focusing on the cumulative and interactive effects of economic and cultural capital through the creation of taste publics is limited. Using data from the United States (Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [1982–2012]), this research integrates economic and cultural capital—measured as income and education—into the analysis of taste, creates taste publics, and examines their association with highbrow arts participation over time. We find that the effects of economic and cultural capital on highbrow arts participation decreased between 1982 and 2012, and American publics seem to have converged across both types of capital. Implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Rates of violence in the United States have steadily declined over the last decade. However, there continues to be a disproportionate number of homicides among African American young men compared to their race and gender counterparts. Among African American males between the ages of 15–24, homicide is the leading cause of death. This is a public health issue that seems very preventable and a plethora of research and interventions have explored psychosocial causes that might aid in reducing rates of violence. Although there have been a significant number of efforts to understand and reduce violence, few studies or interventions have explored the unique cultural factors that might serve as buffers against violence for African American males. This study examines the role of culture in reducing rates of violent behavior among adolescent and young adult males. Findings suggest that culture plays an important protective role in the likelihood of engaging in violence for this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using MacKendrick (2017) as a springboard, this essay explores the March for Science as an example of social mobilization. I lay out some concerns regarding the use of this tactic as a response to attacks on science and suggest some ways sociology could contribute to the development of more efficacious actions to address the denigration of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I develop the concept of 'suppressive synergy' to explain how meat products retain their everyday legitimacy amongst consumers despite the controversies which surround these products. While sociologists have offered various explanations for and solutions to contemporary food controversies, absent from this literature is a more integrated explanation as to how industry, mass media, and consumers' everyday habits reciprocally limit the public's engagement with these arguments. I investigated this empirically elusive phenomenon by conducting six focus groups plus follow-up interviews with urban meat consumers in the US and a content analysis of meat-related articles in the New York Times (1983-2011). Findings indicate that suppressive synergy occurs on both spatial-temporal and cognitive-affective dimensions. The meat and livestock industry enchants consumers with ornate products while sequestering production facilities in remote areas. Consumers, resistant to abandon their everyday habits and the cultural imperative of meat consumption, routinely avoid and dissociate themselves from meat-related controversies. The mass media further normalises meat culture by infrequently covering these debates. This only reinforces public indifference, as the dearth of controversial stories bolsters the cultural presupposition that meat consumption is a generally benign activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of clarity about underlying philosophical commitments leads to lack of clarity at other levels of analysis. Here I show that the literature on so-called 'causal mechanisms' is rife with conceptual problems, stemming from insufficient rigor with respect to the metaphysics of causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our goal with this special issue is to expand currently untapped ideas about racial microaggressions from a sociological point of view. As noted, research on this issue comes largely out of psychiatry, psychology, and education-disciplines that tend to place less emphasis on structural and institutional causes of racism. There is a need for more sociologically guided research to examine how subtle, covert, and non-apparent forms of racism affect minorities physiologically, psychologically, and emotionally-and how these micronooses can best be understood in a larger context of structural racism. Examination of racial microaggressions from a sociological point of view promises additional insight to help understand the complexities of contemporary race and racism in America and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. Topics discussed include American sociology, racism in U.S. and black sociologists. Other topics which includes academic writing, social inquiry and slavery in U.S. are also discussed. In addition, topics such as book "The Philadelphia Negro" by Du Bois is also mentioned.

The article focuses on sociology in U.S. and mentions apartheid and slavery in the country. Topics discussed include working class in U.S., sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, his book "Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880" and democracy. Other topics which includes abolition, history of sociology and social change are also discussed.

This contribution is written against the backdrop of the historic dispersal of early American media sociology out from the core concerns of the discipline and into various importer academic disciplines (including communication, journalism, and media studies) and an ever-growing pervasiveness of media in everyday life which is reflected by a resurgence of sociological scholarship in the United States since the early 2000s. The article divides the field in works that study media inwards - along the threefold dimensions of production and technologies, communication and discourse, reception and effects - and works that study media outwards. We argue that this latter perspective, examining broader theoretical, methodological, and substantive social implications of mass-mediated communication, is the most promising one for a mature field of American media sociology. On this basis, we conclude with some suggestions regarding possible new, and as of yet understudied, lines of inquiry for future media sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study examines differences in prescription opioid misuse (POM) among adolescents in rural, small urban, and large urban areas of the United States and identifies several individual, social, and community risk factors contributing to those differences. Methods: We used nationally representative data from the 2011 and 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health and estimated binary logistic regression and formal mediation models to assess past‐year POM among 32,036 adolescents aged 12‐17. Results: Among adolescents, 6.8% of rural, 6.0% of small urban, and 5.3% of large urban engaged in past‐year POM. Net of multiple risk and protective factors, rural adolescents have 35% greater odds and small urban adolescents have 21% greater odds of past‐year POM compared to large urban adolescents. The difference between rural and small urban adolescents was not significant. Criminal activity, lower perceived substance use risk, and greater use of emergency medical treatment partially contribute to higher odds among rural adolescents, but they are also partially buffered by less peer substance use, less illicit drug access, and stronger religious beliefs. Conclusions: Researchers, policy makers, and treatment providers must consider the complex array of individual, social, and community risk and protective factors to understand rural/urban differences in adolescent POM. Potential points of intervention to prevent POM in general and reduce rural disparities include early education about addiction risks, use of family drug courts to link criminal offenders to treatment, and access to nonemergency medical services to reduce rural residents’ reliance on emergency departments where opioid prescribing is more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique data set of causal usage drawn from research articles published between 2006-2008 in the American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review, this article offers an empirical assessment of causality in American sociology. Testing various aspects of what we consider the conventional wisdom on causality in the discipline, we find that (1) 'variablistic' or 'covering law' models are not the dominant way of making causal claims, (2) research methods affect but do not determine causal usage, and (3) the use of explicit causal language and the concept of 'mechanisms' to make causal claims is limited. Instead, we find that metaphors and metaphoric reasoning are fundamental for causal claims-making in the discipline. On this basis, we define three dominant causal types used in sociology today, which we label the Probabilistic, Initiating and Conditioning types. We theorize this outcome as demonstrating the primary role that cognitive models play in providing inference-rich metaphors that allow sociologists to map causal relationships on to empirical processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the sustained sociological relevance of US daytime soap operas, a seemingly dead or dying generic form that continues to influence the entertainment landscape as well as media scholars from across the academy. The essay begins by examining soaps' longstanding resonance with three-core sociological concerns: identity, community or sociality, and cultural legitimacy. It then discusses scholarly research opportunities associated with the recent decline of the genre and concludes by examining current debates in soap opera scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A "risk" discourse, characterized by the focus on behaviors of the economically marginalized especially as it relates to drugs, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood, has traditionally dominated poverty research in the United States. More recently, this hegemonic risk discourse has become contoured by the so‐called new cultural turn in urban poverty studies, which has been marked as a departure from the earlier "blame the victim" perspectives. In this article, we review the role of urban ethnographers in shaping the structure versus culture debate in the sociology of poverty sub‐discipline. We then point to a scant, but growing, body of work that is encouraging urban ethnographers engaged in poverty research to expand their vision. To conclude, we contend that this new direction can be conceptualized as a feminist urban ethnography frame that advocates for transformation of the poverty research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]