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This paper examines the relation between positivistic and interpretive sociology, using the stress research literature as a case study. Analyzing the cultural history of the stress concept, it uncovers four central themes: anxiety, performance, adjustment, and mentalism, Examining the self-criticismc made by scientific students of stress, it focuses on the problems of temporal order, confounding, and interaction. Comparison of the cultural and scientific literatures shows that while some of the positivists' complaints derive from general methodological choices, others come from inescapable aspects of the culture's general idea of stress. Considering the past development of stress research, the paper argues that positivism and interpretation have not been Cartesian opposites but interpenetrating fractals. It then speculates about what this relation implies for future positivistic studies, both in the stress literature and more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the sociology of nations, a literature that is only starting to carve out its place in the social sciences. The paper offers a reconceptualization of 'nations' as 'national cultures', employing an evolutionary perspective and a systemic framework in which 'nations' are understood as cultural systems of a special kind. National cultures are intimately tied to natural languages, and the acquisition of a national culture occurs as part and parcel of the acquisition of a natural language. Acquiring a natural language is a prerequisite for learning other cultural systems (artefactual languages as well as other natural languages). National cultures function as metacultures. They are also the reference cultures for modern states and their citizens, a political dimension of nations that is of paramount importance, though it will only be touched on in this paper. National cultures should be considered as the most fundamental type of cultural system today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents two reports on the Eleventh World Congress of Sociology, that was organized in New Delhi in August 1986. If there is any unity across cultures among sociologists or others working in this field, it is provided neither by shared theories or concepts, nor by a common choice of topic studied, except in a very loose sense. Rather the international research community in our field is sustained through the sharing of a general perspective on society, a methodology and a more or less common Marxist-leftist political attitude. Political attitude is at least as important as the other two features, and is perhaps the key to a characterization of the events at the Delhi conference. The attitude of socio-political concern and engagement seems to be most productive in research terms when it is a counter-strategy, working in opposition to the dominant economic-political tendencies of a given society. This position was largely absent from the first world research reported. On the other hand, the moment it either becomes part of the political power structure or finds itself paralleling the efforts of the dominating parts it formerly saw as opponents, it faces a crisis. Such positions characterized the first and second world research presented.

This paper argues that the belief in and reverence for superhuman beings cannot be understood as the chief distinguishing characteristic of religious phenomena. The consideration of Buddhism has always been central to the discussion of what religion is, and this paper focuses on the limitations of the human-superhuman dichotomy as it might be used to apply to Buddhist traditions. The argument makes three points: a) There are important sects of Buddhism that do not rely on reverence for superhuman beings, and the concept "superhuman" is difficult (if not impossible) to use in cross-cultural studies because of cultural variations in what it means to be human; b) the insistence that "philosophies" should be systematically distinguished from "religions" is arbitrary and culturally biased; and c) Buddhist doctrines that assert that reality is ultimately "nondual" provide the conceptual context for understanding superhuman beings in Mahayana, and this conceptuality is not consonant with superhuman definitions of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverse events such as disasters are interpreted through a system of meaning provided by culture. Historically, research into society's response to disasters provides numerous examples of community resilience in face of adversity. However, since the 1980s, numerous researchers have challenged the previous optimistic accounts and argue that such incidents result in long-term damage to the community. It is claimed that community response to a disaster episode is far more likely to be defined by its vulnerability than its resilience. This new vulnerability paradigm of disaster response is underpinned by the belief that contemporary technologically driven disasters have a peculiarly destructive outcome. This paper explores the changing conceptualisation of adversity. It suggests that the shift from the expectation of resilience to that of vulnerability is best understood as an outcome of a changing cultural conceptualisation of adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to balance the conceptual reception of Bourdieu's sociology in the United States through a conceptual re-examination of the concept of Habitus. I retrace the intellectual lineage of the Habitus idea, showing it to have roots in Claude Levi-Strauss structural anthropology and in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, especially the latter's generalization of the idea of operations from mathematics to the study of practical, bodily-mediated cognition. One important payoff of this exercise is that the common misinterpretation of the Habitus as an objectivist and reductionist element in Bourdieu's thought is dispelled. The Habitus is shown to be instead a useful and flexible way to concep-tualize agency and the ability to transform social structure. Thus ultimately one of Bourdieu's major contributions to social theory consists of his development of a new radical form of cognitive sociology, along with an innovative variety of multilevel sociological explanation in which the interplay of different structural orders is highlighted. In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the "mechanisms" that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation. Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of the cognitive structures that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds thus structured. Indeed there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world . . . and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them (Bourdieu, 1996b[1989], p. 1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the notion of ‘addictive consumption’, conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are consistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shifting configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance. Finally, it suggests that the notion of ‘addiction’ has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its proliferation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself.

Interactionist analyses of social organization stimulate examination of how social situations and collective activity are shaped. Meta-power, the creation and control of distal situations, and organization as a structuration of meta-power are used as tools for exploring the shaping of situations Five meta-power processes are presented: strategic agency, rules and conventions, structuring situations. Culture construction, and empowering delegates. These processes illustrate how situations are created or altered. This paper offers a view of social organization that emphasizes relations among situations, linkages between consequences and conditions, and networks of collective activity across space and time. The conclusion calls for additional research to make more explicit the nature of social organization and its social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of students' engagement with a Web-based inquiry environment aimed at prompting student reflection in processes of scientific inquiry. In order to demonstrate how prompts become structuring resources for students' scientific inquiry, detailed analyses of students' interaction processes are conducted. The students' written responses to the reflection prompts indicated a widespread use of a ‘copy and paste’ strategy. The analyses of student interaction deepen this finding and show that instead of participating in reflection activities, the students make use of these ‘copy and paste’ strategies in order to come up with ‘correct’ answers to the prompts. Further, the analyses indicate that the students' employment of these strategies can be seen as a response to what can be termed the institutional practices of schooling embedded within the design of the prompts. These findings are discussed and explored in accordance with findings from previous studies on prompting students' reflection in Web-based inquiry environments. The study demonstrates the value of a socio-cultural perspective for gaining a deeper understanding of students' engagement with Web-based learning environments. Such a perspective can give valuable insight into how to (re)design prompts, and how prompts can be productive parts of students' learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the increased interest in the relation between culture and social policy as a starting point, and discusses how this increasing attention can be understood as the result of contextual factors such as economic, social and academic trends. It discusses these matters and at the same time reviews briefly some of the main findings of studies that contain a cultural perspective in analysing social policy. A second issue concerns the specific character of cultural perspectives in such analyses. Thus far, most studies in the field have been guided by a notion of culture as consisting of the values, norms and beliefs of welfare state actors. Recently, this notion has been questioned by advocates of the so-called ‘cultural turn’, who suggest that a radical change in the cultural analysis of social policy is required. The article concludes with a discussion of their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four community studies are analyzed to show the relative advantages of the concepts of cultural isolation and rurality. This analysis suggests that, in many types of investigations, it may be more advisable to establish theoretical frameworks in which the focus is centered on specific variables. Cultural isolation as a concept may offer keener insights and reveal more significant knowledge for the development of systematic theory than the use of the rural-urban dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on culture identity and dress. The sociology of dress is a vibrant field, exploring intriguing theoretical, methodological, and empirical domains. During the mid-twentieth century, clothing scholars began investigating the sociological and psychological implications of dress and appearance. In 1989, a group met to discuss the direction of the analysis of dress. The published papers from that meeting considered a wide range of topics, including identity, social psychology, cultural anthropology and sociology, semiotics, affect and cognition, social construction of gender, literary analysis, as well as qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Recent textbooks in the area continue to thaw from sociology and other fields to refine theories of dress and human behavior. Related to the misperception that dress only applies to the psychology of the self is the notion that dress is trivial both substantively and theoretically. Perhaps sociologists' neglect of dress might also be linked to a misperception that it is nonrational behavior similar to other actions that do not lend themselves to systematic analysis. Again these articles provide a contrasting view. In organizational and institutional settings, such as greedy organizations, total institutions, and mass media, dress and all it symbolizes are debated and discussed in ways that can be studied scientifically. Further, all of the articles have identified patterns in how dress is used in identity embracing and distancing that can be incorporated into broader theoretical frameworks.

The article focuses on anthropological reflexivity, which means applying anthropology's methods and insights to the study of anthropology. It states that anthropological reflexivity addresses the areas associated with the production of anthropological knowledge. To study about anthropology, it is important to have expertise in analyzing and comprehending other cultures since it deals with the study of human nature and human realities affected by cultural and social circumstances. It added that anthropological reflexivity is to understand and justify the position of anthropology in the institutional context.

In-depth interview data reveal that workplace context and the social characteristics of clients and coworkers play an important role in shaping how upwardly mobile individuals experience class at work. While respondents did discuss their working-class backgrounds as a liability, as might be expected, they also described ways in which they experience their backgrounds as an occupational asset. These findings challenge the notion of a linear relationship between class and culture, suggesting instead a complex, fluid relationship between class, culture, and occupation, where the “class” of a job does not necessarily determine the class culture needed for that job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are human individuals universally seen to be more real entities (or more entitative, to use Campbell's, 1958, term) than social groups? Although the individual may be seen to be more entitative than social groups in the West, it is unclear whether this is the case in other cultures, especially in East Asia. Two aspects of perceived entitativity are distinguished: psychological essentialism (belief in the presence of essence-like unchangeable properties) and agency (perception that a social entity is an agent), and examined for four social targets (individual, family, friendship group, and society) in three English-speaking cultures (Australia, UK, and USA), three East Asian cultures (Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea), and two continental European cultures (Belgium and Germany). In all cultures, the individual person was seen to possess essence-like unchangeable characteristics more than social groups (i.e. essentialized). As for agency, the individual person was seen to be more agentic than groups in Western cultures, but both individuals and groups were conferred an equal level of agency in East Asia. Individuals may be universally more essentialized than friendship groups and societies, but not always seen to be more agentic, than social groups. Implications of the results for conceptions of individualism and collectivism are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The determinants of and variations in processes of cultural valorization are of increasing interest to sociologists. In the case of high-culture literary texts, the central evaluation process takes place through canon formation. We explore the mechanisms of canon formation and of cultural valorization processes more generally by analyzing the critical history of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Published in 1937 to lukewarm reviews, the novel is currently considered a core canonical text. We specify three processes involved in the reconstruction of Hurston's novel and in the establishment of the African American literary canon: (1) the application of new evaluative criteria, (2) the reconstruction of textual meaning through newly available interpretative strategies, and (3) changes in the institutional and organizational environment that allowed new claims on high-status critical positions to be made by those previously outside the literary hierarchy. The implications of this study for theoretical models of cultural valorization in sociology are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political science in Britain. It focuses on the assessment on the degree of cohesion in other social sciences such as economics and sociology in comparison to the culture-bound character of political science. It also explores the non-existence of indigenous tradition with little resistance to absorption of foreign methodology and set of assumptions. British political scientists conclude on inductive intellectual process with criteria for selection from data observed from interactive process until provisionally accepted facts are arrived at.

James P. Spradley developed a systematic program for using personal experiences as data for cultural analysis. According to the program, the diversity of urban culture can be studied using ethnographic interviewing, participant observation and life history techniques. Spradley studied a Kwakiutl chief, tramps, cocktail waitresses, and deaf people and stimulated the study of variety in modern society. Teaching and research are integrated in Spradley's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Community" is defined as a number of families residing in a relatively small area within which they have developed a more or less complete socio-cultural system imbued with collective identification and by means of which they solve problems arising from the sharing of the area. The analysis of the verbal definition brings out four major variables: (1) number of actors, (2) awareness of action, (3) goal of action, and (4) recipients of action. Variables 1 and 2 are considered more relevant for the degree of "community-ness" than variables 3 and 4. By cross-classifying the four variables and weighting them, a sixteen-fold table has been developed. All actions occurring within the area of the community can be classified within the sixteen cells which are ordered along an increasing degree of "community-ness" of pertinent actions. Thus the complex phenomenon of community appears to be a continuous series of actions which can be measured along several dimensions making up the composite dimension of "community-ness." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the current social science is based upon the idea that social change characterizes primarily only this times or this generation. This is not true. In order to understand the farm family and the family farm one must be acquainted with the fact that social and cultural change has been a perennial characteristic of the civilization. Everything is always changing in rural life, including the farm family and the family farm. Neither the family farm nor the farm family has been the same from one broad period to another from the Homeric period to date. However, the farm family and the family farm have shown a certain recurrence of patterns although under somewhat different conditions. Forms of family organization, strength of domestic institutions, and forms of social challenge have been very much the same in the primitive, the middle and the late periods of each of the three great swings of Western culture. Furthermore, the family and the family farm are components of larger organizations of culture. What happens to them is generally decisive in many larger affairs.

The criterion of science is power of prediction as realized respecting controlled conditions of certain physical sciences. Gee-cultural regionalism implies a degree of ability to predict the effects in society from physical environment factors. Crop response offers a good testing ground of this, since relations of nature and society are there intimate and direct. Such situations prove baffling, because simple factors on one side articulate with a complex of factors on the other, rendering it impossible to trace the exact effects of the natural antecedents. The sequence is lost in the shuffle. From neither trends nor correlations can it be predicted exactly what effect such natural factors as precipitation or temperature will have on crop acreage, yield, income, or the death rate, educational index, and other cultural complexes. The conclusion is that this can be a field of approximate scientific forecasting only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deleterious effects of joint bias in favor of statistical inference and against replication are becoming well known. The acceptance of numerous Type I errors into the literature is by far the most serious of these. Data on the contents of three major journals support the contention that a joint bias for statistical significance tests, for rejections, and against replication exists in modern sociology. This finding replicates that of Sterling (1959) for psychology. A speculative analysis of the dynamics of publication decisions suggests that a compact format for reporting replications might make their publication more attractive to editors, and thus increase their frequency in the literature. A possible format for briefly reporting replication studies is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for universals means not so much stepping over the borders of cultural communities, as discovering construction principles common to the Spheres of the human praxis apparently belonging to entirely different realms. In other words, universal principles instead of common denominators, theory instead of endless rearrangement of disarrayed empirical records follow immediately. It is quite possible that in non-linguistic cultural sub-systems, like in language, the value of each element depends entirely on their opposition to other elements, on their being different from other elements. They are therefore characterised not by any positive quality of their own but by their oppositional quality and differential value. Common misinterpretations notwithstanding, a chance to bridge the conceptual chasm between statics and dynamics, synchronic and diachronic dimensions, is also built into the analytical equipment of the modern linguistics. The numerous statements to the contrary, frequent as they have been, have been born out of the understandable, though not necessarily convincing, passion of the devout preachers of an undoubtedly revolutionary idea.

This article presents information related to historical sociology of science. The sociology of science, not unlike the general discipline of sociology, studiously has avoided comparative/historical investigations. Notwithstanding the fact that comparative/historical work has merited the most prestigious awards available in the profession,' this style of work does not fill the pages of sociology journals. Rather, work in the sociology of science generally has focused on factors contributing to productivity on the part of individual scientists, the normative structure of science and the social organization of science. Most studies, including recent ethnographic analyses, focus on a selected science in a particular country. Yet, however interesting ethnographic investigations may be in generating certain kinds of insights concerning the "constructed" or craft like quality of science, they simply cannot generate hypotheses about the embeddedness of science in larger cultural traditions and institutions.

The article comments on culture and synthesis in the social sciences. The author does not know of a single important work that has been published that does not include culture in the broad sense of the term as part of the socio-economic system. If the evolution of culture is not a sociological subject, then surely the time has come when scholars should shut up shop and leave the publication of magazines to the dyed-in-the-wool specialist who would departmentalize every flimsy notion that attracts the intellect of modern man. Surely the title of the essay, "The Spirit of Medieval Culture," is sociological. As for the article itself, there is implied in it grandness of achievement under an economic system wherein a serf, having the benefit of about twelve acres of land, could, by a few weeks work, produce sufficient to provide for himself and his family for the entire year. What was possible under that system is impossible under this and, as contrast is of assistance in helping to determine the worth of subjects discussed, the author thought it would be of interest to men of this day to spare an hour to study some aspects of a culture which produced many of the greatest monuments man has raised in literature, philosophy and architecture.