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The article offers the author's insight on the knowledge of sociologist Hans Joas concerning the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom or phronesis as the foundation for creativity. He mentions that his book "The Creativity of Action," explores his different perceptions about creativity. He adds that phronesis is related to the situation without given solution by reflecting on experiences and principles. He says that Joas perceive creativity as expression, production, and revolution.

The article describes conceptual displacement and migration in science. In the last few years there has been growing agreement among sociologists studying the scientific community that one of their central aims should be to describe systematically the connections between social processes and intellectual development in science. This concern on the part of sociologists with scientific knowledge is very recent, however, and most of the studies at present available deal exclusively with such social aspects of science as the system of professional rewards, the patterns of communication among research scientists, and the nature of social control within the research community.

This paper analyzes the work of two Indian sociologists who defined the contours of sociology in India in the immediate post-independence decades, M. N. Srinivas and A. R. Desai. It argues that their scholarship can be linked to sociology's legacy as anthropology in India and its embeddedness in the episteme of colonial modernity. It contends that Srinivas's methodology, the field view, attempted to make a break with earlier methods, such as book view. However, his three concepts, that of dominant caste, Sanskritization and Westernization were perceived as civilizational attributes and which had organized social change in India. A. R. Desai, a Marxist historical sociologist, made an incisive critique of capitalist exploitation and elaborated the material conditions that led to peasant and working-class revolts. However, his sociology could not unravel the caste-class linkages that organized the Indian 'social' which was embedded in Indian nationalism. This paper suggests that a definitive understanding of modernity emerges in Indian sociology in the late 70s when the feminist, dalit and tribal movements interrogated the material basis of contemporary India's developmentalism and its capitalist and exploitative character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on papers presented in a symposium on the nature and scope of sociology. Like other theoretical sciences, sociology is concerned with knowledge, not action, and thus sociology consists solely in scientific method and techniques, and in the organized body of theory and knowledge developed through the application of these. In this view, social engineering, which is the application of this knowledge to practical problems as through social work, social reform, or Christian social reconstruction, is definitely not sociology, although many sociologists participate in such engineering. When a sociologist participates in social engineering, he should realize that he is stepping over the boundaries of his role as a scientist. Like moral philosophy, sociology studies what can be observed of men's interactions through the use of the senses, but unlike philosophy it proceeds to testing the truth by a purely inductive criterion. In science, the ultimate test of all theories and hypotheses must be an inductive examination of whether they conform to the facts of sensible phenomena. It is this which distinguishes the knowledge of science from that of mathematics, philosophy or theology. It is for this reason that metaphysical principles may not be invoked to prove scientific questions.

The notion of the mechanism is one of the most popular and widely used concepts in science and sociology is no exception. This paper problematizes the widespread and often uncritical use of the term "mechanism" in contemporary sociology. Drawing on the mechanistic worldview associated with leading figures of the scientific revolution, the paper emphasizes the impact of mechanistic thinking on the societal rationalization process identified by Max Weber and the Frankfurt School. The analysis suggests that mechanisms, when applied to sociological theories, may uncritically reproduce a cultural fetish of the rational society with potentially dehumanizing consequences. The author advocates for a critical reflection on the cultural and historical context of mechanisms, urging sociologists to view them not merely as analytical tools but as active contributors to the creation and shaping of social worlds erected on a belief in instrumental reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even conservative estimates of the future course of AIDS epidemic make clear that only a small fraction of people who ultimately will experience AIDS symptoms now have them and that the spread of the virus will continue for some time to come. This article focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, some of which are beginning to be felt. I argue that sociologists have an important contribution to make anticipating the long range social consequences of AIDS. Intelligent planning is impossible without a reduction of uncertainty in what the future might hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary about a study by Michael A. Overington about the changes which have occurred in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. Most scientists are taught that theories will be abandoned when negative evidence is discovered. Scientists are taught that they should evaluate all new ideas even if those ideas contradict existing scientific beliefs. Parts of the work from some philosophers of science have been emphasized by a group of subjectivists who take pleasure in arguing that there is no real difference between scientific ideas and other types of ideas. Most sociologists know that what is considered to be good work depends upon a contemporary but changing consensus. Saying that there is no difference between scientific knowledge and ideology is saying that despite the beliefs of scientists, empirical evidence is of little importance in validating currently accepted scientific beliefs.

Max Weber (1864–1920), a German political economist, sociologist and historian has been influencing the critical accounting research significantly since 20th century. This paper aims to investigate the influence of Weber’s ‘rationality’ concept in accounting research through the identification of research platforms, trends and major themes and findings. This study adopts the qualitative research methods. A number of papers from 1984 to 2021 have been analyzed to reach the aim. Call of modernization and human inheritance with tradition force men to act in a rational and calculative way which are the premise of Weber’s rationality. Through the three specific things – calculability, methodological behavior and reflexivity Weber defined rationality and its process in the society. The study finds that Weber’s rationality has been used to understand the society and its reflection in the implementation of accounting mechanisms. Various disciplines of accounting (financial accounting, management accounting and auditing) as well as implementation of various tools of accounting have been investigated under the concept of rationality. Both the public and private enterprises have been investigated under the concept of rationality. It is expected that the study will contribute to understand the application of Weber’s concept in accounting research and potentiality as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written from an auto-biographic perspective, this paper is based on reflections and insights arising from a journey of adaptation by a 'sociologist-teaching-in-a-school-of-management'. These reflections unveil the relevance to management studies of four interrelated conceptual tools: critical thinking, reflection, reflexivity and the sociological imagination. Examples of scaffolding activities and class exercises are provided throughout the paper to illustrate the usefulness of these concepts in management teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Sociologists in Communism. The beginnings of a profession without status” is a collective volume coordinated by Sorin Mitulescu and contains the stories of some sociology graduates in 1975 and of some of their teachers at that time. The book is both an essay in sociology and a collection of oral history papers. We understand from reading the book that sociology was at that time the victim of the oscillations in Romanian politics between the desire for modernization (especially technological) and the fearful and dogmatic conservatism that had penetrated all social levels. Sociologists in communism want to be a starting point in a broader debate on the role of sociology and the sociologist, both in the past and in the present. He discusses several topics such as the relationship between sociology and power, the professional mobility of sociologists, the relationship between personal life and the career of a practicing sociologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a step-by-step guide for the undergraduate instructor in how to launch a student journal. The authors describe their experiences over the past four years in publishing the student journal at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, Michigan. Though there were some problems and pitfalls, the authors concluded that it was a rewarding educational experience and strongly recommend its replication at other undergraduate institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an explanation of sociologist Leo Goodman's paper hierarchical models for significance tests in multivariate contingency tables. In several papers Goodman presents and elaborates a system for the analysis of contingency tables that promises to be extremely useful to sociologists. The papers are however, extremely compressed, heavily complex with the cumbersome notation of contingency analysis and are not easily accessible to the student and average research worker. The aim of this article is to explain the logic and procedures of the system in terms the reader may find more comfortable. The Goodman system consists of two parts: a scheme for making significance tests by means of hierarchical models and an extensive discussion of a set of techniques known as log linear models. The two parts are logically and practically distinct. Among the important uses of hierarchical models are the following: tests for the significance of partial correlations, tests for interactions, where the control variable has as many categories as one pleases, tests for higher-order interactions, succinct statements of what is and what is not going on in a contingency table. Since none of these tools have been easily available to the average sociologist, the Goodman system is well worth learning especially because it provides considerable insight into the properties of cross-classifications and the logic of significance tests.

In a recent issue of the journal Review of Religious Research, sociologist Donald N. Anderson presented an attempted replication of a study one of the present authors published in 1962 on the relationship between laymen's participation in ascetic Protestant churches and their political preferences. The present article offers a testable resolution of the discrepancies between Anderson's findings and authors' findings. In addition, it attempts to clarify the distinction between the way Anderson prefers to study religion and the way most sociologists study it. In so doing, a social interaction model of religious influence is presented. This model is shown to afford a better interpretation of the political outlook of Protestants than do certain other models used by students of religious behavior. According to authors, the conclusion of Anderson's paper is devoted to a critique of the way most sociologists conceptualize and measure religion. He rejects what he thinks is their penchant for defining the religious factor as "the residue apparent when such factors as occupation, education, place of birth, etc., have been controlled." Anderson's approach to religion is quite different from the approach of most sociologists.

Merton proposed middle range theories, not as ends in themselves, but as bases for a consolidation to explain broader phenomenon. More than a half century has passed since Merton's consolidation proposal and in that time a number of experimentally tested middle range theories have been developed. Certainly, the next step should be a consolidation. Yet, to our knowledge, no one has previously offered a consolidation of experimentally tested theories and applied it for explanation. This paper offers a consolidation of middle range theories formulated to explain the rise of the pristine state. Two theories of this consolidation, Status Characteristics Theory and Elementary Theory, form the core of what Analytic Sociologists have called a toolbox of theories. Our toolbox forms an integrated consolidation in two ways. First, the social structures modeled by the theories form a path-dependent process of increasing benefits gained by the elites of the structures. Second, the end conditions of each step of the process are the initial conditions of the next. Whereas the theories in our toolbox have previously been seen as applying exclusively to microstructures, we have encountered no difficulties in scaling them up to apply to macrostructures. While we hope the consolidation has validity in explaining the occurrence of pristine states, this paper's significance lies in its demonstration that today social theories can be consolidated and applied for explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a collaboration between a sociologist and a writing instructor to develop a Human Ecology course that stresses problem-solving and written communication. The emphasis on thinking and writing skills means reduced time for lectures but increased student ability to identify, resolve, and communicate issues in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the position papers in the June 1967 issue of Rural Sociology. The author asserts that the papers are a mark of growing maturity of the rural sociology profession. It took years before the state universities and colleges assumed the dominant role of that they have achieved in the development of rural sociology. Contributions of the early sociologists to the applied field are presented to emphasize their historical value.

Ackoff has decried the "devolution" of OR/MS. Corbett and Van Wassenhove have spoken of its "natural drift," and a sociologist has described its "regression" as typifying that of other learned professions. To shed light on these views, we undertook a detailed survey of a segment of the OR/MS literature, with particular focus on the space in flagship journals devoted to theory on the one hand and applications on the other. While the literature of OR/MS contains many articles and texts with the word application in the title and the word data in the text, the definitions and uses of these terms are not precise. The claimed applications differ in degree and the actual data differ in kind. To encompass these different meanings we used a five-point scale to classify articles in the 1962 and 1992 volumes of Operations Research and Management Science and the 1972 and 1992 volumes of Interfaces. The resulting statistical analyses shed considerable light on the direction that OR/MS is taking and raise questions about its appropriateness. Finally, the paper raises fundamental questions about the direction that OR/MS should take and the roles that its journals should play in pursuing this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that interreligious dialogue through study and friendships across the religious divide makes participants less susceptible to religious and cultural misinformation that is often used to maintain social bubbles, in which members draw clear boundaries between "us" and "them". Differences between social groups can culminate in a struggle between "good" and "evil" that can escalate into tension and violence. Preventing tensions and conflicts requires respect for differences, willingness to engage in dialogue, and a sound understanding of what religion is and the historical processes that have determined its development, distinguishing between empirical facts and images to which believers adhere. Because the author is a Dutch sociologist turned journalist from a conservative Christian family involved in interreligious dialogue in the Netherlands, Israel, and Egypt, the literature review presents contemporary religious developments in all three countries. The literature review is flanked by the author's personal narrative on the events that changed his views on truth and spirituality, making him more aware of the commonalities between peoples of different beliefs and leading him to a lifelong commitment to interreligious and intercultural dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definition: Residential segregation refers to the disproportionate distribution of population groups across a geographical area. Groups can be segregated on the basis of any characteristic (such as occupation, income, religion, age or ethnicity) and at any geographical scale. In most cases, segregation is, however, measured with regard to residential areas of a city. The extent of the unequal distribution of selected characteristics can be expressed by different statistical measures. Sociologists, economists and demographers have long studied how social groups tend to be differentiated in residential space and developed a broad range of explanations. As a consequence, segregation has been explained by a variety of theories, which are discussed in this paper. The topics examined by empirical research include temporal dynamics, geographical patterns, societal causes and effects on life chances. This entry focuses on major conceptual facts regarding residential segregation and only marginally discusses the methodological issues connected with its measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology & Society is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article comments on sociologist Nichloas S. Timasheff's work on "Don Luigi Sturzo's Contribution to Sociological Theory." Timasheff makes his points with fine perception and his comments are not only illuminatory of Sturzo's positions but also unflinchingly expose the problems that at points may trouble the reader of Sturzo. Don Sturzo would have received more adequate recognition hut for his tendency to lay down some maxims which antagonized various groups of readers, but which, nevertheless, do not affect the actual course of his sociological arguments or the conclusion to which they lead. The logic of his initial dictum beguiled Sturzo into an occasional concession that is at odds with the tenor of his sociological teachings. Sturzo's sociological contribution is many-sided, but has scarcely entered into the stream of sociological thought. Aside from an appreciative study by Monsignor Paul Hanley Furfey, which, nevertheless, recognizes the primary difficulty the author has been discussing, and the favorable comments of a few other sociologists, he has been ignored as unimportant. Sturzo himself has made it more difficult for sociologists in general to appreciate the scale of his contribution; his polemical attitude towards other sociologists whose views were akin to his own was no doubt also responsible. He was an effective critic but, as Timasheff points out, over inclined to consider other theories only in their more extreme interpretations.

Rural sociologists are concerned about the present status, the crucial issues, and the future of their group. In 1963, the Committee on the Development of Rural Sociology developed a preliminary list of major issues facing rural sociologists. With the approval of the Council, the members of the committee decided to prepare a set of working papers on some of these major issue areas. These papers would attempt to define more clearly the assumptions, dimensions, and issues, to present different points of view, and to suggest alternative definitions or positions and their probable consequences. Thus, it was hoped that the working papers would provide a structure from which more effective discussion would develop.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to make a conceptual argument for considering interactive work – i.e. work made up of micro-level exchanges or social interactions with third parties such as customers, patients or citizens – as a distinct analytical category in employment-related research. The argument is underpinned by the core role played by interactive work in valorisation. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper, with its argument based on key findings from the debates on symbolic interactionism, service work and interaction work. These are merged and combined with a valorisation perspective. Findings: "Social interactions" and "work" have mostly been considered separately by theoretical sociology and the sociology of work. The author contends however that the two concepts should be viewed together, as social interactions at work are a constitutive feature of many occupations, jobs and tasks. This implies studying both exchange and social relationships between the different parties and their embeddedness in specific (multi-level) contexts. Moreover, there are two reasons why interactive work relates to specific working conditions: first, it involves customers or similar groups as third parties; second, it is key to valorisation. To systematically study interactive work, context-sensitive approaches spanning multiple (analytical) levels are recommended. Originality/value: The article contributes to advancing the understanding of interactive work as a distinct form of work as yet under-theorised but deserving to be considered as a separate analytical category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on a criticism of his research on Ideational and Sensate cultures by sociologist Hornell Hart. Since by its very nature ideational culture is all inner and charismatically collective and anonymous, it naturally does not yield as great a number of individual philosophers, thinkers, artists, or as great a number of scientific discoveries and inventions, or as high a standard of sensate living, as sensate culture, mainly external, does. And yet, so far as an absorption in God and in inner values is of great value, so far is Ideational culture one of the most magnificent forms of culture, and possibly uncomfortable as a settled dwelling for most of the sociologists. In addition, besides a great art and literature, the Mediaeval Ideational culture created Christianity, the backbone, the heart and soul, of Western culture, the very condition of the possibility of later Sensate culture itself. The weight of this single creation of Ideational culture is likely to be greater than that of almost all the philosophers, artists, scientific discoveries, and Sensate planes of living given by the critic.

Historians and sociologists have highlighted the importance of skills, local practices and material culture in their studies of experimental sciences. This paper argues that the acquisition and transfer of skills in theoretical sciences should be understood in similar terms. Using the example of Feynman diagrams - first introduced by the US theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1948 as an aid for making certain kinds of calculations - we study how physicists in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union learned how to use the new tools and put them to work. Something about the diagrammatic tools could be learned from written instructions alone, at a distance from those physicists already 'in the know', although this type of transfer proved to be very difficult slow, and rare. The rate at which new physicists began to use the diagrams in various settings, and the types of uses to which the diagrams were put, reveal the interplay between geopolitics, personal communication, and pedagogical infrastructures in shaping how paper tools spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussing his work and teaching in Appalachian Studies, Dwight Billings emphasizes the need to recognize the diversity of Appalachia and understand Appalachian Studies in relation to social, economic, cultural, and political developments around the world. Appalachia has much to offer others in terms of postcolonialism and the ways that people make sense of their traditions in a changing world. (TD)

Reacts to articles by Charles Bidwell, Paul Kingston, and Carolyn Riehl in the 2001 theme issue of Sociology of Education. Argues that Bidwell and Kingston's articles show the strengths that the educational sociology field has exhibited over the years. Evaluates Riehl's article as a movement toward examination of the current intellectually tumultuous world. (CAJ)

Overviews the career of Helen Lewis as sociologist, social activist, teacher, writer, researcher, and mentor. Helen Lewis discusses growing up in segregated Georgia, her unorthodox approach to education, her fight for social and economic equality, her instrumental role in the development of Appalachian Studies programs, and how social activism affected her personal life and career in higher education. (LP)

The structure that best develops a discipline's core has a high density of positive network ties within the discipline, relatively weak subdivisions, and a lower density of ties to outside institutions. Theoretical insights about interactional dynamics that weaken this optimal disciplinary structure may help sociologists deal productively with major social changes occurring in their field. Contains 50 references. (Author/SV)

The article presents the author's comments on the works of sociologist Robert F. Winch regarding permanence and change in the American family. The author suggests that there may be two significant aspects of a network of extended kin in a nuclear family. One is the literality of kin contacts and other is the presence or absence of formal kin groupings.

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in a previous issue of the Canadian Journal of Sociology. According to the author, the central points of his article were: (a) that an extensive body of ignored research had shown that the methodologies adopted by the original Vertical Mosaic school of thought on elites probably exaggerated the exclusivity of Canadian elites to a considerable degree; (b) that the finding of elite membership that was unrepresentative of the social composition of the population did not indicate a shocking anomaly that demanded immediate remedy. This pattern is referred to in the international literature as the law of increasing disproportion; (c) that, in any case, research conducted using other methodologies, and research conducted since the original publication of The Vertical Mosaic, indicates that the Canadian pattern is in transition. Sociologist Harvey Rich argues that the measures of middle class used in the Vertical Mosaic tradition, and uncritically adopted in author's paper, are far too narrow and would apply to what most would designate as the upper middle class. Consequently, Rich argues that author's guesstimate about the possible proportion of those of working-class origins in the elites was too high. Rich is correct. It is also correct to suggest that author's paper sometimes confused sociologist Wallace Clement's position with sociologist John Porter's position and that its discussion suffered accordingly.

This paper explores the presence and consideration of economics in sociology, specifically its classical version. It identifies certain original and independent economic theories, concepts and approaches in classical sociological theory as central and its derivations, implications and extensions of economics as peripheral. The paper argues and demonstrates that classical sociology is far from being the science of noneconomic or irrational phenomena, as often sociologists conceive it and economists perceive it in counter-distinction from economics defined as the science of rational behavior, and indeed encompasses virtually all economic activities and processes, and thus prefigures New Economic Sociology adopting the same approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in a previous issue of the journal Review of Religious Research. According to the author the article by sociologists R.W. Bibby and M.B. Brinkerhoff contains some interesting ideas, especially when taken together with their closely related paper, which, as well, is a major contribution to the literature on church organization and of why people join churches. However, the article has some problems that call to question some of its conclusions. First, the paper seems to set up a questionable "straw man" to justify its own existence. The authors say "It has been a popular pastime in armchair and social scientific reflections upon religion to assert that the religious are drawn from the ranks of society's deprived." According to the author of this article his understanding of the deprivation literature is that it usually seeks to explain why people join new and somewhat deviant religious groups, and how such groups and movements are started and grow.

Social scientists, in particular sociologists, claim that the distinction between universalistic and particularistic values is relevant to explaining the social behaviour of individuals (and societies). This paper provides preliminary empirical evidence that supports the claim. It first defines a number of proxies for the degree of particularism embedded into long-celebrated dimensions of social behaviour (trust, political awareness, and associational activities). Then, it shows that the particularistic measures are positively correlated to each other and negatively correlated to some established generalist measures for all dimensions of social behaviour considered, both across and within countries and regions. Moreover, the paper relates that the various proxies for particularism share the same set of covariates (such as low education and income), which are neatly distinguishable from the determinants of the generalist measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Seminare Learned Investigations / Seminare. Poszukiwania naukowe is the property of Francis de Sales Scientific Society / Towarzystwo Naukowe Franciszka Salezego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this study is to investigate Mohsin Hamid's novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by utilizing the theory of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The study, a theoretical construct founded on two key concepts from Bourdieu's theory, namely habitus and field, aims at offering a new perspective to understand the dilemma of the protagonist Changez from a sociological cultural perspective. It shows how Changez cultivates his habitus to pursue a specific taste in America through multiple forms of cultural capital and manifests how these forms shape his attitudes and relations. It also offers a metaphorical portrayal of Changez as a footballer who struggles within various positions to retain power and eventually fulfill his American dream through both the macrocosmic and microcosmic social fields that he finds himself in. The assumption that this paper is seeking to validate is that there is a common ground between the novel and Bourdieu's theory of practice in some key concepts and that understanding the habitus and the doxa of Changez' social fields can help understand his practices, dispositions, and most importantly the reasons behind him leaving America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ilene Philipson, the Californian born sociologist and licensed psychologist, asserts that Erich Fromm is the second widely read psychoanalyst in the world standing after Freud. Fromm discusses "necrophilia", love of death, and "biophilia", love of life. He also studies "being mode" and "having mode", one's general orientation toward being a better person or toward having more, respectively. This paper is the case study of Tolstoy's novella The death of Ivan Ilyich (1886/2009) in light of Fromm's insights as reflected in his later works. There are two opposing views arguing if Ivan Ilyich, the protagonist, eventually changes for better or worse. Invoking Fromm's theories, we argue that Ivan Ilyich undergoes positive changes toward the end of his life which are actualized through the protagonist's departure from necrophilia and conversion to biophilia. In this sense, it is also argued that Ivan casts "having mode" to embrace that of "being". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Chicago was founded in 1833, it was an abstract grid that operated as an instrument of procession and dispossession. Almost a century later, sociologists Robert E. Park and Eugene Burgess mapped another process of possession and dispossession as they studied the city's social organisation. Their students St. Clare Drake and Howard Cayton adapted that map in their 1945 book, Black Metropolis. Both Park and Burgess, who were white, and Drake and Cayton, who were Black, marked the area of the city where Black people lived, situating it as an anomaly cutting through an otherwise well-determined model of urban growth. Park and Burgess labelled this territory the 'Black Belt' while Drake and Cayton named it the 'Black Metropolis', representing a radically different understanding of the city as a particular form of optimism. Using the notion of 'Black optimism' that emerges out of Fred Moten's understanding of the Black Radical tradition as a framework, this paper argues that Blacks in Green, a Chicago community organisation, has advanced a form of radical sustainability that asks us to learn how to think and be 'otherwise'. It pursues a form of environmental justice that depends on African American heritage, particularly abolition and reconstruction, to create new possibilities for Drake and Cayton's 'Black Metropolis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of research using Talcott Parsons's papers at the Harvard University Archives, Charles Camic read "Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions" in manuscript form. Given sociologists' continuing interest in Parsons's ideas, Camic suggested that ASR make the paper widely available. We are pleased to do so in this issue. Camic's prologue places "Prolegomena" in the historical context of Parsons's work. Both James Coleman and Jeffrey Alexander have previously written about Parsons and were asked to comment on the implications of "Prolegomena" for our understanding of his theoretical contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Arab universities, sociologists rarely discuss the sociology of death. By studying social and cultural variables along with subjective and objective meanings of death, this paper contributes to filling this gap in research on death in a Sudanese urban area. Furthermore, the study examines the relationship between the burial of the dead and the time and place of their burial, social status, relatives, and religious affiliation as they relate to their burial. A major objective of the research is to explore the social and cultural dimensions of death in Sudanese communities. Data were collected using interviews and observations in the field using the descriptive method. Death is more of a social than a biological fact; therefore, the general findings of this research are about declaration of death, and what it implies about social cohesion. Burial and social acts following death are acts that express social meanings, and further, indicate how biological death has occurred. Based on variables such as social status, family relationship, and religious affiliation, it can be seen that the deceased person and/or family holds these beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the role of sociology in climate change research and policies. Climate change can be regarded as one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. It has attracted attention from several disciplines, with the physical sciences regarded as dominating climate change research. Apparently, despite that climate change is inherently a social problem, sociologists have been slow in tackling it, at both theoretical and policy levels. Even so, available literature contains assorted and interesting sociological contributions and insights. As such, this paper posits that sociologists are interested in climate change issues, have a lot to offer and they can draw from a number of sub-fields. For instance, using sociology of sustainable consumption sociologists can tackle how societies can re-organise consumption patterns and habits, sociology of education provokes more intriguing research into the construction of climate change science, knowledge and solutions and feminist sociology can extend robust research into how the material and discursive dimensions of climate change are profoundly gendered. Importantly, critical sociology provides a repertoire of concepts and novel methods that can be deployed in climate change research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (1855-1920) was an economist, a philosopher, a sociologist and a literary critic who had a major contribution to the spread of Marxism in Romania and who studied the relations in our country through this current of thought. Amongst his most relevant preoccupations was the study of the agrarian issue, which led him to formulate the theory of the neo-serfdom. He painted a very realistic picture of the European economic world of his time and worked out the thesis of development from forms to the roots in the less developed countries. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the specific features of Gherea's economic thinking and the historical context of his main ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the comments of the editor for the journal "Human Studies." This special issue began with an idea proposed by George Psathas over lunch an intentionally open and broad call for papers to all contributors, editors and friends of "Human Studies." The present volume displays the many different ways that call was answered. As a sociologist have generally found it advisable to reject what in traditional academic circles is called interdisciplinary but in practice seems a way for one discipline to steal, and often distort in the process, ideas from other disciplines and claim them as their own. When, for instance, sociologists make use of psychological theories to explain children, rather than displaying interdisciplinarianism, they, from perspective, simply fill in gaps neglected by sociologists by stuffing in handy ideas from psychology, doing justice to neither.