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The multiple problems that the planet is currently experiencing—climate crisis, conventional and unconventional wars, planetary disenchantment with political systems, growth of inequality, increase in all kinds of intersectional violence, destructuring of the political economy of morality, etc.—are not a favorable scenario for thinking about hope. This paper nevertheless offers a summary presentation of the sociology of hope, presenting some of its central sources and components as well as a proposed study agenda for the future. This article seeks to foster discussion of what could be the central axes of a sociology of hope. To achieve this purpose, the following argumentative strategy was chosen: (a) the "place" of hope is explored in some classics of sociology, (b) the central components of a sociological investigation of hope are synthesized, and (c) an agenda is presented as a summary for a future development of a sociology of hope. The article seeks to draw attention to the urgency of hope as an important element for the future of sociology and social sciences in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows, first, how Sociology has approached the concepts of "hope" and "war" and how throughout the history of the discipline these terms have gone from being neglected to arousing considerable interest. Second, the paper analyzes how and why avant-garde artists understood the First World War as a motif of utopian hope to annihilate a civilization in crisis and to transform it through its aesthetic formalization. Third, the essay tries to find out whether that hope was preserved over time or, on the contrary, was soon dissolved as a result of the drama of the events. It is shown here that the savagery of the fighting dissolved all European values of modernity and progress, including artistic ones. In fact, theoretical and stylistic conceptions, aesthetic categories, ethical postulates, and artists' aspirations for conscience to rule the world were blurred. For the artistic avant-garde, utopian promises of a better world broke down. Consequently, this obliges sociologists to pay more attention to both phenomena—that of the war and that of the avant-garde—and to seek a more objective and critical interpretation of modernity, calling for its actualization, and of Sociology itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In educational research, there has been much stricture of neoliberalism as a scourge. In the higher education sector, the neoliberal turn has been observed as eroding academic freedom and deprofessionalising academics. Early career academics are often described as victims of neoliberalism. In this paper, we take a positive perspective through a deep dive into resilience that enables self-transformation and, potentially, system change. Our paper is situated in the Chinese higher education context where the "up-or-out" system has been put in place, mirroring the neoliberal university at a global range. We — a mid-career researcher and an early career academic — analyse our collective narratives generated through WeChat text and voice message. Drawing insight from Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, our narratives lead to four themes: capital accumulation and self-transformation, shaping the publication habitus, emancipation from symbolic violence, and resilience to symbolic domination. We conclude the paper with a call for sociology of resilience and recommendations for deneoliberalising higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the recent body of research exploring strategic positioning, and the processes and factors which influence the development and content of university strategies and plans, with lessons then applied to open questions of institutional diversity and its determinants. Following a sector level analysis of the contents of university positioning documents, an in-depth case study is developed of a large Australian university, where the interaction of intra-institutional 'meso' layers is explored to show a confluence of factors contributing to positioning. The case demonstrates that institutional positioning involves the selective crafting of narratives for multiple purposes, including the seeking and portrayal of internal cohesion, identity enhancement, and resource seeking. Importantly, while cross-institutional comparison of positioning narratives portrays an undifferentiated and somewhat homogenous sector, positioning is found within the case institution to obscure what is significant internal diversity and complexity. The implications of these findings for research exploring institutional diversity, and policies seeking to stimulate it, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution is based on Robert Bellah's introduction to Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973) and second on other references to the French sociologist in Bellah's work as well as in Bortolini's insightful remarks on the "homology" between Durkheim and Bellah. The publication of the book took place in a time of Durkheimian effervescence: Steven Lukes' Emile Durkheim.His Life and Work was published on the same year and a new Durkheimology appeared in the English-speaking world: attention shifted from methodology, as expressed in Suicide or in the Rules of Sociological Method, to morality with a focus on the moral basis on a non-pathological society. Bellah's statement is quite strong: Durkheim can "be seen as a theologian of French civil religion". The paper will examine's this point of view with respect to the state of French society at the turn of the century and Durkheim's social project. One side question concerns the choice of texts: the editor did not give enough weight to texts that might have strengthen Bellah's point of view, particularly l'Education morale. Bortolini mentions Bob's long and silent work on Durkheim and his critique of mainstream analysis of The Elementary forms of Religious Life, reducing religion to a mere projection of society (:142). The biographer insists on the ambivalent, if not contradictory, vision of Durkheim in Bellah's work, in which he finds a key to the interpretation of the oeuvre. The article focuses on how to account for its complexity, which is never as clear as in the interpretation of Durkheim's sociology in a post-rationalist direction. Bortolini's concept of role model/hero incarnated by the founding fathers (here Weber and Durkheim) is analyzed in connection with Parsons' reconstitution of a pantheon. The question of civil religion is reexamined in the light of the transatlantic transfers carrying different meanings of civil religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1950s saw the emergence of the science-driven model of engineering education. In the following decades, the model has been continuously challenged to incorporate aspects such as liberal arts, information & communication technology, design, entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainability, industry 4.0, and more recently, online-learning. This has triggered several initiatives at institutional and national levels, and manifested in approaches and practices for transforming engineering education. One approach that appears to be gaining attention is design-centric engineering, with its emphasis on learning-by-doing, product design and entrepreneurial orientation. While literature points to several variants of design-centric engineering and challenges in implementation, it also calls for more empirical studies and deeper theoretical inquiry into the contradictions and paradoxes that this approach might present to the students at the micro-level, and guidance on how they might make sense and find pathways of action jointly with internal and external stakeholders. This paper throws light on the contradictions and paradoxes experienced by undergraduate engineering students while implementing a design-centric engineering program at a young public-funded institute in India, involving approximately 1500+ students over a period of six years. The paper also discusses the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of the approach adopted to encourage students to make sense of the contradictions and paradoxes, namely: (a) leveraging the affordance offered by one of the courses in the program—"Sociology of Design—to synthesize engineering, design and sociological perspectives; (b) turning the contradictions and paradoxes into sources of learning and change, informed by the theory of complex responsive processes; and (c) application of multiple methods such as rich pictures, reflective writing, self-organized interactions and data analysis to enable sense-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 38 in-depth, qualitative interviews, this article explores how people working in the equality sector in England and Wales view and use the current law around sex and gender, and how they imagine law's future, particularly potential decertification, where the state would withdraw from certifying and regulating a person's sex/gender. Whilst situated in the bureaucratic strand of the literature, the paper also contributes to wider legal consciousness studies. This literature has generally focused on people's relationships to law in terms of domination, alienation and game-playing. Drawing on idioms and the language of touch, the paper unpacks the way in which equality actors talked about law not as remote or alienating, but as close and familiar; not as oppressive, but as "precious" and hard-won. Some also regarded law as a place of safety in unsafe times. These proposed 'attached to law' and 'protective of law' strands of consciousness enrich and extend Ewick and Silbey's classic 'before the law' narrative. The findings are also useful for critical legal and feminist scholarship. Combined with the equality sector's pragmatic and tactical use of law to problem-solve, this close and protective orientation towards law reproduces its hegemony. The paper concludes by exploring a recurrent refrain that, in relation to decertification, "we're not there yet" and that gender equality would need to be achieved before decertification would "fly". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a quantitative analysis of the data collected globally by the World Value Survey. The data is used to study the trajectories of change in individuals' religious beliefs, values, and behaviors in societies. Utilizing random forest, we aim to identify the key factors of religiosity and classify respondents of the survey as religious and non-religious using country-level data. We use resampling techniques to balance the data and improve imbalanced learning performance metrics. The results of the variable importance analysis suggest that Age and Income are the most important variables in the majority of countries. The results are discussed with fundamental sociological theories regarding religion and human behavior. This study is an application of machine learning in identifying the underlying patterns in the data of 30 countries participating in the World Value Survey. The results from variable importance analysis and classification of imbalanced data provide valuable insights beneficial to theoreticians and researchers of social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identified the 100 most impactful global contributors to religion journals and mapped their respective disciplinary affiliations. To conduct this investigation, we performed a secondary data analysis of a Scopus-derived database featuring the world's leading scientists. The mean contributor published 51.93 papers, had an h-index of 13.57, and an hm-index 11.50. Most contributors were located in the USA with the most common disciplinary affiliations being religion, non-specialized (n = 22), sociology, non-specialized (n = 21), sociology of religion (n = 20), and theology (n = 11). The results reveal that religion discourse is populated by some of the leading scholars in the world. Leveraging their expertise can help advance the field's knowledge development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociologies of quantification, university rankings, and infrastructure are a loosely connected set of scholarly endeavors. Research in these areas typically examines production of certain types of quantification, their effects, and institutionalization. Despite these commonalities, scholars have noted a lack of conceptual coherence, debates on how to study quantification, a need to examine their socio-epistemological prerequisites, and research that crosses organization and national boundaries. In this paper, I argue that institutional ethnography—an alternative sociology for people—provides a unifying ontology for the sociology of quantification and studies of rankings and metrics in higher education. Institutional ethnography examines socio-epistemological prerequisites of quantification and facilitates a collaborative transnational project due to its focus on the extra local coordination of action. I also share results of the first transnational institutional ethnography of university rankings and related metrics, demonstrating coordinated action across several junctures of what has been called a global university ranking surveillance assemblage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociologist C. Wright Mills is one of the most important and controversial sociologists of the post-war period. Of Mills' works, one book stands out: The Sociological Imagination, published by Oxford University Press in 1959. Little known is that Mills drafted his book during a 12-month Fulbright visit to University of Copenhagen 1956-1957. In the rich biographical literature on Mills this is mentioned only in the passing, or not at all. Based on hitherto unused archival material, this paper offers the first detailed account of his Copenhagen-visit during the Cold War. Bringing together this bulk of new historical traces sheds new light on the year Mills himself referred to as a "pivotal moment." These 12 months in Copenhagen, amid the Cold War, was formative for Mills in two ways: First, Copenhagen was an entrepot to European center-left thinking both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Second, the stay in Copenhagen offered a 'space of selfhood', allowing Mills a necessary respite to develop his critical thinking. He did so in close cooperation with like-minded colleagues in Copenhagen. In the mid-1950s, the discipline was in the making in Denmark, and the visit of a prominent US scholar like Mills offered opportunities for Danish sociologist to further the discipline – and their standing within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central thesis of this paper is that human unconscious processes influence the behavior and design of artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis is discussed through the case study of a chatbot called Replika, which intends to provide psychological assistance and friendship but has been accused of inciting murder and suicide. Replika originated from a trauma and a work of mourning lived by its creator. The traces of these unconscious dynamics can be detected in the design of the app and the narratives about it. Therefore, a process of de-psychologization and de-humanization of the unconscious takes place through AI. This psychosocial approach helps criticize and overcome the so-called "standard model of intelligence" shared by most AI researchers. It facilitates a new interpretation of some classic problems in AI, such as control and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue gathers empirical papers that develop and employ digital ethnographic methods to answer core sociological questions related to community, culture, urban life, violence, activism, professional identity, health, and sociality. Each paper, in its own right, offers key sociological insights, and as a collection, this special issue demonstrates the need to bring ethnographic methods to digital communities, interactions, practices, and tools. Both as a topic and a methodological approach, "the digital" points us to the need to update, rethink, and grow qualitative sociology. The exemplary papers comprising this special issue exhibit this curiosity and expansiveness, with lessons and implications for an interdisciplinary set of fields and research problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the interrelations between academic disciplines and society beyond academia by the case of sociology in Norway. For that purpose, this paper introduces the concept of disciplines' societal territories, which refer to bounded societal spaces that are shaped by the knowledge of a discipline, premised on the linkages between the discipline and its audience. By mapping sociologists' reported contributions to societal changes beyond academia, the paper firstly shows how societal territories are established by sociologists' recurring engagement with certain topics and research users. Secondly, it traces the interactions between researchers and their users, and identifies four ideal typical pathways by which the cognitive territory of Norwegian sociology is transformed into societal territories. A key observation is that the establishment of societal territories is co-determined by the structures of research use among its audience. As for the case of sociology in Norway, questions therefore arise over the interdependency between sociologists as knowledge 'suppliers' and the 'demand side' for research, and the autonomy of the sociological discipline in selecting its focus of attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which men protect a masculine ideal as they discuss Military Sexual Assault. Rape is an under-reported crime, but significantly less likely reported by men who have been sexually assaulted. The Department of Defense released a report indicating a higher-than-expected number of reports of male-on-male sexual assault. Sexual assault in the military, referred to as Military Sexual Trauma (MST), is complicated by a rigid hierarchical system. I use Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze Reddit extracts made by military men discussing military sexual trauma, some of whom are victims. Forms of gender capital, represented through features of masculine discourse, are present in these extracts. Victimized men are less likely to use the word "rape" to define the experience and focus on other terminology that identify the violence of the experience or the structural dominance that demanded their compliance. In cases of military sexual assault, men reinforce hegemonic elements of gender capital by discursively evading sexual aspects of the violence and affirming homosexism, to distance themselves from the femininity they associate with being sexually violated. Militarized masculinities and their expectations demonstrate an unique relationship between men and their own victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as 'scientific' early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim's very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on sociologists conceptualizing and studying hope along with several other papers on diverse topics. Topics include refection on the state of historical consciousness in U.S. sociology, and a discussion of the recent trend toward the pre-registration and registration of research designs; and study of "social pathology" such as poverty, illness, racial/ethnic discrimination.

In 2000, a controversial article about hormones and gender roles was published to stimulate debate about whether and how biological knowledge should be integrated in sociological research. Two decades later, this so-called biosociology debate is more relevant than ever, as biological knowledge has become widespread across societies and scientific disciplines. Hence, we as sociologists are regularly confronted with biological explanations that challenge our own explanations. Whether this happens in the scientific arena, the classroom, media, or even at social events, these situations often force us, individually, to take a stance on whether to meet such explanations with dialogue or opposition. One could therefore expect that sociologists have an interest in discussing these issues with their peers, but their lack of participation in the biosociology debate suggests otherwise. This paper explores possible reasons for this absence and how sociologists' views on biosociology are influenced by key agents – sociological associations and journals. Smith's "A Sacred project of American Sociology", and Scott's "A Sociology of Nothing" served as theoretical tools in the paper. A qualitative content analysis of presidential addresses of four sociological associations was conducted. The analyses suggest that sociologist avoid biosociology for widely different reasons, including fear that biosociology legitimizes oppression. This avoidance is probably reinforced by the leftish politization of the sociological discipline and the rightish politization of society. Overcoming obstacles to engagement in biosociology is required to safeguard the scientific integrity of sociology and enable sociologists to provide relevant contributions to research on the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profit-oriented service sectors such as tourism, hospitality, and entertainment are increasingly looking at how professional service robots can be integrated into the workplace to perform socio-cognitive tasks that were previously reserved for humans. This is a work in which social and labor sciences recognize the principle role of emotions. However, the models and narratives of emotions that drive research, design, and deployment of service robots in human–robot interaction differ considerably from how emotions are framed in the sociology of labor and feminist studies of service work. In this paper, we explore these tensions through the concepts of affective and emotional labor, and outline key insights these concepts offer for the design and evaluation of professional service robots. Taken together, an emphasis on interactionist approaches to emotions and on the demands of affective labor, leads us to argue that service employees are under-represented in existing studies in human–robot interaction. To address this, we outline how participatory design and value-sensitive design approaches can be applied as complimentary methodological frameworks that include service employees as vital stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In plotting the course for the discipline of sociology, sociologists over the past two decades have called for the practice of "public sociology" (Burawoy in American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28, 2005), for disciplinary convergence around a critical methodology (Carroll in Canadian Review of Sociology, 50(1), 1–26, 2013) and the devotion of our scholarly efforts to issues of social justice (Romero in American Sociological Review,85(1), 1–30, 2020). While public, critical, and social justice-oriented work is important, these disciplinary mandates can serve to marginalize other types of sociological work that are valuable as well. In this climate, work coming from perspectives that are not as left leaning politically, or that does not seek to advance any political agenda may be seen as less valued or legitimate, and scholars who choose to separate their political agendas from their research may experience marginalization (McLaughlin in Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30(1), 1–40, 2005; Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019). Inspired by the work and doctoral mentorship of Dorothy Pawluch, this paper seeks to both understand the historical development of the field of Canadian sociology and consider the value and place of the interpretive tradition within it. Through reflecting on the research of others and my own experiences as a graduate student, I argue that the "chilly" climate Dorothy (Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019) alludes to for scholars who operate outside of a politically informed "social-justice agenda" does exist, but that mentorship can help mediate this chill for interpretive leaning students. Finally, I suggest that the branch of the interpretive tradition which asks researchers to suspend their own perspectives and privilege the position of others still has value for Canadian sociology. It can both produce deep, meaningful research contributions and provide students with tools for engaging in productive intellectual debate and transformative encounters with difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the history of sociology in India to colonial anthropology and Indology. I argue that the compulsions of post-colonial society have also made specific demands on the discursive terrain of sociology. Fundamental to the pursuit of sociological knowledge in India, I believe, was a core debate about its mode of discursive practice – specifically, a debate between particularistic and universalistic orientations. From this point of view, I re-read the history of sociology in India. In doing so, I argue that close attention to the history of sociology helps us see the extent to which foundational western approaches to historical and comparative sociology have affected the historical development of sociology in India. Ironically, this has meant that the degree of historical self-awareness in Indian sociology has been limited. Hence, I discuss the grounds for the weak historical self-awareness in terms of historical sociology in India. I conclude by discussing how a strengthened tradition of historical sociology can be a tool to revitalize the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous enrichment of material life and the increasing improvement of spiritual life, the quality of life of people in the new era has improved comprehensively. After achieving technological advancements, further improving people's living standards will become the first priority, and indicators concerning quality of life will become more important, including spiritual needs, environmental conditions and social order. In particular, the degree of spiritual and cultural satisfaction is a prominent indicator for consideration. The current research investigates how new-age art is changing and how it may affect society dynamics in the future. It explores how new-age art, as a phenomenon in culture, adjusts to shifting environments, emphasizing the social roles, realization of values, and influencing elements of the art. With a focus on spiritual and cultural fulfillment, the study highlights the value of art in improving people's quality of life while taking into account elements such as social order, environmental influences, and spiritual demands. The primary goal is to comprehend the ways in which new age art raises living standards and general well-being. The results demonstrate the lasting contributions that new-age art makes to enjoyment, cultural transmission, and education, thereby reaffirming its important position in society. The paper emphasizes how crucial the socialist culture sector with Chinese characteristics will become to the future economic framework. This study found that new-age art continuously produces excellent literary and artistic works in addition to preserving traditional Chinese culture and fostering cultural self-confidence through its support for the improvement of living standards and industrial growth. This illustrates its practical importance in upholding economic supremacy and promoting cultural advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a study of the International Space Station (ISS), this paper argues that – as a set of orientations for sociological inquiry – pragmatism and hermeneutics are confluent frameworks to examine valuation as a social process. This confluence is grounded on their common attunement to valuing as a problematic and relational process, their equally common updates with theories of institutions, and a further conceptual development regarding the temporalities of valuation. I advance the argument in four steps. First, looking at how the question about the "scientific value" of the ISS is far from settled, I show how valuation is always about something considered problematic and indeterminate. Second, characterizing the ISS at the intersection of different criteria of assessment, I stress the nature of valuation as a fundamentally perspectival and interpretive process, and show how a hermeneutic approach can complement some of the limitations of pragmatism in this regard. Third, I look at the question of institutions considering how some modes of assessment sediment more successfully than others. Fourth, I argue that, while providing insights towards it, pragmatist and hermeneutic approaches to valuation have not fully grasped its temporal nature as a process, and outline ways to open this line of inquiry. I conclude with some ideas for studies in sociology of science to re-entangle detailed case studies of scientific practice with the study of how institutions make claims of worth about the nature of science, I propose ways to extend these arguments to other studies of what I call iridescent institutions, and I make some considerations about our stance as sociologists in these valuation disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes a critical analysis of the work of Gisèle Sapiro, with reference to sociology of literature. From 1999 (Sapiro, 2014a), Sapiro has developed the Bourdieusian research tradition, amplifying especially Bourdieu's theory of crisis. Focusing on the antagonisms between literary "prophets" and "priests", she has drawn on a rich sample of 184 writers to elucidate the struggles inherent in World War II between writers from different field positions and literary habitus. Further, her historical analyses of the ethical commitments of nineteenth century writers via a fresh microsociology of literary trials (Sapiro, 2011) has reminded us of the importance of popular poets in articulating the suffering of the subordinate classes. Her most recent book (Sapiro, 2018) has expanded on her earlier themes, whilst identifying the recuperation of certain 1930s' fascist worldviews within contemporary literature. This article notes that there is a telling divergence between Bourdieu and Sapiro on the issue of interests behind disinterestedness, exemplified in the case of Zola. On this issue, Sapiro's reading (Sapiro, 2011) is found convincing. Finally, the dialectic of avant-garde consecration and routinisation is questioned as a universal structure. It is suggested that certain avant-garde – the Harlem Renaissance, for example – did not undergo swift consecration or routinisation, although this contention deserves greater research. The paper concludes by showing that Sapiro's conception of writers' responsibility owes its origins less to Sartre than to the Durkheimian/ Bourdieusian notion of the expertise of the "specific intellectual". It welcomes Sapiro's concern for literature as a potential force for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist's view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada's criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically looks at the ways in which 'global sociology' has been debated and conceived in the past decades. It provides an historical overview of various proposals and ideas and the institutional contexts within which they are put forward and criticized. Two different periods are distinguished. Until the early twenty-first century, on the one hand, criticism of the 'ethnocentrism of the West' was often supported by ideas and pleas for an 'indigenization' of sociological knowledge. A commitment to the unity of science and to its universalist aspirations remained strong, however. In the course of the twenty-first century, on the other hand, criticism of the 'northern dominance' in sociology has become much stronger. Instead of a 'multicultural' understanding of global sociology, a 'critical' sociology that contributes to 'global justice' is now often advocated. Based on this historical overview, it is suggested that global sociology might contribute to more self-reflexivity within the discipline. It helps us to see how different contexts reverberate into the ways in which sociology itself is imagined in this world and provides an analysis of the debates for a better understanding of the challenges which sociology currently faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fruitful evidence to support the emergence of cooperation, irrational decisions are still an essential part of promoting cooperation. Among the many factors that affect human rational decision-making, peer pressure is unique to social organisms and directly affects individual cooperative behaviors in the process of social interaction. This kind of pressure psychologically forces individuals to behave consistently with their partners, and partners with inconsistent behaviors may suffer psychological blows. As feedback, this psychological harm may in turn affect individual cooperative decisions. There is evidence that when peer pressure exists, partnerships can reduce free-riding in enterprise. Based on interdependent networks, this paper studies the impact of peer pressure on cooperation dynamics when the strategies of corresponding partners from different layers of the networks are inconsistent. We assume that when individuals are under peer pressure, their payoffs will be compromised. The simulation results show that the punishment effect will force the expulsion of partners with different strategies, which will further reduce the proportion of partners with inconsistent strategies in the system. However, in most cases, only moderate fines are most conductive to the evolution of cooperation, and the punishment mechanisms can effectively promote the interdependent network reciprocity. The results on the small world and random network prove the robustness of the result. In addition, under this mechanism, the greater the payoff dependence between partners, the better the effect of interdependent network reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]