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In recent years, 'Facebook' is considered a widely used social network site, used by a vast cross section of persons worldwide, regardless of age, job and education level. Facebook was commenced in February 2004 as a social networking site for Harvard students and expanded to all over the world, thus offering an extensive attain within a defined geographical area, unlike most internet sites (Lewis, J. West, A. 2009). It is the practically 'universal social networking site and it has the highest share of users' daily visits' (Hampton, K.N. et al et al, 2011). As a result, it made communication with different people and groups in various locations possible and easy. 'Facebook's mission' is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected' (www.facebook.com). In this paper, my interest is in the term 'Friend' on Facebook. Especially, in the way it is socially shaped, and how the users are using it and understand it. In addition, the aims of this essay are to explore reasons for having friends on Facebook, and methods or ways that have been used by users to select friends. It also aims to illustrate types and main themes of conversation and chatting with friends on Facebook. However, the main purpose of the paper is to critically compare the notion of friend online and offline, via a quantitative data collection and interviews with the Facebook users. [For the complete volume, "Proceedings of International Conference on Studies in Education and Social Sciences (Antalya, Turkey, November 11-14, 2021). Volume 1," see ED625228.]

The Pandemic has affected the success rates among students in Higher Education. In general, Higher Education success rates are typically lower among minority groups. Considering the Pandemic effects in Hispanic Serving Institutions, this research study will focus on understanding the impact of the pandemic on currently enrolled undergraduate students in a Hispanic Serving Institutions and how technology may have played a role in their success. A qualitative approach will be used. Specifically, researchers interviewed 7 students whom were currently enrolled in a Hispanic Serving Institution in a Sociology class. The data will be analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Findings showed students saw technology as a contributing factor towards their success, the pandemic positively impacted their lives with the increase of flexible schedules, and males mentioned more barriers for success with high rates of struggling with anxiety. These data imply the need for a department focused on helping students succeed. Specifically, a department focused on providing all the resources needed by students in a Hispanic Serving Institution. These needs were amplified after the pandemic. [For the full proceedings, see ED631133.]

This volume includes three sections of the 2021 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; (2) Language and Linguistics; and (3) Sociology and Healthcare. Education and Educational Research includes 15 papers covering the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education, educational policy, strategy and technologies. This section also covers pedagogy and the education and socialization challenges post-COVID-19 pandemic. Language and Linguistics includes 7 papers covering topics related to theoretical, literary and historical linguistics, as well as stylistics and philology. The Sociology and Healthcare section has 15 papers covering topics related to human society, social structures, and social change, healthcare systems and healthcare services. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

Talking about the existence of art since the cave period is a universally common judgment. It is said that reaching this judgment comes with understanding living collectively or living in an area. Therefore, in the first place, a conversation showed its existence in the language of communication, which provides the opportunity to understand each other, and then it turned into an art field that is a tool for people to express their aesthetics and feelings. Even when the art is being examined within itself, it has been divided into parts and examined under sub-headings such as movements and understandings. In this way, it has become a narrative tool that expresses the periods of people. It has shown that man does not do anything in the universe for no reason and is connected with a cause. Research has been shaped by the idea that man has not produced anything without a purpose; he does not produce. In this study, it is seen that he made a sociological-based evaluation of art projection and worked in sociology. For this purpose, the effects of the war on individuals and the sociological context of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," Diego Rivera's "National Palace," Francisco Goya's "May 3, 1808" were analyzed. [For the complete volume, "Proceedings of International Conference on Studies in Education and Social Sciences (Antalya, Turkey, November 11-14, 2021). Volume 1," see ED625228.]

This paper explores the value of different paradigms to explain dispositions towards mathematics among primary school students from different social backgrounds. As part of a larger project designed to elicit students' thinking and attitudes towards mathematics, we seek to develop an explanatory model for the socially-differentiated outcomes in students' responses. The three paradigms--psychology, sociology and post-modernism--form the basis of the paper where the data we collected from three geographically close but socially different schools were analysed.

The article focuses on conducting a systematic literature review of stigma in marketing and consumer research, aiming to categorize types of stigma and suggest research directions. Topics include analyzing 82 relevant papers, employing frameworks from sociology and psychology, and outlining a comprehensive research agenda for advancing knowledge in marketing and consumer behavior.

This paper offers a sociological framework that doubles as a practical guide for the study of entrepreneurship based on Bourdieu's theory of practice. Bourdieu's lens has been applied in organizational studies, and has strong potential in entrepreneurship studies. There is, however, a dearth of robust frameworks to guide its application. The result is a number of Bourdieu-based entrepreneurial studies with solid ontological vigour, yet lacking in methodological rigour. This paper bridges this gap by offering a framework that guides the application of Bourdieu's key concepts (Forms of Capital, Social space, Habitus, Fields of practice, Field of power, Homology and Opposition) to entrepreneurial studies. The framework offered in this paper emphasises the 'spatial power distances' between agents as the basis of choices, preferences and actions, and stimulates Bourdieu's sociology as tool for explaining the dialectic between entrepreneurial agency and agents' social environment. Using Bourdieu's concepts of 'homology and opposition', this paper provides researchers, opportunities and tools for accounting for the conflicts and tensions, struggles and negotiations, agreements and disagreements that arise between agents, agential groups, and their environment, struggles and negotiations that give rise to, and shape their entrepreneurial practice. The framework provides for Bourdieu-based researches, guidance for conceptualization, data gathering and interpretation of the data, a guidance structured in such a way that all research methods and processes rigorously conform to Bourdieu's ontological and epistemological implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Division of power as a base principle of construction of state power is a major precondition for establishment and construction of democratic and functional states in accordance with international acquitted standards and practices. Parliamentary control of the Government and the state administration bodies in front of Parliament is one of the characteristics of the parliamentary system. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia and its members for their work are responsible before the Parliament of the Republic of Macedonia, but also to the general opinion. The Parliament has established constitutional competences to exercise political control over the Government. The constitutional obligation of the Parliament itself, i.e. the MPs, is implemented through constitutional mechanisms; MPs' questions, interpellation and vote of confidence of the Government, as well as other mechanisms (polling commissions, etc.). The purpose of this paper is to study the implementation of parliamentary control over the Government and administration, respectively the use of political and parliamentary mechanisms. Part of the paper will also be the comparative aspect of parliamentary control in the Republic of Macedonia and Republic of Albania. The results of this paper should reflect the analysis of the functioning of parliamentary control in Republic of Macedonia compare to Republic of Albania. The used methodology will be in the function of researching the subject and obtaining results and conclusions of the work using appropriate legal and sociological scientific methods as the method comparative that will achieve the specified objective. Part of the paper will be the conclusions of the paper that will be the product of analysis and scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I contribute to both the sociology of violence and the sociology of animals through a comparative analysis of two U.S. government killing programs: a shadow airwar conducted as part of the "War on Terrorism" overseas and a program undertaken to kill predatory and "nuisance" animals at home. Throughout the paper, I describe the necropolitics through which both programs are sustained. First, both U.S. government killing programs operate in "states of exception," in which it is presumed that widely shared normative prohibitions on killing humans and wildlife do not apply. And both programs utilize a humanitized violence, and are both accompanied by a humanitizing discourse, in order to create the impression that this killing is undertaken in a humane and moral way. Finally, these programs share similarities in political economy, in which organizational and economic logics drive the U.S. government to continue both, while imposing few political or economic costs for doing so. I close the paper by imagining what kinds of changes would need to transpire before such programs are brought to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of recent publications in sociology, moral psychology, and social psychology have voiced concern about the existence of "sacred" values within the social sciences. More specifically, such critics contend that the construction of sacred victims (i.e. the morally, and thus empirically inviolable) in sociology and other disciplines has biased both theory construction and the gathering and consideration of evidence. This paper argues that these contributions have incorrectly directed analysis at the field's communicated content, the opus operatum. As argued here, the correct level of analysis, one which can account for the existence of sacred valuations within a scientific field (i.e. immunity from peer criticism) is more so at the sub-cognitive, generative mental schemata more specifically, which as principles of composition are within, but therefore not of, perception. This paper outlines the content of such heuristics (oppressor-victim binaries), the psychological orientation they engender, their origin and rationalization amid and under the express theorization within the field, the vulnerabilities of intellectual fields their adoption reveal, and the recursive, selfreinforcing effect they have on the field (i.e. self-evidency resulting from accumulations of scholarship). The paper concludes with noting that areas of sociology will remain in an assimilationist phase (in the Piagetian sense) if such modus operandi are not brought into explicit recognition, hence discussion, within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to systematize the main ideas on "taste" and "art" in the writings of German sociologist Norbert Elias. Even though Elias's work is mainly known for his theory on "The civilizing process," he developed substantial ideas on problems that were later associated mainly with Bourdieusian sociology: distinction, taste, art, status. Following Elias's insights, the paper argues that "taste" should be understood as the expression of sensibilities that arise from networks of interdependence (or, as he called them, "figurations") that are situated in particular historical contexts. These sensibilities, thus, are historically contingent and sociologists should study them observing their variations over long periods of time. The paper analyses the key texts were Elias developed these ideas, above all his books "The Court Society" and "Mozart: Portrait of a Genius", and his essays on kitsch, German lyric poetry, and African art. The paper makes contributions to both the understanding of Norbert Elias's work and the theoretical vocabulary of the sociology of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the familiar historical sociological notion of the 'dual revolution' that began around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, should be analysed as a 'triple revolution', with the additional process called here the 'academization process' taken into account. This refers to the emergence and ascendance of the modern university system and the academic profession, which came to occupy a central position in a field of professions. The paper explains why previous functionalist and critical accounts of this trend are insufficient, before recommending an alternative processual theoretical framework drawn largely from the work of Andrew Abbott and Norbert Elias. The substance of the academization process is outlined, suggesting that five factors were central to the rise of the university: 1) changes in the class structure; 2) displacement of religion; 3) imperialism; 4) changing roles of women, children and disabled populations; 5) science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as its starting point the idea that the sociology of religion has an export problem (Guhin) and considers what the sociology of religion might offer, analytically, to a fieldsite that is not religious in any traditional sense. My dissertation research is a multi-sited ethnographic account of the users and developers of the online communities of Fantasy sports. The central research plan and questions have been shaped and informed by my training in the sociology of religion, notably through attenuation to ritual, community, and boundaries with an emphasis on meaning-making at each level of analysis. The field sites of online communities on the one hand and the producers of a digital product on the other are more obviously suited to the sociological subfields of the social studies of technology or organizational sociology. However, this chapter frames the advantages of drawing on the tradition of the sociology of religion for non-"Religious" fieldsites and puts the two literatures in conversation to identify opportunities to expand the scholarly conversation of each subfield. Here, I introduce the ethnographic field sites, methods, analytical lenses and key concepts used throughout the dissertation project. As a standalone piece, this paper introduces the framework for how two secular communities that share features of a religious community, including a ritual construction of time, community and boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is predicated on scholar activism. Principally, it seeks to represent unaccompanied minors' (UAMs) narratives as a form of resistance. Working within a framework in which knowledge is understood as a vehicle for social action, and through the adoption of cocreation of an epistemological model, the paper challenges representations that portray unaccompanied minors as passive victims. The paper represents the lives, the views and experiences of UAMs as caught between international and humanitarian ideals and nativist populism. In its discussion of methodological approaches utilised in this study, the paper gives recognition to the sociology of childhood within a framework of scholar activism and child narratives. Based on data from in-depth qualitative interviews and focus groups with 50 UAMs from Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, and Bangladesh, this paper helps plug an important gap in the literature in the context of child well-being as related to this group of children. This study is part of a 25-nation research network focused on children's subjectivities around child well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his influential work on the growth of the infrastructural power of the state, Michael Mann (1984) described how states need to develop logistical techniques to aid their effective penetration of social life; one of these logistical techniques, he said, was the establishment of weights and measures allowing economic exchange under an ultimate guarantee of value. This paper deepens this idea by detailing why the establishment of standardized systems of measurement is crucial for the functioning of modern nation-states. It shows how states took special interest on implementing and enforcing on their respective populations a homogenous system of weights and measures (mainly the decimal metric system) as a means to establish a monopoly on the legitimate means of measurement. The paper argues that modern nation-states need metrological unification and that, correspondingly, metrological unification needs the states. States need standardized system of weights and measures because that gives them leverage to fulfill some of their essential functions: enhance the extraction of revenue; make the population and the economic resources "legible"; monopolize symbolic capital; undermine the influence of local authorities; consolidate internal markets; share scientific and commercial standards with other countries; and introduce homogenizing institutions that aid the creation of a common national experience. On the other hand, the global spread of standardized systems of measurement (particularly the metric system, which is the most widely used system of measurement in the word) has needed the states because only modern states have shown to be effective in helping and, if necessary, forcing populations to employ metric units of measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss the main contribution of the sociology of Alfred Schutz for the interpretative biographical research. Schutz handles with biography at least in two different ways: as a manner to investigate the "because" motives for ones action and as a way to exemplify his theoretical considerations. The first step will be to discuss the biographical experience as a key aspect to understand the motivation for action. It will be argued that for Schutz, biography is not exclusively an individual life' trajectory, but results of both individual and social experiences, synthesized on the individual relevance systems, which are embedded by the relevance systems of the community in which one has been socialized. In the second step the paper verifies how Schutz deals with his own biographical experiences to discuss theoretical and empirical aspects of his sociology. Examples of the first kind of use of biography by Schutz are, for instance, "The Stranger" and "The Homecomer", which will be considered briefly in this paper. The third step will be dedicated to establish a dialogue with some of the most influential approaches in the biographical research field, as those proposed by Daniel Bertaux, by Bernard Lahire and by Gabriele Rosenthal, pointing out their advantages and limitations from a Schutzian analytical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "illegality" of some family members influences opportunities, limitations, and resources for everyone in a household. While most scholarship on immigrant families has been concerned with intergenerational dynamics, sibling relationships have the potential to reveal so much more about the effect of legal status precisely because they are peers in the same household: there are no generational differences, and the environment in which they are raised in the same. This paper draws on the experiences of 100 mixed-status families, based on five years of ethnographic study in a US-Mexico border county where an estimated 11.7 percent of the general population is undocumented. The study relied on a unique approach: rather than interviewing one person from each family, it sought greater depth by focusing on multiple members of the same family in order to produce novel empirical and theoretical insights. Findings illustrate that jealousy and resentment is frequently experienced between siblings with different statuses. On the flip side, U.S. citizen siblings may feel guilty for having more opportunities and resources than others in the family. Stratification by legal status also often leads to a stratification of social and everyday responsibilities, such as driving, sharing college financial aid, or expectations to provide more internal remittances than others. Undocumented siblings must watch as their citizen brothers and sisters get better health care than they do. While many gladly assist others, sharing is not always a benign or altruistic activity, and strongly impacts power dynamics in the family. This paper, grounded in the tradition of a scholar-activist sociology, concludes that political efforts toward reform must take into account the experiences of mixed-status families, now a primary and enduring feature of the contemporary immigrant experience in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the role that affects and public feelings of race (i.e., ineffable feelings, named emotions, and sensations that exist both at and above the level of the individual body and social subject) play in shaping college students' understandings of racism after taking an introductory sociological course. While the heretofore study of affects and public feelings about race has been a theoretical conversation mostly outside of sociology, I draw from data-driven analysis of ethnographic field notes from six classrooms at a racially-diverse and politically liberal college campus in California1, as well as interview and qualitative survey data from students in those classrooms. This paper demonstrates how discourses about race are inextricably tied to feelings about race--feelings that are both expressed by racialized individuals and that circulate with particular ideas about racism at the cultural level. The terms "felt understandings" and "affective-discursive repertoires" are introduced to account for the mutual formation of affects and discourses, as well as the multitude of affects and discourses that shape students' consciousness. More specifically, I focus on a common felt understanding of students-- racism as intentional, individual prejudice and show how public feelings of race--specifically erotics (Holland 2012) and paranoia (Jackson 2010)--bolster that knowledge formation, encouraging students in particular, and America at-large, to repeatedly select this understanding from their repertoires and recirculate it in their interactions. I conclude by encouraging sociologists to further develop and emphasize knowledge that accounts for the affective components of race and racism in order to render a more sophisticated understanding of how racism-- something that simultaneously operates through institutional, interactional, symbolic, and psychological mechanisms--functions in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quasi-realism is an assertion about a degree: a matter of attention and how this structure of intelligibility alters what we take to be real. Given the partial separation of language from thought as the justification for an anti-foundationalist epistemology and calls to phrase the human sciences in cognitive scientific terms, the intelligibility of sociology's own central subject matter is becoming a political matter that the mere assertion of theoretical pluralism alone cannot address. These politics become clear when one examines the sociological theorizing that delineates cognitive sociology from the contemporary debate in the sociology of culture & cognition, a lingering ambiguity regarding what "environment" means. In light of this debate, this paper seeks to articulate Durkheim's arguments according to two different structures of intelligibility. In doing so, the paper revisits Durkheim's articulation of the dualism of human nature, its relationship to Goffman's cognitive sociology, and the prospect of a quasi-realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a real-world problem on how to help a multi-disciplinary team become more productive. A group of faculty members from various disciplines as related to the development of a smart phone app brought together undergraduate students from these various disciplines and helped them develop a state-of-the-art App. We found that communication across the various discipline-specific cultures was the most challenging, both at the levels of professors and students. Misunderstandings were common because of differences in their intra-disciplinary languages, tools, physical models, and skill sets, and intra-disciplinary cultures in terms of mental models of other disciplines and stereotyping. However, we also found that much of the uncertainty and friction can be overcome by providing a solid foundation of expectations, milestones and communication mechanisms from which to work. This paper addresses one important aspect of that effort, viz., of providing access to comprehensive app-specific content knowledge on the World Wide Web so the groups can progress without much of communication gaps. Though this paper addresses issues specific to content of the apps, the same approach can be applied to providing a common platform for communication with regard to engineering, aesthetics, marketing, and other aspects of app development as well. The semantic web approach is generic enough to be applied for any multi-disciplinary setting. The effort is worth the results in terms of reduced misunderstandings and enhanced productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project presents the curriculum development efforts for infusing cybersecurity into the sociology curriculum at Norfolk State University. The goals of this cybersecurity project are to develop, implement and assess twenty-four laboratory and lecture modules which will integrate cybersecurity into sociology and criminal justice courses. For this paper, we will present the development and implementation efforts for a 'Password' module into a 200-level Social Problems course and a 'Data Integrity' module into a 300-level Elementary Statistic course. The infusion project is grounded in the social construction learning theory, and complimented by the scientific learning cycle used by engineers. A multi-stage methodology was used to assess the outcome of the infusion of the modules into both courses. First there was data analysis based on in-class surveys, secondly the assessment of the students' assignments based on the modules, and third in-class observation from an education evaluator. Paired t-test analysis was used to compare the indicator means before and after module infusion. The paired t-test results demonstrated that the infusion of the module into the Social Problem class impacted student' learning outcomes for two out of eight concepts, while there was significant mean difference for one out of six Elementary Statistics indicators. Students also created innovated passwords, and returned strong scores on objective questions on the lectured topic. The utilization of the proposed scientific learning model and social construction of learning theory reinforced the value of experiential learning in teaching cybersecurity to sociology students. The project evaluator recommended hands-on practice for reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is relatively new. While Legalese and English for Business become early on clearly distinctive parts of English for Specific Purposes due to the quite numerous implied professional categories using it, Technical and Medical English follow right after. Once English turned into the new lingua franca for diplomacy, English for Political Science distinguishes itself as an obvious branch of study for non-native learners of English with vested interests in the domains of political science, international relations, sociology, psychology, and not only. In Romania, teaching English for Political Science could be considered an innovation, since it was recently developed. Using IT&C while implementing a whole new set of vocabulary is both challenging and beneficial for professionals in the field. New generations of students and young practitioners are tuned to new technology and ground-breaking devices, expecting nevertheless to use gadgets and virtual tools while accessing new information and knowledge in the process of learning. It is only natural to adapt to such a wonderful and revolutionary century and dare to be creative, innovative, and constantly renew your teaching methods to boost the learning environment. Blending IT&C in the process of acquiring a language facilitates modern teaching techniques, "flips" the classroom and builds interest in your audience. The present paper describes a way in which blended learning, flipped classroom and Controlled Linguistic Immersion increase overall class proficiency, boost performance and trigger long term specialized language acquisition processes. We attempt to pull together the English for Political Science and the new technology in an accessible and friendly way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-computer interaction is one of the most prolific fields of the last decades, due to both the rapid technological developments and the increased mass availability of these developments. HCI is also a highly interdisciplinary field, which brings together researchers from engineering, computer sciences, psychology, sociology, and even fields like medicine, education, and arts and humanities, and makes use of a huge variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods. One of the key constructs in technological design and in HCI is that of "affordances", introduced by the American psychologist James Gibson in the late '70s - early '80s. This construct underpins the design and development of almost all technological devices intended for human use and is central to what is nowadays known as user-centered design. However, it is exactly this complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the field that allows for a vast and sometimes worrying inconsistency in the guiding theories and research methods. Against this backdrop, and in alignment with the increased calls for reproducibility and clear research reporting, we performed a scoping review of quantitative primary research studies in UX/UI that focused on 'affordances' use and/or analysis. Our findings show a scarcity of studies that are thorough in reporting important information, such as clearly mentioning the research design, analysis methods used, measurements, procedure, and sample. Furthermore, another worrying aspect, acknowledged in previous studies, is the significant overlapping of the concept of "affordances" with that of (system/device) functionality. We hope that our review will be helpful for researchers new to the field or for those interested in searching for papers that place 'affordances' at their core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses my multi-methodological comparative study of the intersection of social location and religion in people's daily lives. Specifically, I designed my methods to help me study how race, ethnicity, class and religion intersect and shape the daily lives and identities of 2nd- and 3rd-generation Mexican Americans and Irish Americans on the south side of Chicago. My project is built around evidence obtained from several years of ethnography, eighty-two life narrative interviews, twenty-five interviews with workers and leaders in various community institutions, and visual & digital sociology. My methods were designed to help me understand the beliefs, practices, and identities of my participants, along with how they are shaped by their particular neighborhood context, sociocultural structure, and familial upbringing. The aim of this methods paper is to give the reader a background of my research design and to offer a glimpse of how they helped me get at topics and people that are difficult to access by conventional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) is the most commonly used obstetrical intervention in the United States. Despite the widespread use of these devices, there is little to no evidence that they improve maternal or fetal health outcomes. Instead, the monitors may lead to an increase in unnecessary and potentially dangerous interventions. This paper, based on interviews with ninety-four birth providers in five cities across the United States, seeks to understand how both physicians and midwives interact with these devices. More generally, how do relationships between experts and technology develop and stabilize? Under which circumstances do technologies reinforce expertise or threaten to replace experts? This paper also challenges a common thread in the sociology of birth that explains current power structures by focusing on the professional struggles of midwives and obstetricians. While these studies of maternity care are helpful, they are often marked by an overreliance on professional and gender rivalries as explanatory variables. I argue that analytical approaches focused on professional jurisdiction should be replaced by studying expertise networks, a broader concept encompassing actors, devices, and institutional and spatial arrangements (Eyal 2013). I show the utility of this approach by demonstrating how devices like electronic fetal monitors are key players in understanding contemporary power structures in American birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades, economic sociologists have expanded beyond firms and markets, and beyond circumscribed concerns with 'peripheral' economic activity and economists' neglect of social context. Instead, scholars are moving towards what Zelizer (2011) calls a "real social conception of economic activity" which asserts that pure economic activity is virtually nonexistent. Proponents of this agenda want to eliminate the distinction between real market activity, and other trivial economies and non-market behavior. This paper joins the impetus to dissolve dualistic conceptions that render misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete descriptions of economic phenomena. I argue that economic sociologists' use of Durkheim's sacred and profane categories, with implicit placement of money in the category of the profane, obscures the sacred characteristics of money and reifies the notion that money is set apart from higher values in our social lives. Using Durkheim's (1995) definition of a sacred object as an object that is salient, morally ambiguous, contagious, and dictates behavior, I will demonstrate that money can also be sacred. The point of this paper is not to argue that money should be re-categorized as sacred, but to highlight the limitations of the profane/sacred binary as part of economic sociology's larger agenda to disrupt the dichotomy between market and non-market phenomenon. Recognizing money as sacred is important for analyzing money's moral and emotional power, as well as its duality and ambiguity in the lives of individuals. This paper ends with a discussion of the potentially harmful results of leaving the sanctity of money unexamined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Goffmanian dramaturgical framework to account for emergence of a particular style of sociological work exemplified by sociology in the USSR. The history of Soviet sociology unearths several puzzles. It was rapidly institutionalized which in the Soviet times necessarily implied support from the Party authorities, but at the same time became target of frequent repressions; its leaders enjoyed wide popularity then and remain objects of worship afterwards although their particular texts from the Soviet era are scarcely remembered and their attempts at theorizing are disregarded; finally, its intellectual achievements prove not translatable to other cultural contexts. This paper presents the results of a historical research to argue that all of this could be explained by the fact that Soviet sociology had to deal essentially with social, rather than natural, secrecy - to struggle with intentionally created deficit of information. Any knowledge claim is embedded into a wider cosmological framework and the dominant framework of the Soviet society described it as a single formal organization designed according to an all-embracing plan of movement towards Communism. A study of any aspect of social life was essentially an evaluation of this plan and an assessment of its implementation. This vision of their research terrain charged sociologists with new intellectual mission of criticizing existing societal designs, inventing new ones and taking on tasks of assigning political blame. This explains repressions against them, vivid public interest to their work, and the fact that the Soviet era left many heroic figures but few intellectual legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group research projects are frequently used to teach undergraduate research methods. This paper examines the individual characteristics, group characteristics, and task characteristics associated with student achievement and positive student experiences in group research projects. It also examines cohort differences in student achievement and experiences. The sample includes 241 students who completed a sociology research methods course at a small private liberal arts institution in the Northeast between 2004 and 2014. I find that group characteristics (group size, gender and racial composition) and assigned research method are associated with group achievement (grade on research project) but not individual achievement (grade on final paper). Individual characteristics (gender, race, and average grade on midterm exams) are associated with individual achievement but not group achievement. Cohort is associated with student experiences, but not student achievement; more recent student cohorts describe more negative experiences. The findings raise questions about whether to adapt the pedagogy of group projects in sociology research methods courses to reflect changes in the 21st century undergraduate population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new "micro-educational" classification to the study of educational assortative mating capturing both hierarchical and horizontal forms of educational differentiation. Previous research tend to use highly aggregated hierarchical or gradational measures of education neglecting distinctive socialization and preference patterns found within specific types of educations. We advance the research on assortative mating by separating men and women and by using a much more detailed educational classification than normally applied (micro-educations). Taking advantage of rich Danish administrative data the paper investigates a) whether homogamy is not only linked to levels of education but also to particular types of education; b) how well different educational closure mechanisms explain assortative mating (i.e., aggregated vs. disaggregated measures of education); and c) whether mating patterns differ for men and women. We use a topological model that takes into account several measures of educational homogamy patterns: Gradational (by returns to education), categorical (5-level), horizontal (field of study), and our disaggregated (60 micro-educational groupings). Results show that, even when we control for the other measures, the disaggregated measure (micro-educations) still explain a substantial part of the changes in educational homogamy patterns for 45-year-olds from 1981-2010. Among the microeducations, older professions such as law, engineering and medicine display decreasing mating patterns while newer professions, such as the creative arts programs, social science and architects increase their propensity to be educationally homogamous. In addition, women have higher odds than men of being educational homogamous at the university and university college level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates why Afghans in the wider diaspora take action in certain ways. It builds on the analysis of transnational activities and different 'spheres of engagement' (Van Hear 2015). Drawing on qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews and participant observation the paper first explains how members of Afghan diaspora groups come to direct their activities towards certain social contexts and how these engagements implicate ideas of change. In a further step the findings are used to critically discuss the notion of diasporas as agents of change. Engaging with relational sociology the article contends that we cannot assess the agency of diasporic groups by focusing exclusively on the transnational practices which they direct towards the respective origin country. How and under what conditions people exercise agency only becomes intelligible if we broaden our understanding of the multi-layered conditions under which members of diasporic groups act upon their specific relationships with their countries of origin and reception, their embeddedness in social networks and ideas of change and development. A relational perspective replaces the interpretation of actions through a priori categorizations with a focus on contingent narratives of meaning. This way the effects and variability of multi-layered structures are disentangled and thus a more precise understanding is being developed of why people engage with their home countries in certain ways and what forms of agency are involved if they take action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations has adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030, including education as one of 17 comprehensive goals. The SDGs could revitalize a sociological research agenda aimed at understanding the consequences of education internationally. This paper reviews the problem of causality in international education policy. It then focuses on one particular target within the Education goal: Adult Literacy. The paper suggests three quantitative data sources for assessing the impact of adult literacy for sustainable development, and further discusses mobile literacy as a fourth possible agenda for sociologists. The PIAAC (OECD), World Values Survey, and the STEP data from the World Bank are now available for researchers who wish to link educational change with attitudinal and behavioral change. What the SDG focus adds to the past is the urgent demand to understand how education does and does not contribute to social transformation. The corollary policy question is how to effect the type of educational change needed to bring about this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the most sophisticated advancements in contemporary and continental political theories of populism and their potential shortcomings can be best understood through the methodological orientation evidenced in the classical sociological theories of Weber and Durkheim. Built into Weber and Durkheim's theories of the 'social' was already a nuanced perspective of 'discourse' as an implicit horizon of understanding that comprised both individual and collective levels of social phenomena. They understood culture not just in the Neo-Kantian sense of an objective and independent conceptual sphere, but also on the level of the 'subjective component of belief.' In tracing the emergent paradigm of populism as discourse through the history of social theory, this paper shows that at each subsequent stage of linguistic and psychoanalytic interventions, it is precisely this Weberian orientation toward methodological individualism that faces the peril of obfuscation from every reformulation of the 'anonymous social field.' Thus, in order to theoretically conceive of and operationalize the concept of populist discourse for comparative-historical analysis, this foray through the history of sociology and social theory reveals the ever-timely necessity to account for the classical sociological cornerstone of the 'subjective component of belief.'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In On Hashish, Walter Benjamin writes that he would "like to write something that comes from things the way wine comes from grapes." In this paper, I try a similar project by squeezing things from my past that have been fermented over time with memory. I take as the starting point various objects and spaces from my childhood experiences in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which may or may not be shared by others who encountered atomic Appalachia. I use my own eccentric archive and queer methodologies, including sociological poetry, to theorize perceptions of memory and the atomic spaces of my youth. Stretching beyond my own experience, this paper seeks to add to the growing body of sociological thinking about the connections between materiality and memory by adding the atomic as a dynamic example of matter's vibrancy and effects on individual and collective memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most systems in our environment contain components that interact through competition or cooperation, which can lead to system adaptation. Recently, it is especially important to study the behavior of such systems, and to develop and apply new appropriate mathematical methods for studying the processes in these systems. Such approaches have many applications in economy and sociology and are successfully used in mathematics, physics, ecology, biology and technical sciences. In the last decades non–linear models are intensively used to model economic and social systems. In many cases the main features of such complex systems can be explained by a relatively small number of non–linear differential equations. Examples of such systems are some economic organizations. In this paper we model the behavior of a socio-economic system by partial differential equations. The model describes dynamics of populations competing for limited resources. In the model, migration is treated as a advection–diffusion process influenced by changing of the growth rates and the interactions among population individuals. The model describes several novel features of the interacting populations compared to the well-known classic models in population dynamics. Using the modified method of simplest equation and one of its extended versions, we obtain new wave solutions of the model system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates for two moves in sociology of political parties--one conceptual, and one analytical. First, I argue that the political party can be usefully conceptualized as a relational network of actors that is riven by three distinct, irreducible, and potentially irreconcilable action-orientations: representation, power-seeking and truth-claiming. Second, I argue that the sociology of parties should take as one of its basic aims the explanation of variation in the way parties see and represent the world--which requires, also, resuscitating historical concerns in party scholarship with experts and expertise. In order to avoid a return to the vexed question of the "intellectual," however, I build a case for a "formation stories" approach aimed at historical and comparative understanding of variation in the biographical trajectories and professional ethics of people in and around parties who formulate programmatic language. Taken together, I make the case for a synthetic, relational, refraction approach to the analysis of political parties that situates the explanation of how and for whom (or what) parties speak on par with other longstanding explanatory concerns--namely, how parties express or "reflect" the perspectives and demands of particular groups; the relationship between parties, knowledge, and expertise; how (or if) parties drive the formation or "articulation" of political interests and identities; the party-economy relationship; and relations between parties, states, social movements, and represented publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical pragmatist thought has undergone a revival in recent years in American sociology. Sociologists have drawn on the work of Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead to advance a range of theoretical and empirical agendas. This paper considers how this recent work has diverged from the epistemological commitments and visions for social science offered by the original pragmatists. Through juxtaposing John Dewey's writings on social science with contemporary uses of pragmatism, we both suggest new ways theoretically minded sociologists can draw on the pragmatists as well as analyze the translation of intellectual work between academic fields as a problem in the sociology of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes on developing the concept of economization, which has recently attracted attention from social and political theorists (Callon and Caliskan, 2009, 2010; Brown, 2014; Murphy, 2018). I argue that economization should not be taken as a single process with clearly defined characteristics, but as a multifarious dynamic. I analyze the empirical case of end-of-life care in the U.S. and the concerted efforts to put limits on lifeprolongation, medical utilization, and healthcare spending on severely ill patients. I argue that this case illustrates a merger between two economization processes--neoclassical and Aristotelian--which govern how the U.S. healthcare system handles end-of-life decisions. In my analysis, I discuss economization processes as inherently hierarchical and illustrate how these hierarchies manifest in the case of end-of-life care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses a long standing desiderate in ethnomethodological studies, namely the empirical investigation of sociological research in situ. In contrast to earlier studies, that have mostly addressed the allegedly 'standardized' practice of survey research, or the verbal and textual accounts of 'talking science' (Lynch), I wish to address and analyze the very practice of scientific observation, as it is engaged in fieldwork. How do researchers "see sociologically", when they are investigating actual field sites and social settings? How do they practically achieve an analytical focus (or shift it)? And how is observation and documentation intertwined and tying the body up to further research devices (such as the video camera, audio recorder, etc.)? By providing a detailed analysis of an ethnographer's first approach to a research site, I want to take up ethnomethodology's sensitivity for 'opening' moves. I want to appreciate their constitutive character not only for the organizational, but also for the experiential composition of social situations. For understanding how sociology is put into practice empirically, the constitution of its observational practices is a relevant topic and site of sociological investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of embodiment has long been sociology's inscrutable asses' bridge. It remains so despite decades of interest in the body and more than a few young Turks having taken a crack at it. This paper argues that no solutions with staying power exist because scholars have only sought to reinvent the square wheel: no one has learned from earlier mistakes, and no one has tried to recover parts of the solution earlier authors worked out. To make headway requires moving forward from back, starting with Parsons. He, more than anyone, set the terms for solving the problem. He did by laying it out as one of abstraction and realism emphasizing syntheses of cultural, structural, and psychological elements. Regarding abstraction, only some aspects of the body influence, or are influenced by, social action and social life. Those are the only aspects social science needs to abstract. Others can be left out, much in the way sociologists filter out from explanations, atoms, hydrogen bonds, meiosis, kreb cycles, and all other necessary but not sufficient conditions. On the other hand, the part of the bodily substrate that is socially influential and relevant--what Parsons came to call "behavioral organism"--must be an object of abstraction that is realistically calibrated to the substrate's consequential properties. Such properties, in turn, must be analyzed in terms of their mutually conditioned interrelationships with culture, structure, and social-psychological components. Parsons provided an abstract framework for these things--all of which are necessary for studying embodiment. But, the framework was fundamentally flawed. While he laid down the proper path to solving the problem and took several crucial steps toward that end, to go further we also need to abandon specific aspects of his framework, for example its abiding "functionalism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent initiatives in the sociology of culture and cognition, represented by the works of Omar Lizardo, John Levi Martin, Stephen Vaisey and others, are some of the most intriguing developments in contemporary sociological theory and cultural sociology. Aiming at the progress in cultural analysis, these initiatives at the same time include substantial criticism of basic statements of cultural theory. I argue that, for the mutual benefits of cultural sociology and cognitive science, first, cultural sociology must take seriously the recent developments of cultural cognitive sociologists -- and thus to avoid the threat of the neglect of these important impetuses; and, second, -- to overcome counterproductive one-sided reshaping cultural concepts led by ideas about cognition -- and thus to avoid prospective nullification of the most of the developments of cultural theory. To solve the former task, this paper aims to contribute to recognizing these initiatives as an important challenge for cultural sociology to be addressed in a strategic way. To solve the latter task, I propose an ideal-typical model, which embraces those underlying premises of the cultural turn, which fundamentally oppose to cultural concepts -- 'the informational theory of communication,' which reduces culture to information. Although many cognitive scientists and sociologists of culture and cognition are aware of the limitations and counter-productivity of this model, I argue, that, first, it is still clearly traceable in many of their arguments, and, second, it can be seen as a cultural logic underlying substantial part of their arguments. I argue, that replacing this logic with Durkheimian model of sui generis synthesis not only allows to use the insights of cognitive science in sociology in a more productive way, but also opens a way for sociology to contribute to the cognitive sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This presentation summarizes the events and processes that led up to creating a new Latina/o Studies Minor in Sociology at Texas State University, one of the largest Hispanic Serving Institutions in Texas. The focus of this paper is to describe how collective advocacy, leadership, activism and protest and applied research, evaluation and assessment was utilized to implement a new Latina/o Studies Minor academic program at a 4 year university designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution. I will also describe how assessment and evaluation and community involvement of various stakeholders to mobilize and sustain a commitment to include Latina/o Studies. In addition, I will delineate and reflect on the practices and dynamics of advocacy by faculty and staff, student protests and leadership of key groups that cultivated and facilitated the process of creating a space for the creation a new academic program in Latina/o Studies. Lastly, I will reflect on the new socio-cultural and socio-political formations that have occurred in in the first year of implementing Latina/o Studies at Texas State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of faith-based humanitarianism, we explore the embeddedness of individual life stories within larger stories of the Christian church and the deep story of God's salvific plan. Within a sociology of development, this work matters because faith-based international development is on the upswing with upwards of 17% of all global humanitarian aid flowing through faith-based organizations. These stories enable us to go beyond the conventional treatment of religion as a variable or a category label in sociology by demonstrating how different levels of storytelling are mutually constitutive. In contrast to the critical discourse analysis that predominates the sociology of humanitarianism, we seek to promote a sociology that engages constructively as well as deconstructively within a world of increasing fracture, tribalism and division (while not being blind to ideological positions, religious tropes and real consequences for people's lives). Linking theories of craft and social practice, we disclose the skillful work of our storytellers - work that engages richly and creatively with specific life events while also being rooted deeply and explicitly in broader Christian narratives of human and societal development. Skillful story telling allows these humanitarian workers to formulate ways to engage in humanitarian work, consider hardship, think about time, and encounter the distant other, modalities that are strongly culturally inflected. Attending to stories enables us to step away from the "unmasking" imperative in some sociological accounts of humanitarianism and towards a more complex understanding of the world of people who do this work. We do not want to abandon politically charged interrogation of the ideas that underlie the work of our participants, but we want to treat them as more than just overdetermined carriers of practice or nodes of discourse. This paper offers theoretical and empirical pathways to undertake this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]