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The expression “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) has gained considerable traction among sociologists of religion and culture, media outlets, and the broader public in recent years. Though the expression itself has achieved wide appeal, few studies have explored what SBNRs believe about God, religion, or spirituality. This paper uses survey data from Wave IV of the Baylor Religion Survey (2014) and draws from the theory of “cultural omnivorousness” to show that SBNRs have significant sociotheological differences when compared to those who are both religious and spiritual (RAS). The expression “spiritual, but not religious” is more than a manifestation of religious deinstitutionalization or “believing without belonging.” Rather, being “spiritual, but not religious” involves sociotheological boundary work that distinguishes SBNRs from traditional monotheists. When compared to RAS respondents, SBNRs are more likely to view God as a higher power or cosmic force instead of a personal being and are more likely to adopt an individualistic ethic as opposed to finding moral authority in God or Scripture. By examining the historical context and sociotheological characteristics of SBNRs, this paper locates a boundary between SBNRs and RAS monotheists and offers theoretical reasons why SBNRs engage in sociotheological boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does society work? How do groups emerge within society? What are the effects of emotions and memory on our everyday actions? George Homans, like us, had a perspective on what society is, except that he was a sociologist. Homans theory, which is an exchange theory, is based on a few propositions about the fundamental actions of individuals, and how values, memory, and expectations affect their behavior. In this paper, as Homans predicted, our main interest and purpose are to find out whether these propositions lead to the emergence of groups. To do so, computationally, Based on Homans' prepositions, we provide the opportunity for each agent to exchange with other agents. That is, each agent transacts with familiar agents based on his previous history with them and transacts with newly found agents through exploration. The importance of our work is that we have scrutinized the consequences of an actual sociological theory through the eyes of simulation. At the end of our investigation, we discuss other possible directions for further research. • In this paper, we tried to give a quantitative answer to the question whether the Homans' theory was incomplete? • Our work aims to interpret Homans' sociological theory in algorithmic and arithmetic form. • We tried to interpret how important each part of the theory is with their absence consequences and find their accordance with some known sociological facts. • The simulation results show that Homans' propositions actually had direct effects on the structure of the network and gives a reasonable model to derive social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural studies have highlighted a rural idyll as something to which many aspire, perhaps as a vision of a good place to live or as a repository of values. But harking back to an imagined past is recognized as normative and power-infused, often serving the interests of the powerful. How far should this nostalgia for an imagined golden age of indeterminate date inform a vision for a desired future? This paper seeks to begin, and indeed to provoke, discussion of what might constitute visions for rural futures, or our collective imaginaries of rural places into the twenty-first century, of a Good Countryside to work towards. What morality might underpin such imaginaries? And how might we approach such a task? One approach might be to employ utopian thinking as a means of identifying and imagining desired alternative futures, drawing upon Levitas' argument for utopia as a form of anticipatory consciousness - the not yet - in contrast to the essentially backward looking rural idyll. Four registers from urban studies - repair, relatedness, rights, re-enchantment - are then taken as a point of departure for deliberation on what morality might underpin a Good Countryside, and whether this might differ between urban and rural contexts. A discussion ensues on how to proceed in practice, both in eliminating evils and in pursuing collective forward dreaming and anticipatory consciousness, for example through place-shaping or networked rural development. Finally, the discussion reflects on what scholarly and practical roles rural sociologists might play in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only recently have sociologists begun to examine the social origins of educational mismatches in more detail. This research not only repeatedly found, but also investigated why individuals from lower social origin more often have a higher level of education than required for their job (overeducation), and why individuals from a higher social origin more often realize high positions despite having a lower level of education than required for their job (undereducation). While these studies provide additional and valuable empirical insights into the effect of social origin on both types of mismatch separately, to date there has been no investigation on general sociological meaningful conditions, under which the social origin unfolds an effect on undereducation and overeducation in the first place. This paper addresses this gap by examining the relevance of intergenerational stability for the effect of social origin on mismatches. It does so by drawing on arguments from sociological theories on intergenerational (im-)mobility, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the period 1990–2017, and two different measurement methods for educational mismatches. The empirical results show evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the effect of social origin on educational mismatches: A higher parental status is found to be advantageous only for employees with intergenerational stability in social classes and/or occupational tasks. This indicates that the intergenerational transmission of class-specific traits and occupational skills contribute to the effect of social origin on mismatches. The results show no effect of parental status on educational mismatches among employees who are intergenerationally mobile and make up half of the German labor force under investigation. Since this heterogeneity is also found among workers who immigrated to Germany as adults, parental networks within Germany and the corresponding social capital can be ruled out as the main driver behind this finding. Although educational attainment is the most important pathway of intergenerational status maintenance, the results suggest that educational mismatches offer a means of identifying systematic deviations from this pathway. Individuals who follow in the footsteps of their high-status parents are more likely to be employed either at or above their level of education. In the light of the strong heterogeneity revealed, complementary explanations and routes for further research to investigate the link between intergenerational (im-)mobility, social origin and educational mismatches are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the relationship between historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, and indeed scientists themselves. I argue that (i) they co-habit a shared intellectual territory (science and its past); and (ii) they should be able to do so peacefully, and with mutual respect, even if they disagree radically about how to describe the methods and results of science. I then go on to explore some of the challenges to mutually respectful cohabitation between history, philosophy and sociology of science. I conclude by identifying a familiar kind of project in the philosophy of science which seeks to explore the worldview of a particular scientific discipline, and argue that it too has a right to explore the shared territory even though some historians and sociologists may find it methodologically suspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the failure to integrate history and philosophy of science properly may be explained by incompatible metaphysics implied by these fields. Historians and sociologists tend to be historicists, who assume that all objects of research are variable in principle, while philosophers look for permanent and essential qualities. I analyse, how the historicists and essentialist approaches differ with regard to the research objects of general history, history of science and science itself. The implied historicism makes some radical pronouncements by Latour on ontological variance understandable. I will also consider, whether there could be something like a historicist philosophy of science. The historicisation of the natural world proves most challenging, but both certain traditional disciplines and some recent advances in physical and life sciences indicate compatibility with historicism. One should note that historicism does not alter how ‘truth’ is understood. Historicism does not question the reality of objects either; only their eternality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years growing sociological interest in new forms of cultural distinction has led some to argue that the advantages previously conveyed by the consumption of ‘high’ culture ‘or ‘omnivorousness’ are being overwritten by the possession of what has been termed ‘emerging cultural capital’. So far, though, this term has only been discussed in passing within empirical work and remains in need of further analytical specification. This special issue seeks to both critically interrogate and develop this concept by bringing together the work of leading cultural sociologists around four key themes: the role of age and generation in the formation of cultural capital; the power of visual display for distinction; the significance of new elite cultures; and the need for methodological pluralism to apprehend the expressions and mechanisms of distinction. This editorial introduction outlines the descriptive terrain on which the concept of emerging cultural capital has rested until now before exploring the common themes that sit across all five papers in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural eclecticism has been the focus of most sociological debates pertaining to cultural practices since the publication of Richard Peterson's first articles on the topic. Underlying these debates surrounding results, the prevailing definitions and methods are particularly striking for their… eclecticism. And although it is not explicitly stated, it appears that sociologists disagree over the parameters of inquiry – how the object of study is constructed and all manner of methodologies, rather than over hypotheses and whether or not they are valid. In this paper, we shall extend and systematize assertions that appear in various works on omnivorousness. Our aim is to determine the theoretical implications of the three groups of choices that seem critical in statistical methods of studying cultural eclecticism: choices concerning indicators of taste; methods of constructing a scale of cultural legitimacy; and indicators of cultural omnivorousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper considers an aspect of culture rarely formally studied by sociologists: the organization of sensory experience. • We develop and employ a novel technique aimed at measuring music experience. • We analyze the dimensionality of the distribution of reported experiences. • Analyses reveal three dimensions of experience, which appear to stretch between poles that correspond to binaries of embodied experience. The theories of William James and John Dewey regarding the nature of experience suggest that there is an aspect of the organization of culture that sociologists have not yet studied formally, namely the structuring of sensory experience. We propose a way of trying to measure respondents' experience of "textural" music, as opposed to their preferences, evaluative judgments, or associations. We employ a novel data-gathering approach as part of 61 in-depth interviews, and then analyze the dimensionality of the distribution of reported experiences. We find three dimensions, all of which seem to touch upon fundamentally meaningful binaries of embodied experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]