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Evidence from large-scale studies of primary and secondary students’ technology practices at school over the last decade show disparities in student practices and suggest that schools need to do more to cater for all students. Research that explores the influence of social and cultural factors may be useful for understanding such inequality in student practice. Bourdieu’s theory of practice [(1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. London: Cambridge University Press] is proposed as an example of a sociological theory that can be adopted in educational technology research to move towards understanding the wider complexities of technology practice. To encourage discourse and application of Bourdieu’s sociology in the field of educational technology research, this paper provides an introduction to the theory, a review of its application in research of primary and secondary students’ technology practice and relevant conceptual work. The paper presents a conceptual framework based on Bourdieu’s theory that has been developed through two recent studies, and review of empirical and conceptual works and invites its application in future research so that it can be critiqued and further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an old cliché that Weber's 'Protestant Ethic' (PE) is historically wrong or deficient. Recent work by German sociologists has reinforced this view, with the aim of further demoting the text within Weber's oeuvre: as if it was a work of bad history and nothing more. This paper takes a contrary view. It argues that the text is neither 'wrong' (to say so is a category error) nor is it confined to the past. Rather, it is much misunderstood, and a principal reason for this is our ignorance of Weber's uniquely sophisticated historicism, an area of his thought that has hardly been examined hitherto. The PE must be read as a product of this historicism, and set within the comparative context of contemporary European historicism, which was then at its apogee. Seen in this light, it is not only a pre-eminent guide to Weber's modern social theory, but one of the most carefully constructed and original historical works in all of European thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper poses a simple question that is hard to answer: what does Simmel mean by "form" in Sociology? We pursue this question in three major steps: First we articulate why it is important to understand what Simmel means by form in Sociology; second we explain why it is difficult to understand Simmel's notion of form; and third we develop what might be considered a pragmatist answer: namely, that there is no single meaning but that depending on his argumentative purposes, Simmel utilizes at least three different but interrelated notions, which we designate as "geometric," "transcendental," and "vitalist." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kafka’s unfinished story, The Burrow, an unidentified subterranean creature struggles while digging in a burrow, constantly engulfed in anxiety for potential intruders. His obsessive anxiety starts to be materialised in his hearing of a noise everywhere and at constant intensity. Incessantly speculating the cause of this noise, his dreadful imagination first finds it as a swarm of small fries, eventually growing into a single gigantic monster threatening his burrow, as if desiring an irresistible entity that goes beyond the idea of the individual. Inspired by this story of a creature suffocating from his lonesome effort of nesting, this paper discusses how an individual sensation of dread could potentially transcend to an ability to imagine social totality, drawing on the philosophical readings of Kafka’s other character Odradek by Benjamin and Adorno. I further argue that this process is aesthetic, correlating Freud’s idea of the uncanny with Adorno’s theory of aesthetic experience which examine the negotiation between individuation and socialisation in an experience of desubjectification. By sketching out the anxious hearing in The Burrow in reference to the disturbing seeing of object-creature Odradek, I discuss the feeling of dread that marks the transformation of individual entities into a transcendent social/collective being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent social theories of money have challenged economic conceptions of it as first and foremost a medium of exchange. Writers such as Geoffrey Ingham and David Graeber have revived the chartalist position that money is essentially a creature of the state, whose primary function is to measure value or debt. In this paper, I argue that this is a wrong turning. I first clarify the conceptual underpinnings of Ingham's treatment of money as an 'institutional fact', a concept drawn from Searle. I clarify the sense in which this argument establishes that the state 'creates' money -- and show that this sense is quite limited. It is a theory of how something comes to be accepted as money, rather than a theory of why there is money in the first place, and it gives no account of money's value. Finally, I sketch an alternative way of looking at the relationship between states and money. This recognises that modern states have been shaped in part by strategies with regard to monetary management, with state actors engaging strategically in a system they only partially constitute -- so that states are 'creatures of money' as much as the reverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to critiques of the metrocentric nature of contemporary youth studies, situating both major traditions of youth research within a geographical framework with the aim of moving towards more spatialised youth sociology. The paper demonstrates that young people outside of major metropolitan centres have been marginalised from the dominant theoretical perspectives that frame both the transitions and the cultures traditions in youth studies, and explains this in terms of the metrocentric nature of sociological theory from the earliest theories driving work in the discipline. From the perspective of social change, the paper then situates the transitions and cultures of young people within a spatial perspective, demonstrating ways in which attention to the spatial dimensions of youth enriches analyses of both urban and rural youths. The transitions, and cultures, of young people in both urban and rural places are connected by macro-level processes which create the structural and cultural environments that young people from different places are negotiating. The paper concludes with a call for a more spatialised youth sociology that is sensitive to macro-level connections between different places, as well as the local ways in which young people are responding to social changes that shape the contemporary youth period as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes an ecological methodology in order to re-think the concept of situatedness in ways that can take into account that we live in relation to, and are of, a more-and-other-than-human world. In doing so, the paper proposes that situatedness should be understood in terms of processes of co-invention that, fractally and recursively, open onto other co-inventions that include the non-human. The paper illustrates this through the concept of patterning. It advances a number of terms – cutting, knotting, contrasting, figuring–as potential practices that can be drawn on to provide analyses of dynamic and multiple relations that cross the boundaries between human and non-human forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper makes a critical appraisal of the contemporary sociological conceptualisations around the study of social transformations and youth transitions. It is argued that new theoretical positions, mnemonically indicated by the prefixespost,reflexive,late, andliquid, tend to challenge the adequacy of classical notions about ‘youth’ as a transitional phase of life, and life-course as a series of stages, linear, cumulative, and non-reversible. Conversely, the post/late variety theories draw upon flexibility, diversity and communication, decentralisation, internationalisation, and de-traditionalisation, reflexivity and individualisation. By repercussion, the ‘take-off’ from childhood to adulthood is increasingly understood as non-linear and heterogeneous. Indeed, youth is conceptualised as one identity amongst many, which may be adopted or dropped at will – something highly contested and fluid, rather than static and given. This paper is divided into seven sections. It begins by considering the literature on classical conceptions of youth transition, and then moves on to post-modern social theory and youth identity. The third section examines reflexive/late-modernisation and transition to adulthood. The fourth section explores the socio-economic terrain of contemporary young people through the lens of global perspective. The fifth section analyses a tendency of returning to a classical sociological toolbox in youth research. The sixth section takes on Bourdieu's key arguments on habitus and social reproduction, and the last section develops the concluding arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to advance some theoretical-methodological propositions about analyzing official statistics in the contemporary world: it is going to underline how the category of ambivalence is important in order to improve our comprehension of official statistics. In the second section, we will give a brief overview on contemporary sociology of official statistics. In the third and fourth sections, the focus will be on the ‘French theory’ – probably, the hegemonic current now – starting from Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the State, one of the most important issues in order to better understand this perspective. This analysis points out as French theory considers just rationalization processes. Control, dominion as well as alienation are the main subjects, a set of ideas based on a structuralist point of view which does not actually consider the possibility of social change. The ambivalence (or social contradiction in Marxism terms) of every sociopolitical process – including the making and using of official statistics – is systematically underestimated. Beyond the dominion there is the subject and the conflict in a shared field of historicity: ethic and social claims need official statistics too. Eventually, the fifth section will focus on our theoretical-methodological proposal based on re-embedding the category of the statistical system in a more complex vision where ambivalence is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim'sThe Elementary Forms of Religious Life(1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed inElementary Formsto draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the contribution of sociological theory to the academic study of young people, education and digital technology. First it discusses the shortcomings of the technological and socially determinist views of technology and education that prevail in current academic and policy discussions. Against this background the paper outlines the benefits of a number of different sociological perspectives on the social shaping of technology that, despite their popularity in other areas of science and technology studies, have been employed rarely in analyses of educational technology. In particular the paper outlines the provenance of theoretical approaches such as the social construction of technology, studies of domestication of digital technologies, feminist critical theory and the political economy of technology. Drawing on all these theoretical traditions the scene is then set for future empirical and theoretical examinations of young people’s use of digital technology in formal and informal educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses conceptual tools which might allow an elaborated sociological analysis of the relationship between information and communication technology on the one hand, and social inequalities on the other. The authors seek to go beyond the familiar idea of the 'digital divide' to develop a focus on digital social inequality, through discussing three bodies of literature which are normally not discussed together. The paper thus addresses issues in feminist theory; the sociological field analysis of Pierre Bourdieu; and the Actor Network Theory. This paper shows that there are unexpected commonalities in these three perspectives which allow the possibility of effective cross-fertilization. All seek to avoid positing the existence of reified social groups which are held separate from technological forces, and all stress the role of fluid forms of relationality, from which social inequalities can emerge as forms of stabilization, accumulation and convertibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the question of knowledge needs to be reconceptualised if sociology is to make its potential contribution to current debates about the curriculum. It begins with a review of the dominant assumptions underlying contemporary curriculum policy: neo-conservative traditionalism and technical-instrumentalism. It then examines the relativist position on knowledge that follows from the postmodernist critiques that have recently come to dominate social theory, particularly in the sociology of education. The paper argues that, in different ways, each of these approaches avoids the question of knowledge and hence leaves unresolved epistemological and educational dilemmas. In the final section, the paper draws on recent research in the sociology of science to develop what is referred to as a social realist approach to knowledge and explores its implications both for the curriculum and the claims that we are entering a 'knowledge society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses crowd-based dynamics of value creation in participatory culture. Based on a corpus of 114,931 tweets associated with One Direction and similar boy bands, we draw on recent theories of crowd-based organization in digital media as well as classical crowd theory to build a theoretical model of collective value creation. In our model, the achievement of value in the form of trending and individual microcelebrity is based on affectively driven processes of imitation, rather than on rational evaluation and deliberation. We contrast this model with established accounts of microcelebrity and draw out implications for theories of crowd-based organization in digital media and for theories of participatory culture and collaborative value creation in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is an attempt to develop a sociology of impairment and to theorise embodiment in the lebenswelt. Disability studies has failed to address adequately the fundamental issue of bodily agency. The impaired body is represented as a passive recipient of social forces. Such a conception of the body is losing ground within social theory. This paper attempts to overcome disability studies' disembodied view of disability by utilising a phenomenological concept of embodiment. Phenomenology offers the opportunity to transcend the traditional Cartesian dualisms which posit the body as a passive precultural object. However, such a view, when extended to impairment is empty of political content since phenomenological analyses have relied upon medicalised and individualised understandings of disability. In order to counter the disablism evident in phenomenology on the one side and disability studies' disembodied view of disability on the other, we argue for a radical phenomenological approach to the (impaired) body. To demonstrate the vitality of such an approach, we also attempt to deploy Leders' (1990) concept of dysappearance as a means of analysing the carnal politics of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that current ways of thinking about disability are inadequate, both theoretically. and as a basis for social policy. The main reason for this is that most writers have remained locked within a 'personal tragedy theory of disability' and have failed to examine the concept of disability critically. Even those writers who have attempted to take disability seriously have failed to move beyond a traditional framework and have subsequently produced sterile accounts. The final section of the paper begins to suggest what a social theory of disability might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the difficulties in conceptualising and presenting research, in particular doctoral work in education, in the current climate of intellectual theorising. It argues that many researches experience a phenomenon described in the paper as 'post-modernist tension' when trying to write in an atmosphere of theoretical and methodological uncertainty. The author elaborates the 'symptoms' of post-modernist tension, and makes a critique of some elements of contemporary social theorising. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the usefulness of contemporary social theory in challenging traditional research, despite its density and inaccessibility to many researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several papers related developments in economics as realist social theory. According to the author, social theory expressly committed to work out the nature of social being, and, or how people access social reality is going through something of a revival in economics. The papers presented, provide numerous results, arguments, conjectures, and critiques have been produced in recent years, and aim to take some of these specific developments further. Context of the papers and basic ideas and results are presented.

In recent years, many different versions of relational sociology have appeared. In this paper, I present a critical realist version developed since 1983, which is also called ‘relational theory of society’ (CRRS). It shares with the other relational sociologies the idea of avoiding both methodological individualism and holism. The main differences lie in the way social relations are defined, the kind of reality that is attributed to them, how they configure social formations, and the way in which their changes are conceived (morphogenesis and emergence). In particular, this approach is suitable to understand how the morphogenesis of society comes about through social relations, which are the connectors that mediate between agency and social structure. The generative mechanism that feeds social morphogenesis resides in the dynamic (that is, in their ways of operating) of the social relations networks that alter the social molecule constituting structures already in place. Social morphogenesis is a form of surplus of society with respect to itself. Society increases (or decreases) its potential for surplus depending on processes of valorization (or devalorization) of social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Situationist International (SI) has been one of the main reference points during the past 40 or more years within social movement organizing, cultural studies, social theory and philosophy. While the SI has been understood in many ways as inheritors and elaborators of an unorthodox Marxist politics drawing heavily from the history of the avant-garde, relatively little attention has been paid to the specifically strategic dimension of their thought and practice. This is surprising, especially in Debord's case, given how much his work also draws from the history of military strategy. This paper will particularly examine the strategic aspects of Debord and the SI's thought and politics and how they rethink the nature of strategy through collective forms of aesthetic–political practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a particular understanding of Bourdieu's social theory and the place of language within it, in response to Susen's depiction of these matters in his “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation”. Bourdieu's understanding of language is argued to be overly derivative and too dependent upon conventional assumptions of late twentieth-century thought. Conversely, allegations of “determinism” in Bourdieu's social theory are rebutted as being too often glib and unquestioningly rooted in liberal assumptions about human “creativity”. It is argued that Bourdieu's social theory could in fact be construed of as not being determinist enough, an appraisal hardly ever entertained by social theorists today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that Simon Susen’s “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation” does not sufficiently acknowledge that Bourdieu’s work is always “conjunctural”, a consequence of his “position-taking” as an individual and intellectual. It examines in detail the historical context between 1972 and 1982 of most of Bourdieu’s texts considered a-historically by Susen. It suggests that Susen’s analysis wrongly attempts to situate Bourdieu as a philosopher of language, rather than as a socio-linguist. Although he differentiates Bourdieu from Habermas in showing that Bourdieu emphasizes the social context of linguistic exchanges, Susen does not follow Bourdieu in applying this contextualization to his own practice, with the result that he strangely approves of Bourdieu almost in terms established by Habermas, rather than in the terms set by Bourdieu himself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: As a component of the physical education curriculum, Health-Related Exercise (HRE) has been subject to intensive critique in terms of its status, organisation and expression in schools. Concerns and questions have also been raised about physical education teachers' professional knowledge of health and the extent to which HRE features within their continuing professional development (CPD) profiles. Aims: This paper presents findings from a research project which investigated English secondary physical education teachers' experiences, views and understandings of HRE and related CPD (HRE-CPD). It also draws upon existing research, sociological theory and the concept of ‘philosophies’ in order to present an explanatory model (the HRE conundrum) which may help the physical education profession better understand the often problematic organisation and expression of HRE in schools. Methods: The research was undertaken via a two-phase, mixed-method study. Phase one consisted of a survey questionnaire, which was completed by 112 secondary physical education teachers. Phase two involved semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers from the phase one sample. Results and discussion: The survey revealed that approximately half of the physical education teachers who participated in the study reported to have had no prior professional experience of HRE before teaching it, and most had not taken part in any CPD related to health and lifelong physical activity in the previous 12 months (80%) or 3 years (70%). Further, the teachers' responses to both the survey and the interviews suggest that HRE within physical education continues to be characterised by incoherence and misunderstanding. The interdependent and emerging themes which provided an explanation for this include: i) the tendency for the teachers' philosophies to bear the hallmark of sport- and fitness-related ideologies; ii) the teachers' often narrow understandings of HRE and how best to teach it; iii) the teachers' largely misguided confidence in their ability to teach HRE; iv) a general lack of teacher engagement with any CPD related to health and lifelong physical activity. Conclusions: With regard to HRE, both the ‘I’ in ITE and the ‘C’ in CPD appear to have been overlooked, and this inevitably raises questions about the degree to which teachers are prepared to teach this area of the curriculum. It is argued that now is the time for action, and that relevant, effective and ongoing CPD has the capacity to address the problematic teaching of HRE and develop in teachers the knowledge, skills and understandings that are necessary to promote healthy, active lifestyles among young people. Many physical education teachers are not engaging in HRE-CPD but in order to disturb common and often narrow understandings of HRE it is arguably necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asserts that the religious assumptions of Christian academies need to be fully examined in relation to any analysis of their cultural practices, impact or policy implications. It proposes that Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, cultural capital and symbolic power can be broadened out from their traditional use in accounting for social positioning in order to explore the interaction of religious faith and institutional culture. The emergent analytical framework outlined relies on series of theoretical tools drawn from Bourdieu whose social theory and concepts are already employed extensively in sociology of education research and studies of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the re-establishment of independent Estonian statehood in 1991, Russian lost its privileges as the dominant and official language in Estonia, and Estonian continued as the only official language. This paper attempts to map the position of a Russian-speaking teacher within the sociological categories of power and language, based on the analysis of legislative acts and strategic documents within the domain of language policy and language legitimization practices in historical retrospective. The main focus of the study stresses an attempt to elaborate on to what extent the low self-efficacy of Russian-speaking teachers as the agents of legitimization of the Estonian language in Russian-speaking schools, and their low position in power relations within the Estonian education system, can be explained in the categories of power and language, as conceptualized on the basis of the social theory of Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social theory provides a lens through which we can analyse the role of trust in health systems. However, the majority of theoretically informed trust literature addresses 'institutional' or 'interpersonal' trust individually, failing to investigate trust as determined by a 'web' of mutually interacting relationships between individuals and social systems. Current theoretical assumptions are also problematic as they fail to recognise the role that social factors (such as socio-economic status, class and age) play in an individual's willingness to trust. Through the analysis and critique of existing social theories of trust, this paper demonstrates a need for further empirical research into the multidimensionality of trusting relationships, while suggesting new directions for research in public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the constraints of leisure literature by demonstrating how materials are circulated to regulate and constrain leisure behaviour in the countryside. It is argued that constraints in the form of moral regulation should be recognised as part of the constraints literature. The development of the Country Code in England is regarded as part of a long-term and ongoing effort to extend governance and control by means of informal and semi-formal codes of conduct. Crucially, however, the Code has changed over time and may act as a means of placating different interests in the countryside as much as observably constraining them. The Code is seen as a constraint project mediated between groups and is found to be contested and reworked over time. Drawing on key concepts expounded in Bourdieu's post-structural social theory it is argued that actors occupy positions within social fields and draw on their own habitus, other dispositions of power and imaginations to co-construct leisure regulation and behaviour. Such conceptual devices should more properly be viewed as contingent dispositions that are subject to challenge and revision. As such the more diffuse and circulatory constraints affect practices differentially. A need for more attention to this in leisure studies research and a recognition of how different constraints are experienced and responded to is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While 'cultural studies is caught in a traffic jam', at the same time the seemingly global crisis of cultural studies coincides with the late reception and high popularity of cultural studies in the German-speaking countries after the 'cultural' and the 'linguistic turns'. Yet, the political and academic history and the contexts of the emergence of cultural studies and 'Kulturwissenschaften', as well as their by now established academic traditions and the manifold relations to current developments, are rarely defined and scrutinized. In this paper,we will relate some theoretical and historical perspectives concerning the relationship between cultural studies and the historical disciplines in the German-speaking context. We shall try to trace the potential of mutual benefits between cultural studies and history by foregrounding the political commitment of academic work that still seems to be one of the most important traits of CS as much as the necessity of a stronger notion of the contextualization that history and historiographical methodology provides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the St. Louis meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, the author organized a special session to reflect on the particular sociological tradition associated with Washington University, with a particular focus on Alvin Gouldner's work. From that session came this symposium, for which various papers presented were developed into articles. The session and these articles raise important issues for what they tell us both about Gouldner's work and about where sociology is as a discipline today. Among these issues are (1) the optimistic quest for objective value-free knowledge positivism entailed in the past versus a self-reflexive quest for knowledge that entails a tragic acceptance of its limits at presents, (2) the effort to distinguish social theory from sociology, ideology, and politics, with all of whom it overlaps as they strive to be both social diagnosis and social therapy, (3) the production of knowledge as dependent both on the lived experiences that shape our biographies and on the intellectual influences available in the local settings where we work, (4) the effort to warn us against the various accesses to which our disciplinary and personal commitments give way, and (5) the role social theory can play as a search light that illuminates our way in the darkness of the empirical world in which we live, while it simultaneously casts a shadow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to articles by Shilling and Abraham, which were concerned with the relationship between Giddens' structuration meta-theory, differentiation-polarization theory, and positivism. Despite their conflicting conclusions, both authors criticize my reconstruction of differentiation-polarization theory, and I try to clarify the nature of that reconstruction and the theory it represents. It seems to me that these articles display misunderstandings of, and unwarranted prejudice against, positivism; though they are of course by no means alone in this. I suggest that while the sort of debate in which these authors engage is welcome, there needs to be a more open-minded approach towards the theoretical and methodological resources available to sociologists of education, including those frequently dismissed as positivist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to Professor K. Swanwick's critique of our sociological perspective on music education. A detailed presentation of the sociology of music thesis demonstrates that accusations of 'social determinism' and 'referentialism' are both misconceived Moreover, Swanwick's position leads to difficulties in his approach to music aesthetics, where at times he makes assumptions concerning the work of theorists such as Meyer and Keil which these authors have themselves explicitly repudiated We then relate certain observations which Swanwick's makes concerning the processes of schooling to wider sociological theories of schooling that help make sense of the kinds of constraints Swanwick's correctly identifies Finally, we accept Swanwick's challenge to be more explicit concerning both our response to his charge of relativism and our practical recommendations for the reform of music teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the nature of critical theory, its historical development, its connections to sociology and Marxism, and the central debates over its core ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing number of analysts who employ the world system perspective on national development, theoretical disagreements have evolved which may only be settled by examination of available data. Using an adaptation of the network metaphor, this paper blockmodels the world trade system in order (1) to demonstrate a single mode of international exchange in the world system instead of the competing capitalist and communist modes proposed by some, and (2) to illustrate the unique position of the middle level of nations in a three tier world system—a position sometimes denied. Implications for the competing world system theories and world development itself are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Marx's sociology has been interpreted incorrectly as the consequence of the application of a "dialectical" method to social phenomenon. In this paper, I discuss his actual method of theory construction (a rather more complicated phenomenon than the simple reversal of the Hegelian dialectic), the Ricardian method of successive approximations. This method involves three steps or stages—observation, model formation, and model testing and revision. Marx's Capital is reviewed in the light of his use of this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorizing in economics is often associated with some form of individualism. This paper considers the nature of this association in the work of Carl Menger. I adopt this focus not only because of continuing interest in Menger's work, but because recent developments in social theory facilitate a fruitful reevaluation of his general position. I argue that a convincing link between theory and individualism is absent in Menger's work. Moreover, I argue that the various criticisms often made of his work actually relate to the ideas which underlie his individualism rather than, as is usually supposed, those arising from an adherence to a form of Aristotelianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Social theories that approach the presence of 'new identities' in an already given social and political space encounter problems in defining both identities and space, and their relationship. This paper looks into the works of sociologist Bryan Turner, political theorist Chantal Mouffe and philosopher Iris Young to finally settle into the theories of space and place of Harvey, Massey and others as an alternative way to articulate the problem of marginal identities in Europe. I argue that, if we think of any given identity as multiple and dynamic (as opposed to being fixed and originary), and also the identity of any given place as multiple, and as a process, then it is logical and meaningful to re-articulate subject identities and place identities as in a relationship. The nature of this relationship is a complex web of political, social, economic and cultural articulations. Therefore, any discourse on citizenship should be grounded within this frame of analysis and not on an ethical principle of nation state and on a-historical, originary constructions of particularistic or universal identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]