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In this paper, we focus on the stratification system impinging on scholarly publications, but we move beyond viewing gatekeeping as a product of professional idiosyncrasies or preferences for certain methodologies to give greater attention to the institutional forces shaping relations among universities, academic departments, academic journals, and individual scholars. To illustrate the operation of institutional factors, we examine data on the affiliations (elite and non-elite departments) of editors and authors over a 50-year period in four sociology journals, and our findings indicate clear evidence of over-representation by faculty from elite departments of sociology. We interpret these data through the theoretical lens of social closure, which may be shaped by discipline demographics and the "missions" of the academic journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper demystifies the processes, methodologies and outputs of three co-design projects, identifying how and to what extent are aims and principles of the multi-actor approach realised and upheld in the field. Implications from the cases for participatory principles are discussed. Design/Methodology/approach: A detailed ethnographic account is presented of three multi-actor co-design cases, supporting diverse readers' interpretations and learnings. Findings: Three paradoxes were identifiable from the multi-actor processes: (1) outputs can be orphaned when they lack strong identifiers and affiliations with discrete professional communities outside of the co-design team; (2) combining diverse knowledges co-design can generate outputs that are new and strange (rather than familiar and acceptable) to end-users; (3) for Responsible Research and Innovation, co-creating interventions that are challenging (rather than popular) to society may be required. Practical implications: Awareness of dynamics and paradoxes arising in the implementation of multi-actor co-design supports enhanced facilitation of processes and impacts of outcomes. Together, the paradoxes highlight the critical importance of communications and engagement initiatives across diverse communities in the aftermath of co-design efforts. Theoretical implications: Although co-design processes are case-dependent, reflexive accounts of how they play out contribute to the body of knowledge of how co-design may be better understood. The cases in this paper identify paradoxes with implications for principles and theory of multi-actor co-design. Originality/Value: This paper presents a detailed account of three unique co-design processes. Practical and theoretical implications of the cases are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging technologies research often covers various perspectives in disciplines and research areas ranging from hard sciences, engineering, policymaking, and sociology. However, the interrelationship between these different disciplinary domains, particularly the physical and social sciences, often occurs many years after a technology has matured and moved towards commercialization. Synthetic biology may serve an exception to this idea, where, since 2000, the physical and the social sciences communities have increasingly framed their research in response to various perspectives in biological engineering, risk assessment needs, governance challenges, and the social implications that the technology may incur. This paper reviews a broad collection of synthetic biology literature from 2000-2016, and demonstrates how the co-development of physical and social science communities has grown throughout synthetic biology's earliest stages of development. Further, this paper indicates that future co-development of synthetic biology scholarship will assist with significant challenges of the technology's risk assessment, governance, and public engagement needs, where an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to foster sustainable, risk-informed, and societally beneficial technological advances moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is a key mechanism for explaining the ease and frequency of knowledge spillovers within regions. While the importance of trust is virtually uncontested, there have been few attempts to rigorously disentangle the way in which trust formation is related to space and proximity. The aim of this paper is to advance the understanding of trust formation in terms of its main antecedents within the context of regional studies. This is done by reviewing the rich literature on trust formation from psychology, sociology, and organization studies and connecting it conceptually to different types of proximity. In doing so, the paper maps out a number of avenues for future research on trust and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the growing emphasis on the concepts of the experience economy, creative industries, and cultural industries as ways in which the social contract of artists is negotiated. What expectations are directed towards the artistic profession and how is the contribution of artists to society and their work conditions constructed by these concepts? The paper applies the concept of social contract from the sociology of professions which enables a focus on the artistic profession not only in an internal arts world perspective, but also in a broader societal frame. The study presented was carried out in a Norwegian context. Empirically, the paper is based on 28 applied research reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are changing dynamics among political regionalization processes and the rescaling of nation-states in Europe. However, updated and timely research remains scant, ambiguous and unable to meet the challenges of data-driven societies and uneven borders. Nations' physical boundaries matter as much as political borders in their pervasive and growing algorithmic, stateless, liquid and metropolitan citizenship patterns. This paper explores these new 'connectographies' from a regional science perspective, introducing the term 'algorithmic nations' as a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage. A case study is presented of the small stateless city-regionalized European nation of the Basque Country through its analytical and transitional lens, locally known as 'Euskal Hiria' (Basque city-region in the Basque language). This paper questions whether the Basque Country could evolve by (1) modifying its governmental logics and (2) merging its three separate devolved administrations (3) while enabling their direct interactions with citizens (4) through blockchain technologies as the small state of Estonia is implementing and employing cutting-edge algorithmic governance frameworks. In doing so, this paper suggests how four drivers - metropolitanization, devolution, the right to decide and blockchain - may be respectively invigorating four dynamics - geoeconomics, geopolitics, geodemocratics and geotechnologics - in this transition towards the algorithmic nations. Ultimately, this paper concludes with an algorithmic nations research and policy agenda decalogue of how these geotechnological changes might determine the future position of small stateless city-regionalized nations in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alan Ingham has criticized the prevailing positivist and blatantly ideological methodologies used in sport study and offered a Weberian alternative. This paper presents a different methodological approach; one based on a materialist understanding of the relationship between sport and society. By examining the totality as the real object of study and integrating the conception of dialectical analysis, it is argued that the labor process constitutes the ontological basis of social history and thus of sport study. Using labor as the take-off point, the paper illustrates in some detail how sport study can be integrated into the materialist framework. The final section discusses the ideal-type approach offered by Weber pointing out that it is a redundant methodological construct once the pivotal relations of social history have been identified. Finally, it is argued that the Weberian position also harbors certain ideological elements that often go unnoticed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of sociological knowledge in Australian universities is explored through an empirical study of research papers published in a selection of academic outlets between 1960 and 2011. Drawing on theories concerning scholarly practices, institutional formation and the sociology of knowledge, questions are posed about the factors that shape and structure the production of sociological knowledge about health and medicine. The concept of intellectual schools is examined, with evidence sought for the presence of these 'knowledge networks' in the Australian context. The study suggests the formation and maintenance of schools are subject to structural factors within the university sector, specifically the relative wealth and prestige of the university and the dictates of the higher education market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various papers relating to crime and community published in the journal Sociological focus. Each of the papers published follow contributions in an important theoretical or empirical way to one's understanding of community, inequality and crime. Here, they outline the key issues addressed in the articles and offer the journal's sense of the directions for future research suggested by the papers. Observing these disparate patterns, author Jeanette Covington identifies the contradictions in the inequality-crime literature as reflecting largely a theoretical problem. She argues that underlying the Blaus' thesis is a conception of race in which the "black psyche" is considered as different in kind from that of whites. She notes, however, that there is no empirical support for either the notion that there is a distinctive black psychology, or the assumption that racial stratification is associated with a unique black psychological reaction of frustration the mechanism assumed in the inequality-crime literature to lead to greater black violence.

In the closing decades of the last century, Professor Akínsolá Akìwowo, in a series of seminal papers, inaugurated what Jìmí Adésíná later dubbed 'the Akíwowo project'. This project involved (1) showing that there are resources in an African culture – Yorùbá – for doing sociology in ways that are as good as the dominant tradition to be found in Western sociology; and (2) offering some original ideas regarding some explanatory framework that could enable us to make sense of social phenomena. In this essay, I advance the Akìwọwọ project by showing how, despite previous criticisms, Akìwọwọ remains a keen identifier of theoretical possibilities lurking in his Yorùbá heritage for doing not only sociology, but also philosophy and other theories with African idioms. I show how those criticisms enhance the practice of sociology in Africa that will be a powerful presence in the discipline and in the world of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant popular perception in contemporary Romania is that its people have strong, persistent and genuine Christian beliefs that are the main source of their attitudes towards death and of their representations of the afterlife. Questioning this assumption, this paper is based on two exploratory studies consisting of 80 semi-structured interviews and aims at investigating the features of personal representations related to death in contemporary Romania. It highlights the emergence of new patterns of representation and new and unexplored attitudes towards death, dying and the afterlife, identifying three categories of interviewees: the believers, the personalists, the atheists. The paper pleads for further study of Romanian beliefs and representations related to the topic of death from a sociological perspective. As it is the case with the majority of Romanian post–communist studies on death and dying, elements related to religion and folklore should not be considered the only ones that matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the necessary complementarity between a translanguaging and named language-perspective by critically examining risks of 'overshooting' when a translanguaging view is theoretically posited as the ultimately superior (sociolinguistic) theory of language use and learning in today's multilingual world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationalism presumes conceptual primacy of relations over the elements engaged in those relations. In that sense, relations are not viewed as something external to pre-given elements, but as constitutive of those elements. Processual relationalism presumes that the relations between/among elements are not just static ties, but unfolding, dynamic processes. Currently, processual relationalism is increasingly present in the social sciences. Nevertheless, it is the movement of relational sociology that has been at the forefront of the processual 'relational turn.' In this paper, the authors argue that the methodological potential of processual-relational sociology should be taken decisively further since it is especially relevant for addressing the socio-political reality of our time that is increasingly characterized by what has been referred to as 'wicked problems'. Through introducing the distinction of self-action, interaction and trans-action as it is discussed in relational sociology, the authors argue that the methodological consequences of processual relationalism overlap with constitutive explanation, which is an important addition to causal explanation that is prevalent in the 'variable-centered' social sciences. The authors offer a sketch of a research agenda for explaining a wicked problem that needs a processual-relational methodology to be addressed: the ongoing COVID-19 Crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitated communication (FC) has been a heavily debated and documented topic across multiple disciplines, including sociology, education, psychology, pediatrics, speech-language pathology, and disability studies. Although many professionals from various disciplines and advocates have offered opinions, suggestions, and research on the topic, there has been minimal input from the occupational therapy (OT) profession. The lack of OT input is noteworthy as OTs are experts in enabling upper extremity performance and independence through a variety of training, adaptation and modification strategies, and use of external supports. Because of their professional code of ethics and a specific knowledge base, OTs are uniquely positioned to provide a host of ethical and evidence-based strategies that enable independent access to communication technology. The consideration of multiple access options is contrary to the typical facilitated encounter where facilitators exclusively choose to manipulate an upper extremity in order for letters to be selected on a display or keyboard. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) To offer insight into the standard of care by OTs including their ethical standards; (b) to identify varied accommodations that enable access using a feature-matching standard of care that eliminates the need for a facilitator; and (c) to highlight how to increase independent assistive technology/augmentative and alternative communication access, thus dissuading the need or use of facilitated access to letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the self-narratives of young nonbinary individuals in Italy, shedding light on the challenges they face, thereby contributing to a nuanced understanding of these phenomena and their societal implications. In pursuit of this research goal, an exploratory study was conducted between July and September 2021, involving in-depth interviews with 26 young adults aged between 18 and 30 who identify as non-binary. The qualitative data gathered was analyzed using a reflexive thematic method. The findings reveal specific forms of social unease and discrimination experienced by nonbinary individuals, with primary stressors including a lack of recognition, limited knowledge on the subject and a dearth of socio-cultural visibility. These stressors manifest in varying degrees of discomfort, shaping daily life and interpersonal relationships. At the same time, participants’ narratives underscore a strong desire for societal change and inclusivity. Some nonbinary individuals express determination to challenge and redefine societal norms related to gender identity, emphasizing the importance of education and awareness for fostering understanding and acceptance. Following the thematic analysis, the article concludes with critical reflections and potential policy recommendations to create a more inclusive environment for all sexual and gender identities in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the sociology of education, opponents of deficit thinking would be seen as important change agents, potentially inspiring radical policy change aimed at reducing systemic discrimination of specific sociodemographic groups. That is, contestation of deficit thinking can in theory lead to its destruction. In this paper, we argue that contestation can be overruled or downplayed via public discourses. From a discourse-historical approach, we illustrate how contestation was attenuated in the context of ethnicity in Flemish higher education in the period 1985–2020. We show how a variety of discursive processes eventually marginalize anti-deficit narratives in mass media texts, even though these stances were dominant at certain moments. The major contribution of our study is that it highlights important discursive mechanisms underlying the reproduction of deficit thinking in times of contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports in the issue on the topics including one on scholarship, the other on reflexive sociology and the third on hidden educators.

Several common themes emerging from an inter-disciplinary collection of papers on belief are identified and discussed: place, notions of the individual, and the role of institutions. The disciplinary perspectives represented here ranged from anthropology, business, drama, development, political science and sociology. 'Belief' is often treated unproblematically because it is assumed it resides in the minds of 'believers', so-called often without any further descriptive adjective. Another, more Durkheimian approach would situate belief as culturally produced, contextual and congruent with a society's norms. The papers presented here mostly illustrate that a problem with 'belief' emerges when it is treated a-historically as a psychological and sometimes emotive state with little reference to the time and conditions which shape it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the issue of being a 'double' insider when conducting interviews. Double insider means being an insider both in relation to one's research matter - in the authors' case the making of geographical knowledge - and in relation to one's interviewees - our colleagues. The article is a reflection paper in the sense that we reflect upon experiences drawn from a previous research project carried out in Danish academia. It is important that the project was situated in a Scandinavian workplace culture because this has bearings for the social, cultural, and economic situation in which knowledge was constructed. The authors show that being a double insider affects both the interview situation and how interviews are planned, located, and analysed. Being an insider in relation to one's interviewees gives the advantage of having a shared history and a close knowledge of the context, and these benefits outnumber the disadvantages. Being an insider in relation to one's research matter makes it difficult to contest hegemonic discourses and tacit values and ideas. Recommendations on how to handle the double insider situation are given. The article concludes that for analytical purposes, it is useful to separate the two roles, but in reality they coexist and are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relations between the sociality of cultural economies and the cultural objects traded in them. It argues that the study of cultural economies must work up new methodologies that can account for both. The paper suggests the concept of the 'mediator' as a way of highlighting how cultural objects and sociality are co-constituted. The 'mediator' is formulated as a methodological tool for by-passing the academic divide between cultural-aesthetic objects and their social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction and framing for this special issue of International Journal of Inclusive Education on pedagogies as an issue of social justice and inclusion. The paper works in the interstices between a sociologically sophisticated reproduction theory and a sociologically naïve school effectiveness framework in suggesting pedagogies can make a difference in terms of schooling as a good in and of itself and as a positional good. It rejects the pessimism of the former and the optimism of the latter and accepts the stance of the US school reform literature that teacher classroom practices have the greatest impact of all school-based factors. However, pedagogies alone cannot make all of the difference, particularly given the vast inequalities which surround schooling and what Ladson-Billings (2006) calls the 'educational debt'. Further, it is argued that considerations of socially just pedagogies also must of necessity involve considerations of curriculum, the purposes of schooling and assessment. The paper then summarizes the ways in which the essays included here provide a scaffold for what socially just pedagogies might look like today, stretching from the public pedagogies of politics to school-based pedagogies in the 'totally pedagogised society' (Bernstein, 2001b). Asking about socially just educational practices requires policy sociology to combine action-oriented and critical perspectives. It demands a respect for practice and a willingness to see educational practices as sites of justice, not merely sites of injustice (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2003, p. 28). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that as well as being sensitive to wider discourses of gender relations, social workers need to consider the ways in which gender is localised. It is argued that to some extent gender practices vary according to local culture, that gendered identities are often localised and that social workers tend to construct their clients according to images of local men and women. These images tend to be stereotypical but some do also reflect dominant local gendered practices. The paper draws on data from qualitative interviews with social workers and probation officers, as well as the experience of teaching social work students, to illustrate these arguments. Whilst it is argued that the localising of gender is of general relevance, the data come from Wales alone. The author's conclusion is that (amongst other things) anti?oppressive practice involves recognising the important influence of local stereotypes and challenging them, whilst also acknowledging that gendered practices do vary from place to place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Test-based accountability or 'TBA,' as a core element of the pervasive Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), has become a central characteristic of education systems around the world. TBA often comes in conjunction with greater school autonomy, enabling governments to assess 'school quality' (i.e. test results) from a distance. Often, quality improvement is further encouraged through the publication of these results. Research has investigated this phenomenon and its effects, much of it focusing on Anglo-Saxon cases. This paper, drawing on expert interviews and key policy documents, couples a policy borrowing with a policy instruments approach to critically examine how and why TBA has developed in the highly autonomous Dutch system. It finds that TBA evolved incrementally, advancing towards higher stakes for schools and boards. Further, it argues that school autonomy has been central to the development of TBA in two ways. Firstly, following a period of decentralisation that increased school(board) autonomy, the Dutch government saw a need to strengthen accountability to ensure education quality. This was influenced by international discourse and accelerated by a (politically exploited) national 'quality crisis' in education. Secondly, the traditionally autonomous Dutch system, shaped by 'Freedom of Education', has at times conflicted with TBA, and has played a significant role in (re)shaping global policy and in mitigating the GERM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consciousness is a natural and integral part of human beings that is at the core of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual functions throughout our lives. However, we tend to be too occupied with or distracted by the details of our daily existence to be fully aware of our own consciousness. More often than not, we are engaged in the surface consciousness in the materialistic world or emotional realm, which interferes us to get connected with our deeper consciousness and capacity. This paper will unpack the layers of human consciousness (or lack of consciousness) from philosophical perspective to examine the relations between our understanding of consciousness and its impact on our holistic wellbeing and growth (Singh, 2016; Suzuki, 1999; Thompson, 2015). What is consciousness? How do human beings choose our consciousness? What is the relation between micro and macro consciousness? How do we expand, develop, and apply our consciousness for the maximum wellbeing and growth through education? The paper intends to go beyond the compartmentalized analysis of consciousness (e.g. biological, psychological, neurological etc.) by engaging a holistic metaphysical viewpoint as well as relational and dialectic approaches (Ames & Hall, 2003) Hegel, 1807, 1977; Laozi, 1999). It aims to connect theory, learning, and living together with nature and universe beyond the limitation of time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Material has come to be acknowledged as an important source of political and social meaning due to recent philosophical and sociological debates concerning 'material agency', particularly linked to theorists such as Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett. This has clear implications for art: it explores the effects material has on human behaviour and vice versa. In contrast, art criticism commonly positions material as secondary to metaphysical interpretation. Critics such as Rosalind Krauss and Lucy Lippard avoid analysing material's multiple sources of information. As a result, we as viewers are ill-equipped to examine the meanings it embodies. This paper presents sculpture as an appropriate framework from which to engage with this problem, as it remains a discipline which creatively explores material in three-dimensional space. Four themes have been developed from the analysis of qualitative interviews carried out with eight emerging UK sculptors in order to work towards a condition of 'material literacy' in contemporary art practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in 'hard-to-staff' schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the 'Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers' (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu's sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows' position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers' attributes termed as 'localised pedagogical capital'. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genital fashioning practices, such as Brazilian waxing and female genital cosmetic surgery, have become increasingly prevalent within contemporary western societies. This paper explores the role of genital fashioning in the construction of contemporary femininity. It uses in-depth interviews and focus groups with Australian women aged 18–30 to investigate female genitalia as a site of alteration. Drawing on broader understandings of the body as socially mediated, this paper contends that multiple modification practices are employed to produce genital appearance. It departs from previous investigations which consider genital fashioning practices in isolation. In identifying the scope of genital fashioning, this research reveals a continuum of genital fashioning practices, both physically and discursively mobilised by women to negotiate their identity, sexuality, and femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an immense pleasure to be here today with my mentor, Nancy Chodorow. In 1976 I entered graduate school in sociology specifically to study with Nancy. As an undergraduate I had read two brilliant articles that Nancy published as a graduate student prior to The Reproduction of Mothering, in which she used psychoanalysis "to account for the reproduction within each generation of certain general and nearly universal differences that characterize masculine and feminine personality and roles" ("Family Structure and Feminine Personality" in Rosaldo and Lamphere Women, Culture and Personality). I was dazzled. Nancy not only went on to chair my dissertation in sociology, but nine years later sat on my committee for my dissertation in clinical psychology that became On the Shoulders of Women: The Feminization of Psychotherapy. We both now are psychoanalysts, sociologists and feminists. While we each have traveled down our own paths, I always have wondered how Nancy, as a graduate student at Brandeis, could write with such courage, conviction and, well, chutzpah, to take on the project of not only understanding why women mother, but how gender is socially reproduced across generations and cultures. I also took this as an opportunity to discuss how her thinking and interests have changed over time since the publication of her groundbreaking Reproduction of Mothering, a book that heralded a new era in our understanding of gender and psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic and the ideology of intensive mothering through analysis of posts on lockdown learning in an online mothering community. It is argued that although the school closures seemed to constitute an endorsement and normalisation of intensive mothering ideology [Hays (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press] by the machinery of government, and increased the pressure upon many women, some mothers resisted these expectations in this online forum. The online community served as a space in which intensive mothering expectations were articulated [Lehner-Mear (2020). "Good Mother, Bad Mother? Maternal Identities and Cyber-Agency in the Primary School Homework Debate." Gender and Education 33 (3): 285–305] but also offered an arena for cyber-agency, enabling women to express negative emotions, and normalising the rejection of expert constructions of mothering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

An introduction to the articles within the issue of the journal on topics including need post-structuralist concerns of Deleuze and Guattari, sociological commentary on new developments in drugs and historical perspective on the development of anorexia nervosa, is presented.

This paper presents a comparative assessment of South Africa and India's service delivery improvement strategies, challenges, successes and lessons learnt in advancing their service delivery reform programmes. The cardinal argument in the paper is that the public administrative systems adopted and inherited in the post-democratic epochs in India and South Africa were incapable of meeting the service delivery needs of their respective citizens. They epitomised the traditional and hierarchical public administrative systems that were the object of reforms in the 1990s. The reform initiatives also coincided with global reforms on public administration systems taking place under the aegis of the new public management framework. A key feature of new public management is its application of private-sector ideas to the public sector, such as individual accountability. The paper further undertakes a comparative review of service delivery improvement frameworks of South Africa (Batho Pele) and India (Sevottam) in relation to their objectives and implementation modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any study of violence in the sociology of sport owes a substantial debt of gratitude to Eric Dunning. This is certainly true of Canadian sociology of sport where, for at least three generations, the ideas of Dunning and his mentor, Norbert Elias, have proven both foundational and enduring for a core group of scholars. In this paper, two recognized scholars in the Canadian figuration, Michael Atkinson and Kevin Young, reflect on Dunning's influence in shaping both their own and others' understanding of how 'sport matters'; in this case, the analysis of violence inside and outside of sport. The authors consider their own research 'in the field' of sport violence, their personal career intersections with figurational thinking, and both the formal and informal mentorship Eric provided over several decades. For both Michael and Kevin, Eric helped to shape not only the contents of their theoretical leanings over the course of time, but also instructed them to envision substantive issues related to sport violence as both long-term sociogenic and psychogenic processes more broadly. The paper concludes with personal reflections on Eric the scholar and gentleman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we begin to explore how knowledges being generated in bioscience might be brought into productive articulation with the Sociology of Education, considering the potential for emerging transdisciplinary, 'biosocial' approaches to enable new ways of researching and understanding pressing educational issues. In this paper, as in our current research, we take learning as our focus. Our work brings together collaborators from across fields: sociology of education; molecular biology and biochemistry; cognitive neuroscience; fMRI imaging; and EEG. Through the paper we explore the generative potential of an encounter between life sciences and sociology of education. Through consideration of the conceptual and methodological elements of our 'Synchrony in Learning' research and engagement with our pilot experimental approach, our research is suggesting that our central concept, learning, is undergoing metamorphosis, challenging us to understand learning as a phenomenon produced through the intra-action of a multiplicity of forces and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the dramatic expansion of private tutoring around the world, a significant body of literature has been produced to understand this phenomenon. While many studies consider the issue of geographic location, the spatial dimension tends not to be a central focus of private tutoring studies. In contrast, the present essay applies mobility theory to research from Cambodia, where private tutoring is essential to student success. It does so in order to place private tutoring provision into a broader perspective that includes but moves beyond the economic dimensions of supply and demand and the sociological dimensions of economic, cultural, and social capital to include consideration of how private tutoring provision is constrained by a multidimensional spatial field of possibilities and how private tutoring participation is enabled by one's position and abilities in relation to that field. The paper argues for increased attention to 'spatial capital' in studies of private tutoring and education generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental designs to examine attitudes and behavior are crucial to make causal inferences. However, studies that assess attitudes and behavior of journalists are still dominated by correlational designs, such as used in surveys with journalists. Elaborating on historical and practical reasons for that, we argue in this paper why journalism scholars may benefit from including a certain experimental approach to their toolbox: the factorial survey experiment. Using data from a factorial survey with German newspaper journalists, we illustrate the application of factorial surveys from their conceptualization to the data analysis. Suggestions for further fields of application are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological study of intellectual recognition has tended to focus on highly cited and highly acclaimed authors and perspectives, while reserving some interest for those who are "forgotten." We know much less about the liminal cases: authors who are in-between fame and oblivion. This paper proposes a way to study intellectual recognition, by examining the liminal case of sociologist Charles H. Cooley. Based on a multilayered (quantitative and qualitative) citation analysis of Cooley's classic work, Human Nature and the Social Order (HNSO), we study the role of intellectual deference in accounting for this liminality. Specifically, we identify two distinct deference processes: acknowledgment and involvement. We argue that Cooley has survived intellectual oblivion by standing on the shoulders of citers, as he has received substantial acknowledgment but decreasing involvement. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of our paper for the understanding of the making of sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proto-sociologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl is best known in architectural history for the popularity that his organicist-functionalist dictum of "building from the inside out" received in early twentieth-century German architectural culture. However, less is known about Riehl's own writing on architecture in the context of his sociological theories. This paper discusses the importance of Riehl's thoughts on domestic architecture in giving theoretical elaboration to what, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a growing intellectual concern over the social position of workers. As the "worker" emerged as a distinct social type, and workers' welfare registered as an increasingly pressing issue, Riehl's call for a sociologically oriented understanding of architecture (capable of reforming the worker "from within") significantly altered the terms of the debate over housing policy in Germany. In examining his theoretical elaboration of the task of social policy and the role of architecture within it, this paper reads Riehl's work as a prelude to a new kind of logic about architecture's social agency that would come to underpin modern housing reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption on the African continent unfolds two unique trends: first, the involvement of senior state officials in the perpetration of grand corruption; and secondly, the illicit and surreptitious transfer of stolen assets and funds beyond Africa's borders. As such, African States are heavily drained of their resources when corruption is committed. Foreign states become safe havens for stolen assets from Africa which makes Africa's development stagnated, paralysed and hijacked by the perpetrators. Compounded by a litany of challenges such as weak institutions; poorly written laws; a culture of impunity; the absence of the rule of law; a widening gap between the rich and the poor; the pangs of underdevelopment; undermanned and under-resourced anti-corruption institutions and a sheer absence of a strong political will, the fight against corruption in Africa is one of Africa's biggest battles. While some national efforts to overcome this invisible enemy amongst the African people (corruption) may be commended, it is clear that such efforts themselves are insufficient and ineffective: a holistic approach is more than needed, especially given the trends in which grand corruption in particular is committed. Borrowing from relevant international legal instruments, this paper argues that it is a moral and legal imperative for non-African States to enjoin Africa in its fight against corruption. In making this thesis, this paper identifies and discusses the different ways in which such non-African states can help Africa in its fight against corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses and examines Deleuze's Foucault as a means of investigating intellectual resources for a new sociology – one that, in Foucault's name, is neither foundationalist nor representationalist but genuinely other than the modernist discourse with which the discipline began and grew up. The paper begins with a brief historiography of sociology in order to broach the relationship between Deleuze and Foucault, and then focuses on Deleuze's book on Foucault as a means of moving 'from the archive to the diagram' and to a topology of 'thinking otherwise'. Finally, the paper moves to reformulate a new vocabulary no longer anchored in modernist categories to a non-dialectical reconfiguration of explanation and comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists and social scientists' low professional status looms large when looking at the rapidly changing professional hierarchy based on the prominent role of technology and of scientific applications for peoples' lives. The paper seeks to unveil the inadequate professionalization of sociology in Greece and to relate this situation to the increase in the employment precariousness of sociologists over the years of the economic crisis. Moreover, the dominant economy-centric ideological/ governance model which promotes the 'utilitarianism' of the social sciences has played a significant role in sociology's residual position. The paper is structured along three axes: First of all, the low professional status of sociologists is related to the delayed academic institutionalization of sociology. Secondly, there is brief discussion of the relevant literature on graduate supply and demand in the labour market and the expansion of higher education. Thirdly, a more focused discussion is developed which portrays the opportunities and challenges faced by sociologists and other social scientists in the labour market, giving particular emphasis to the current situation in the wake of the financial crisis. Finally, it is concluded that the vicious circle of low professionalization and high precariousness facing sociologists demands institutional action aimed at reformulating the public agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how transphobia is understood and responded to in South African schools. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with teachers, school managers, and TGD school-attending youth, the findings show that while there are minimal efforts to respond to and dismantle transphobia, school managers and teachers increasingly reproduce cisnormativity instrumentalising TGD youth to either assimilate or change. The analysis crystalises that cisgenderism is highly institutionalised in South African schools, pointing to an urgent need for targeted strategies to include TGD learners. This article sets the stage for further research on transphobia in schools and its response [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While money is centrally important to globalization, inequality, and social conflict, sociological globalization theories lack a macro theoretical framework for analysis of the international monetary system. Because studies of the US dollar by Hoogvelt (2010) and Vermeiren (2013) are directly relevant to the development of such a framework, in this paper I critically review their analyses in light of (A) post-Great Financial Crisis macroeconomic and sociopolitical trends, (B) recent theoretical studies of money, and (C) empirical studies of the international monetary system. My critique of Hoogvelt and Veirmeiren's analyses serves as a foundation for the development of a theoretical analysis of money that is both sociological and global in its orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising influence of actors and worldviews from the Global South in contemporary movements calls for renewed approach, method and epistemology in social movement studies. It raises practical, theoretical, methodological and epistemological challenges. How to study global movements without ceding to the pitfalls of methodological globalism and epistemic extractivism? How to conciliate the diversity of struggles with the global dimensions of a movement? This reflexive paper draws on the author's previous research on global movements since 1999 to discuss these challenges and propose an approach built on four pillars: multi-site research, transnational analytical tools, dialogues with local actors and researchers, and an ethic oriented towards intercultural dialogues. Under these premises, global sociology becomes a collective project that combines researchers' and actors' reflexivities in a common quest for a better understanding of our world and the actors who seek to transform it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established by student activists in the 1960s, Project Community in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan (U-M), Ann Arbor, is one of the longest-running community-engaged learning programs in the country. Community-engaged learning courses like Project Community have been identified by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as a high-impact educational practice because they allow for simultaneous learning in the classroom and community (AAC&U 2022). This paper explores how Project Community utilizes various pedagogical approaches grounded in liberatory and social justice education to provide U-M students with the opportunity to learn how to engage in mutually beneficial, respectful, and ethical relationships with community members. The structure of this two-course sequence is described and examples of experiential activities are provided so that instructors can gain insights into how students can apply their sociological lens to real world experiences. Data from teaching evaluations and post-course surveys from Fall 2019–2022 are included to explore how Project Community has increased students' awareness of their positionality in society, deepened their understanding of social inequalities, and strengthened their commitment to social responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based learning (CBL) is an innovative pedagogical approach that allows students to learn through direct engagement with community partners and participate in social change initiatives. Scholars have documented many transformative benefits of CBL: for students, it promotes critical thinking, self-reflection, and community action, while at the institutional level, it advances epistemic justice. Despite these advantages, many instructors balk at the idea of implementing CBL, especially given the current era of austerity in higher education. Within this context, I propose community-engaged field trips as a tool for instructors to achieve the core benefits of CBL by means of a concrete course activity. In the model I propose, students take part in a preexisting event or opportunity made available by a community-based organization. They then write an analytical reflection paper prompting them to think deeply about systemic inequities, examine their preexisting biases, and develop action ideas. To demonstrate how to implement this model of community-engaged field trips, I provide an exemplar from a course on the sociology of race and ethnicity. I describe the field trip logistics, learning objectives, reflection prompts, and assessment criteria and then conclude with suggestions for ways this model can be applied across a variety of course contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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New energy technologies present opportunities for low-carbon housing but also significant upfront costs for house owners. Due to the long service life of such technologies, market valuation impacts on the feasibility of such investments. Yet, existing evidence on the market valuation of energy investments in private housing is inconclusive. Furthermore, despite significant policy efforts, energy performance certificates remain ineffective. This paper addresses these gaps with a study of real estate agents and the use of market devices, such as tools, databases, classification schemes, inspection protocols and market practices. Our analytical framework builds on the sociology of markets, actor network theory and pragmatist theories of valuation in order to highlight the material and discursive assemblages and arrangements that intervene in the construction of markets. Drawing on empirical evidence from Finland, the results point to asymmetries in market devices and valuation practices that disfavour energy investments compared to the other key quality attributes of housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]