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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]

Drawing upon figurational sociology, this paper examines professional football managers' attitudes towards injured players. Following interviews with 10 managers, as with previous research, we found that managers have an expectancy that players are rarely fully fit. Players were stigmatized when they were seemingly unwilling to play when a manager encouraged them to. However, we also found that many managers shaped, in part, by their habitus formed from their own experiences as a player, showed greater empathy towards injured players. Many claimed they would not risk the long-term health of players, although at times, managers at the lower levels felt more constrained to take certain risks. We argue this is an unintended outcome of the increasing pressures on managers to succeed with smaller squads. The increasing emphasis and reliance on 'sport science' enabled managers at the higher levels to have a more supportive approach to managing injuries not previously identified in existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for conceptualising development in terms of social semiotics. It points out that development studies is moving towards to human-centred rather than program-centred, technique-centred or engineer-centred thinking, that it has moved from a focus on technical transfer to dialogic interaction and that it has moved towards a postdevelopment imagination. On the basis of these moves, which all assume that development entails meaning-making, the article explores the contributions that biosemiotics and sociosemiotics can make towards conceptualising development. The article argues that semiotics provides development scholars with the conceptual tools to include both the material and the ideal in development thinking. It proposes a semiotic response theory of development in line with aspects of complexity thinking and semiotic realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we highlight key conceptual, empirical, and theoretical contributions of the sociology of race and racism, particularly those relevant to education scholars. We suggest that educational researchers could benefit from incorporating some of the insights of sociological research on race and racism into their scholarship as such engagement would help to refine and deepen understandings of what race is and is not, how racial dynamics shape what happens in schools, and how schools matter for society. Similarly, studies of school processes, practices, politics, and outcomes can help us to understand more about the construction, negotiation, and transformation of racial knowledge, racial boundaries, and racial hierarchies. We thus advocate for more robust interdisciplinary exchange and believe that the potential benefits are substantial not only to academic fields but also to efforts to advance racial justice more generally. How we conceptualize race informs how we measure it and how we make sense of the pervasive racial inequity that defines our society and pervades educational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With financialization now acknowledged as one of the most potent threats to income equality, can finance-driven inequality be explained by a singular causal argument? Taking the case of top incomes across the OECD, this paper addresses the standard causal narrative of finance-driven inequality, where rising top income inequality is explained as a function of deregulation, financial sector growth, and a parallel weakening of the role of trade unions and the government. Applying fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a time-series dataset (1975-2005), it assesses the ways in which configurations of institutions combined in different ways prior to the recent financial crisis, to create policy contexts conducive to top income growth. It does this by adopting a time-series approach to QCA, involving calibration and analysis of data at three successive historical waves. Results suggest that top incomes in the era of finance-driven capitalism were subject to a diversity of causal paths which generated similar outcomes in different contexts, in a manner which departs substantially from the standard narrative. In doing so, it elaborates on the application of time-series approaches to case-based analysis, and uses its results to discuss the ways in which institutions may combine in different ways to generate similar, or divergent outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinises the educational knowledge requirements of craft, technical, and reflective professional conceptions of teaching, as recently outlined by Winch, Oancea, and Orchard. Drawing on Bernsteinian sociology of knowledge we identify the different requirements each conception makes of educational knowledge, and how it is envisaged that this knowledge will be used in educational practice. While craft conceptions dismiss the value of educational knowledge per se, they nevertheless value other forms of disciplined knowledge. Arguing that technical conceptions of teaching may be either narrowly instrumental or autonomous, we suggest that an advanced technical knowledge base requires a disciplinary aspect, while knowledge for purely instrumental purposes offers a reductive view of educational practice. Moreover, the varying notions of reflection suggested by reflective professional conceptions require certain forms of engagement with educational knowledge, which are challenged by contemporary reforms in teacher education globally. It is suggested that there are often interdependencies between forms of educational knowledge and conceptions of teaching, with potential implications for the trajectories of educational reforms. The argument is briefly illustrated with reference to the national contexts of Germany, England, and Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new paradigm of early childhood allows for the construction of the child as active agents able to comment on their own lives. Historically children have been constructed using divergent discourses as either beings or becomings. More recently they have been seen as complementary and a further temporal state of having been allows for a richer description of the child. In play and role-play, the three temporal states can be observed and appear to inform the children’s understanding of complex world structures. This paper reports the research that was conducted in two Early Childhood Education and Care settings in England. The research was concerned with young children’s experiences of play and role-play in their early childhood setting. Observations and conferences demonstrate the ways in which the temporal states are established in their play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly mediatised policy processes influence practice in schools as education becomes a site of parental anxiety and choice exacerbated by standardised national assessment and ranking of schools in the media. This paper analyses the responses to media scrutiny of six principals whose schools’ national test results were reported in the Australian press following the release of the federal Labour Government’s MySchool website in 2010. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, the concept of cross-field effects, and associated research on mediatisation, the evidence suggests that the relationships between the press, education policy and schools are highly contested, and that principals have some agency in talking back regarding their school’s reported ‘performance’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most surveillance studies scholars assume privacy is antithetical to surveillance, critics have recently warned that privacy-based criticisms may facilitate surveillance. That being said, we do not yet have data that show whether privacy claims were used in the past to legitimate government surveillance. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing claims made over one of the U.S.’s most controversial surveillance issues: government control over encryption technologies. A review of Congressional hearings and statements on the Congressional Record (n = 112) reveals that from 1993 to 1999, public debates were dominated by a market liberalization discourse in which participants supported loosening encryption controls as a way to protect privacy from criminal intrusions in market transactions. Also playing a role was a strong skepticism toward government power and a preference for markets as managers of crime prevention. Challenged by these critiques, lawmakers withdrew regulatory proposals and spent the following decade working quietly with private firms to ensure law enforcement surveillance capability. These findings show the expansion of privacy for consumers and entrepreneurs has in fact been used to achieve the contraction of privacy from law enforcement and intelligence agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-optation theory, more commonly used in sociology and marketing literature, has value in media and cultural studies for examination of how countercultural ideals such as diversity can be assimilated into dominant discourse, in ways that neutralize the concepts’ countercultural significations. This paper demonstrates the value of co-optation theory through a case study of an Australian nationalist advertisement, which co-opts the concept of diversity and utilizes it in a way that is palatable to the imagined White Australian audience. In the process, it is argued, the concept of diversity is neutralized and stripped of its countercultural significations, and masculine Anglo-Australian identity is sustained as an idealized norm. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of the advertisement and its surrounding media reception is conducted to explore the advertisement as an instance of co-optation that was largely met uncritically, and resultantly, passed as a national adulation of an assimilationist ideal dressed as diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life in long-term care is a growing concern for clinicians and social scientists. Attention is turning increasingly to the impact of the institutional environment on residents' experience of themselves and others. In an effort to improve residents' experience, distraction and illusion murals are being created to disguise exit doors and decrease exit-seeking behaviour. Most research focuses on the effect on exitseeking behaviour once murals are complete. This paper will discuss benefits for residents in terms of sustained attention and aesthetic awareness, memory and gender identity and community-building that were realized during the painting in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the activist, feminist and pragmatist Jane Addams (1860-1935) was an experimental philosopher. To defend this claim, I argue for capacious notions of both philosophical pragmatism and experimental philosophy. I begin in Section 2 with a new defence of Rose and Danks' ['In Defense of a Broad Conception of Experimental Philosophy'. Metaphilosophy 44, no. 4 (2013): 512-32] argument in favour of a broad conception of experimental philosophy. Koopman ['Pragmatist Resources for Experimental Philosophy: Inquiry in Place of Intuition'. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26, no. 1 (2012): 1-24] argues that many twentieth-century American pragmatists (e.g. Peirce, James, Dewey) can make important contributions to contemporary experimental philosophy. In Section 3, I argue that while this may be true, it is also true that under the broad conception, many of the pragmatists just were experimental philosophers. In Section 4, I argue that as a pragmatist philosopher in her own right, Jane Addams also fits the bill of an experimental philosopher, broadly construed. My central argument is that working at Hull House rather than the University of Chicago is no reason to think Addams' methods any less rigorous or empirical, nor the problems she addressed any less philosophical. I conclude by responding to potential objections to my even broader conception of experimental philosophy, and I briefly consider how my arguments might inform contemporary feminist criticisms of experimental philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across a crisis-stricken Europe battles rage for post-neoliberal hegemony, with "race" and "austerity" as central signifiers. One of the places where the frontlines are most pregnant is Sweden; long perceived as a role model for its welfare state, cultural equity and social equality. Sweden is, however, facing social conflicts following in the tracks of a deep transformation in terms of welfare cuts, racialization and growing social polarization, targeting in particular a disadvantaged migrant and post-migrant population. On that background, the paper focuses on the upsurge of mutually antagonistic popular movements - "racist" and "anti-racist". We use Sweden as an exemplary case of Europe's present Polanyian moment, reminiscent of the 1930s. Yet, current upheavals expound, the authors claim, a different configuration of crisis and racism as well as a dissimilar utopia for the imagineering of nation and community. [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]

Since 1953, when Anthony Thwaite described Geoffrey Hill as a ‘runic visionary’ in the Oxford student magazineThe Isis, the visionary has been a site of contestation for Hill and his critics. Tom Paulin's 1992 essay on Hill, ‘A Visionary Nationalist’, identified vision with an entrenched belief in ‘the magical transcendence of art’. While Paulin seems to have overlooked the fact that Hill's early poems subject this very belief to intense scrutiny, it can sometimes appear that their dense, hermetic forms are merely the despairing flip side of the transcendence they rebuke. In this paper, I suggest some ways to read the prosodic and thematic disposition of the mythical elements in Hill's early poetry, arguing that they constitute a complex, differential attitude towards the temporality of visionary thought. My argument draws on the notion of the speculative proposition as expounded by Gillian Rose, to explore how Hill inhabits the gulf between art's vision and the world of commerce and society. Through close readings of ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘Of Commerce and Society’, as well as Hill's early essay ‘The Poetry of Allen Tate’, the paper suggests that Hill's early poetry works towards an apprehension of society as productive content rather than repressed other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to understanding why curriculum design in a discipline with a horizontal knowledge structure is difficult, time‐consuming and contested. A previous paper on the same case study in one sociology department reported that students who had completed the general sociology major found it lacking in coherence. To illustrate the problem, I selected two third‐year sociology courses, Urban Studies and Diversity Studies, and set out to compare and contrast how knowledge claims are made and legitimated in these two discourses. The paper also has a methodological focus – to demonstrate the potential of systemic functional linguistics as a method of discourse analysis that can complement and deepen a sociological analysis – Bernstein’s sociology of education and in particular his concept of ‘grammaticality’. I seek to make explicit the basis for knowledge claims in these two sub‐disciplines and then to investigate how this ‘grammar’ is built into criteria for assessing students. The long‐term goal of this project is pedagogic – to understand how academic discourses work, in order to contribute to the development of more coherent curricula and visible pedagogies with explicit assessment criteria, for the enhancement of teaching and learning. The analysis shows that the ‘grammars’ of these two academic discourses (in the same discipline, sociology) are based on different ordering principles; they are based on different ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions. The analysis also shows that the respective ‘grammars’ do ‘get into’ the assessment criteria, although in a contextually contingent manner. The paper concludes by suggesting that the use of SFL as a method of discourse analysis within a social realist sociology of education framework proved to be fruitful and worthy of further development, particularly for education development work where the quest to make explicit the criteria for producing a ‘legitimate text’ is critical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the extent to which diversity in the backgrounds of students and diversity in the forms and characteristics of universities combine to produce diversities in learning experiences and outcomes. It draws on a recent major national study in the UK which has been investigating how student learning is mediated by a series of social and organisational factors. Fifteen case studies of student experiences in different universities lay at the heart of the study and provide extensive qualitative and quantitative evidence about the realities of diversity in UK higher education. The paper reports both diversities and commonalities in the student experience and its outcomes, some of which challenge the predominantly hierarchical and reputational conceptions of diversity and differentiation currently dominant in debates about UK higher education. The student 'voice' on these matters as reported here does not fully coincide with current policy priorities and 'voices'. Student perceptions of the ways in which they have changed as a result of the experience of higher education embrace a range of factors within which the social and the personal are at least as important as the academic. Although the focus in this paper is on student learning on undergraduate degrees in the biosciences, business studies and sociology, a model of university learning contexts and settings is presented which may have wider applicability to achieving a better understanding of higher education's increasing diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health promotion, as one tool of hospital managers to reorient hospitals towards more client-oriented healthcare services, has been emphasized for almost three decades. Yet, it is recognized that change in hospitals is challenging and is more desired than substantially enacted. To overcome organizational challenges, health promotion has, so far, adapted organizational change strategies primarily applied in business organizations. However, in this paper, it is argued that such strategies do not adequately reflect the nature of hospitals as 'professional organizations'. To gain a better understanding of the challenges for health promotion reorientation, this paper combines well-established theories from the sociology of professions and organizational science. These theories provide a useful framework that advances the role of professionals as powerful agents within any reorientation efforts in hospitals. This framework guided the narrative review of empirical literature on critical dimensions along which professionals engage with reorientation efforts in hospitals. Accordingly, specific managerial strategies to facilitate health promotion reorientation are formulated. With its theoretical underpinnings and related empirical studies, the paper offers a new perspective on the challenges of implementing health promotion and proposes strategies that may help hospital managers to push forward health promotion reorientation in their organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the key role of discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, social norms, and practices – as the underlying drivers of gender inequality. Using the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) from the OECD Development Centre, this paper assesses the cost of gender-based discrimination in social institutions for economic and human development. Quantifying such complex issues is a powerful lever for advocacy, where rights-based arguments have tended to gain less traction. The paper provides evidence that measuring the invisible is feasible and critical to position social norms on the policy radar. It demonstrates that any truly transformative post-2015 development agenda must take into account how such inequalities impact the development pathways of women and girls across their entire life course, limiting their rights and empowerment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is the first article in English of Rosenstock-Huessy'sFull Count of the Times, the second volume of hisSociology. The vastness and diversity of Rosenstock-Huessy's corpus, plus the associative manner of his writing, makes any systematic analysis of his work very difficult. Yet he explicitly stated in his Sociology that he did have a system. In this paper I clarify why his work is devoted to theFull Count of the Times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I outline a framework for a relational sociology of culture. I begin by briefly defining relational sociology and contrasting it with both individualistic and holistic alternatives. Culture, I suggest, is an inherently relational concept and needs to be theorised and analysed as such. This argument is briefly elaborated through a discussion of the generation and diffusion of culture by way of interaction and social networks. The respective contributions of Tarde, Durkheim, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein are given particular attention. In the final part of the paper I introduce and discuss Howard Becker's notion of ‘art worlds’, drawing out and elaborating upon its relational foundations whilst also further developing it through a more sustained reflection upon both the facilitative potential of social networks and their shaping, as hypothesised by Peter Blau (and developed by Miller McPherson and Noah Mark), by way of homophilic attraction in ‘social space’. The paper covers a lot of ground and is intended as a sketch which subsequent work will fill out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Managing the risks to which children are exposed in contemporary Britain is complex, requiring parents to balance opportunities for a child’s development with an appropriate concern for the potential consequences. Managing risk is particularly an issue for mothers, who, despite societal changes, tend to retain overall responsibility for the care of children. This paper explores the meanings mothers attach to risk and how this influences their children’s outdoor play. It also extends the scope of much existing literature by including children’s own perspectives on risk in outdoor play. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 12 mothers who had children aged between 9 and 11 years old who attended a north-east school. Two focus groups were also held, each with six of the children. Findings are analysed in relation to mother and child constructions of risk; mothers and children as risk managers; and negotiating mothering choices. The paper pays particular attention to the way in which mothers’ decisions were framed within risk cultures and dominant views of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Mobility and transport needs, challenges and experiences are embedded in everyday life. An examination of mobility and transport issues contributes to our understanding of social change, stratification, differentiation, inequalities, structures and processes. This is an indication that sociological understandings of mobility and transport are relevant and critical to contemporary society, particularly the daily experiences and realities of marginalised and vulnerable social groups. This review paper then makes two contributions. The first demonstrates the extent to which the concepts 'mobility' and 'transport' extend our understanding of everyday lives, needs, experiences and challenges. Secondly, the paper highlights a selection of dominant and emerging themes, including the conceptual, methodological and epistemological deficiencies. This presents opportunities for further sociological accounts of youth in general and youth mobility in particular. This paper then is a 'primer' to encourage the exploration of 'new' avenues and domains within sociology in general and the Sociology of Youth or Childhood in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how conceptual confusion may be a significant obstacle to cross-disciplinary dialogue. We focus on the relationship between the framework of technological innovation systems (TIS) and sociological functionalism (SF). The paper argues that while there are similarities between the two schools of thought, in particular in the use of the terms ‘structure’ and ‘function’, these are more linguistic than substantive. We demonstrate this by assessing the validity of the spillover to TIS of four main points of critique raised against SF. We conclude by stating some lessons for improving cross-disciplinary communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a qualitative study on the contribution of a Program of Education through Work (PET) in Healthcare, based at a Brazilian State University, to interprofessional education. Data were collected from ten undergraduate students of Nursing, Medicine, and Phonoaudiology (speech therapy), who were part of PET at the University. Data were analyzed using the Discourse of the Collective Subject technique. Central ideas were gathered into three categories: (1) teamwork and interprofessionality; (2) PET influences on SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System); (3) teaching-service-community integration. The study found evidence that PET enabled the students with opportunities to be involved in an education that supported the SUS principles and guidelines and to engage with interprofessional learning where there were exchanges of different professional experiences. The PET also supported the development of critical thinking for professional performance, as well as an integrated teaching experience that could support community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper posits that an infusion of psychoanalytic concepts into the teaching of sociology in undergraduate liberal arts curricula offers a route to expanding students' understanding of how self and society are entwined in a condition of mutual crisis in contemporary society. We argue that the liberatory project at the core of the liberal arts is served well by linking the critical perspectives found in these two disciplines. We provide as specific examples from our own teaching: (1) a demonstration of how Freud's concept of neurosis has an affinity with Marx's concept of alienation; and (2) a discussion of how the torture sequence in Orwell's 1984 presents an inversion of a psychoanalytic treatment through which the power of propaganda is illuminated. We conclude that teaching the two disciplines in tandem helps students grasp how the self is a socially constructed entity and how the orthodoxies of neurosis and social control are available for critique and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on racial identification in Brazil, considering how concepts of race travel internationally and are transformed locally. In light of the silencing of issues of race in Brazilian public education, we analyse the experiences of student teachers of colour participating in a professional development project coordinated by the authors. We report findings of a qualitative study arising from the project, based on reflective journals and interviews, and focusing on processes of racial resignification and resistance. The narratives produced by participants are situated in relation to dominant discourses of racial democracy and mixing, which deny the possibility of a politicised Afro-Brazilian identity. We show how hybrid identifications, drawing on cultural resources and networks that involve transnational circulation, are part of the construction of new social identities in the context of teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as its subject the circulation of tolerance discourse within two pedagogical encounters in two Australian educational settings, and draws from the work of Wendy Brown on tolerance as a regulatory force. Brown argues that discourses of tolerance are produced within historical and cultural milieu that enable tolerance and aversion to exist simultaneously. This has significant implications for how we might come to understand the project of working towards a socially just educational system and the various struggles encountered within pedagogical sites. I also examine the pedagogical affects that are produced within different educational moments as we work to teach in or around difference and when we embody the Other in the classroom. I engage with how these experiences speak to the way in which tolerance as national ideal acts to both alleviate and circulate discourses of inequality such as sexism and homophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows one small, Christian university’s five-year experience with student charity date auctions. The contemporary re-emergence of date auctions represents a backlash against gender and racial progress. Student leaders believe that in a post-racial and post-sexist society, race and gender are decontextualised neutral elements of identity. Students see their expressions of racist or sexist practices as quaint or ironic, as markers that they have sufficient cultural capital to reference historical events or practices. This perceived mastery of cultural signs is what marks these expressions as hipster racism and sexism. The date auction is difficult to unpack and challenge as it rests on privilege blindness, individualism, and the powerful rhetoric of irony. Using a close reading of the student newspaper, we analyse the discourse surrounding the date auction revealing the maintenance of patriarchy and white supremacy within the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals are claiming greater scope for choice in their racial identities. But how they are seen and classified by others is not necessarily changing in a similar way. Racial appraisals are the way that people classify the race of others, both particular individuals and larger groups. In this paper, I make a case for the study of racial appraisals as a field of sociological inquiry. I map out the different analytical levels and methodological approaches for this field and discuss how these can be used to understand observed race, norms of racial classification, and societal norms of the racial order. I present an example of how societal norms and logics of racial classification can be analysed in real time through survey research, using 2015-16 data on 866 White Americans’ reactions to Rachel Doležal’s racial identity claims. I present an agenda for studying changes in racial boundaries and classification norms through the longitudinal tracking of racial appraisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The RSA Research Network on Regional Economic and Policy History (ReHi) aims to investigate the role of the historic perspective on regional studies through a series of events. During the inaugural two-day workshop, held in London in April 2017, the participants highlighted historical methodologies and approaches that establish a common thread in the various regional disciplines. They defined interdisciplinary connections that need to be addressed to overcome the discontinuous dialogue among researchers of regional studies and history. The research papers that were presented at the conference focused on improving methodologies, analysing economic strategies, developing techniques, and understanding policy development. The workshop aimed at establishing the foundation for a common research framework to improve the scientific debate and provide impact on regional policy regulations. [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]

For philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, an outcome of the Plato-led victory of philosophers over poets is the 'conquest of abundance' where abstraction replaces the 'richness of being'. This poignant motif is visible in the project of the social sciences, where theory describes classificatory schemas that can be imposed upon the social world to categorise and, subsequently, explain it. However, Homer's writings (which pre-date Plato) provide a completely different frame of reference. By reimagining ourselves within this work we may be able to rethink and reconfigure our understanding of science, and perhaps even the practice of science. This paper reports on a Feyerabendian 'experiment' in sociology of science which attempts to write contemporary scientific production from the frame of reference of Homer. This new methodology leads to fragments of epic poetry which act as a provocation to, and a disruption of, sociology of science and STS and their ways of making sense of science in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relativism is often motivated in terms of certain types of disagreement. In this paper, we survey the philosophical debates over two such types:faultless disagreementin the case of gustatory conflict, andfundamental disagreementin the case of epistemic conflict. Each of the two discussions makes use of a (largely) implicit conception of judgement:brute judgementin the case of faultless disagreement, andrule-governed judgementin the case of fundamental disagreement. We show that the prevalent accounts work with unreasonably high levels ofidealization. We defend two claims. First, philosophical discussions of disagreement need to be de-idealized. Second, once a less idealized account of disagreement is available, both our conception of judgement and our understanding of relativism need to be revised. Our example is a case study in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s classicLeviathan and the Air-Pump(1985). This case study gives a less idealized account of disagreement that conceptualizes judgements assituated(rather thanbruteorrule-governed). We argue that this conception can and should be applied to cases of gustatory and epistemic disagreement. The payoff will be a reformulation of relativism in terms ofrationally resolvableyetcontingentdisagreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the development of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) as an illustrative case to examine how national schooling reforms are assembled in Australia’s federal system. Drawing upon an emerging body of research on ‘policy assemblage’ within the fields of policy sociology, anthropology and critical geography, we focus on interactions between three dominant ‘component parts’ in the development of the APST: the Australian federal government; New South Wales state government agencies; and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. While policies like the APST claim to be national in form and scope, our analysis suggests ‘the national’ is much more disjunctive and nebulous, constituted by a heterogeneous and emergent assemblage of policy ideas, practices, actors and organisations, which often reflecttransnationaltraits and impulses. We thus see national reforms such as the APST as having a phantom-like nature, which poses challenges for researchers seeking to understand the making of national policies in federal systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article has two parts. The first part compares two Jungian interpretations of the Elián González affair in 1999 in which a family custody battle metastasized into a Cuba-U.S. international event. One interpretation is brief, simple, and integrated, and revolves around a single complex. The other interpretation, building forward on the first, is longer, complicated, fragmentary, and evokes multiple complexes. The second part of the paper poses some taxing questions around matters of epistemology and methodology: What kind of evidence is needed to construct the interpretation of an event? How does one go about gathering that evidence, and how does one spot a complex or an archetype? And, more fundamentally, how does one choose one interpretation of an event over another? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What is the role of knowledge in the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in Higher Education? This paper presents the findings of empirical research at a Canadian university. A position of knowledge differentiation located in a social realist sociology of knowledge is adopted. This is not an obvious or usual position for scholars of RPL, because it holds that what distinguishes formal academic knowledge from experiential knowledge is a question of the structure and purpose of the knowledge. Research into a range of academic and professional education programmes points to degrees of – and different types of – possible connection between formal and experiential knowledge. Findings offer an indication of the type of programmes in relation to which the implementation of RPL is likely to be most feasible. Additionally, findings show how social factors other than knowledge types enable or constrain the implementation of RPL. Avenues for further research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

The Gdeim Izik protest emerged in response to Moroccan public policy (the distribution of land for construction) and adopted a nationalist line during the course of the action, provoking a heavy-handed response from Moroccan state security forces. This paper analyses the process and places it in the broader context of protest movements that emerge in situations of occupation and authoritarian rule. To that end, the study addresses the reconfiguration of the protest camp in Western Sahara during the 2000s, including protests that were not explicitly pro-independence struggles, to examine how Sahrawi protest actors perceived and assessed this context and how this assessment influenced their individual and collective action strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Throughout this mediated society, young people, in particular, are mass consumers of corporatized media. The mediation of sport has long been critically examined within sociology and physical cultural studies [(e.g. Mcdonald, M. G., and S. Birrell. 1999. "Reading Sport Critically: A Methodology for Interrogating Power." Sociology of Sport Journal 16: 283-300)]. Due to our society's media consumption, physical education (PE) teachers and students are mediated and socially constructed individuals, which influences one's ability to teach and learn within a school environment. Purpose: In this paper, we critically examine and analyze movie content of PE, primarily in the U.S.We explore the representations for what they tell us about the place of PE in society and compare them to best practices in regards to appropriate content and methods. Data collection and analysis: A critical analysis of 43 movies with PE content was conducted spanning the years 1939-2012. All PE scenes were transcribed verbatim for dialogue, action and sound. Using the constant comparative method [Corbin, J. M., and A. L. Strauss. 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 3rd ed. London: Sage], a systematic analysis of the movie scenes and transcripts was implemented to examine them for themes. Trends were reviewed over time and across genres, offering a systematic analysis of all scenes related to PE. Findings: Two major themes represent the findings of the critical readings: (a) bullying in PE and (b) constructions of masculinity. Furthermore, a comparative analysis ensues on the depictions and representations of content and methods in PE and how those relate to best practices in the profession. Collectively, PE has changed over time from being depicted in romantic ways as a lighthearted space, to a space of discipline and fear, to an irrelevant and/or comedic space. Instances of physical educators being depicted as caring and competent within a plethora of less positive portrayals of physical educators as cruel, inept and/or inappropriate were also found. We argue that these public narratives of PE over time reflect collective feelings and imaginings of PE, which impact beliefs and attitudes about the profession, and therefore policy impacting PE offerings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of youth sociology has been challenged to reconsider the role of parenting in the lives of young adults. This paper presents a multiple-case study investigation into young men’s transitions from school into further education in an Australian context. We will argue that relationships with parents are materially, socially and emotionally salient throughout the period during which young men move out of adolescence and into young adulthood during their final year of senior schooling and beyond. In considering how the young men constituted their identities in the context of family relationships, we will highlight the dynamic interplay between three relational identities: dependent, independent and interdependent. We show that a main locus of tension was the negotiation of power and agency in the representation of self in relation to parents, specifically in the context of a period in which educational achievement was highly emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2008 recommended two interpretive standards for the use of force against individuals in armed conflicts. While one standard defines ‘direct participation in hostilities’ by reference to ‘functional membership’ such that anyone with a continuous combat function in an organised armed group will lose her/his civilian immunity and be subject to attack on a continuous basis, the other standard requires that the kind and degree of force used in the attack be graduated according to military necessity. This paper surveys the levels of adoption of these standards in selected domestic jurisdictions, identifies the possible legitimating factors that gave these standards the capacity to induce their adoption by domestic actors and examines whether and how governance by these transnational standards may be justified by their democratic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a call for papers on sociology, pedagogy or related disciplines in social sciences published in the July 2004 issue of the journal "Sports, Education and Society."

Agency is a conceptual problem for youth studies. While the term is used in many analyses of young people's lives, this paper argues that the nature and conceptual meaning of agency remain ambiguous: agency is a ‘black box’ which while fundamental to youth sociology remains unpacked. Ontological and epistemological confusion about the concept means that appeals to agency in contemporary youth sociology beg the very questions they claim to answer. Nevertheless, the concept has become central to the conceptual and political basis of youth research, coming to stand for practices that are ‘bounded’ by structures and resist existing states of affairs. This limits the explanatory power of theoretical frameworks in youth studies, and does not serve the ethical commitments of a politically engaged discipline. Identifying conceptual and normative problems raised by the way agency is deployed, this paper argues that a conceptually powerful and politically engaged youth sociology must move beyond the problem of agency as it stands, and incorporates theoretical perspectives on youth subjectivities and social action that indicate possibilities for how this might take place. [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]

Once exceptional, a long life is now an everyday expectation for many citizens of the prosperous nations. The consequence of this transformation in life expectancy however has led to a set of contradictory responses, representing threats as much as opportunities. Old age is no longer a stable coherent part of the life course; its future is fragmented by the competing narratives of the third age (opportunity) and the fourth age (threat). While there is a tendency to frame this distinction primarily through the lens of socio-demography and/or 'stages of life,' this paper proposes an alternative model. This model argues that later life is now represented through two different, though not unrelated, paradigms. The first frames the third age as a network of cultural fields dominated by rising consumerism and changing social relationships, while the second frames the fourth age as a negatively developed social imaginary of 'real old age.' The central features of this imaginary, we suggest, are frailty, abjection and the 'othering' of the self. This paper elaborates this theorising of the fourth age, briefly outlining each of these three features before considering in more detail the nature of othering and its consequences for those affected by this particular imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students' results on national literacy and numeracy tests - the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) - in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers' learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN within schools was the result of sustained policy pressure for increased attention to such foci at national and state levels, and a broader political context in which rapid improvement in test results was considered imperative. However, implementation, (or what this paper describes more accurately as 'enactment') of the policy also revealed NAPLAN as providing evidence of students' learning, as useful for grouping students to help improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities, and as a stimulus for teacher professional development. Drawing upon the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that even as more political concerns about comparing NAPLAN results with other states were recognised by educators, the field of schooling practices was characterised by a logic of active appropriation of political concerns about improved test scores by teachers, for more educative purposes. In this way, policy enactment in schools is characterised by competing interests, and involving not just interpretation, translation and critique but active appropriation of political concerns by teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with the Simmel triad, a unit formed by three different sides, in order to explore science and technology in the applied mainstream discourse of development. My analysis begins when development is oversimplified to an absence of science and technology. By placing the beliefs, values and knowledge that are embedded, produced and maintained within the triad of science, technology and development under the scholarly gaze, I illustrate the importance of understanding whether it is an absence or presence that is nurtured by the analysis and reproduced in the discourse. The paper begins with a short discussion of development as a mainstream discourse and moves into a discussion of studying the triad from the outside and inside. Using an informal case study of the Togolese educational and demographic document: statistiques scolaires I explore components of the development, science and technology triad from an inside perspective and place the who, what, where, when and how of the triad within social relations and social structures in order to study science and technology as social institutions within development rather than as objects of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]