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In India, where around 19,500 dialects are spoken, there is a great abundance of fiction quite rich in varied descriptions of old age and aging. While scholars like Pramod K. Nayar and Ira Raja have recently begun studying Indian literary texts written in English from the perspective of literary gerontology, those literary experiences of aging (which are originally in languages like Bengali, Tamil, Hindi, Oriya, etc.) are yet to be analyzed from a gerontological point of view. The present paper aims at studying the experiences of old age in 2 Indian short stories (one from Bengali Literature and another from Tamil Literature)—Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay's "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi" ("Drabomoyeer Kashibash" in Bengali) and T. Janakiraman's "The Puppet" ("Vilayattu Bommai" in Tamil). Regarding "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi," the paper interrogates the problems in the emplacement of Hindu older widows to Kashi and explores the possibilities in Drabomoyee from ecofeminist and creatural perspectives. The discussions on "The Puppet" chiefly reflect on the social exclusion of the aging bodies of people living with dementia. Through the story of Venu, the paper shows that what the society or family generally expects from the older persons suffering from dementia may not do any good to them, and may instead lead to their institutionalization and other forms of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with how ideological factors influence the transfer of literature through translation between what translation sociology calls 'peripheral languages'. The international dissemination of the literary oeuvre of the Dutch communist writer Theun de Vries (1907–2005) in translation stands in the centre of this investigation, which focuses on three questions: 1.) How the transfer of literary products from a peripheral language into both peripheral and central languages takes place, and what specific dynamics can be shown to shape these translation flows. 2.) How ideology plays a role in shaping translation flows. 3.) How methodological tools from translation sociology can and cannot be used to investigate literary export from peripheral literatures. Through the case study of the translation of De Vries' novel Hoogverraad [High Treason] (1950) into Hungarian the details and dynamics of Cold War cultural transfer and literary manipulation are analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a sociological reflection on contemporary conjugal love, both from an empirical and a theoretical point of view. Drawing on analyses of data regarding financial arrangements between partners forming a couple, as well as on the sociological literature concerning love relationships, we present a theorization of contemporary conjugal semantics. We define these semantics as consisting of eight "meaning rules" through which social actors respond to the challenges of intimate relationships. Our analysis shows us the gaps and the tensions between different logics of love, on the one hand, and logics of love and social realities, on the other. However, partners' utterances feature an integration of elements stemming from opposed semantic frameworks; meaning rules fostering mythical idealisation are combined with rules regarding relationship work, therapeutic communication, and the entrepreneurial management of the relationship. This empirical analysis also allows us to tackle a double confusion in the contemporary sociological literature on love and couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies two contrasting approaches to the quantitative measurement of scholarly output, emphasizing the distinction between contribution studies and productivity studies. Contribution studies are those in which the investigator starts with a well-defined list of publication outlets, recording all contributions to that literature by all authors, whomever they might be. In contrast, productivity studies are those in which the investigator starts with a well-defined list of contributors, recording all their scholarly output, wherever it might have appeared. We apply this conceptual model to sociology by examining the key characteristics of 25 relevant studies published since 1970. Nine are contribution studies, twelve are productivity studies, and four are too limited in scope to fall into either category. We conclude by discussing the implications of the contribution/productivity distinction for sociology and other disciplines—in particular, the problems that may arise when contribution studies are used to evaluate scholarly productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a historical sociological analysis of the sociology of sport. It draws on theoretical insights from the sociology of professions to examine ‘state-of-the-field’ reviews written by sociologists of sport. The paper argues that in establishing why the sociology of sport emerged, how people identified its earliest manifestations, and how the subdiscipline’s boundaries were drawn, the political dynamics and consequences of the social construction of the field become apparent. This social construction is conceived of as a ‘professional project’ through which a knowledge domain, and this group’s authoritative status, was established. Sociologists of sport sought to validate their professional project through appeals to the sociological ‘mainstream’ and the correlative distancing from physical education. These reviews consistently obscure this professional project and portray a lineage that is logical, inevitable and consensual. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper dwells upon the crisis of literary sociology in Romanian criticism in the decade(s) after the demise of Socialist Realism. Viewing it as a paradox within the research commandments of a communist regime, the study relates this crisis both to the decline of the Marxist-Leninist frame in post-Stalinist, Soviet-emancipated Romania, and to the rising fame of French Structuralism. Some relevant case studies are chosen to highlight the development of Romanian sociological criticism, its difficulty to make amends with the dogmatic past and to swiftly move on to the next level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper starts from a premise relating to the act of fictional writing about eugenics and the way it may be understood as the embodiment and enactment of social imaginaries. It proposes that literature (in the sense of fiction) frequently, if not habitually, expresses the underside of what is expressed in public discourse. That is, far from being the implement of state policy or intervention, it acts in counterpoint to the state, constituting a type of social fantasy in that it explores through the realm of the imagination what might happen. It becomes the arena for contestation, exploration, and nuancing as it essays how ideas from public, ‘real’ life, might transform when acted out. The paper considers two sorts of literary case. First it looks at that of ‘naïve’ literature, harnessed unashamedly to a specific sociological discourse of eugenics. Then, using primarily Ibsen, it considers a subset, the case of literature that does not set out to be explicitly in the service of the cause of eugenics, but is appropriated and disseminated from a platform of eugenics. Lastly, taking the example of Unamuno’s Amor y pedagogía (1902) the paper considers literature that exists in a quite different sphere of public awareness. It shows awareness of the arguments and precepts of eugenics and related beliefs and practices, but acts as a transitional space (in the terms of Winnicott) to enable such ideas to be entertained and thought about, without a requirement of acceptance or belief. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses the example of ‘slash fiction’ (fan fiction which appropriates media heroes to form homoerotic pairings) to offer an investigation which broadens the concept of decoding. Slash fiction provides a particularly suitable starting point for considering the decoding process, as it is one of the few cases in which we have the evidence of decoding readily available for analysis in the form of fanzines. Many academics have considered Kirk and Spock's relationship as it was represented in Star Trek and the homoerotic ‘K/S’ fiction which it inspired, however no one has effectively considered the interpretive processes which connect them. I question the implicit belief that K/S fiction is an ‘oppositional’ decoding of Star Trek and demonstrate its more negotiated nature through a detailed consideration of the decoding process. To this end I borrow an idea of David Morley's who has suggested that ‘Hall's original model [of decoding] tends to blur together questions of recognition, comprehension, interpretation and response’ (Morley 1994, 21). This paper will take up Morley's four process model of decoding and answer Jenkins’ call for a closer analysis of the links between audience reception and texts (Jenkins 1996, 275). Throughout this piece I write as both fan and academic; I consider this a privileged position from which I have access both to the dominant discourses of K/S fandom and fiction, and the academic paradigms with which to interpret them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to offer, through a reading of hedonism, an analytic conception of the difference which one author has referred to as the dialectic of speech and silence. In addressing the form of life of hedonism as one version of otherness and difference, the author seek not only to display an alternative conception of life and inquiry than that of hedonism, but also to show the authority or grounds of this papers possibility - even if such a showing inevitably and necessarily remains incomplete. The first section begins to make available authors understanding of hedonism as one theory of desire and difference through a presentation and consideration of two contemporary expressions of it. The Second section provides the theory, through a consideration of classical hedonism, for the practices encountered in the prior section.

The first part of the article describes men's experiences from the perspective of women and the second part presents an interpretation of the sport experience from a male's perspective. The relationship between the two parts, which are critical of masculinity yet simultaneously sympathetic to men, are complementary rather than contradictory. As such, the paper represents a contribution to the emergence of a new conception of women's and men's studies. The article's methodological framework is drawn from the field of women's studies and centres on the recollection and interpretation of one's own life history. The first part of the article is about how masculinity in boys is constructed with the help of sport. It presents selected recollections by male university students about how the cultural processes which reproduce masculinity in men is realized in the case of sport. The methodological basis for the second part of the paper is drawn from the tradition of textual analysis which has become increasingly influential in Finland in the areas of sociology, literature and politics. The article's second part deals with the deconstruction of masculinity in relation to the sportsman. It is a story of a man who has himself unfolded the power relations of sport in the context of his life history, his society and a theoretical frame of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the notion of classics from the literature, we return to the topic in the field of sociology and extend this idea to the medical / health sociology. We have analyzed some of the concepts developed by several authors - Gellius, Sainte-Beuve, Twain, T. S Elliot, Borges, Calvino, Merton, Schwartzman, Baehr - and discussed the possibility of applying this notion in more recent fields, such as medical sociology / health / disease. We've pointed out the coexistence, nowadays, of notions of «classic» in the tradition of the 17th century (the «chosen», «teaching models», «language models») to notions of eternal and universal models (19th century) and of «authority» (20th century). We emphasize the character of redesigning and implementing the «classic» to a new situation. In this sense, we understand its extension to the field of sociology of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, different approaches which are focusing on the relationship between society and literature and providing perspectives on using literary works in social studies creatively has been examined. Using literary work as a document and and collect information for social studies may lead us some short cut and false conclusions. Sociology of literature as a discipline aims to clarify the aspects of the relation between society and literature. According to this discipline exploring the transformative potential of art is a more efficient way. For this reason, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the types of aesthetic transformation by viewing different approaches exploring the relationship beetween "literature and psychology" and "literature and ideology". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explanation can be given for the relevance of literature to Bourdieu's theoretical work? In order to explain this choice of object, in the first part of this article I consider the national and international context within which Bourdieu's theory has been built. In the French intellectual space literature was a central theoretical object. In the international context, the attention paid to literature was justified by the importance given to the symbolic phenomena in the main contemporary theoretical traditions. In order to appreciate the singularity and difficulty of Bourdieu's theoretical acquisition, I try to reconstruct the problems that he attempted to resolve, the theoretical possibilities with regard to which his hypotheses were defined, and the position that he held in his field of production at the time in which they were formulated. In Bourdieu's thought, this conjunctural dimension does not imply that a theory is particularized or relativized. So he presented his theoretical frameworks on literature as a model applying to any kind of cultural products. In the second part of my paper I intend to test these claims by examining under what conditions and to what extent his ‘Principles of a science of works’ have been considered transposable to other national contexts and/or to new objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the classical sociology of Ludwig Gumplowicz, who was one of the forerunners of scientific sociology. Connected with Graz in Austria and primarily writing in German, he is generally regarded as a representative of Austrian sociology. This paper highlights the Polish origins of the scholar, as well as the multicultural influences that shaped his thought, and treats him as a classic of both Austrian and Polish sociology. His scholarly work and biography are presented with special regard to the historical reception of his thought. An attempt is also made to try to show the circumstances which led to a relatively quick depreciation of his work, and sonic new regenerative works on his sociology are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a large literature on social capital, empirical estimates of the effect of social capital may be biased because of social homophily, the tendency of similar people to become friends with each other, Despite the methodological difficulties, a recent literature has emerged across several different disciplines that tries to estimate the causal effect of social capital. This paper reviews this recent empirical literature on social capital, paying close attention to the statistical and theoretical assumptions involved. Overall, there is evidence that genuine progress has been made in estimating the effect of social capital. The reviewed articles should provide useful examples for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to point out a remarkable gap between the social science literature on diffusion and the legal literature on reception and transplantation and to explore the implications of this gap for research on diffusion of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional. We use these two dimensions to develop a typology of resistance, thereby clarifying both the meaning and sociological utility of this concept [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends the relevance of materials pertaining to auditory perception in the analysis of colonial and postcolonial texts. It considers the orientation of the subject in an acoustic domain and, through the work of Jacques Attali in particular, theorises the relation between dissonance and political dissidence as this distinction circulates in the social imaginary. Having suggested what is to be gained in analytical terms by analysing the relation between sound, place and identity, the argument proceeds to consider a specific instance: the representation of music and the configuration of ‘noise’ in the highly influential South African autobiography. Bloke Modisane's Blame Me on History (1963). A close reading of sections of the text demonstrates some of the ways in which literary acoustics sound out power relations and enable significantly different modes of the social, political and literary imaginary. The argument concludes, though, on a somewhat pessimistic note, suggesting ways in which theories of dissonant dissent can be complicit in the systems of meaning they are taken to oppose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's "The City," the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. "The City" was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence on his 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in "The City" can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of "The City" in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Pierre Bourdieu''s analysis, the emergence of the literary field results from a historical process by which the literary activity became autonomous from different types of external constraints, related to the conditions of production. This paper gives a provisional account of these types of constraints, focusing on the French case. It is possible to class the national literary fields according to their dependence upon the State or upon the market. In authoritarian regimes, the State is an instrument of control put at the service of an ideological system. The ideological demand determines the supply of cultural goods. It implies a strict regulation of economic exchanges, a centralisation of the means of production and consecration. The liberalization of the bookmarket has favoured the literary field''s relative liberation from State control. But the market has also constraints of its own, mainly profit, which encloses, for literature, the risk of standardization. During the 19th Century, writers claimed for the autonomy of literary recognition, that must be grounded on aesthetical judgments and not on sales. In France, the State progressively became committed to help literary activities preserve a certain degree of autonomy from the market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we analyze Latin American magazines as documents of culture, in terms of Benjamin, because they allow us to dissect a particular state of the intellectual field. Also collective texts help us to understand cultural and political projects developed in a period of time. Since they are discursive forms related to journalism, the reviews are seen here as a symptom of dependence between the press and literature, one of the prominent features of our process of cultural autonomy. Likewise, we offer methodological proposals to approach these texts based on the confluence between the History of Ideas and the Sociology of Culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the notion that our ideas of space are defined by their margins, this paper explores some of the social, symbolic and cultural means commonly used in particular contexts to determine both the definition of these perimeters and the various competing social structures implicit in their maintenance and function, or otherwise. In addition to first-hand accounts and ethno-graphies, the work draws on sources ranging from literature and journalism to architecture and social anthropology, all presented in terms of the author's long established, and much published, approach to SCOS events and the broader discontinuities of life in general. So, for example, the title of his proposed piece contains an oblique yet knowing reference to theories of relativity in that no matter how light the text may be, or lacking in gravity, it cannot easily be described within the space of ten and a half minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The totality of Cooley's contribution to self-theory, as reported in most sociology texts and much of the contemporary self literature, is erroneously equated with his concept of the "looking-glass self," in its passive, dependent; and chameleon form. In this paper, we highlight Cooley's own qualifications to the looking-glass self, which properly place this popular concept in the context of Cooley's broader and more assertive view of self-concept formation. These qualifications include Cooley's emphasis on selectivity and Interpretation in the process of reflected appraisals, his writings on core values and the continuity of character, and his discussion of efficacious action and appropriative activity in the early formation of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides gudelines for authors who want to contribute in social and cultural phenomena through their articles for the publication in the journal "Journal of Social History (JHS)." A JHS article will say something substantial and new about its empirical subject matter and will be of interest to readers beyond a specialist geographical or disciplinary audience. These guidelines brief up on the format of paper submission, the length of articles, refereeing, the possibility of acceptance of the paper. The contributions should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 100 words, and a brief biographical note including institutional affiliation. Articles should normally be no longer than 10,000 words or 35 double-spaced standard north American letter-size pages. The contributions that are wished to be considered further after being edited, will only be sent to the external referees, and once the papers have been finally accepted, the full final text has to be sent by the authors. There are few guidelines on production and the copyright also to be taken care of by contributors.

The article provides guidelines for authors who want to contribute to social and cultural phenomena through their articles for the publication in the journal "Journal of Social History (JHS)." Articles that contribute to the historically-grounded understanding of human societies, whatever their disciplinary provenance or theoretical standpoint, will be welcomed for this journal. These guidelines brief up on the format of paper submission, presentation on the terms of the length and style of the article, references, the possibility of acceptance of the paper. The contributions should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 100 words, and a brief biographical note including institutional affiliation. Articles should normally be no longer than 10,000 words or 35 double-spaced standard north American letter-size pages. The contributions that are wished to be considered further after being edited, will only be sent to the external referees, and once the papers have been finally accepted, the full final text has to be sent by the authors. There are few guidelines on production and the copyright also to be taken care of by contributors.

The link connecting a reader to a text is so strong that we cannot consider the one without also looking at the other. All too frequently, literary reception is studied by focusing either on the textual features or on the reader's dispositional characteristics, which come into play in the reading process. The present paper proposes an integrated approach: reader and text carry different kinds of knowledge in reading, which cannot be easily separated. This knowledge may differ according to the extent to which it is shared among readers, but it all contributes to construct the final literary meaning. Consequently, literary reception can be seen as the result of the action of both widely shared and less shared knowledge, which together produce nomothetic and idiographic forms of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]