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Using a legal-consciousness approach, this paper discusses the issue of stigma and law from the perspectives of a group of older homeless people in Singapore. Focusing specifically on the Destitute Persons Act 2013 Rev. Ed. (DPA), the paper shows the different ways in which homeless people make sense of, negotiate, resist or succumb to the stigma of a homeless identity ascribed by the DPA. From these experiences, two fundamental problems with the DPA are highlighted. First, the DPA imposes a homeless identity that is entangled in archaic legal definitions that often do not relate to contemporary experiences of homelessness in Singapore. Second, the enforcement of the DPA legitimises a differential treatment of homeless people, without addressing the broader complexities of homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the intersection of gender, sexuality and class in shaping the ways in which 'leftover' women navigate legal and social discrimination. 'Leftover women' is a stigmatising term in China that refers to women who do not get married by the time they reach their late twenties. Based on my fieldwork in China with queer and heterosexual 'leftover' women, I introduce two strategies of stigma management: 'buying a licence to be deviant' and 'identity-hopping'. The former is a strategy adopted by heterosexual women with financial resources and a desire frequently expressed by queer women. 'Buying a licence to be deviant' refers to the strategy of accumulating sufficient financial resources to justify one's choice to be deviant and deal with the legal consequences of the evasion of the population policies. 'Identity-hopping' is popular among those with a lower social and financial status, who use the law's labelling function to hop from one stigmatised identity to another as a way to deal with stigma. From an intersectional lens, this paper advances law and society's study of stigma and discrimination by emphasising the hierarchy of stigmatised identities and the strategy of using the law's power of labelling identities to hop from one identity to another. It also demonstrates how the intersection of gender, sexuality and class complicates the ways in which leftover women understand and engage with the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has progressively introduced antidiscrimination enforcement measures like the duty to set up Equality Bodies (EBs) that applies to the ground of racial or ethnic origin, among others. Until recently, however, EU law only envisaged vague standards for EBs that allowed a wide range of national configurations. Building on international benchmarks, this paper draws a set of dimensions considered necessary to improve promotion-type EBs responsiveness to discrimination. These dimensions are applied to the British and Spanish EBs to illustrate how the gaps left by EU law may lead to the design of ineffective bodies. The paper argues that EBs can contribute to effectively tackling discrimination if they are designed to be responsive at individual and systemic levels. The 2018 EU Recommendation on Standards for EBs makes a step forward in that direction, but its practical relevance may be limited by its non-binding nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000, a controversial article about hormones and gender roles was published to stimulate debate about whether and how biological knowledge should be integrated in sociological research. Two decades later, this so-called biosociology debate is more relevant than ever, as biological knowledge has become widespread across societies and scientific disciplines. Hence, we as sociologists are regularly confronted with biological explanations that challenge our own explanations. Whether this happens in the scientific arena, the classroom, media, or even at social events, these situations often force us, individually, to take a stance on whether to meet such explanations with dialogue or opposition. One could therefore expect that sociologists have an interest in discussing these issues with their peers, but their lack of participation in the biosociology debate suggests otherwise. This paper explores possible reasons for this absence and how sociologists' views on biosociology are influenced by key agents – sociological associations and journals. Smith's "A Sacred project of American Sociology", and Scott's "A Sociology of Nothing" served as theoretical tools in the paper. A qualitative content analysis of presidential addresses of four sociological associations was conducted. The analyses suggest that sociologist avoid biosociology for widely different reasons, including fear that biosociology legitimizes oppression. This avoidance is probably reinforced by the leftish politization of the sociological discipline and the rightish politization of society. Overcoming obstacles to engagement in biosociology is required to safeguard the scientific integrity of sociology and enable sociologists to provide relevant contributions to research on the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the processes contributing to equality of opportunity and outcomes in contemporary societies is at the core of the discipline of sociology. This paper illustrates the value of administrative data to underpin research aimed at identifying, monitoring, and addressing socio-economic disparities between population groups. To accomplish this, I draw on three case studies of recent empirical research leveraging administrative data to examine processes contributing to the (re)production of inequalities by sexual orientation. Collectively, the three case studies exemplify how data sources that fall within the broad category of 'administrative data' can help social researchers generate new, policy-relevant knowledge on socio-economic inequalities, as well as robust information to contextualize public and legislative debate. The paper concludes with a discussion of the promises and challenges of using administrative data to understand inequalities by sexual orientation, as well as inequalities between other minority and majority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an integrated theoretical framework to explain interpersonal, moralistic conflict that combines the logic of the "pure sociology" approach with a social psychological framework that highlights the importance of the human capacity for language, evaluation, and justification. While violations of normative expectations are the root causes of moralistic conflict, the paper argues that one can only determine the emergence of such conflict by assessing the nature of the behavior in question in relation to the social locations of the participants in combination with the justifications invoked. The central question that the theory addresses can be distilled as follows: What explains the emergence of interpersonal, moralistic conflict? The paper specifies three core assumptions, followed by a delineation of a series of propositions designed to explicate the conditions under which moralistic conflicts emerge. The theory identifies the combination of the social geometry of interpersonal encounters along with the mechanisms that typically are used to justify the grievances that individuals express toward one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is written in response to Helen Morgan's paper 'Whiteness: A problem for our times'. A distinctive feature of her writing and thinking in this essay, and her new book, is how she moves easily and freely between psychoanalytic, sociological, political and psychological frameworks of understanding. In doing so her work exemplifies something that the psychoanalytic community has mostly been poor at achieving – a recognition of both its distinctive and unique potential to illuminate social and political processes, and a parallel acknowledgement of its need to enter into equilateral dialogue with other intellectual paradigms. Social and political life is historical, specific, local and complex, and not amenable to reductionist or universalizing modes of analysis and engagement. Through some examples I aim to add to Helen's very thoughtful and well researched paper, to show how psychoanalysis needs to respect other languages and methodologies for engaging with the world, render its own more accessible to non‐specialists, and relinquish its tendency to assume the status of a 'master discourse'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current drug discovery is impossible without sophisticated modeling and computation. In this review we outline previous advances in computational biology and, by tracing the steps involved in pharmaceutical development, explore a range of novel, high-value opportunities for computational innovation in modeling the biological process of disease and the social process of drug discovery. These opportunities include text mining for new drug leads, modeling molecular pathways and predicting the efficacy of drug cocktails, analyzing genetic overlap between diseases and predicting alternative drug use. Computation can also be used to model research teams and innovative regions and to estimate the value of academy–industry links for scientific and human benefit. Attention to these opportunities could promise punctuated advance and will complement the well-established computational work on which drug discovery currently relies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The negative aim of this paper is to identify shortcomings in received theories. First, we criticize approaching audiences, and large gatherings more general, in categories revolving around the notion of the crowd. Second, we show how leading paradigms in emotion research restrict research on the social-relational dynamics of emotions by reducing them to physiological processes like emotional contagion or to cognitive processes like social appraisal. Our positive aim is to offer an alternative proposal for conceptualizing emotional dynamics in audiences. First, we offer a notion of emotional sharing for studying the social-relational dynamics of emotions. Second, we propose a working concept of audience as a dynamic and dispersed social collective. Finally, we bring these elements together in the description of two scenes of jubilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the performance of sport politics. We carry out a text analysis of a year-long media debate that raged in Norwegian newspapers throughout 2016. After the Medias had critiqued how the Norwegian Confederation of Sports (NIF) spends state-provided funds, the Minister of Culture questioned the alleged civil contribution from NIF and demanded change. An archival search retrieved 488 articles and 1604 pages on the matter. Performance theory clarifies the debaters' failure and success in achieving sport political legitimacy. Success was an ongoing achievement contingent upon the actors' abilities to apply broadly available representations in the pragmatics of the dispute. Drawing on Norwegian codes of equality and by polluting the image of NIF, the Minister of Culture eventually managed to reshape Norwegian sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides insights on the urgent need for transformative responses in health and social care services due to challenges such as aging populations, chronic illnesses, infrastructure underinvestment, and workforce shortages. It presents papers that examine different aspects of these transformations, including the adoption of single-handed care.

This paper takes a critical look at the role of chronobiology in society today, with particular reference to its entanglements with health and medicine and whether or not this amounts to the (bio)medicalisation of our bodily rhythms. What we have here, we show, is a complex unfolding storyline, within and beyond medicine. On the one hand, the promises and problems of these circadian, infradian and ultradian rhythms for our health and well‐being are now increasingly emphasised. On the other hand, a variety of new rhythmic interventions and forms of governance are now emerging within and beyond medicine, from chronotherapies and chronopharmacology to biocompatible school and work schedules, and from chronodiets to the optimisation of all we do according to our 'chronotypes'. Conceptualising these developments, we suggest challenges us to think within and beyond medicalisation to wider processes of biomedicalisation and the biopolitics of our body clocks: a vital new strand of chronopolitics today indeed which implicates us all in sickness and in health as the very embodiment of these rhythms of life itself. The paper concludes with a call for further research on these complex unfolding relations between chronobiology, health and society in these desynchronised times of ours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the patient–doctor relationship by focussing on a specific chronic disease: type 1 diabetes. This field is characterised by an increasing use of technology, specifically therapeutic devices and a significant requirement of patient self‐management. This paper presents the main findings of research conducted in Italy in 2018. It is argued that this relationship is more properly described as an interdependent figuration of actors characterised by a dynamic process of power balances, which recalls Elias' (What is sociology? Columbia University Press, 1978) figurational‐processual and relational sociology. In this theoretical context, patients may manage their (dis)satisfaction with their diabetologists by choosing different behaviours that stem from Hirschman's archetype (Exit, voice, and loyalty. Responses to decline firms, organizations, and states. Harvard University Press, 1970): voice, exit, loyalty and, we would add, resignation. These categories are fluid, and all of them can be experienced by patients over time, depending on the quality of the figurations built among these transactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to present a brief insight into the significant works and views of the German sociologists Niklas Luhmann and Jűrgen Habermas on the role of law in regulating human relations in society. Educated as a lawyer, Niklas Luhmann in the late academic career was under the influence of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons. Niklas Luhmann later, under the influence of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons, he built a sociological theoretical system called the systems theory. On the other side, Jűrgen Habermas was a philosopher and sociologist, highly influenced by the Frankfurt school of sociology. According to Luhmann's systems theory, the social reality and the separate aspects of the social life are part of a deeper system called society, and in relation to the same they are set as subsystems. Social systems are divided into allopoietic and autopoietic. One of the significant axioms of Luhmann's theory is that the largest number of systems tends to simplify due to the pressure of the environment for greater efficiency. Law in Luhman's systems theory enjoys the status of an autonomous system for regulating society, rather than an instrumental contribution to politics. This brief review exposed a big clash between two influential German thinkers. In this paper we are going to use historical method and analysing of the content of different materials and previous authors that are dealing with the work of Niklas Luhmann and Jűrgen Habermas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the relationship between education and society from the perspective of sociology and critically reviews how African education studies in Japan have been conducted to date. In this paper the term ‘schooled knowledge’ is expediently used in order to refer to knowledge that is constructed in school. First, the paper explains global trends in aid in the education sector since the 1960s with the influential theories behind them. The paper then describes how the trend has influenced Japanese aid and further education studies in Africa. Next, the paper discusses theories that critically examine modern education systems and structures in relation to society at large. The paper then explains contemporary dual viewpoints of the schooled society and schooling in society. Finally, the paper critically reviews how African education studies in Japan have been conducted with little critical reflection of modern education systems in African contexts and suggests the necessity of examining them from the critical and wider viewpoints of how learning is taking place both within and outside school contexts in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of linked articles and monographs over the last decade (e.g. Love, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), literary scholar and critic Heather Love has called for a descriptive (re)turn in the humanities, repeatedly taking up examples of descriptive methods in the social sciences as exemplifying what that (re)turn might look like and achieve. Those of us working as sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars and researchers in allied social science fields thus find ourselves reflected back in Love's work, encountering our own research practices in an unfamiliar light through it. In a period where our established methods and analytical priorities are subject to challenges on many fronts from within our own disciplines, it is hard not be struck by Love's provocative invocation of the social sciences as interlocutors and see in it an invitation to contribute to the debate she has sought to initiate by revisiting our own approaches to the problem of description. Inspired by Love's intervention, the eight papers that form this Special Issue demonstrate that by re-engaging with description we stand to learn a great deal. While the articles themselves are topically distinct and geographically varied, they are all based on empirical research and written to facilitate a reorientation to the role of description in our research practices. What exactly is going on when we describe an ancient papyrus as present or missing, a machine as intelligent, noise as music, a disease as undiagnosable, a death as good or bad, deserved or undeserved, care as appropriate or inappropriate, policies as failing or effective? As the papers show, these are important questions to ask. By asking them, we find ourselves in positions to better understand what goes into 'indexing and making visible forms of material and social reality' (Love, 2013: 412) as well as what is involved, more troublingly, in erasing, making invisible and dematerialising those realities or even, indeed, in uncovering those erasures and the means by which they were effected. As this special issue underlines, thinking with Love by thinking with descriptions is a rewarding exercise precisely because it opens these matters up to view. We hope others take up Love's invitation to re-engage with description for that very reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in clinical encounters, reconfiguring the basis on which health care is delivered. Thereby, the delivery of care shifts from territorial locations in clinics and temporal modes of co‐presence towards digital platforms. Drawing on a sociotechnical evaluation of digitised patient follow‐up in HIV care, this paper argues that the forms of interactivity practised in platform encounters cannot be adequately understood through traditional interaction frameworks such as Erving Goffman's interaction order. To conceptualise the new informational space and temporal mode of 'response presence' within which platform encounters are conducted, the paper draws on theoretical advances made by Karin Knorr Cetina who further developed Goffman's interaction order to describe interactions augmented by 'scopic media'. A comprehensive framework is presented to elaborate the distinct qualities of interactions occurring in face‐to‐face, tele‐interaction and platform encounters and to analyse their affordances based on doctor and patient experiences. This framework is intended to stimulate further research on how new interactional forms between doctors and patients will reconfigure roles and responsibilities as well as wider structures of digital society. Furthermore, it can also support practical guidance of when and how different forms of clinical encounters may be integrated in care pathways. [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]

Understanding intra-urban human mobility patterns and their potential driving forces are vital to city planning and commercial site selection. In this paper, we first investigate the functions of urban regions and how different region types dynamically influence people’s trip decisions. Furthermore, we characterize urban circadian rhythms by time-vary inter-regional transition probabilities between these regions with different functions, and integrate them into intervening opportunity model to predict human mobility. Public transportation card data in Shanghai are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model in terms of station passenger flows, travel time and trip flux. By taking regional function into consideration, the proposed model significantly improved the prediction accuracy. Quantitative analysis ulteriorly indicates that trip intentions and regional features are critical elements in trip flux prediction, especially in the afternoon and evening when people have an abundance of opportunities to travel by their own volition. When the function of a certain region changes, our model is able to make reasonable predictions accordingly. The results indicate the importance of considering individual travel motivation and regional function in modeling human mobility. The proposed model could serve as a guide for popularity and trip flux prediction in urban planning and reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many contradictions in previous studies of the status of depressive symptoms among Chinese migrant children, the number of which in the compulsory education stage is about 13.9 million. This systematic review and meta-analysis were designed to compare depressive symptoms among migrant children and their urban children. Around 2,710 papers were retrieved from PubMed, OVID, the Web of Knowledge, CNKI, Wan Fang, Chongqing VIP, and Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index on January 27, 2020. Thirty-Two studies met study criteria with 14,906 migrant children and 10,792 urban children. Migrant children scored significantly higher for depressive symptoms score (SMD = 0.307, 95% CI [0.222, 0.393]). Region significantly influenced the difference of depressive symptoms between migrant children and urban children. Large effect sizes came from studies using scales that focus on depressive mood while studies using scales that focus on depressive behavioural symptoms had small effect sizes. Future research should focus on treatments to decrease depressive mood of migrant children. Future studies can add information about the length of their current stay in the urban location to improve the quality of study. PROSPERO registry: Systematic review registration no. CRD42018090676. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: How do learning communities influence academic performance in Introductory Psychology? Method: The present research examines the relationship between participation in first-year students learning communities and academic performance across a variety of course requirements (midterms, finals, papers, and class participation) in introductory psychology and, for comparison, sociology courses. Results: Students who took Introductory Psychology as part of a first-year-student learning community outperformed their peers (who took the same course without a learning community) on the first exam of the semester and were less likely to miss assignments but otherwise showed no significant differences on the other course assignments; introductory sociology students part of these communities showed even greater differences in performance that lasted through the end of the semester. Conclusion: First-year students learning communities offers significant albeit limited benefits for student performance in introductory courses in the social sciences. Teaching Implications: Short of institutional efforts to enact programming for first-year learning communities, introductory psychology instructors can attempt to simulate the experience of such communities by promoting a sense of belonging via extra-curricular service or discipline-related activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power dynamics influence every aspect of scientific collaboration. Team power dynamics can be measured by team power level and team power hierarchy. Team power level is conceptualized as the average level of the possession of resources, expertise, or decision‐making authorities of a team. Team power hierarchy represents the vertical differences of the possessions of resources in a team. In Science of Science, few studies have looked at scientific collaboration from the perspective of team power dynamics. This research examines how team power dynamics affect team impact to fill the research gap. In this research, all coauthors of one publication are treated as one team. Team power level and team power hierarchy of one team are measured by the mean and Gini index of career age of coauthors in this team. Team impact is quantified by citations of a paper authored by this team. By analyzing over 7.7 million teams from Science (e.g., Computer Science, Physics), Social Sciences (e.g., Sociology, Library & Information Science), and Arts & Humanities (e.g., Art), we find that flat team structure is associated with higher team impact, especially when teams have high team power level. These findings have been repeated in all five disciplines except Art, and are consistent in various types of teams from Computer Science including teams from industry or academia, teams with different gender groups, teams with geographical contrast, and teams with distinct size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of urbanization, urban land has been expropriated and developed on a large scale. Moreover, people's awareness of the protection of historical buildings is relatively weak, so some historical buildings have been demolished or rebuilt. Historical buildings have played an important role in the spread of national culture, so how to use some methods to protect historical buildings from being destroyed has become an urgent problem to be solved. The protection of historical buildings includes a series of complicated and rigorous procedures, such as on-site drawing and mapping, survey and design, and scheme discussion and construction. The surveying and mapping of traditional historical buildings require people to do it by themselves, so it is inevitably time-consuming and labor-intensive. This paper first discussed and analyzed the significance of historical building protection, and then used digital technology to make up for the shortcomings of traditional manual surveying and mapping and historical building protection methods. Modern technologies such as three-dimensional laser scanning technology and virtual reality technology are used to restore the style and appearance of historical buildings. Among them, in terms of the color of historical buildings, the restoration degree of buildings based on digital protection technology has reached 56.1%; at the same time, the efficiency of information collection and processing, and virtual model construction has also been improved. Thus, the ultimate goal of historical building protection is achieved, and it provides a reference for the digital protection of historical buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's participation in the decision‐making and design of urban public spaces is crucial for achieving inclusive cities. International covenants have recognized the importance of participation as a right. Having adhered to these agreements, Turkey is obliged to enable children's participation in all public matters that concern them, including shaping urban spaces. This paper analyses national and local legislation in Turkey and Istanbul to distil how children's right to participate is legislated and institutionalised. It shows that lack of integrated child‐responsive legislation, accounting for children's individuality, and lack of collaboration between national and local governments are the root of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apparently growing punitiveness in many countries toward the end of the twentieth century prompted considerable criminological activity which focused on attempting to understand trends and contrasts in systems and patterns of punishment. Although to date this literature has tended to treat policing and punishment as being largely separate spheres of activity this paper advances two reasons for paying greater attention to policing in this context. First, and briefly, to reflect the fact that the police are the 'gatekeepers' to the penal system, and therefore in some senses inseparable from other penal practices. Second, and more centrally, that in various forms policing both involves, and is often experienced as, punishment. Attempts to understand the nature of and differences between penal states will be enhanced by the inclusion of policing within its ambit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of partisanship, rightwing media, and social media on attitudes about contemporary conspiracy theories. Mainstream scholarly views that 'both sides' of the political aisle indulge routinely in such theories are challenged. I adopt a Gramscian hegemonic framework that examines rising rightwing conspiracy theories as a manifestation of mass false consciousness in service of a political-economic system that serves upper-class interests. Issues examined include the QAnon movement, 'big lie' voter fraud conspiracism, and Covid-19 conspiracy theories, and the way they related to partisanship, rightwing media, and social media. I provide evidence that Republican partisanship, rightwing media consumption, and social media consumption are all significant statistical predictors of acceptance of modern conspiracy theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses Trump's failed self-coup, its authoritarian backwash, and threats to democracy. It analyzes his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to his 2020 election loss and deepened the political polarization that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The essay also discusses how the forty-year acceleration of economic inequality and sociopolitical de-democratization generated a legitimacy crisis of the hegemonic, neoliberal regime that opened way for Trumpist ethnoracial nationalism. The Trump presidency and pandemic increased the intensity of the political-economic contradictions and transparency of the attenuated relationship of democracy and capitalism. In the consequent "interregnum," fundamental threats to democratic electoral institutions persist, yet a clear, realistic vision of an alternative democratic regime and the political bloc to bring it into being have yet to be forged. The fate of American democracy rides on overcoming the remarkable denial and normalization of the Trump coup attempt and on forging new safeguards for electoral institutions. Preventing a recurrence, however, requires a progressive transformation of Trumpism's de-democratized seedbed – neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [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]

Most social scientists agree that case studies are useful for "theory building," but ethnographic methods papers often look to survey research for case selection strategies. This is due to a common but untenable distinction between theoretical and empirical generalization, which obscures how theoretically inclined ethnographers make implicit external validity claims. I analyze several exemplary ethnographies to show that (a) the distinction between theoretically and empirically oriented ethnography revolves around competing conventions for making claims that others accept as provisionally externally valid, (b) comparative-historical sociology provides a framework for evaluating how theoretically oriented ethnographies make such claims, and (c) each approach to making validity claims is optimized by different kinds of cases. Empirically oriented ethnographies make inductive claims via "pointy" cases wherein a phenomenon is pronounced or bifurcated. Theoretically oriented ethnographers are like post–Millian historical sociologist who triangulate past studies with resolutive or negative cases to make constitutive arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research mainly examines the importance of the intersected places that are crucial in the daily life of young migrants from a sociological perspective. This group is different from other migrant groups because they are both in transition from childhood to adulthood and the changes in the routine of the host country. As a theoretical discussion, this paper examines intertwined places in their daily life and looks at their migration experiences by adding a spatiality perspective. To cover all dimensions and understand better youth experiences, which are underestimated in migration studies, youth migrant identity will be examined by focusing mainly on four different intersected places that are education (training centers or universities), home, workplace, and street/ public space. Their encounters there and their various experiences of them by combining with their backgrounds produce translocational positionalities in their everyday life. As a result, different from other researches, by examining the interconnected dynamics of many locations, this study helps to comprehend the experiences of young migrants from a holistic viewpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pattern mining (PM) refers to the process of discovering patterns of interest to users from data. However, most studies have considered only one pattern, such as frequent pattern or high-utility pattern. With the continuous requirement of businesses in various industries, the single-objective PM methods are difficult to meet the increasingly diverse needs of users. In this paper, a multi-objective problem model for high quality pattern mining (HQPM) is proposed, where the objectives are support, occupancy, and utility. In order to solve the proposed three-objective problem efficiently, an improved multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for HQPM (MOEA-PM) is proposed. Two kinds of population initialization strategies are designed, which is used to ensure the population is effectively distributed in the feasible solution space. By taking the properties of the model into consideration, an auxiliary tool is proposed to accelerate the convergence of the algorithm. Experimental results on real-world datasets show that the proposed three-objective problem model with the MOEA-PM algorithm can discover patterns that are both frequently occurring and has a high utility in the transaction datasets, while at the same time being relatively complete. Compared with the state-of-the-art MOEA-based HQPM algorithms, MOEA-PM has better performance in terms of efficiency, quality, and convergence speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child marriage is a problem that has continued to attract global attention. The media have been identified as critical to the fight against the scourge as it discusses the capacity to raise awareness of the issue as well as trigger action in solving the problem. The report of the alleged abduction of a minor, Ese Oruru by one Yunusa Dahiru for marriage jolted the nation and sparked public outcry for her release. This study explored newspaper framing of the incident. Drawing from qualitative frame analysis, it examined how Punch and Daily Trust newspapers framed the alleged abduction saga. The study found that there was contrastive framing of the incident with Punch newspaper portraying the issue as abduction while Daily Trust newspaper depicted it as elopement. The influence of socio-cultural leanings of these papers on the contrastive framing is discussed. The implication of the divergent framing of the saga on the fight against child marriage is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the relevance of Kant's anthropologically oriented idea of the pragmatic use of reason for specific theoretical approaches in sociology. As I show in the first part, Kant's explicit presence in 20th-century sociology does not refer much to his anthropology and specifically to its cornerstone – the pragmatic use of reason which establishes a subtle connection between the theoretical and practical functions of reason. As an instrument for gaining systematic knowledge about the social world and ourselves as beings both passively and actively involved in this process, Kant's pragmatic use of reason serves a specific form of the theoretical use of reason. At the same time, it embodies a kind of practical reasoning concerning the "general welfare" in the social sphere. Building on the key arguments in the first part, I then address the question of whether we can view Kant's pragmatic approach as a possible third way for sociology today, beyond the simplifying opposition of 'theoretical' normativity and 'realistic' empiricism, and whether this third way can help us in clearing specific sociological issues. Here, I focus on two examples, namely the use of Kant's notion of "unsocial sociability" in Ralf Dahrendorf's conflict theory and on the criticism of Kant's cosmopolitanism in Ulrich Beck's reformed sociology of cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for papers for the meeting titled "Annual Allied Social Sciences Association Meetings" to be held on January 4-6, 2008 at New Orleans, Louisiana with a theme about inequality, democracy, and the economy. The Association for Social Economics members and nonmembers are encouraged to submit proposals for the New Orleans ASE program. The papers can be send by email of 300 words or less by May 1, 2007 to John Davis of University of Amsterdam and Marquette University. Guide questions are also included.

In January 2024, Florida’s Board of Education eliminated the sociology course, ‘Principles of Sociology’ as one of its core requirements for obtaining a general social science education in its college and university system. Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz, led the charge, claiming that sociology has been ‘hijacked by left wing activists’ and is a purveyor of ‘woke ideology’. Some within the profession would agree with Diaz, and certainly, many university administrators would as well. Of course, there are varying representations of sociology, and what Diaz and others are targeting is critical sociology and its commitment to the interrogation of power. However, these political dynamics are not new. The history of critical sociology has reflected a similar pattern that it is being played out currently. The ebbs and flows of critical sociology’s place within the discipline, the state and profession’s suppression of it, its resurgence linked to external social and political forces, and its precarious existence within the university have been true of critical sociology since its origins. This paper offers a historical context for better understanding the current attack on the field of sociology and raises the question, what should critical sociologists do about it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of pandemic governance on state regimes is a topic of lively debate. While some researchers suggest that governments may use a ‘state of exception’ to consolidate their power and introduce new methods of control, others see it as an opportunity for new civil society initiatives and social innovation. In this paper, we examine both the actions and discourses of the Polish government and its associated actors and the independent bottom-up responses of Polish society and how these were incorporated or rejected by the government. Our primary focus is on public health governance, including quarantine policies, the management of scarce personal protective equipment, related narratives and societal responses. This study is based primarily on desk research, analysis of key legislation and regulations tailored to the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland and analysis of social media (X/Twitter) discourse related to COVID-19. Our research reveals a crisis not only of governance but primarily of the neoliberal capitalist state. We conclude that governance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland showed uneven patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section deals with the papers needed for the special issue of the journal Critical Sociology concerning the influence of foundation on culture, society and politics. The subject is vast and under-investigated and the book includes a plea for more researchers to devote themselves to the aspect of the society. While exposés of conservative foundations funding conservative individuals are common, very little has been written about the effect of mainstream foundations funding almost all progressive, liberal and even radical movements and publications. Similarly, the corporate influence on universities has been thoroughly studied, but not the foundations that fund and create programs and curricula. There are some possible topics for the special issue. First is the evaluation of the effect of foundation funding of scholarly organizations, university programs and departments and individual research. Second is the implications of foundation support for information sources of many types: reference works, epochal books and liberal journals. Third is the role played by foundations in financing non-governmental organizations, travel and conferences in relation to the globalization of protest movements and human rights networking. Each paper must outline the theoretical framework, primary focus of the study and methods to be used.

The paper presents short summaries and analyses of two books by Eviatar Zerubavel (2018a; 2020) that are demonstrations of his approach to cognitive sociology. The first book (2018a) shows examples of the analysis in Zerubavelian cognitive sociology, and the second one is a methodological and theoretical elaboration of his approach described in formal terms. We analyze the approach presented at the end of the paper, showing that the analysis of distinctions and perceptive categories is essential in Zerubavel analysis. Still, there is an unclear dimension (in between) included in the contexts of perception, lived experiences, and perception of the world beyond the categories that we introduce in our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This involves incorporating voices and praxis internationally, in particular from the Global South, Latinx scholars, and other scholar-activists not represented enough in this special issue. This special issue on Funds of Identity, guest edited by Moisès Esteban-Guitart, is comprised of six research papers and Esteban-Guitart's response, with collective support from Julian Williams and Alfredo Jornet as host editors. The Special Issue finishes with a paper by our guest editor, Moisès Esteban-Guitart, entitled: "Advancing the funds of identity theory: A critical and unfinished dialogue.". [Extracted from the article]

Rapid urbanization, high city population growth rates, technological development, environmental impacts, and human wellbeing in urban areas have over the years become increasingly challenging concerns. These trends are related to the complex, multiple factors to be considered when evaluating “smart” cities, that is, municipalities that seek to improve residents’ quality of life by combining new technologies and environmentally sustainable practices. The above tendencies thus add to the myriad of indicators that need to be included in smart city assessments, whose intricacy hinders related decision-making processes. Based on the principles of multiple-criteria decision analysis, this paper seeks to integrate cognitive mapping and the Choquet integral to develop an assessment system that facilitates the evaluation of smart cities, which was named “SMART-C.” The research includes a panel of experts on smart cities who identifies the evaluation criteria and their respective interactions. The results of a real-life application of the assessment system developed in this paper are validated both by the panel members and a representative of the Lisboa E-Nova nonprofit association of the Lisbon City Council's Environment and Energy Department. These experts confirm that the proposed evaluation system facilitates making distinctions between cities according to how fully they develop “smartness.” The advantages and limitations of this assessment framework are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Therapeutic relationships are fundamental in aphasia rehabilitation, influencing patient experience and outcomes. While we have good understandings of the components of therapeutic relationships, there has been little exploration of how and why therapists construct and enact relationships as they do. Sociological theories may help develop nuanced understanding of the values, assumptions and structures that influence practice, and may facilitate critical reflexivity on practice. Aims: To explore the potential for theoretical approaches from outside speech–language therapy to enable a deeper understanding of the nature and enactment of therapeutic relationships in aphasia rehabilitation. Methods & Procedures: An explanatory single case study of one speech–language therapist–patient dyad in an in‐patient stroke rehabilitation setting. Data included observations of five interactions, two interviews with the client and three interviews with the speech–language therapist. Analysis was guided by analytical pluralism that applied aspects of three sociological theories to guide data analysis and make visible the contextual factors that surround, shape and permeate the enactment of therapeutic relationships. Outcomes & Results: The analysis of this dyad made visible individual, interactional and broader structural features that illustrate the dynamic processes that practitioners and patients undertake to enact therapeutic relationships. Clinical practice could be viewed as a performance with each person continually negotiating how they convey different impressions to others, which shapes what work is valued and foregrounded. The patient and therapist took up or were placed in different positions within the interactions, each with associated expectations and rights, which influenced what types of relationships could, or were likely to, develop. Organizational, rehabilitation and individual practitioner structures assigned rules and boundaries that shaped how the therapist developed and enacted the therapeutic relationship. Whilst the therapist had some agency in her work and could resist the different influencing factors, such resistance was constrained because these structures had become highly internalized and routinized and was not always visible to the therapist. Conclusions & Implications: While therapists commonly value therapeutic relationships, social and structural factors consciously and unconsciously influence their ability to prioritize relational work. Sociological theories can provide new lenses on our practice that can assist therapists to be critically reflexive about practice, and to enact changes to how they work to enhance therapeutic relationships with clients. What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subjectTherapeutic relationships are critical in aphasia rehabilitation. We have a good understanding of the different components of therapeutic relationships and how relationships are perceived by patients and practitioners.What this paper adds to existing knowledgeThis study is novel in its use of sociological lenses to explore contexts and complexities inherent in building and maintaining therapeutic relationships. These are often invisible to the practitioner but can have a significant impact on how relational work is enacted and what forms of relationship are possible.What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?This study will support clinicians to critically reflect on how they enact therapeutic relationships and may enhance awareness of the often‐hidden factors which influence the ways in which they work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of attempts at endogenization and indigenization in the history of sociology in Japan. The author begins by presenting a short history of Japanese sociology. While the issues of endogenization and indigenization had been raised in the 1910s, imperialism and the militarization of the Emperor state and society blocked this form of development. Japanese social sciences have thus mainly followed the model of Western social sciences. The issue of indigenization gained attention after World War II and especially after the late 1960s, which was a time of reflection on the extreme influence of American sociology. In this context, this paper investigates the development of Kazuko Tsurumi's sociology, which is one of the best examples of work that deals with the issue of indigenization. Tsurumi analyzes social change from pre‐World War II to post‐World War II Japan by drawing on sociological functionalism. However, Tsurumi suggests that Kunio Yanagita's theory of folklore and ethnology provides a stronger explanatory framework than functionalism, and contends that Kumagusu Minaka has developed an approach rooted in East Asia. Tsurumi advances this indigenous development theory based on the work of Yanagita and Minakata, and at the same time internationalizes this theory. This paper concludes that Tsurumi's theory is an important medium between Western sociology and Eastern sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides insights on the contemporary relevance of Talcott Parsons's writings by analyzing 20 textbooks from Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, published in 1999–2019. Whether having knowledge of Parsons is helpful to today's students and other interested readers, and what knowledge, deserves consideration. Therefore , the paper asks: Which future gains of readers did textbook authors envision when they chose, in their own present, to discuss (or not) sociological writings from long ago? In order to understand what future opportunities authors wanted to create for readers, as well as how they chose to discuss Parsons to this end, the paper draws on Niklas Luhmann's notion of memory. The analysis reveals several key competencies that student and other interested readers might acquire through having knowledge of Parsons' writings and its critiques. These potentials would have gone unnoticed if authors had assessed Parsons's relevance only according to whether he adequately considered conflict or not, as has been done in many debates about his work until today. Moreover, through analyzing how authors remembered Parsons, I distilled two key selective criteria: First, what must be remembered in order to enable readers to acquire those competencies? Second, which memories would be impeding for readers and thus be better left out? These criteria are relevant for research, as well. Looking at the future, it would be desirable that sociologists let Parsons assist them in their research in many different ways, if possible. As a result, we might see a revival of Parsons that enables genuine advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education is usually regarded as crucial for quality assurance and quality development in schooling. In their professionalization, teacher students are expected not only to learn "good practice" but also a literacy concerning the evaluation of (their own) practice. With reference to the "sociology of valuation and evaluation", the paper investigates how evaluative practices are conceptualized in different research perspectives on teacher education. It can be shown that both, theories of competence and theories of socialisation, focus upon judgements about appropriatemeans thatmeet predetermined standards, while they do not account for judgements about these standards themselves. Performativity theories draw attention to evaluative practices as social processes of negotiation, yet, they do not account for the framework within which evaluative judgements operate. To overcome these blind spots, the paper draws upon Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of a „Living Tradition" and its potential for opening different perspectives on becoming a teacher and developing a literacy to evaluate the practice of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palm oil has been recognized as large world trade of vegetable oil around the globe. The vast improvement of planting palm trees and the numbers of oil palm export shown that these agricultural has huge potential for the farmers. The Objective of this paper is to evaluate the wellbeing and quality of life among oil palm smallholders. Since this is a review paper, a secondary data through various past researches has been collected and the data were extracted, and thematic analysis was used to organize the data. There is no denying that oil palm smallholders have received many benefits through their participation in palm plantations. Their economic wellbeing concludes having enough enough salary and job opportunities whereas psychology wellbeing includes being diligence, enthusiasm, not giving up, confident and honesty in the work done. They are also willing to take a risk in their plantation activity. The ssocial wellbeing of smallholders is the provision of roads, bridges, community centers, health and education services and communication infrastructure. All these aspects of wellbeing will lead to the enhancement the quality of life among the smallholders. Although there are several type of researches that has been conducted on social benefits from oil plantation but the numbers of researches still not adequate. Therefore, more research on the wellbeing and quality of life of oil palm smallholders need to be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilises the concepts of social exclusion and precarity to explore the situation of migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on European countries, we first demonstrate how migrants were more likely to experience exclusion prior to the crisis and how they were further marginalised due to the public health measures. Second, we show how inadequate government support exacerbated the exclusion of migrants. Finally, we explore social ties of migrants during the pandemic, with a focus on local and transnational ties. The paper is based on qualitative data collected as part of the European Union (EU)-funded project RESISTIRÉ, which examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable groups across Europe. Over 100 narratives with migrants were gathered during the project, and these were analysed to explore the multiple social exclusions experienced by migrants, as well as the ways they coped with being on the margins of receiving societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the significance and the challenges of various decolonized practices in research and in social science training methods in Mexico and, particularly, in Chiapas, based on a Latin American approach to the field of studies conducted by intellectuals and activists involved in social movement struggles. We analyze different forms of intercultural dialogues used in decolonizing research in terms of social, ethnic and gender relationships, according to the contexts and the knowledge production of popular and indigenous movements facing politics, education and epistemic racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]