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Social ontology studies the nature and properties of social reality while social metaontology examines the relationship between ontology and the social sciences, which is often treated as a normative question. However, social sciences themselves contain ontological theses, raising the descriptive question of how these internal ontologies relate to the rest of the social sciences. This paper argues that important parts of sociology have an anti-foundationalist metaontology. This descriptive claim is used to build a normative argument against foundationalism and is supported by examining the works of Durkheim and Weber and how their metaontological beliefs continue to influence many sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this paper, we develop a critique of Mead's notion of the self as constituted through social interactions. Our focus will be on Mead's categorial distinction between the socially constructed self and subjective experience, as well as on the tendency of post‐Meadian sociologists to push Mead's position in ever more radical directions. Drawing inspiration from a multifaceted understanding of selfhood that can be found in Husserlian phenomenology, we then propose that the most basic level of selfhood is anchored in irreducible subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future‐oriented – collectively experienced events that are "not yet" – and co‐constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co‐create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future‐related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty – the socio‐psychological social representations theory (SRT) – has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations – two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on social change and representations of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

This article draws on 2 years' worth of ethnographic observation of team meetings to explore decision‐making in an NHS clinical genomics service. The focus of discussions was on ambiguous genomic results known as VUS or Variants of Uncertain Significance, which may be pathogenic but which also may turn out to be benign. In examining decision‐making around such results, we note how, in contrast to much policy and promotional material in this area, clinicians in these meetings (clinical geneticists and genetic counsellors) place great emphasis on parental phenotypes and whether the parents of a patient share the symptoms and signs of the suspected condition. This information is then combined with the result of genomic tests to decide whether the variant a patient has is responsible for their condition. This article explores the way in which clinicians attempt to flexibly enrol parents into genomic explanations through informal diagnosis of their possible phenotypes and the way in which actually meeting parents allows some clinicians to trump explanations based on documentary or photographic data. The paper sheds light on the way that earlier scholarly understandings of such decisions (around, say dysmorphology) remain relevant and explores claims that laboratory tests overrule clinical decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows, first, how Sociology has approached the concepts of "hope" and "war" and how throughout the history of the discipline these terms have gone from being neglected to arousing considerable interest. Second, the paper analyzes how and why avant-garde artists understood the First World War as a motif of utopian hope to annihilate a civilization in crisis and to transform it through its aesthetic formalization. Third, the essay tries to find out whether that hope was preserved over time or, on the contrary, was soon dissolved as a result of the drama of the events. It is shown here that the savagery of the fighting dissolved all European values of modernity and progress, including artistic ones. In fact, theoretical and stylistic conceptions, aesthetic categories, ethical postulates, and artists' aspirations for conscience to rule the world were blurred. For the artistic avant-garde, utopian promises of a better world broke down. Consequently, this obliges sociologists to pay more attention to both phenomena—that of the war and that of the avant-garde—and to seek a more objective and critical interpretation of modernity, calling for its actualization, and of Sociology itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigative journalism is about uncovering what shall not be covered, yet, blind spots remain. This paper explores what topics investigative journalists consider to be neglected in different regions of the world, why these topics are not covered, and how journalists strive to report them in spite of difficulties. We theorize the blind spots by drawing on the Hierarchy of Influences Model, meaning that blind spots in investigative reporting are deeply rooted in these influences. We explore these issues in a global comparative approach and conducted qualitative face-to-face interviews at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019 with 90 investigative journalists from 60 countries. Our findings show that many topics can't be worked on due to repercussions from four levels of the Hierarchy of Influences Model (esp. from the wider social system), leading to self-censorship. The journalists overcome these obstacles with resourceful individual actions (e.g. publishing from abroad) since their media outlets and organizations are often not fit to help them due to resource constraints. Thus, journalists may defy the hierarchy and see it as their mission to persist, also and especially in countries in the Global South. However, obstacles are found globally and directly affect the nuts and bolts of journalism, such as access to information and sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This discussion paper offers a critical provocation to my mental health nursing colleagues. Drawing upon David Graeber's account of bullshit work, work that is increasingly meaningless for workers, I pose the question: Is mental health nursing a bullshit job? Ever‐increasing time spent on record keeping as opposed to direct care appears to represent a Graeberian bullshitisation of mental health nurses' work. In addition, core aspects of the role are not immune from bullshit. Professional rhetoric would have us believe that mental health nursing is a therapeutically beneficent occupation organised around ideals of care and compassion and providing fulfilling work for practitioners. Yet, there are some key characteristics of the experience of mental health nursing work that afford alternative judgements on its value and meaningfulness. Not least of these is the fact that many mental health nurses feel quite existentially unsettled in the practise of their work and many service users do not recognise the professional ideal, especially when compelled into increasingly coercive and restrictive services. In this context, Graeber's thesis is explored for its applicability to mental health nursing with a conclusion that many aspects of mental health nursing work are commensurate with bullshit but that mental health care can possibly be redeemed from bullshitisation by authentically democratising reforms. Engaging with posthumanist ideas, this exploration involves a flexing of aspects of Graeber's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

This is a study of an action research project conducted in one of the biggest university departments for sociology in a Central Eastern European capital during the first half of the 2000s. The paper shows that researchers' images of society have a strong impact on social scientific methodology, scientific explanations and narratives. I offer an example of how realist approaches to science and technology studies can be used in a field study and discuss the benefits and limitations of such an endeavor, which I define as an interpretive and explanatory social scientific work. The analysis shows ways in which latent knowledge structures influenced the wording of a questionnaire used in the research, the types of data that were gathered, and how the data were interpreted. These knowledge structures include notions concerning local policy discussions, different social policy traditions, and images of a Roma minority struggling with the effects of structural poverty and prejudices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Foundations are one of the oldest organizational forms globally; their number and resources, as well as their socio-political and economic importance, have steadily continued to grow. Yet, foundations' attributes, activities, and actual achievements remain underexplored and poorly understood. This is particularly noticeable in the context of global policy and transnational administration, an area where foundations tend to be subliminal players, acting as a widely unrecognized socio-political undercurrent. Addressing the resulting need for better and alternative conceptualizations of foundations, our paper uses French pragmatic sociology of critique (FPSC), a non-structuralist, post-Bourdesian, approach to sociology, to theorize philanthropic foundations within the policy agora. Through FPSC, we present foundations as a composite setup of activity, where critically reflexive actors bring normative ideologies and knowledge to policy, providing a new avenue for how scholarship can interpret and critique foundations and their influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among French Jewish intellectuals who rejected Zionism in the early twentieth century was René Worms, a sociologist who used sociological theories as well as "franco-judaïsme," the French-Jewish model of assimilation, to oppose it. In 1920–21, during debates organized by the Société de sociologie de Paris on the future of Palestine and Zionism, Worms used various theories to counter Jewish nationalism. Influenced by biology and race science, he began by denying the existence of a Jewish race, emphasizing the racial heterogeneity of modern Jews. His understanding of the evolution of modern religions toward universalism, influenced by Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim, also discredited Zionism. Finally, his sociology of nationality, interwoven with Ernest Renan's conception of the nation, precluded any national claim to Judaism. This article examines the arguments Worms made and compare them to those of other speakers in debates between sociologists in Paris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing multiracial population in the United States necessitates a shift in research attention to include mixed‐race youth. While racial‐ethnic socialization (RES) research has predominantly focused on family contexts, this review highlights the role of schools in shaping the RES socialization of mixed‐race youth in the United States. Existing literature indicates that RES plays a vital role for multiracial children and adolescents by helping them navigate their complex identities, promoting a sense of belonging, and enhancing mental health outcomes. However, studies explicitly exploring RES for mixed‐race children in elementary and secondary schools are limited, and RES is often theorized without structural conceptualizations of race and racism. Using Critical Multiracial Theory (MultiCrit) as a theoretical lens, this review investigates the content and messages conveyed to mixed‐race youth at school. It considers transmissions from various sources (e.g., curriculum, teachers, peers) to uncover implications for the well‐being of mixed‐race students. This paper contributes to scholarship on school RES by considering how the process unfolds for the fastest‐growing demographic of students in the US (multiracials) using a sociohistorical approach (MultiCrit). The review concludes with future directions for researchers studying multiracial youth in K‐12 schools and considerations for practitioners working with multiracial students in school settings. Keywords: multiracial youth, mixed‐race, K‐12 schools, RES, MultiCrit [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research project assignment can create meaningful opportunities for students to apply sociological concepts. For grading these projects, assessment rubrics are useful pedagogical tools to evaluate students' abilities in achieving course learning objectives. In this study, I analyzed final research papers collected over multiple semesters in my undergraduate Methods of Social Research course. My goals are to (1) evaluate the grading rubric's effectiveness in enabling students to meet course objectives and (2) identify improvements in students' outcomes from revisions to the rubric over time. Findings indicate that rubrics can provide students the information needed to apply course concepts to their work and that rubric revisions are necessary to ensure validity, reliability, and equity across grading. In conclusion, I provide suggestions for implementing a semester-long research project assignment and initiating iterative revisions to rubric criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first to analyze data from a national survey to investigate the significance for deaf identity of the different forms of social and technological support that deaf people rely upon. Data were derived from a survey among 839 deaf people and were analyzed with regard to social identification as deaf, hearing, bicultural, and marginal. Findings showed connections between technology and identity, including the use of a range of technology to support being culturally deaf. Findings also showed that the deaf and hearing groups had strong homophilous social networks, while the bicultural group tended toward more mixed but equally strong social connectivity. The marginal group had a much thinner social connectivity and relied more upon institutional social support, findings that are in line with previous research revealing a sub-group struggling with social participation and well-being. Theoretically, the paper builds bridges between the fields of social identity and microsociology and shows how a microsociological perspective brings attention to the significance of reiterated social relations and practice for constructing social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the ideology of Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdūdī, a prominent Islamic scholar and thinker of the 20th century. Focusing on Mawdūdī's religious, social, economic, and political ideas, the paper examines his contributions to Islamic thought and their relevance in contemporary perspectives. With a special focus, the paper explores Mawdūdī's interpretations of Islam, his vision for society and governance, and his critiques of modern ideologies. Additionally, the paper examines the controversies surrounding Mawdūdī's thought and offers insights gained from comparative analysis with other Islamic thinkers. By exploring Mawdūdī's intellectual legacy, this paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of Islamic thought and its implications for contemporary Muslim societies. It seems that over the coming years the comprehension and influence of his thoughts will grow within the field of contemporary Islamic social sciences and he will be recognized as one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary world of Islam.

Medicalization represents an increasingly significant form of social control. Emergent evidence suggests that workplace managers take up medicalized practices and discourses to produce a compliant labor force, but this phenomenon has received limited sociological attention. This paper extends prior theories of medicalization to investigate therapeutic management in the low-wage workplace. I draw upon eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Disability Works, a nonprofit job training program for people with mental illnesses, and interviews with other providers and advocates within this field. Disability Works harnesses therapy, psychiatry, and "softer" therapeutic practices such as mindfulness meditation, sleep hygiene, and positive affirmations to produce its workforce. This paper identifies two dimensions of therapeutic management: (1) it aims to inculcate work norms at the level of client-workers' embodied dispositions, and (2) it aims to transform structural problems into individual ones. Findings illuminate therapeutic management as an emergent workplace regime and may guide future research on its effects. • "Therapeutic management" is an emergent managerial style. • Ethnographic fieldwork and interviews illustrate practices of therapeutic management. • This style draws on therapy, psychiatry, and pseudo-therapeutic practices. • Therapeutic management aims to inculcate work norms at the dispositional level. • Therapeutic management aims to transform structural problems into individual ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how working-class activists challenged and overcame political fear narratives during the anti-water charges campaign in Ireland (2014–2016), with specific focus on the ‘sinister’ narrative, an attempt by the government and its supporters to frame working-class protestors as violent, irrational and extremist. Rather than subscribing to the position that political fear is ubiquitous or the reflection of a general societal malaise, this paper follows Jeffries’ argument that political fear is mediated, contested and contradicted. While political fear operates most effectively when targeting expectations for normal living, it is these same expectations that offer fertile ground for opposing fear threats. Drawing on interviews from activists, this paper shows how the ‘normal living’ becomes a key context in which ‘deviance framing’ around class and gender can be reappropriated/reframed by activists, particularly through the deployment of counter spectacles and through the reframing of what constitutes legitimate emotional responses to government-initiated fear threats. Finally, while political fear can have an individualising effect, this paper demonstrates how subjective and individual acts of transgression are mediated through a collective and community lens as the crucial element in overcoming political fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between sociotype and cultural evolution has been a subject of great interest, particularly in the context of industrial revolutions. This review article delves into the intricate dynamics between sociotype and cultural evolution, focusing on how the advent of industrial revolutions has accelerated cultural trade and transformation. By examining historical and contemporary examples, as well as theoretical frameworks from anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how sociotype shapes and is shaped by cultural evolution, particularly in the context of industrial revolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents an invitation to feminist and queer sociology to engage more frequently, enthusiastically, and deeply with animals. Feminist and queer sociology that attend to animals and animality stand to develop better knowledge for animals and animal studies and for women, queers, and feminist and queer sociology. Sociologists working from feminist and queer perspectives are also particularly well‐positioned within the discipline of sociology to contribute to and take advantage of the insights of the field of feminist animal studies. After a brief review of what feminist animal studies is, I proceed through three steps to elaborate the imperative for feminist and queer sociology to consider animals. First, I show how feminist animal studies as a theoretical perspective engages with issues that are core to feminist and queer sociology. Second, I center intersectional feminism and lay out how incorporating species can and does enhance our understanding of intersectional processes. Third, I present an ethical call, grounded in the traditions of feminist ethics and ecofeminism, to attend to species in feminist and queer sociology.

This paper argues that race must be a central consideration in understanding migration in Korea, where international migrants are rapidly reshaping the national landscape. While migration scholarship on Korea has analyzed various policy trajectories, it has predominantly focused on three aspects—liberal democracy, ethnicity, and gender—largely overlooking the significance of race. First, it assumes that liberal democracy will eventually supersede xenophobia without critically examining its assumptions that are both racialized and teleological in nature. Second, by prioritizing ethnicity, it interprets discrimination against migrants through the notion of uni-ethnicity and a fear of foreignness without delving into Korea’s deeply rooted fixation on race. Third, it overemphasizes gendered migration, regarding Korea’s demographic crisis as a primary reason for accepting migrant women as biological reproducers. This paper contends that all three aspects are intricately connected to race, including Korea’s aspiration for whiteness and abjection of blackness, which significantly shape migration dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative social scientists working in medical faculties have to meet multiple expectations. On the one hand, they are expected to comply with the philosophical and theoretical expectations of the social sciences. On the other hand, they may also be expected to produce publications which align with biomedical definitions and framings of quality. As interdisciplinary scholars, they must handle (at least) two sets of journal editors, peer reviewers, grant-awarding panels, and conference audiences. In this paper, we extend the current knowledge base on the ‘dual expectations’ challenge by drawing on Orlikowski and Yates’ theoretical concept of communicative genres. A ‘genre’ in this context is a format of communication (e.g. letter, email, academic paper, and conference presentation) aimed at a particular audience, having a particular material form and socio-linguistic style, and governed by both formal requirements and unwritten social rules. Becoming a member of any community of practice involves becoming familiar with its accepted communicative genres and adept in using them. Academic writing, for example, is a craft that is learned through participation in the social process of communicating one’s ideas to one’s peers in journal articles and other formats. In this reflective paper, we show how the concept of a communicative genre can sensitise us to the conflicting and often dissonant expectations and rule systems governing different academic fields. We use this key concept to suggest ways in which the faculty can support early-career researchers to progress in careers which straddle qualitative social science and medical science. [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 article examines how Catholics form their consciences together in parishes particularly on topics of gender and sexuality. The data for this project stems from ethnographic observations and forty interviews from a 2010 to 2012 study of two Catholic parishes in Chicago. The first is a progressive parish promoting inclusion of gay and lesbians as well as women’s ordination. The second had a small but active Respect Life group attempting to change their parish culture to be more committed to Respect Life issues. The paper suggests that cultural inertia (or lack there of) is one mechanism that drives or halts conscience formation. These collective consciences lead to differing understandings of what it means to be Church and to be a person, and they may motivate actions to change the Catholic Church hierarchy or local parish. Forming consciences together has implications for understanding the role of culture and structure in the Catholic Church. Specifically, these formed consciences, parish cultures, and actions produce different boundaries and partnerships with the Archdiocese which determines what actions are legitimate by setting the conditions for parish actions and constraining parish actions with threats of sanction.

Responding to humanitarian crises is a prominent global domain, spanning thousands of relief agencies and billions of US dollars. Amidst the potentially infinite needs arising in these crises, how are humanitarian priorities constructed? Existing answers are dominated by functionalist and critical perspectives, stressing obvious needs or geopolitics. This paper builds on sociocultural approaches to examine the changing understandings of humanity that underpin humanitarian priorities. Analysis of 659 United Nations humanitarian resolutions from 1946 to 2018 reveals an evolving vision of human life in crisis that shifts from initially narrow foci on displacement, survival, and livelihood towards a multidimensional vision today, anchored in rights-bearing and agentic personhood. Underpinning the evolution are striking expansions in how crisis-affected persons, and their needs, agency, and entitlements are imagined. The trends are not reducible to function and geopolitics but reflect macro-cultural shifts towards individualised and globalised conceptions of society, stretching humanitarian imaginations of a universally shared humanity.

In this article, I explore Karl Marx’s evolving understanding of the temporal dimensions within capitalism, particularly focusing on his reflections during the 1850s and 1860s. This period marks a significant shift in Marx’s theoretical framework, prompted by his in-depth analysis of the world market and diverse modes of exploitation. The article highlights coexisting forms of exploitation and their entanglement in terms of temporalities. From this perspective, capitalism and its history can be investigated as a complex interplay of temporal layers rather than a linear progression. Marx’s 1858 letter serves as a starting point, emphasizing the importance of accumulation as a long-term process and the challenges of a revolutionary project in a globalized capitalist context. Finally, the paper emphasizes Marx’s mature writings, where he envisions the potential for combining historical layers to challenge capitalism. This nuanced understanding has contemporary implications for globalized capitalism and social change discussions.

Circa 2023, after receiving much hype and investment, two agri-food technologies touted for their world-changing potential, bioengineered animal protein substitutes and vertical (indoor) farms, began to falter economically. Tech sector observers attributed the fall to typical hype cycle dynamics; this paper provides a deeper read. Based on research involving over ninety interviews with agri-food tech sector actors and observation at nearly 100 industry events, we show an unrealized socioecological fix as first conceptualized by Ekers and Prudham. As attempts at preemption, these technologies were able to attract excess capital to an area believed to be in need of fixing, and their backers anticipated and in some cases tried to promote the devaluation of legacy production systems. But the technologies on offer failed to become cost competitive in a timely way since legacy production systems continued to be productive and profitable. It was these new companies that became uncompetitive and overvalued, which in turn turned investments in them into bad ones. Ironically, the agri-food tech sector has eschewed a path which might have made their products competitive, which is social regulation of legacy production systems. Instead they effectively speculated that such systems would implode under their own contradictions.

Recent years have seen an explosion of theoretical interest, as well as increasingly fraught real-world debate, around issues to do with discourse participation. For example, marginalised groups may find themselves excluded or may exclude themselves from discourse contexts that are hostile. This not only has ethical implications, but likely impacts epistemic outcomes. The nature and scale of such outcomes remain difficult to estimate in practice. In this paper, we use agent-based modelling to explore the implications of a tendency toward `agreeableness' whereby agents might shape their communication so as to reduce direct conflict. Our simulations show that even mild tendencies to avoid disagreement can have significant consequences for information exchange and the resultant beliefs within a population.

Command and control is a key activity in a war that determines whether the war is won or lost. A person's cognition can influence the decisions he makes in command and control. In this paper, we propose a method to assess the impact of cognitive manipulation techniques in command and control. We divide command and control activities into eight segments and use a hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation model in natural language processing to discover the most important cognitive manipulation techniques at present. We completed the assessment process using the Quality Function Deployment Model. The results of the assessment show that judgement, decision-making, and planning in the command and control perspective are susceptible to cognitive manipulation techniques; the tactical level is more susceptible to cognitive manipulation techniques than the strategic campaign. Life sciences, digital technology, and other fields play a key role in command and control research under cognitive manipulation.