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This paper aims at exploring existing literature on substance use prevention programs, focusing on refugee youth. A comprehensive search for relevant articles was conducted on Scopus, PubMed, and EBSCOhost Megafile databases including Academic Search Ultimate, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL with Full Text, E-Journals, Humanities Source Ultimate, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, and Sociology Source Ultimate. Initially, a total of 485 studies were retrieved; nine papers were retained for quality assessment after removing duplicates. Of the nine studies that met the inclusion criteria, only three are found to partially addressed substance use prevention programs. The two substance use prevention programs that emerge from the study are Adelante Social and Marketing Campaign (ASMC), and Screening and Brief Intervention (SBI). Six others explored protective factors and strategies for preventing substance use. The study findings show that refugee youth held negative attitudes toward institutions that provide substance use prevention programs. This review concluded that refugee youth often experience persistent substance use as they are not aware of prevention programs that may reduce the prevalence and/or severity of such misuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the idea of global sociology in relationship to the discipline of Sociology. While the discipline initially emerged in Western societies, in the post-1945 era, the field extended its reach to the rest of the world. The intellectual project of global sociology emerged in the 1960s and has been on the agenda of the International Sociological Association since at least 1990. Delving deeper than the mere notion of a sociology that is applied to the world, global sociology requires the re-examination of the role of core sociological concepts and narratives, especially regarding the extent to which these reflect Eurocentric preoccupations. Global modernisation (alongside Global Studies) and Postcolonial Sociology, two of the most widely known research fields claiming global intent, are examined as to whether they provide meaningful blueprints for global sociology. Both offer promising insights but also suffer from important drawbacks. Instead of attempting to unearth new grand narratives that would displace the narrative of Western modernity, though, it might be possible to envision a plurality of such narratives coming from different regions of the globe. Sociology can thus be conceived not as exclusively global but also as local and glocal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article serves as an introduction to the special section "Vulnerability: An Interdisciplinary Trialogue," which brings together three researchers who have made important contributions to the field of vulnerability studies from different perspectives and in different disciplines: Elodie Boublil, Kate Brown, and Erinn Gilson. At the outset, the article discusses some characteristic features of the current discourse on vulnerability, in particular the question of why the concept of vulnerability is not only very popular but is also often used in such a diverse and vague manner. In addition to an increased multidisciplinary interest, transdisciplinary conflicts over fundamental epistemological, ontological, and methodological positions are identified as an essential factor; furthermore, the plurality and vagueness of the notion are attributed to an increasing "duplication" of vulnerability as an academic concept on the one hand and as an element of cultural semantics and political discourse on the other. The special section discusses this peculiar mixture of popularity, plurality, and vagueness of the vulnerability concept in an interdisciplinary, reflexive, and critical manner. The introduction outlines key aspects of the three contributions to the trialogue and highlights some convergences and common themes. At the end, the three authors are also briefly introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a response to a review of the book "The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan." The author expresses gratitude for the review and discusses the interdisciplinary nature of research on social memory. The book focuses on the social traumas experienced by people displaced from China to Taiwan after the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution and explores the ways in which they undertook social memory production efforts to mitigate these traumas. The author also highlights the lack of literature on the population exodus from China to Taiwan and its implications. The document addresses critiques of the book's analysis of trauma, memory, and reconciliation, particularly in relation to generation, temporality, and events. The author agrees with the critiques but offers some clarifications and reservations. The text discusses the concepts of theodicy, social memory, and cultural trauma in relation to the study of psychic trauma. The author explores the complexities of social trauma and social memory, highlighting the quest for meaning and explanation in the face of devastating events. They argue that memory can be both salutary and problematic, and that shared memories can reinforce victim identities. The author also introduces the concept of "multidirectional empathic unsettlements" as a modality for reconciliation between conflicting traumatic memories. They share their personal journey of grappling with conflicting emotions and developing empathy for the experiences of others. The author acknowledges the challenges of promoting reconciliation and emphasizes the importance of listening and understanding across mnemonic divides. [Extracted from the article]

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Copyright of Berliner Journal für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Scholarship on nonresident enrollment by public research universities has developed in isolation from scholarship on linkages between private high schools and selective private universities. We argue that these literatures are part of a broader story about the competition for students from affluent schools and communities. This manuscript analyzes off-campus recruiting visits to private high schools made by a convenience sample of 15 public research universities and 14 selective private universities. An off-campus recruiting visit indicates a social relationship between a school and a university. Therefore, we utilize social network methods to examine the recruiting networks of public and private universities. With respect to scale (research question 1), universities in our sample made a disproportionate number of visits to private high schools. With respect to overlap (RQ2), simple network analyses and community detection methods reveal substantial overlap in the recruiting networks of public and private universities. RQ3 assesses the characteristics of visited schools. Both public and private universities tended to visit private schools in their home geographic region and also in the South, where private school enrollment growth has been strongest. Visited private schools enroll a much larger share of white students than visited public schools. Surprisingly, several public research universities visited sectarian private high schools at a rate similar to sectarian private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discovering new relationships between entities in networked data is essential in various applications such as sociology, security, physics, and biology. This paper introduces a novel approach to directed link prediction, filling a notable research gap by acknowledging the importance of the directionality of relationships often overlooked in traditional methods. We present three algorithms: an asymmetric similarity-popularity algorithm, which applies the similarity-popularity paradigm specifically to directed networks; a path exploration algorithm, which utilizes path patterns, closure probabilities, and paths' exploratory potential to predict new links formation; and a hybrid algorithm that merges the strengths of both approaches. The effectiveness of these methods is rigorously evaluated on real-life networks, demonstrating their robust performance across various types and sizes of networked data. In addition to predictive power and runtime performance assessments, we study the impact of predicted links on network spreading capacity. This perspective provides invaluable insights into the broader implications of our algorithms on network behavior and dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often argued that oppression reduces freedom. I argue against the view that oppression is wrong because it reduces freedom. Conceiving oppression as wrong because it reduces freedom is at odds with recognizing structural cases of oppression, because (a) many cases of oppression, including many structural ones, do not reduce agents' freedom, and (b) the type of freedom reduction involved in many structural instances of oppression is not morally objectionable. If the mechanisms of oppression are sometimes indistinguishable from benign, or even ineluctable, processes of social shaping, arguments that oppression is objectionably freedom-reducing risk implausibly suggesting that socialization itself is objectionably freedom-reducing. I show how three strategies for explaining how oppression reduces freedom either fall into the trap of overgenerality, or end up appealing to values other than freedom to avoid it. I conclude by suggesting that oppression might be better thought of as an affront to equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early phase of outbreaks, awareness of the presence of the disease plays an important role in transmission dynamics. To investigate the processes of how people become aware of a disease, we conducted two complementary investigations. First, we surveyed 868 academic researchers in France, on the time and circumstances when they became aware of COVID-19 as an important event. We found that 25% did so before February 18th (first death in France), 50% did so before March 10th (first presidential allocution) and 75% did so before March 16th (announcement of the lockdown). Awareness came from nine categories of circumstances: (1) decisions taken by the government (elicited by 35.7% participants); (2) information from media or social media (24.7%); (3) conversation with friends (22.4%); (4) observed changes in their personal lives (14.0%); (5) decisions taken by the employer (9.2%); (6) observed changes at work (9.9%); (7) suspected case of COVID-19 in their entourage (3.1%); (8) fear for oneself or their entourage (2.8%) and (9) self-appraisal of scientific reports (2.8%). Second, we appraised three general media in France (a television news show, a radio news show, and a newspaper) and showed that COVID-19 became a preeminent topic only after March 1st 2020 when the epidemic is present on national soil. Our results show that multiple intricated factors prompt the awareness of an emerging infectious disease. Awareness is not solely driven by general media as they begin to focus on the topic late. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the importance of 'the social' has again become a crucial theme within psychiatric research, as evidenced for example by the recent focus on the social determinants of mental health. However, what is less clear is what is meant, in this kind of research, by the very idea of the social—and what consequences those ideas have. The key purpose of the article is therefore to discuss what is often meant by the concept of 'the social'; what different ideas of the social do; and what can be at stake in the different, explicit and implicit, understandings of social life that proliferate in contemporary psychiatric research. We propose that there are, roughly, three widespread styles of social thought, wherein (a) the social is seen as structural, (b) the social is seen as individual, and (c) the social is seen as relational/processual. We exemplify these by discussing examples of 'social defeat' and 'therapeutic communities', focused on what might be at stake in different understandings of social life. Lastly, we draw on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to argue that a singular understanding of 'the social' is not achievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sal Restivo's book, "Beyond New Atheism and Theism: A Sociology of Science, Secularism, and Religiosity," explores the ongoing debate between new atheists and theists in the Anglo-American sphere. Restivo argues that both sides are wrong in placing the individual at the core of their perspectives and overlook the societal context and its influence. He suggests that embracing secularism, which combines atheism with humanistic values, can lead to a more meaningful existence. While the book provides valuable sociological insights, some notable omissions and logical inconsistencies are present. Researchers of Jews and Judaism can use Restivo's analysis to understand the relations between beliefs and society in Jewish contexts. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of life, including how social scientists develop and conduct research. Transitioning to remote interview methods was one methodological adjustment made by many qualitative researchers. In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews (N=106) and fieldnotes from three qualitative research projects conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which center the experiences of women across a wide range of topics. In this article, we consider the opportunities and challenges of remote interviewing as a feminist method of research, analyzing how remote interviews impact both those who participate in and conduct research. We find that remote interview methods offer potential advantages for conducting participant-centered research, as they provide an opportunity for new forms of emotional engagement and options for privacy. In addition, remote methods have the capacity to increase accessibility for both participants and researchers alike. As such, remote interview methods address several feminist methodological and epistemological concerns about qualitative social scientific research, including those related to accessibility, privacy, and relationality. We weigh these advantages with the unique challenges that remote interviewing brings, including potential technological difficulties and additional considerations regarding privacy. We conclude by discussing the future of remote interview methods and consider their ability to address structural factors that shape feminist qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greatest conceptual challenge that moral panic studies has struggled with over the past half century is the problem of disproportion. Since the field's inception, moral panics have been conceptualized as disproportionately conservative overreactions to ostensibly insignificant problems. It did not take long for critics, many of whom were working in moral panic studies or related fields of inquiry, to point out that disproportion is construed in a normative rather than empirical manner, and to supplement the conventional focus on conservative overreactions by drawing attention to either conservatively conditioned underreactions (missing panics) or socially progressive overreactions that are cultivated on the political left rather than the right (good moral panics). This article explains how the dynamics of disproportionate social reactions are more complicated than conventional moral panic scholars and their critics alike have recognized. By theorizing the nuances involved in disproportionate social reactions, the article develops a provisional framework to encourage theoretical and conceptual investigations into different kinds of moral boundary violations. The focus of analysis is on the problem of disproportion as it appears in moral panic studies, but scholars working with a broader range of realist, materialist, and/or critical perspectives will recognize and identify with the normative challenges posed by the problem of disproportion in their respective areas of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines recent arguments by Andrew Abbott, Jensen Sass, and Tariq Modood proposing a normative sociology, one that not only adopts an evaluative stance towards the phenomena it investigates, but also makes explicit and seeks to justify the values on which its evaluations rely. I argue that, while these proposals are to be welcomed in some respects, they fail to address two key issues: On what reasonable basis can it be assumed that there are single correct answers to value questions?; and What distinctive intellectual authority can sociologists claim to be able to discover those answers? I also point out that these recent advocates for a normative sociology pay insufficient attention to the opposing position, a commitment to 'value-neutrality', as proposed most notably by Max Weber. I argue that, while this is frequently ignored or dismissed out of hand, it represents a much more coherent and cogent view, even if its advocates have rarely fully lived up to its demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black Sociology has reemerged as a vital scientific endeavor to understand the social conditions of Black people. One approach to Black Sociology identifies five principles that are rooted in the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (ASL) at Atlanta University. Another approach permits scholars to use any Black scholar from the Black intellectual tradition and apply it to sociological phenomena. While both approaches provide generative analytical lenses, they do not engage one another leaving the utility of Black sociology bifurcated, without clear theoretical and methodological boundaries. Reviewing 20 ASL publications, I articulate seven principles that define Black sociology as the scientific analysis of systems of oppression and social power developed at ASL. To do this, I add a validity principle, a Black sociological standpoint, and a practitioner principle that clearly defines Black Sociology's intellectual boundaries as a scientific/intellectual movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book examines changes in the "content and status of sociology" in the United States in the present and recent past. The author understands the present as an era in which relatively organized capitalism has "given way to the disorganization, "de-civilizing," and "wilding" of post-modern post-normalcy. Sociology in the previous period was oriented toward reinforcing the sense of normalcy both epistemologically and substantively. A "normal science" of repetition, teleological modernization, and value-free science resonated with the experience of "social normalcy." In the more recent period, crises have proliferated throughout social space, with implications for sociology, undoing its metaphysical foundations and throwing into question all the disciplinary divisions upon which normal science had been organized. In response, sociology has seen the emergence of two new variants: a hyper-normalized sociology that doubles down on "statistical prowess" and "the application of quantitative techniques to novel domains"; and a post-normal sociology that rejects positivism and value-freedom and that is aligned with particular social movements and identities. This post-normal sociology, Thorpe argues, complements rather than contradicts corporate neoliberalism and works together with hyper-normal sociology in marginalizing critical sociology. In response, I argue that Thorpe mischaracterizes academic freedom and understates its importance, underestimates the heterogeneity within US sociology today, and overstates the historical unprecedentedness of the present condition of "postnormal" polycrisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Thorpe argues sociology lacks a "language of society as a whole." He holds that positivist sociologists de-legitimated holistic theories or broad normatively oriented "social theories," leaving the discipline without discursive means to critically assess and deliberate its overall directions and those of society. Thorpe does not address holistic theory directly or explain how it differs analytically from standard "sociological theory." My intent is to clarify these matters by extending facets of his argument to illuminate the interdependence between holistic theorizing and empirical-historical social science, which is necessary to create the type of "reflexive sociology" that Thorpe argues would make sociology more cosmopolitan and capable of addressing the turbulent sociopolitical conditions in the interregnum after neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article provides a critical examination of the social and historical aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) in education. It challenges the assumption that AI will automatically improve education, highlighting the potential drawbacks and limitations of technology. The article also raises concerns about biased and false information generated by AI, and discusses the economic and political factors influencing its development and deployment. It emphasizes the need for a social and historical understanding of AI in education, and calls for a critical and interdisciplinary approach to its implementation. The article also addresses the ethical considerations and potential risks associated with AI in education, particularly in terms of exacerbating existing inequalities and injustices. [Extracted from the article]

Demonstrations are on the rise, and scientists are revealing which types work best. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a year in which numerous countries are going to the polls, many election-watching scientists are under pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple problems that the planet is currently experiencing—climate crisis, conventional and unconventional wars, planetary disenchantment with political systems, growth of inequality, increase in all kinds of intersectional violence, destructuring of the political economy of morality, etc.—are not a favorable scenario for thinking about hope. This paper nevertheless offers a summary presentation of the sociology of hope, presenting some of its central sources and components as well as a proposed study agenda for the future. This article seeks to foster discussion of what could be the central axes of a sociology of hope. To achieve this purpose, the following argumentative strategy was chosen: (a) the "place" of hope is explored in some classics of sociology, (b) the central components of a sociological investigation of hope are synthesized, and (c) an agenda is presented as a summary for a future development of a sociology of hope. The article seeks to draw attention to the urgency of hope as an important element for the future of sociology and social sciences in the twenty-first century. [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]

This article conducts a congruence analysis on the historical development of CEO pay at large firms in Finland to contribute to the debate between prominent competing theoretical perspectives on the causes of CEO pay and consequent income inequality. It examines the alignment of the empirical evidence on CEO pay in Finland with a market-based theory, which emphasizes market forces, and a politics-based theory, which emphasizes the distribution of power between labor and employers, drawing from Power Resources Theory, to see whether a particular perspective holds more explanatory power. The congruence analysis finds that the expectations of the politics-based perspective are aligned with CEO pay developments in the 1970s and 1980s, when labor was strong and CEO pay was modest, as well as the difference between CEO pay developments before the mid-1990s and afterward, when employers were strong and CEO pay grew rapidly to new heights. It also finds that the market-based perspective is helpful for explaining developments starting in the mid-1990s. The impact of the market on CEO pay is shown to be contingent on the distribution of power in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article deals with the position occupied by Québec's Sephardic community within the transnational francophone Jewish field. On the one hand, it examines the roles and contributions played by nonlocal actors (rabbis, academics, journalists, etc.) within Québec's French-speaking Sephardic public sphere. On the other, it offers insights into what specific ideas and conceptions of Jewishness might be "exported" out of Québec to the rest of the francophone Jewish world. Drawing from sociological literature on ethnic boundary-making and field theory, it aims to offer new insights into the specificities of francophone, Canadian, and Québécois Jewry. A geometrical data analysis of the articles published between 2018 and 2021 in the community's flagship magazine, La Voix Sépharade, reveals that French- and Israeli-trained authors tend to be producers of abstract, international, and intellectual content. However, this is not synonymous with an "intellectual vacuum," as Québec-trained authors also heavily contribute to these issues, although less so proportionately, and are more concentrated on practical and local issues. Following a more qualitative look at the magazine's content and interviews with local actors, this article also makes the hypothesis that Québec's "speciality" in the transnational francophone Jewish field is a heightened sense of equivalence between Sephardicness and Francophoneness on the one hand, and an idea of Sephardism as being a self-sufficient category of Jewishness on the other. Yet, given the small size of this Jewish population, this idea has to be seen more as an ideal rather than an institutionalized reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how higher education organizations strategize in complex and coherent fields. Unlike previous studies which looked at either exogenous (field) or endogenous causes in strategizing, this article integrates them to explain organizational responses. We devise a conceptual framework under the premises of new institutional theory in order to connect macro-transformation in the institutional field to the micro-processes of organizational strategizing. The framework highlights that every combination of the analytical dimensions (field and organization) presents more possible strategizing practices. Then we test it on the responses to the same change in the field (introduction of research mandate) of three universities of applied sciences located in two countries (Portugal and the Netherlands) with dichotomous field conditions by analyzing organizational members' practices. Findings support that both field and organizations warrant investigation in strategizing research since it is not possible to determine the strategizing outcomes just from the combination of theoretical dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the recent body of research exploring strategic positioning, and the processes and factors which influence the development and content of university strategies and plans, with lessons then applied to open questions of institutional diversity and its determinants. Following a sector level analysis of the contents of university positioning documents, an in-depth case study is developed of a large Australian university, where the interaction of intra-institutional 'meso' layers is explored to show a confluence of factors contributing to positioning. The case demonstrates that institutional positioning involves the selective crafting of narratives for multiple purposes, including the seeking and portrayal of internal cohesion, identity enhancement, and resource seeking. Importantly, while cross-institutional comparison of positioning narratives portrays an undifferentiated and somewhat homogenous sector, positioning is found within the case institution to obscure what is significant internal diversity and complexity. The implications of these findings for research exploring institutional diversity, and policies seeking to stimulate it, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the urgency of this issue, AI still struggles to represent social life. This article presents a comprehensive agent-based model that investigates status-power dynamics in groups. Kemper's sociological status–power theory of social relationships, and a literature review on school children in middle youth, is its basis. The model allows us to investigate causation of the near-ubiquitous phenomenon that females have lower social status on average than males. Possible causes included in the model are children's dispositional traits (kindness, beauty, and physical power), schoolyard culture (social acceptability of fighting), behavioural strategy (amount of rough-and-tumble play) and the balance between public and dyadic sources of status. An agent-based model of a virtual schoolyard was created in which the children assemble in changing groups and mutually confer status. The status conferred upon a child modifies the status it holds. Rough-and-tumble is modelled as ambiguous: it is intended as a status conferral, but may be perceived as a power move. Running many trials of the model we found that in time, depending on the parameter settings, a gender-based status gap emerged. Rough-and-tumble play had more impact on emergent status differences than did physical power differences. Social acceptability of fighting also strongly moderated the resulting status gap. Placing more weight on dyadic relationship could alleviate status loss. All these model behaviours are in line with empirical findings of child behaviour studies at schools. They have face validity for social status issues in the adult world. We conclude from this that this kind of agent-based model merits use in studying the status–power dynamics of other issues in child behaviour, or indeed in social behaviour in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is ample recognition that intellectual work is - to some degree - relational and cooperative, most narratives of production focus on how intellectual supporters aid the author and the crafting of a work. In this contribution, I adopt a perspective centered on intellectual work as "dialogue and draft" among triads - the author, the work in progress, and the supporter - with a particular attention to the relationship that intellectual supporters develop with the work and the author. Through an archival analysis of personal correspondence that covers the years 2005–2021, drafts, and interventions, I tell a story of A Joyfully Serious Man as an ongoing project that shifted shape at critical junctures and in which not only the object and the author, but also the supporter were transformed. In the concluding remarks, I offer some potential questions for advancing the historical and sociological study of how intellectual self-concepts change in the context of asymmetric, yet very intimate, relations with work carried out by others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution is based on Robert Bellah's introduction to Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973) and second on other references to the French sociologist in Bellah's work as well as in Bortolini's insightful remarks on the "homology" between Durkheim and Bellah. The publication of the book took place in a time of Durkheimian effervescence: Steven Lukes' Emile Durkheim.His Life and Work was published on the same year and a new Durkheimology appeared in the English-speaking world: attention shifted from methodology, as expressed in Suicide or in the Rules of Sociological Method, to morality with a focus on the moral basis on a non-pathological society. Bellah's statement is quite strong: Durkheim can "be seen as a theologian of French civil religion". The paper will examine's this point of view with respect to the state of French society at the turn of the century and Durkheim's social project. One side question concerns the choice of texts: the editor did not give enough weight to texts that might have strengthen Bellah's point of view, particularly l'Education morale. Bortolini mentions Bob's long and silent work on Durkheim and his critique of mainstream analysis of The Elementary forms of Religious Life, reducing religion to a mere projection of society (:142). The biographer insists on the ambivalent, if not contradictory, vision of Durkheim in Bellah's work, in which he finds a key to the interpretation of the oeuvre. The article focuses on how to account for its complexity, which is never as clear as in the interpretation of Durkheim's sociology in a post-rationalist direction. Bortolini's concept of role model/hero incarnated by the founding fathers (here Weber and Durkheim) is analyzed in connection with Parsons' reconstitution of a pantheon. The question of civil religion is reexamined in the light of the transatlantic transfers carrying different meanings of civil religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the sixty years of his career, Robert Bellah has occupied an enigmatic position in the field of American sociology. Despite his triumphant academic career and his standing as a prominent advocate of sociology in the public sphere, he felt increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of sociology and believed he was underrecognized and misinterpreted by many of his peers. Drawing on Matteo Bortolini's A Joyfully Serious Man, this article reviews various biographical circumstances that may account for Bellah's ambiguous status as a sociologist. It then argues that the most significant source of tension with the sociological profession was Bellah's aversion to science as manifested in many of his writings, where he engaged in a relentless critique of positivism and scientism. This negative side of Bellah's epistemology, i.e. what he defined as bad or dangerous knowledge, is often overlooked both by Bortolini in his book and by commentators who try to derive a usable epistemology from Bellah's oeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of competitive computer and videogaming, also known as electronic sport (esport), has been rising rapidly during the past decades. Because of many parallels with traditional sports, like competitiveness, skill requirements, degree of professionalization, or the way it is portrayed in the media, esport has been adopted as part of the sport canon in many countries. Still, critics argue that playing computer games lacks the physicality commonly seen in traditional sports. A significant part of the competition is mediated through digital platforms and the spotlight shifts from the players' appearance and actions to their digital avatars. This paper takes on this issue by exploring existing evidence about the role of the body in esport via a scoping review approach. According to the findings of 47 studies, the body's role in esport is akin to that in traditional sport, including specific motoric requirements or biometric responses. Beyond that, the body can be seen as a link between the digital and physical worlds. Players embody digital avatars in the form of esport-specific movements, transfer of norms and ideals, and identification with the in-game characters. Future research can use this review as a basis for scientific approaches to individual phenomena regarding corporeality in esport and inter-corporeality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), an introductory sociology textbook appears on screen for a relatively long time. The analytical framing of this textbook yields an insight that helps us understand Kubrick's filmography, as the framing suggests that humans and their civilized societies cloak some dangerous cultural motivations, acquired throughout a long process of evolution. With this framing in mind, we researched 11 of Kubrick's 13 films and extracted 15 general themes and 25 crime-deviance related ones. We suggest that Kubrick's films indeed present a critical perspective that challenges viewers to contemplate the contrast and implications of crossing symbolic-moral boundaries of human civilized societies into criminal and deviant—many times extreme—infringements. We also present a critical perspective vis-à-vis Kubrick's views that emphasizes choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the field of biographical research. Comprehensive states of the art and field mappings have enabled researchers, throughout the years, to understand the main trends of an evolving arena of knowledge production in people's lives and their subjectivity. However, these important exercises of taking a step back to observe the field are generally based on more traditional approaches that tend to focus almost exclusively on its nucleus and main protagonists. By developing an extensive literature analysis, which provided the grounds to put in place a profile-oriented qualitative approach, we were able to shed some light on the different zones that characterise the complexity of the field (including peripheries and margins). A quantitative study of 1270 references published between 1918 and 2019, within the sociological disciplinary field, allowed us to identify three profiles of publication: precursors, engineers and explorers. In this article we depart from this tripartite configuration of the field to internally analyse the main characteristics of each profile, their core features and inner diversity. Through this in-depth qualitative analysis of the texts from each profile, we can observe the processes of institutionalisation and legitimation of the field, its inner dynamism and creativity in the development of approaches and methods, as well as the creation of specialisation trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, a group of women from the villages of the Western Himalayas sparked Chipko, a green movement that remains relevant in the age of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why people take to the streets to march against global heating is relatively well documented. But it’s unclear why certain tactics work better than others in reaching the public and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the rapid development of digital technology and its profound impact on human behavior and social functioning and to study the mechanisms by which digital technology and the social environment interact, a new branch of sociology—digital sociology—has emerged and rapidly entered a stage of vigorous development. This article briefly introduces digital sociology and outlines the research progress of digital sociology in six areas: labor economy and production, digital politics and power, social relations and interaction, body and self, social inequality, and methodological innovation. Based on this, the article compares digital sociology research in China and the West. The rapid development of digital technology in China provides a superb opportunity for sociology, and digital sociology has great potential for development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a quantitative analysis of the data collected globally by the World Value Survey. The data is used to study the trajectories of change in individuals' religious beliefs, values, and behaviors in societies. Utilizing random forest, we aim to identify the key factors of religiosity and classify respondents of the survey as religious and non-religious using country-level data. We use resampling techniques to balance the data and improve imbalanced learning performance metrics. The results of the variable importance analysis suggest that Age and Income are the most important variables in the majority of countries. The results are discussed with fundamental sociological theories regarding religion and human behavior. This study is an application of machine learning in identifying the underlying patterns in the data of 30 countries participating in the World Value Survey. The results from variable importance analysis and classification of imbalanced data provide valuable insights beneficial to theoreticians and researchers of social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identified the 100 most impactful global contributors to religion journals and mapped their respective disciplinary affiliations. To conduct this investigation, we performed a secondary data analysis of a Scopus-derived database featuring the world's leading scientists. The mean contributor published 51.93 papers, had an h-index of 13.57, and an hm-index 11.50. Most contributors were located in the USA with the most common disciplinary affiliations being religion, non-specialized (n = 22), sociology, non-specialized (n = 21), sociology of religion (n = 20), and theology (n = 11). The results reveal that religion discourse is populated by some of the leading scholars in the world. Leveraging their expertise can help advance the field's knowledge development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms like Facebook offer marginalized individuals an appealing opportunity: to connect with others like them on a global scale. Transgender and nonbinary individuals, for example, can join 'support groups'. However, these individuals also risk being 'outed' or targeted with hate-speech on a platform that offers visibility and connection. Excellent scholarship has critiqued the ways platforms perpetuate inequalities. However, few have examined the labor of human administrators who build support groups for gender identity minorities, despite these inequalities. This article asks how admin labor processes, both tangible and emotional, expose the cost of constructing a community on Facebook. Using a queer studies lens, it explores how administrators construct felt-belonging, sustain support, and defend members from being outed or targeted. Vetting new members and moderating group content act as repetitive labor processes which reiterate shared cultural ideologies of the community. This research finds something paradoxical: the feeling of disappointment fuels administrators' commitment to continue difficult emotional labor. Paying attention to labor, especially emotional labor, reveals new tools for theorizing digital subjects and digitally-mediated social life. These tools refocus scholarly attention on why users turn to digital spaces and the human cost of sustaining community processes online. The case of gender identity support groups reveal that emotion, particularly disappointment, serves as an important lens with which to critique the sort of community digital contexts can offer "Normative conventions and our own creative repetitions are there along the way to help quell the panic we might feel at the prospect of becoming exhausted or dead before we can make sense of ourselves."-Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (2011) p.125. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociologies of quantification, university rankings, and infrastructure are a loosely connected set of scholarly endeavors. Research in these areas typically examines production of certain types of quantification, their effects, and institutionalization. Despite these commonalities, scholars have noted a lack of conceptual coherence, debates on how to study quantification, a need to examine their socio-epistemological prerequisites, and research that crosses organization and national boundaries. In this paper, I argue that institutional ethnography—an alternative sociology for people—provides a unifying ontology for the sociology of quantification and studies of rankings and metrics in higher education. Institutional ethnography examines socio-epistemological prerequisites of quantification and facilitates a collaborative transnational project due to its focus on the extra local coordination of action. I also share results of the first transnational institutional ethnography of university rankings and related metrics, demonstrating coordinated action across several junctures of what has been called a global university ranking surveillance assemblage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze 15 German cartels, focusing on the personal characteristics of the individual participants, the methods and frequency of communication as well as the internal organizational structures within the cartels and their eventual breakup. Our results indicate that cartel members are highly homogeneous and often rely on existing networks within the industry, such as trade associations. Most impressively, only two of the 158 individuals involved in these 15 cartels were female, suggesting that gender plays a role for cartel formation. We further identify various forms of communication and divisions of responsibilities and show that leniency programs are a powerful tool in breaking up cartels. Based on these results we discuss implications for competition policy and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to investigate science teachers' views about the nature of science (NOS); and second, to examine science teachers' views about their NOS integration into instruction. Reconceptualized family resemblance approach to nature of science (RFN) is used as a theoretical and analytical framework. The participants of this study included 13 in-service science teachers in Turkey, and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews. It is noticed that teachers used scientific practices and scientific methods interchangeably. Participants provided detailed explanations regarding the social-institutional system of science. Participants' views and interpretations were compatible with the RFN framework, which can show that they were aware of the social aspect of science. Concerning the NOS integration into instructions, findings revealed that teachers who had spent more time on NOS tended to include or thought it is important to include NOS into science lessons. Based on the results, it is suggested that the RFN framework can be used as both an analytical and theoretical framework to investigate teachers' understanding of NOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature of science (NOS) is a global conception of the infrastructure of science and, therefore, forms the foundation for teaching and learning science, especially for preservice teachers who are expected to have the proper understanding of NOS to thoughtfully emphasize NOS within their instruction to students. However, studies investigating UAE science preservice teachers' views of NOS through the macro-lens of the Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science (RFN) are limited. This study, therefore, aims to determine the current state of UAE preservice teachers' (N = 130) understanding of the NOS and NOS instruction. Results obtained from the RFN 70-item questionnaire demonstrate that teachers were mostly informed about issues pertaining to the social-institutional aspects compared to aspects related to the cognitive-epistemic nature of science. Although teachers appeared to hold informed perceptions on certain aspects of NOS across the RFN scales and subscales, they had mixed views, as well as misconceptions on other particular aspects of NOS (i.e., the role of bias, gender, and politics on scientific knowledge, the existence of a universal scientific method, and the distinction between laws and theories). Practical and pedagogical implications for teaching and an agenda for further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By several metrics, the sociology of religion subfield and its specialists are marginalized within academic sociology. Though various reasons for that marginalization have been ventured, systematic evidence is limited. This study used a 2022 survey experiment to assess how academic sociologists perceive the sociology of religion and its specialists and the potential biases influencing their evaluations. Sociology faculty and trainees (N = 536) were randomly assigned to evaluate one of six sociology subfields and their respective specialists. Sociology of religion was rated as the least mainstream, but was rated middle-of-the-pack in scientific rigor, need within sociology departments, and interest to undergraduates. Though sociologists of religion were rated comparably to specialists in other subfields on characteristics indicating intellectual rigor, they were more often characterized as "religious" and "conservative," and participants who characterized religion specialists as such downgraded the subfield on nearly every metric. Additional analyses show lower ratings were not due to generalized negativity toward "me-search." And secular sociologists were more likely than religiously affiliated ones to downgrade the religion subfield when its specialists were perceived as "conservative." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]