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A list of books and films received by this publication, including "Social Anthropology and Human Origins," by Alan Barnard, "On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation,: by Luc Boltanski and "Culture and Cognition: Evolutionary Perspectives," by Bradley Franks.

This paper advances a psychosocial hypothesis in understanding relations between recipients, and providers, of health and social care. In doing so, it draws on psychoanalytically informed work which considers the relation between the internal and external worlds and more generally the wider social context. The particular hypothesis in this paper relates to an understanding of an abusive form of relating underpinned by shame and envy. The paper suggests that exposure to these feeling states is more prevalent in a social world marked by increasing inequalities and environmental failures. This argument is underpinned with reference to qualitative and quantitative research, suggesting that antagonistic relationships are increasing and are part of a significant change in the culture. The argument is illustrated by a single detailed description of an initial consultation in an NHS psychotherapy service. An examination of the social context suggests how unhelpful or abusive relations may be manifest between health care providers and recipients, in care organizations and in the wider social world. This aspect of the argument is constructed with reference to relevant organizational and sociological literature. It is suggested that established relations of this type act to limit development, in this case a social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the relation between positivistic and interpretive sociology, using the stress research literature as a case study. Analyzing the cultural history of the stress concept, it uncovers four central themes: anxiety, performance, adjustment, and mentalism, Examining the self-criticismc made by scientific students of stress, it focuses on the problems of temporal order, confounding, and interaction. Comparison of the cultural and scientific literatures shows that while some of the positivists' complaints derive from general methodological choices, others come from inescapable aspects of the culture's general idea of stress. Considering the past development of stress research, the paper argues that positivism and interpretation have not been Cartesian opposites but interpenetrating fractals. It then speculates about what this relation implies for future positivistic studies, both in the stress literature and more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the theoretical and policy significance of one of Robert Merton's most influential contributions to modern sociology, the anomie or ‘strain’ theory of deviant behavior. The enduring theoretical significance of strain theory lies in its sociological completeness. Strain theory preserves the interconnection between culture and social structure which is neglected or defined away by cultural and control theories of deviance. In its emphasis on socially structured contradictions in the relations of consumption, strain theory is also broadly consistent with and complements more conflict-oriented theories of crime and deviance. A major weakness of Merton's argument is its failure to clearly distinguish the etiological significance of the distribution of opportunities (mobility) and the distribution of outcomes (equality), which has led to misinterpretations of the policy implications of strain theory. Ironically, these problems are revealed through a kind of self-criticism that applies the basic tools of Mertonian functional analysis to strain theory. The paper concludes that, ambiguities notwithstanding, for purposes of theoretical integration and substantive insight, strain theory remains an important sociological perspective on deviance, especially when set in the context of Merton's broader sociological legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that interpretive sociology should review its model of consciousness in the light of the new feminist scholarship on women's experience of self and society. The thesis of the paper is that there is a fundamental conflict in women's consciousness between meaning systems inherited from the culture and those that are acquired through lived experience. This paper demonstrates that interpretive sociology's model of consciousness does not account for the conflicts posed by the feminist perspective and suggests future issues for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the sociology of nations, a literature that is only starting to carve out its place in the social sciences. The paper offers a reconceptualization of 'nations' as 'national cultures', employing an evolutionary perspective and a systemic framework in which 'nations' are understood as cultural systems of a special kind. National cultures are intimately tied to natural languages, and the acquisition of a national culture occurs as part and parcel of the acquisition of a natural language. Acquiring a natural language is a prerequisite for learning other cultural systems (artefactual languages as well as other natural languages). National cultures function as metacultures. They are also the reference cultures for modern states and their citizens, a political dimension of nations that is of paramount importance, though it will only be touched on in this paper. National cultures should be considered as the most fundamental type of cultural system today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicalisation has been an important concept in sociological discussions of medicine since its adoption by medical sociologists in the early 1970s. Yet it has been criticised by some sociologists, in part because it seems too negative about medicine, and modified or replaced by others with concepts deemed more relevant like biomedicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation. My aim in this paper is to reassess the concept and consider whether it still has value in exploring significant aspects of the role of medicine in present-day society. I start with an archaeology of the concept's development and the different ways it has been used. This covers some familiar ground but is essential to the main task: examining criticisms of the concept and assessing its value. I conclude that the concept continues to have a crucial and productive place in sociological analyses of medicine and that the process of medicalisation is still a key feature of late-modern social life and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within western cultures, portrayals of dementia as 'a living death' are being challenged by people living with the diagnosis. Yet dementia remains one of the most feared conditions. The sociological lens of citizenship provides a conceptual framework for reviewing the role of society and culture in repositioning dementia away from deficit to a discourse of agency and interdependence. Awareness of cognitive change, and engaging with the diagnostic process, moves people into a transitional, or 'liminal' state of uncertainty. They are no longer able to return to their previous status, but may resist the unwanted status of 'person with dementia'. Drawing on qualitative studies on social participation by people with dementia, we suggest that whether people are able to move beyond the liminal phase depends on acceptance of the diagnosis, social capital, personal and cultural beliefs, the responses of others and comorbidities. Some people publicly embrace a new identity whereas others withdraw, or are withdrawn, from society to live in the shadow of the fourth age. We suggest narratives of deficit fail to reflect the agency people with dementia can enact to shape their social worlds in ways which enable them to establish post-liminal citizen roles. (A Virtual Abstract of this paper can be viewed at: ) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the belief in and reverence for superhuman beings cannot be understood as the chief distinguishing characteristic of religious phenomena. The consideration of Buddhism has always been central to the discussion of what religion is, and this paper focuses on the limitations of the human-superhuman dichotomy as it might be used to apply to Buddhist traditions. The argument makes three points: a) There are important sects of Buddhism that do not rely on reverence for superhuman beings, and the concept "superhuman" is difficult (if not impossible) to use in cross-cultural studies because of cultural variations in what it means to be human; b) the insistence that "philosophies" should be systematically distinguished from "religions" is arbitrary and culturally biased; and c) Buddhist doctrines that assert that reality is ultimately "nondual" provide the conceptual context for understanding superhuman beings in Mahayana, and this conceptuality is not consonant with superhuman definitions of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the first international conference on Sociology of Consumption. Until recently the sociology of consumption has been a fragmented and underdeveloped problem area in social enquiry. This conference was apparently the first crossnational venture to be concerned specifically with consumption. The aim was not to establish the sociology of consumption as a discrete sub-field, but rather to give voice to a range of neglected analytical and empirical issues involving consumption. Hitherto, the problem has not been any lack of awareness of consumption issues, but rather the tendency to subsume consumption relations within some other problem focus such as mode of production or rationalization, class or ideology. Its exploratory forays into contemporary cultural analysis, and the complex relations between culture, economy and political system, are very much part of the postmodern and poststructuralist contours of contemporary sociology. The temper of these discussions is characteristically skeptical and anti-utopian. The sociology of consumption seems to have moved beyond the marxist utopia of free producers and the liberal economists utopia of the free market.

This article presents two reports on the Eleventh World Congress of Sociology, that was organized in New Delhi in August 1986. If there is any unity across cultures among sociologists or others working in this field, it is provided neither by shared theories or concepts, nor by a common choice of topic studied, except in a very loose sense. Rather the international research community in our field is sustained through the sharing of a general perspective on society, a methodology and a more or less common Marxist-leftist political attitude. Political attitude is at least as important as the other two features, and is perhaps the key to a characterization of the events at the Delhi conference. The attitude of socio-political concern and engagement seems to be most productive in research terms when it is a counter-strategy, working in opposition to the dominant economic-political tendencies of a given society. This position was largely absent from the first world research reported. On the other hand, the moment it either becomes part of the political power structure or finds itself paralleling the efforts of the dominating parts it formerly saw as opponents, it faces a crisis. Such positions characterized the first and second world research presented.

The Journal of Historical Sociology (JHS) was founded in 1988 on the conviction that historical and social studies have a common subject matter. It welcomes articles that contribute to the historically grounded understanding of social and cultural phenomena, whatever their disciplinary provenance or theoretical standpoint. The journal is open to topic, period and place and seek to be as international as possible in both the content and the authorship of articles. Alongside articles, it carries occasional essays on "Schools and Scholars" and of "Review and Commentary," and shorter pieces in the "Issues and Agendas" section which are designed deliberately to provoke. A typical JHS article will contain little by way of extended literature review, will say something substantial and new about its empirical subject-matter, will be aware of the theoretical implications of its topic without turning into an abstruse discussion of pure theory and will be of interest to readers beyond a specialist geographical or disciplinary audience.

While many aspects of social life possess an emotional component, sociology needs to explore explicitly the part emotions play in producing the social world and human history. This paper turns away from individualistic and anthropocentric emphases upon the experience of feelings and emotions, attending instead to an exploration of flows of 'affect' (meaning simply a capacity to affect or be affected) between bodies, things, social institutions and abstractions. It establishes a materialist sociology of affects that acknowledges emotions as a part, but only a part, of a more generalized affective flow that produces bodies and the social world. From this perspective, emotions are not a peculiarly remarkable outcome of the confluence of biology and culture, but part of a continuum of affectivity that links human bodies to their physical and social environment. This enhances sociological understanding of the part emotions play in shaping actions and capacities in many settings of sociological concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the 'trajectory' can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensory scholarship in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and geography, among others, has proliferated in the last few decades. Sensory works in these disciplines argue for the senses as social, highlighting important insights that further our comprehension of selfhood, culture, and social relations. In this paper, I delineate five interrelated sections that inform how sensory works have developed over time. In the first section, I provide an adumbrated background with regard to the hierarchy of the senses, and call attention to the need to move beyond the hegemony of vision. The second section offers a discussion on how Sociology has contributed to sensory studies, addressed alongside other disciplines. Building upon these two sections, both theoretical directions and methodological issues will be deliberated in the third and fourth sections respectively. The last section locates the development of sensory research in organizational terms, by elucidating upon the various institutional efforts that have been pursued towards organizing sensory research and scholarly publications through different avenues. The article then concludes by putting forward the concept of sensory transnationalism as a suggestion for the next step forward towards broadening sensory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper considers how our understanding of religious identifications may be enriched through social psychological theorizing on group identity. It reviews a range of work (for example, sociological and social psychological) concerning Islam and Muslim identities and develops the case for viewing religious identities as constructed in and through argument. It then seeks to draw out the implications of such an approach for understanding group relations. Although minority religious identifications are often assumed to undermine social cohesion, the social networks within and between groups can contribute to inter-group harmony. For example, reciprocal relationships characterized by trust and reciprocity can constitute forms of social capital that facilitate civic integration. Yet, how such social networks are used and how relationships are developed depends on group members' understandings of their collective identity. As this is contested, it follows that analyses of intergroup relations must attend to group members' identity-related arguments and the strategic concerns that lie behind them. The utility of this perspective is illustrated briefly with empirical material (arising from interviews conducted with Muslim activists) which hints at the importance of investigating social actors' own theories of social capital and how it can be developed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverse events such as disasters are interpreted through a system of meaning provided by culture. Historically, research into society's response to disasters provides numerous examples of community resilience in face of adversity. However, since the 1980s, numerous researchers have challenged the previous optimistic accounts and argue that such incidents result in long-term damage to the community. It is claimed that community response to a disaster episode is far more likely to be defined by its vulnerability than its resilience. This new vulnerability paradigm of disaster response is underpinned by the belief that contemporary technologically driven disasters have a peculiarly destructive outcome. This paper explores the changing conceptualisation of adversity. It suggests that the shift from the expectation of resilience to that of vulnerability is best understood as an outcome of a changing cultural conceptualisation of adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be conceived of as fundamentally embodied, because sensory information is a fundamental component of experience as it is stored in long-term memory, and because bodily responses and intuitions often precede reflexive or strategic thought. I argue that the challenge of embodied knowledge for cultural sociology is threefold: to develop cultural theories of motivation; to specify the ways in which the body structures discourses endogenously; and to specify how embodied motivations and embodied discourses interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that a better articulated conception of stigma can enhance the analysis of popular culture. Beginning with the work on stigma by Erving Goffman and other scholars, the article contends that the stigma sometimes attached to the production and consumption of popular culture is distinct from the low status associated with certain forms of popular culture. Unlike low status, stigma discredits cultural forms and practitioners often rendering them problematic. This reassessment of stigma is applied and developed further through a study of comic books, showing the various ways stigma can operate in popular culture. The analysis suggests that stigma significantly impeded the evolution of the comic book as an art form, illustrating the potential negative effects of stigma in popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to balance the conceptual reception of Bourdieu's sociology in the United States through a conceptual re-examination of the concept of Habitus. I retrace the intellectual lineage of the Habitus idea, showing it to have roots in Claude Levi-Strauss structural anthropology and in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, especially the latter's generalization of the idea of operations from mathematics to the study of practical, bodily-mediated cognition. One important payoff of this exercise is that the common misinterpretation of the Habitus as an objectivist and reductionist element in Bourdieu's thought is dispelled. The Habitus is shown to be instead a useful and flexible way to concep-tualize agency and the ability to transform social structure. Thus ultimately one of Bourdieu's major contributions to social theory consists of his development of a new radical form of cognitive sociology, along with an innovative variety of multilevel sociological explanation in which the interplay of different structural orders is highlighted. In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the "mechanisms" that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation. Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of the cognitive structures that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds thus structured. Indeed there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world . . . and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them (Bourdieu, 1996b[1989], p. 1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the notion of ‘addictive consumption’, conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are consistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shifting configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance. Finally, it suggests that the notion of ‘addiction’ has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its proliferation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself.

An examination of big-city newspaper coverage of violent crimes in small towns during a recent five-year period reveals a remarkable degree of uniformity in the language reporters use to characterize life in these places. The clichés signal an underlying set of stereotypes of small-town life: They are safe, close-knit communities where bad things are “not supposed to happen.” Yet the point of the stories is that bad things do happen. Drawing upon culturological and sociological approaches to the study of news production, this paper argues that the small towns described in the news are symbolic landscapes that reflect a pastoral orientation among journalists and in the culture at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the study of picture postcards beyond an analysis of their content demonstrates that changes in the material circumstances of the production of postcards, and the conceptual shifts that they catalyzed, fundamentally altered the visual field of late nineteenth–century Japan. Once the postal system began in Japan in 1870, government–issued prepaid postcards, and picture postcards collected and sent from other countries, did introduce the medium to a small degree. However, private production of picture postcards only started in 1900, when postcards to which stamps could be affixed were first allowed. Stores and periodicals first produced them as promotional gifts, opening an arena for print technology experiments. During this period, government–issued commemorative postcards officially encouraged soldier–civilian correspondence, sparking wartime collecting booms. Early postcards of “beauties”, bound by taboos against depicting ordinary women, featured only geisha; later ones depicted ordinary women, subsequently creating a constellation of national stars, setting the stage for later postcard–format bromide paper prints of movie stars’ photographic portraits. “Current–events postcards”, rather than prioritizing accuracy, served as commemorative memorials. However, it was the rise of photojournalism that rendered the genre obsolete. Railway travel, besides reconfiguring and expanding the landscape of tourist destinations, also shaped practices of communication, aided by the innovation of the fountain pen. Increased speed and mobility changed travellers’ ways of seeing in a manner that, like postcards, altered visuality and transformed notions of time and space. Ultimately, picture postcards simultaneously offered intimacy with and distance from the object of the scopophilic gaze of an expanding audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colorism, like whiteness is capital, is rooted in the institution of slavery and has resulted in the preference of light skin. Because colorism is part of the historical construction of whiteness, the consumption of whiteness is commodified through various markets. Current manifestations of racialized beauty, that is, skin bleaching and photo editing apps such as FaceTune and Snap Chat reinforce colorism and impact conceptualizations of beauty. This literature review surveys how colorism and racialized beauty are reproduced to reinforce whiteness as a form of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Private cord blood (CB) banking is more widespread than public banking in Jordan, contributing to misinformation and unequal access to resources. This study elucidates unique perspectives of women in Jordan toward CB banking for the purpose of national and international policymaking, ethics, and education.Study Design and Methods: The authors developed and disseminated a questionnaire to women in maternity outpatient clinic waiting rooms in five different hospitals in Jordan. A total of 899 surveys were collected with 100% return rate: 464 surveys from private hospitals and 435 from public ones. Data were reported as frequency distributions, chi-square and Fisher's exact test statistics, and odds ratios.Results: Patient demographics, self-reported knowledge, and opinions about CB banking differed significantly between women at private versus public hospitals. Women at private hospitals had higher levels of awareness and communication with a health care professional about CB banking, which is associated with more positive viewpoints on CB banking and a self-reported higher likelihood of participating in CB banking in the future. Furthermore, religious approval and father-only consent for CB banking must be considered as unique factors in CB storage in Jordan.Conclusion: This analysis aids in identifying discrepancies in knowledge, resources, and communication, as well as unique population preferences. Comprehensive culturally attuned educational campaigns for patients and physicians should be a national priority to ensure ethical practice, informed decision making, and sustainable programs before the opening of Jordan's first public CB bank in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to compare two frameworks which have been proposed to explain risk perceptions, namely, cultural theory and the psychometric paradigm. A structured questionnaire which incorporated elementsfrom both approaches was administered to 129 residents of Norwich, England. The qualitative risk characteristics generated by the psychometric paradigm explained a far greater proportion of the variance in risk perceptions than cultural biases, though it should be borne in mind that the qualitative characteristics refer directly to risks whereas cultural biases are much more distant variables. Correlations between cultural biases and risk perceptions were very low, but the key point was that each cultural bias was associated with concern about distinct types of risks and that the pattern of responses was compatible with that predicted by cultural theory. The cultural approach alsoprovided indicators for underlying beliefs regarding trust and the environment; beliefs which were consistent within each world view but divergent between them. An important drawback, however, was that the psychometric questionnaire could only allocate 32% of the respondentsunequivocally to one of the four cultural types. The rest of the sample expressed several cultural biases simultaneously, or none at all.Cultural biases are therefore probably best interpreted as four extreme world views, and a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies would generate better insights into who might defendthese views in what circumstances, whether there are only four mutually exclusive world views or not, and how these views are related to patterns of social solidarity, and judgments on institutional trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual moral value attitudes are typically explained by reference to social experiences as indicated by social group variables. Contrary to this view, the emergent “culture wars” perspective claims that two worldviews that transcend social groups are ultimately and fundamentally responsible for moral value attitudes. Although this relationship has been claimed for the general population, it has not been investigated with national representative data. This paper contrasts the worldview and social group explanations by examining the relative importance of the worldviews implicated in the culture wars literature and the social groups found to be important in previous research. I find social groups to be more important than worldviews, but that worldviews also have explanatory power. I conclude with a discussion about possible clarifications of the “culture wars” thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores two themes that had a significant place in Durkheim's Division of Labor: the idea that people's needs and wants vary across epoches and cultures, and the conception of societies as systems. The first leads to a rejection of efficiency as the primary driving force behind advances in the division of labor. Considering power in addition to efficiency, but also the complex conditions of trust and meaning, leads into questions of interdependence and systems analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactionist analyses of social organization stimulate examination of how social situations and collective activity are shaped. Meta-power, the creation and control of distal situations, and organization as a structuration of meta-power are used as tools for exploring the shaping of situations Five meta-power processes are presented: strategic agency, rules and conventions, structuring situations. Culture construction, and empowering delegates. These processes illustrate how situations are created or altered. This paper offers a view of social organization that emphasizes relations among situations, linkages between consequences and conditions, and networks of collective activity across space and time. The conclusion calls for additional research to make more explicit the nature of social organization and its social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares British and French representations of caste in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a formative period in the development of sociology and social anthropology in the two countries. The concepts of 'nature' and 'culture' in the two sociological traditions are examined with respect to their analyses of caste. The two discourses are also analyzed in relation to their respective colonial histories and national political cultures during this epocho [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about one recent argument for the development of a sociology of consumption, that of sociologist Peter Saunders. The paper falls into four parts, a discussion of the origins of the call for a sociology of consumption; a critical exposition of Saunders' own formulation of such a sociology; some more fundamental critical observations, generic to a sociology of consumption; and finally some constructive suggestions for an alternative approach to the same issues-a sociology of service provision. The putative sociology of consumption has two aspects which, though in principle touching upon the same key sociological issues actually address quite different subject matters in isolation from one another. The first has a pedigree in the sociological tradition. It is a heterogeneous tradition, sometimes concerned with consumption as an element of social differentiation, sometimes with consumerism as a shared, common culture, as in the concept of the consumer society. The second aspect is of more recent vintage deriving from the rather arcane debate about the proper subject matter of urban sociology.

The thesis of this paper is that the ‘culture base’ of the farm folk of Southern Appalachia greatly affects their standards and levels of living. This point of view is developed in a study of three small rural communities of East Tennessee in which the units were matched as nearly as possible in their original base of natural resources but subject to marked cultural variations. One community is somewhat typical of situations having few outside contacts; a second is a cultural island having a relatively high level of living for the area; and the third is a community undergoing definite change as a result of community planning. Major conclusions are: (1) that culture itself is an important variable in determining how human and natural resources are treated; (2) that isolation, physical and cultural, greatly retards change; and (3) that the T.V.A. is succeeding in inducing significant cultural and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, are a group of countries that have boundaries with each other and lie between India and China. In all but Vietnam, Theravada Buddhism is the predominant religion. Apart from these resemblances, the pattern of cultures and of political trends is variegated and complex. Thailand, however, is relatively homogeneous in culture and tranquil in politics. Yet in spite of its notorious charm, it has not attracted many field investigators. The major exception to this is the work of the Cornell University Thailand Project, and especially its study from 1948 to 1958 of the village of Bang Chan near Bangkok. From the improvised fieldwork in a north-east province the impression one gets is that some factors that divide and cause conflict within other societies are absent or at least well concealed in Thailand. The Thai intelligence is pragmatic rather than theoretical and hitherto sociology has had no very great appeal in Thailand. Of countries in the list, the one most fitted by temperament and intellectual tradition to produce its own sociologists is probably Vietnam. Unfortunately the widespread political disturbance is an adverse factor.

In recent years, sociologists have lamented the fact that interdisciplinary exchange regarding Culture and Cognition has been largely asymmetrical. However, to date, no sociologist has empirically established the degree of interdisciplinary diffusion of Culture and Cognition scholarship. We add empirical detail to these discussions through a bibliographic analysis of 16 key Culture and Cognition articles, analyzing their citation patterns both within and beyond Sociology. Within Sociology, we find that citations of Culture and Cognition scholarship tend to cluster within culture, generalist, and theory journals. In terms of interdisciplinary diffusion, we find that while engagement with Culture and Cognition scholarship is indeed concentrated within sociology, almost half of the citations of this work come from other disciplines. This suggests that, while not entirely incorrect, the characterizations of Culture and Cognition's interdisciplinary uptake have been somewhat exaggerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural sensitivity in societal development has been advocated for since at least the 1960s but has remained understudied. Our goal is to address this gap and to investigate folk theories of societal development. We aimed to identify both universal and culturally specific lay beliefs about what constitutes good societal development. We collected data from 2,684 participants from Japan, Hong Kong (China), Poland, Turkey, Brazil, France, Nigeria, the USA, and Canada. We measured preferences for 28 development aims. We used multidimensional scaling, analysis of variance, and pairwise comparisons to identify universal and country‐specific preferences. Our results demonstrate that what people understand as modernization is fairly universal across countries, but specific pathways of development and preferences towards these pathways tend to vary between countries. We distinguished three facets of modernization—foundational aims (e.g., trust, economic development), welfare aims (e.g., poverty eradication, education), and inclusive aims (e.g., openness, gender equality)—and incorporated them into a folk meta‐theory of modernization. In all nine countries, the three facets of modernization were preferred more than conventional aims (e.g., military, demographic growth). We propose a method of implementing our findings into a culturally sensitive modernization index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social movement‐countermovement relationship is most often one of competition. The subject of police reform has become more complex after calls for greater restrictive police policies and the emergence of Blue Lives Matter. This study demonstrates how Blue Lives Matter acts as a countermovement to police reform, frame it in a historical context, explain why it appeals to sympathizers, and illustrate how it interacts with opposing groups and individuals. This study also assesses how Blue Lives Matter operates in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter and efforts for greater police accountability. The central theme of this literature addresses how the Blue Lives Matter Movement addresses competition, criticisms, and attitudes of Blue Lives Matter adherents and detractors in local and national contexts. This study questions if reconciliation between the stated objectives and tactics of the countermovement is possible without a change in police behavior and law enforcement practices. Conflict theories identify social constructionism as a process in social and countermovements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive sociology has been split into cultural and interdisciplinary traditions that position themselves differently in relation to the cognitive sciences and make incompatible assumptions about cognition. This article provides an analysis and assessment of the cognitive and methodological assumptions of these two traditions from the perspective of the mechanistic theory of explanation. We argue that while the cultural tradition of cognitive sociology has provided important descriptions about how human cognition varies across cultural groups and historical periods, it has not opened up the black box of cognitive mechanisms that produce and sustain this variation. This means that its explanations for the described phenomena have remained weak. By contrast, the interdisciplinary tradition of cognitive sociology has sought to integrate cognitive scientific concepts and methods into explanatory research on how culture influences action and how culture is stored in memory. Although we grant that interdisciplinary cognitive sociologists have brought many fresh ideas, concepts and methods to cultural sociology from the cognitive sciences, they have not always clarified their assumptions about cognition and their models have sketched only a few specific cognitive mechanisms through which culture influences action, meaning that they have not yet provided a comprehensive explanatory understanding of the interactions between culture, cognition and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology subdisciplines are notorious for being siloed in their respective fields of study. This is sometimes more noticeable in those arenas that surprisingly (to some) do not make sense, as there are bound to be greater sociological insights gleamed from an intra‐subdisciplinary approach that allow for better synthesis of theory(ies) or even epistemology(ies). In this piece, we issue a challenge to the need for more sociological engagement that weaves together the cultural, those structured stories that render our lives and the order of those lives meaningful, and the racial, those storied structures of white supremacy that give rise to that order of our lives and undergird our identities and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Rural children in developing countries have poor health outcomes in comparison with urban children. This paper considers 4 questions regarding the rural/urban difference, namely: (1) do individual-level characteristics account for rural/urban differences in child nutritional status; (2) do community-level characteristics account for rural/urban differences net of individual-level characteristics; (3) does type of residence alter the influence of individual characteristics; and (4) does the rural/urban difference vary across national contexts? Method: Analysis is based on Demographic and Health Survey data from 35 developing countries. Multilevel regression is used to examine rural/urban differences in nutritional status net of individual, community and national determinants of health status. Findings: Rural children have a substantially higher risk of poor nutrition. Much of this disadvantage is because of socioeconomic disadvantage, reproductive norms favoring early and more rapid childbearing, and lack of access to modern medicine. Rural residence also structures the nature of the relationships between socioeconomic status, access to medical care, and nutrition. Finally, the rural/urban gap declines as countries develop. Conclusion: Rural/urban differences in child nutritional status are substantial, and some-but not all-of the differences are attributable to socioeconomic status, access to medical care, and reproductive norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a qualitative study of students' engagement with a Web-based inquiry environment aimed at prompting student reflection in processes of scientific inquiry. In order to demonstrate how prompts become structuring resources for students' scientific inquiry, detailed analyses of students' interaction processes are conducted. The students' written responses to the reflection prompts indicated a widespread use of a ‘copy and paste’ strategy. The analyses of student interaction deepen this finding and show that instead of participating in reflection activities, the students make use of these ‘copy and paste’ strategies in order to come up with ‘correct’ answers to the prompts. Further, the analyses indicate that the students' employment of these strategies can be seen as a response to what can be termed the institutional practices of schooling embedded within the design of the prompts. These findings are discussed and explored in accordance with findings from previous studies on prompting students' reflection in Web-based inquiry environments. The study demonstrates the value of a socio-cultural perspective for gaining a deeper understanding of students' engagement with Web-based learning environments. Such a perspective can give valuable insight into how to (re)design prompts, and how prompts can be productive parts of students' learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the increased interest in the relation between culture and social policy as a starting point, and discusses how this increasing attention can be understood as the result of contextual factors such as economic, social and academic trends. It discusses these matters and at the same time reviews briefly some of the main findings of studies that contain a cultural perspective in analysing social policy. A second issue concerns the specific character of cultural perspectives in such analyses. Thus far, most studies in the field have been guided by a notion of culture as consisting of the values, norms and beliefs of welfare state actors. Recently, this notion has been questioned by advocates of the so-called ‘cultural turn’, who suggest that a radical change in the cultural analysis of social policy is required. The article concludes with a discussion of their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological understanding of generations can be enhanced by avoiding defining them rigidly as chronological cohorts but rather linking people's accounts of their generational experience with an historically informed political economy. It then becomes possible, for example, to understand the complexity of generational politics. This paper uses data on the ‘War Generation’ taken from the Exeter Politics of Old Age project to link an empirically based political economy of generational inequality with a cultural sociology of generations. The ‘War Generation’ recognizes itself and is referred to by others in terms of a common identity. It is also an historical generation; its values, attitudes and, above all, sense of national solidarity and mutual obligation were forged in the direct experience of war. But it is also divided by divergent economic interests in property and pension rights based on the historical experience of the life course by successive groups and this segmentation can be observed in political action. The political culture of the War Generation manifests both continuity and change. Understanding these dynamics requires listening to people constructing their worlds, understanding their full range of historical experiences, and analysing the conditions for their conflicts and their cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature finds cultural sociologists incorporating ideas from the cognitive sciences—cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy——and significantly reshaping sociologists' approach to culture, both theoretically and methodologically. Elsewhere, we have reviewed the cognitive turn in cultural sociology (Cerulo, Leschziner and Shepherd, 2021). But in this special issue, authors capitalize on new directions in culture and cognition, providing 12 original articles that forward new theoretical ideas, offer novel methodologies, provide exciting empirical tests of current theories, and suggest possible applications of the culture and cognition lens to other sub‐disciplines in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article features data drawn from interviews with doctors working in the Finnish occupational health‐care system. These are used to explore the value of an Eliasian approach towards interpreting and assessing the moral meanings and social dynamics of relationships between health practitioners and their patients. We attend to spiralling 'formalizing' and 'informalizing' processes and how these are operating to reconfigure doctor–patient relationships. We document some of the ways in which Finnish doctors are adapting to these processes. While data drawn from a British context suggest both doctor and patients are inclined to adopt positions of mutual distrust and hostility, by contrast we note that in this Finnish setting more concerted attempts are being made to renegotiate social roles, cultural meanings and individual responsibilities. We propose that this can be taken as an instance where informalization is accompanied by revitalized currents of formalization and new syntheses of moral codes and conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four community studies are analyzed to show the relative advantages of the concepts of cultural isolation and rurality. This analysis suggests that, in many types of investigations, it may be more advisable to establish theoretical frameworks in which the focus is centered on specific variables. Cultural isolation as a concept may offer keener insights and reveal more significant knowledge for the development of systematic theory than the use of the rural-urban dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on culture identity and dress. The sociology of dress is a vibrant field, exploring intriguing theoretical, methodological, and empirical domains. During the mid-twentieth century, clothing scholars began investigating the sociological and psychological implications of dress and appearance. In 1989, a group met to discuss the direction of the analysis of dress. The published papers from that meeting considered a wide range of topics, including identity, social psychology, cultural anthropology and sociology, semiotics, affect and cognition, social construction of gender, literary analysis, as well as qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Recent textbooks in the area continue to thaw from sociology and other fields to refine theories of dress and human behavior. Related to the misperception that dress only applies to the psychology of the self is the notion that dress is trivial both substantively and theoretically. Perhaps sociologists' neglect of dress might also be linked to a misperception that it is nonrational behavior similar to other actions that do not lend themselves to systematic analysis. Again these articles provide a contrasting view. In organizational and institutional settings, such as greedy organizations, total institutions, and mass media, dress and all it symbolizes are debated and discussed in ways that can be studied scientifically. Further, all of the articles have identified patterns in how dress is used in identity embracing and distancing that can be incorporated into broader theoretical frameworks.

The article discusses sociology in terms of complementary strengths and areas of expertise as a team sport. Topics include consideration of combination of cultural and social structural factors to enable and constrain different causal processes and outcomes; failing of cultural narratives contribute to social crisis; and successful religious and humanistic discourses helps in creating good narratives in future with moral lessons to life fostering identification and empathy.

Constituting 'social problems' in particular ways has a range of effects, including for how subjects are positioned within policy and discourse. Employing an approach grounded in poststructuralist and social constructionist thinking, this analysis interrogates how the subjects of mental health care were constituted and problematised in mental health policies in two distinctive contexts, unsettling the taken‐for granted assumptions which underpin these problematisations. Two policies were selected for analysis as exemplar pieces of mental health policy reform in Hong Kong and New South Wales (NSW). Subjects were constituted as 'patientised' individuals (in Hong Kong) encouraged to depend on professionals who help them reintegrate into the 'normal' community, and as 'traumatised' individuals (in NSW) expected to take responsibility to guide the delivery of mental health care and respected as a part of diversity in community settings. While both policies constituted subjects as 'unwell individuals' and enacted 'dividing practices', subjectivities were shaped by distinctive cultural and socio‐political contexts. This analysis shifts our attention away from a focus on the effectiveness of policy solutions to the heterogeneity and contingency of policy 'problems' and 'subjects', opening up new possibilities for 'out‐of‐the‐box' policy responses to mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past three decades, the theory of religious economy has been established, applied, debated, developed, and rejected. It has proven to be as divisive as any "general theory" of religion should be, and yet its core tenets continue to engage and unite scholars around the world. In response to broader shifts within the sociology of religion, this article reframes religious economy by advancing a spatial approach to its theorization. A spatial approach can help develop new perspectives on the regulation of religion, and the resistant agency of religious groups. With a focus on the "secular monopoly" of Singapore, it demonstrates how the restricted supply of land for religious purposes increases competition between religious groups. To overcome restrictions, religious groups pursue strategies of spatial and organizational boundary crossing. This has led to the closer regulation of space, and highlights the recursive interplay between the regulation and praxis of religion in Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]