Discipline Of Sociology Research Articles

Queering Doing Gender: The Curious Absence of Ethnomethodology in Gender Studies and in Sociology

“Doing Gender,” Candance West and Don Zimmerman’s famous 1987 article, has become a folk concept—a trope or commonsense resource within the sociology of gender. Yet at the same time, most gender scholars overlook its ethnomethodological premise, visible in both poststructuralist misunderstandings of its argument outside the discipline of sociology and what I term a realist misunderstanding of it in the study of structures and identities within the discipline. Reading West and Zimmerman queerly while clarifying ethnomethodology’s ontology, I refocus attention for critical scholarship on ethnomethodology’s analytic sensibilities for research on gender, race, and sexuality, among other embodiments. Specifically, ethnomethodology reframes a vision of actors as relational, practical actors; repositions gender as accountable, jointly produced social relations, not individual identity; and foregrounds resistance in addition to conformity. Hence, my gender (race/class/sexuality) is not mine; it is ours. Ethnomethodology’s ontological shift in temporality to reality-in-production enables interpretive-materialism: a queer, anti-racist, intersectional sociology that is future-facing and in motion.

Comparative mainstreaming? Mapping the uses of the comparative method in social policy, sociology and political science since the 1970s

This article maps the development and uses of the comparative method in academic research since the 1970s. It is based on an original database that we constructed for our review of 12,483 articles extracted from leading journals representing the disciplines of Social Policy, Political Science and Sociology. We proceed to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reported comparative research effort. We find that the comparative method became mainstream in the 1990s – following the publication of the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and that JESP is the most comparative journal of all. In 2020, 66% of articles published in JESP are comparative. The comparative turn has been stronger in Social Policy than Sociology and Political Science over the last three decades. We witness a rise in the use of formal techniques (case studies and comparative historical analysis, SEM/factorial techniques, cluster analysis, QCA/Fuzzy-set) and mixed-methods in comparison to descriptive analysis, and this is particularly pronounced in Sociology. Regression analysis is dominant, however the most cited comparative articles are based on case studies and descriptive statistics. Overall, we argue that the comparative method is, in essence, ‘a way of thinking’ and not simply the application of a set of disparate techniques.

The Johannine prologue: A hermeneutical key to the community theme

As John wrote to a community grappling with incarnating its communalistic values, he furnishes readers with remedies for addressing such sociocultural maladies. However, to appreciate the Johannine response to colossal cultural failure, we must begin from the Johannine prologue because the narrative develops the enigmatic constructs it postulates. Although the community theme is one of such, it has not received attention despite the gamut of academic interests in the prologue and the ubiquitous acknowledgement that it is a compendium of the major themes in Johannine prologue. Therefore, this article aimed to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the major themes in the Johannine prologue and the divine remedy to these challenges – how the believing community can epitomise the eternal community. The study employed a narratological analysis because it analyses and guides the reader to recreate the Johannine theological concept of community, studying the poetics and meaning of what the prologue promulgates. The findings indicated that the Johannine prologue is the hermeneutical key to understand the community theme: it establishes its legitimacy, explicates what it entails and lays the foundation for its narratological development. Thus, no academic autopsy on the community theme should ignore it.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The Johannine characterisation of a community challenges the relational dimension of a community – the anthropological view that defines community by the ‘quality relationships’ between group members – by redefining a community as a group of people participating in the divine community. This research thus intersects with the disciplines of anthropology and sociology.

The Effects and Types of Parental Involvement in School-Based Sport and Health Programs Still Represent a Knowledge Gap: A Systematic Review.

Background: Health-related behaviours and attitudes acquired in childhood significantly shape health behaviours in adulthood and play an important role in preventing children from becoming overweight. Interventions incorporating parental involvement can provide outstanding support in shaping a child’s health-related behaviour. However, parental involvement has not been investigated from the perspective of efficacy except for obesity. Therefore, this systematic review investigates school-based physical activity intervention programmes incorporating parental involvement. We aim to explore the impact of these programmes and the parental involvement they provide on behaviours that influence child health, which are essential for preventing children and adults from becoming overweight and promoting health-conscious lifestyles. Methods: This systematic literature review follows PRISMA guidelines. The EBSCO Discovery Service Search Engine was used for searching for literature. Papers included met the following inclusion criteria: (1) reported original, empirical research or systematic review published in a peer-reviewed journal; (2) primary or secondary school age (6–18 years) as the target population; (3) examined school-based sport or health prevention and intervention programs; (4) only healthy children and youth in the indicated age group; (5) school-based prevention or intervention program; (6) examines parental involvement; (7) in the English language, and (8) in disciplines of education, psychology, social work, sociology, social sciences and humanities. Results: An extremely limited number of interventions of sufficient quality address the role of parental involvement (N = 17). The forms of parental involvement show a huge variety, ranging from leaflets, home packs, sports organisations “forced” by the pandemic, parent meetings, programmes, courses, and school programmes with diverse children over several months (cooking together, gardening, playing sports together, etc.). Therefore, it is difficult to measure their effectiveness and impact. Conclusions: The impact of parental involvement on children’s health behaviour, especially physical activity and nutrition, as two of the most important factors in preventing them from becoming overweight, are unclear, and other correlations, e.g., academic achievement, are scarce.

Murder by Usury and Organised Denial: A critical realist perspective on the liberating paradigm shift from psychopathic dominance towards human civilisation

The discipline of sociology is in a deplorable condition as it has a pervasive blind spot for the social dynamics of compound interest on credit, resulting in a systematic collective incompetence to bring well-informed structural solutions to the socio-ecological crises that human societies are facing everywhere around the world.

Working it out: Will the improved management of leaky bodies in the workplace create a dialogue between medical sociology and disability studies?

This article focuses on the workplace as a significant site of convergence between the disciplines of medical sociology and disability studies. As disability remains on the margins of sociological exploration and theorising relating to health and work, disabled workers remain on the margins of the workforce, subject to disproportionate rates of unemployment, under employment and workplace mistreatment. The article focuses on the experiences of people with 'leaky bodies', focussing specifically on employees who experience troubling menstruation and/or have gynaecological health conditions. It brings together data from three studies conducted between 2017 and 2020; interviews with disabled academics (n=75), university staff with gynaecological health conditions (n=23), and key stakeholders in universities (n=36) (including university executives, line managers and human resources staff). These studies had separate, but linked foci, on the inaccessibility of workplaces, managing gynaecological health conditions at work and supporting disabled people at work respectively. Drawing on the Social Relational Model of disability and theories of embodiment, we explore the experiences and management of workers with leaky bodies in UK University workplaces. Data illustrates how workplace practices undermine embodied experiences of workers with 'leaky' bodies by maintaining workplaces which ignore their material reality. We highlight that addressing embodied needs alongside acknowledging disabled people as an oppressed political category represents a theoretical meeting point for disability studies and medical sociology.

The secret service of renaissance venice: intelligence organisation in the sixteenth century

ABSTRACT Contrary to more rudimentary espionage networks created by rulers (and their rivals) in various parts of early modern Europe, by the sixteenth century, early modern Venice had created a remarkable, centrally organised state intelligence organisation, the Venetian secret service. This was built on a rigid organisational hierarchy and branched out into distinct communication networks. This article describes, in detail, the structure and function of the Venetian secret service, dwelling on how it was administered and managed by the Council of Ten, Venice’s infamous spy chiefs. To explore the early modern organisational and managerial practices on which this service was premised, the article borrows theoretical concepts deriving from the disciplines of Intelligence Studies, Sociology, Organisation Studies, and Management, which it weaves together with archival sources and relevant literature. In doing so, the article explores some of the methodological challenges of studying the phenomenon of early modern intelligence organisation. Ultimately, the article puts forth the argument that systematised intelligence and espionage are not ‘modern’ phenomena, as conventional wisdom dictates, but date back to the early modern era.

Samiske barnehagers rolle i språkrevitaliseringa

More than a thousand children attend Sámi kindergartens daily, while quite a number of Sámi children get Sámi language instruction in other kindergartens. This activity is one of the most important arenas for transmission and acquisition of Sámi languages. A question raised in this article is how these kindergartens are used as research fields in the disciplines of language and sociology and early childhood pedagogy. Another question is what kind of language teaching models are used. The article shows that little research has been carried out on how Sámi kindergartens teach Sámi language. There is also little research done on the results from this education. A review of the Sámi kindergartens’ history shows that statistical material on Sámi kindergartens and Sámi language instruction in other kindergartens is available only from some geographical areas, and existing statistical information is only partly suitable for analysis. This makes it difficult to use existing material to monitor the vitality of Sámi languages. The article calls for more research on Sámi kindergartens and language teaching models used in them. A goal could be to create a basis for monitoring this crucial indicator of language vitality for Sámi languages: whether new generations of Sámi become Sámi-speakers or not. This should be followed up with more research on the language teaching models used in Sámi kindergartens

Simmel, our Contemporary

The cipher of Simmel’s actuality is expressed by the concepts of “tragedy of culture” and “crisis,” which still assume profound explanatory value in his opinion. By crisis the author means the end of the absolute claims of metaphysics – according to an interpretation that was already Wilhelm Dilthey’s – that is, the discovery of thought’s inability to embrace the totality of life and the consequent yielding of the field of philosophy in the face of the development of the natural and human sciences. Simmel is one of the first significant examples of overcoming the traditional language of philosophy and metaphysics thanks to the centrality that “metaphor” assumes in his thought, of which the Philosophy of Money is an excellent example. In fact, monetary relations are taken up here as a metaphor for the whole of modern culture, and this allows Simmel across disciplinary boundaries to discuss decisive aspects of modernity, such as the autonomization of scientific knowledge, changing lifestyles, etc. From this point of view Simmel becomes central to rediscussing the status of the sociological discipline as such. It is not a matter of comparing Simmel with the other classics of sociological theory – making him wear the too narrow shoes of the sociologist – but rather of reading his philosophical and aesthetic contributions also from a sociological perspective. This perspective appears to be not only the hermeneutically most respectful but the one that helps to broaden the often too narrow terrain of social theory.

“In the broom closet”: exploring the role of online communities in shaping the identities of contemporary witchcraft practitioners

There are multiple lenses through which contemporary witchcraft practitioners are perceived in literature: self-identification; mainstream stereotyping; and counterculture. Contemporary witchcraft is a sociocultural phenomenon that has not received much attention outside of the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. Therefore, the individual views and experiences of self-identified practitioners have arguably been diluted within social research due to an emphasis on historical or group-based observations. With the aim of incorporating a psychological perspective into existing contemporary literature, the current study used semi-structured interviews to explore how practitioners personally engage with online communities to navigate the individual, social, and collective interpretations of their ‘witchcraft-related identity’. Using data from 16 participant interviews, it emerged that digitising witchcraft practices served two key roles in engaging with the practitioners’ identities by providing access to both group membership and interactive knowledge exchange. Positive and negative aspects of these experiences were discussed. Moreover, it was found that the relationship between online and face-to-face constructions of being ‘a witch’ was observably fluid, wherein digital practices could help practitioners compartmentalise their witchcraft-related identity to online spaces or, alternatively, enhance its in-person identity saliency. This investigation offers timely and novel insights into contemporary witchcraft by taking a psychological perspective that contributes to broader debates about the notion of identity and how this manifests in online communities.

Analysis of some training theories applied to the generativity concept

We found exciting to study how generativity has evolved since Erikson (1950) outside the Psychology and Sociology disciplines, and had permeated into the fields of Ecology, Grammar and Syntax, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), without losing part of the essence of the genuine meaning given by Erikson back then, about the generative task and generativity as a construct. I wanted to investigate this further, and my findings turned out to be very interesting. In this paper I perform a basic analysis of some training theories applied to the generativity concept as a task and a construct since Erikson (1950), in the field of Psychology and Sociology, Grammar and Syntax, Ecology, Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Training and coaching of female vs. male endurance athletes on their road to gold. Perceptions among successful elite athlete coaches

This scientific short report investigated how successful male coaches perceive gender differences in training characteristics and coaching practice among medal-winning endurance athletes. Ten male Norwegian coaches with a track record of coaching both female and male endurance world-class athletes (total of 269 Olympic, World and European Championship medals) participated in semi-structured interviews. Inductive thematic analysis revealed that all coaches mainly adjusted their key training and coaching principles to the individual athlete, rather than gender. A coach-driven and athlete-centered individualization process was essential to create trust, mutual understanding, and optimal training content. Potential gender/sex differences were perceived in four main themes: sport-specific competition demands, physiological, psychological and interpersonal factors (e.g., gender of the coach). In this context, all coaches described how training and coaching of female athletes differs from that of men, thus considering male athletes as the reference group and male physiology and psychology as the norm. Furthermore, societal factors such as a male-dominant sports culture and underlying gender stereotypes were suggested as amplifiers of gender differences. Accordingly, our report highlights the need for female perspectives in elite sports and invites further in-depth investigations of the identified gender/sex differences within the respective disciplines of training science, physiology, psychology and sociology. Key Words: Coaching, Endurance Training, Gender Differences, Sex Difference, Training Science

Theorizing from the Margins: A Tribute to Lewis and Rose Laub Coser

This article is an adaptation of the sixteenth Lewis A. Coser lecture, given virtually in 2021 for the American Sociological Association Meetings. In this article, I pay tribute to Lewis and Rose Laub Coser by engaging with their past work, which inspired a theoretical provocation about what it means to theorize from the margins. I specifically address the questions of who gets to be a theorist and what kinds of theoretical work get marginalized. I outline the process of epistemic oppression involved in trying to publish marginal ideas in mainstream journals. I argue that the relationship between mainstream sociology and what I refer to as “marginal” requires a relational perspective that (1) situates both marginalized scholars and their scholarship in the broader discipline of sociology and (2) examines the epistemic oppression of their theories regardless of their sometimes-powerful institutional positioning in highly ranked departments or as leaders within various professional associations.

Social Suffering: A New Reference Framework for Economic Analysis

Social suffering has become a recurrent theme in various disciplines (sociology, social psychology, anthropology), but remains absent from economic analysis. The aim of our article is hence to reinstate the role of social suffering in economics. We first define the scope of the concept, which should be interpreted as a form of suffering generated by economic systems, particularly the current capitalist system. We then dismiss the objections to this conception of social suffering. In particular, we dismiss the attempt to reduce social suffering to a set of categorical phenomena that can be interpreted independently of the functioning of an economic system. Finally, we point out that lowering social suffering should take precedence over the pursuit of happiness. JEL Classification: B40, P46, A13

ИНСТИТУЦИОНАЛНИ РАЗВОЈ И ДРУШТВЕНИ ЗНАЧАЈ СОЦИОЛОГИЈЕ КУЛТУРЕ НА ФИЛОЗОФСКОМ ФАКУЛТЕТУ У НИШУ

The commemoration of the first half century of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Niš provides an occasion for us to take a critical view of the most important segments of the institutional development of the Sociology of culture, as one of the first academic sociological disciplines established at the very foundation of this institution, in 1971. The goal of the paper is to view the decades of development in the context of the development of the sociology of culture in the world and in Serbia (SFRY), of certain social circumstances, political upheaval, and educational reforms, as well as through the analysis of the educational-pedagogical and scientific-research work and the broader social engagement of important individuals (eminent teachers and associates) who have made a significant contribution to the academic foundation and development of the study of the sociology of culture at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nis. Segments of archival, biographical, and biobibliographical material have been gathered, analysed and presented, while at the same time the professional experience and accounts provided by numerous colleagues and associates, as well as the primary work experience of the authors of this text, were also taken into consideration.

Social aspects of introducing the multiple forename system in Skellefteå, Sweden

With a particular focus on differences within social groups, this article describes the multiple forename system as it emerged between 1720 and 1890 in the area of Skellefteå in the north-east of Sweden. Female and male forenames are compared, as is the introduction of the multiple forename system in different social groups in the study data. Theoretical starting points are taken from the discipline of cultural sociology, especially the work of Simmel (1957) and Bourdieu (1984; 1989; 1997). The results indicate that this naming pattern was introduced in the naming of girls prior to the naming of boys. Analysis of the social aspects of the process takes its starting point in fields like ‘names and social identity’, ‘status and (group) solidarity’, and ‘the importance of taste’. The data studied are divided into six social groups based on the father’s social rank at the time of the child’s birth, one group comprising unmarried mothers and one ‘miscellaneous’ group. The results illustrate that the practice of giving children at least two forenames was introduced by the upper middle class (upper bourgeoisie), who then either returned to giving one forename or increased the number of forenames to three for each child. (...)

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Pandita Ramabai Dongre Medhavi Sarasvati, 1858-1922: Founding International Sister of Sociology

Pandita Ramabai was part of the early international network of social reformists who worked to improve the lives of women and children. She is one of the founders of the sociology of marriage and the family in India; as a critic of the status of women and its relation to religion and colonialism, she participated in feminist activism on an international level. Ramabai's significant contributions to the discipline of sociology have yet to be fully examined and credited in the field.

Unsettling knowledge boundaries: the Indigenous pitiki space for Basotho women’s sexual empowerment and reproductive well-being

ABSTRACT Indigenous knowledge systems embody a holistic, inclusive view of the world and foreground interconnectedness for the promotion of life. Through reflective engagement with the author’s positioning as an Indigenous researcher, this article explores Indigenous knowledges of sexual, reproductive health and motherhood shared by Basotho women. It draws on the life stories of twenty never-married women and uses decolonial African feminist approaches to challenge the assumed universality of conceptions of sexual and reproductive health that are both deeply embedded and produced within specific relations of power. It illuminates the Indigenous pitiki space as an Indigenous knowledge hub purposed to empower Basotho women’s sexual and reproductive health. Within this space, Indigenous knowledges and skills are shared amongst women, with the elderly imparting knowledges to the young women. In the context of unsurmountable health disparities, the article shows how Indigenous knowledge-sharing outside the exclusive ‘westernised’ health systems enables communal support for the well-being of women and children in African contexts. It emphasises the need for inclusive and expansive knowledge production systems not only to better inform equitable health solutions for Indigenous communities but also for epistemic redress in the discipline of Sociology.

A bibliometric mapping of shadow education research: achievements, limitations, and the future

This study aims to map the literature on shadow education using metadata extracted from 488 publications indexed in the Web of Science database. It is termed as shadow education because much of its content mimics what is learned in schools. The study uses bibliometric procedures to describe and visually represent available literature on shadow education in terms of main sources, key authors, institutions, and countries leading the production and dissemination of research on shadow education. Further, the study elaborates on h-classics publications to obtain an in-depth understanding of the most influential scientific outputs in this domain. Key findings of the study are that research on shadow education (a) has experienced steady growth over the last decade; (b) is disseminated through a wide range of outlets, mainly in the disciplines of sociology of education, economics of education, educational psychology, and language education; (c) is published mainly by scholars working in East Asia and the United States; (d) has focused on tangible (quantifiable) benefits related to improved examination results; and (e) reveals how this form of instruction primarily benefits students hailing from high socioeconomic backgrounds, thereby contributing to greater educational inequality. This study also suggests pedagogical implications and areas for ongoing research.