Sociological Publications Research Articles

La méthode de l'intervention sociologique

Résumé La méthode de l’intervention sociologique, élaborée et mise en œuvre par Alain Touraine, est à l’origine d’enquêtes et d’ouvrages importants en sociologie. Toutefois, elle est restée dans l’ombre et demeure utilisée par un cercle plutôt étroit de chercheurs. Cet article lie donc deux aspects : il rappelle les grands principes de la méthode, tout en précisant les évolutions qu’elle a connues en passant de la problématique du mouvement social à la compréhension des problèmes sociaux ; il interroge ensuite la singularité de la méthode au regard des différentes modalités d’entretiens collectifs. Il apparaît alors que, originale et exigeante, l’intervention sociologique est aussi par certains aspects proche d’autres méthodes réflexives de groupe.

Homosexuality and the Construction of "Anglican Orthodoxy": The Symbolic Politics of the Anglican Communion

The Conflict over ‘homosexuality’, which has embroiled the Anglican Communion over the past 15 years, has not primarily been a conflict about homosexuality, or even about sexuality per se. Rather, we argue that the conflict has been so intense because ‘homosexuality’ has become a salient symbol, to which different Anglican constituencies (Evangelical, Liberal, and Anglo-Catholic) have brought their own agenda. The conflict does not simply reflect a pre-existing division between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, but the emerging schism reflects the construction of a new religiocultural identity of ‘Anglican Orthodoxy’, which has increasingly polarised the Communion. Drawing on interviews with 70 Anglicans directly affected by the conflict in the UK and North America (including and with particular focus on 18 bishops and archbishops) we explore the symbolic politics of homosexuality and the emergence of new configurations of Anglicanism. We suggest that the symbols of the conflict and the competing parties to the conflict are mutually constitutive constructions, and that attention to the processes of symbolic construction and manipulation are important for understanding the conflict. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Sociology of Religion following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [Brittain, CC. & McKinnon, A. (2011). 'Homosexuality and the Construction of “Anglican Orthodoxy”: The Symbolic Politics of the Anglican Communion'. Sociology of Religion, vol 72, no. 3, pp. 351-373] is available online at: http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/72/3/351

Women Directors on Corporate Boards: A Review and Research Agenda

ABSTRACTManuscript Type: ReviewResearch Question/Issue: This review examines how gender diversity on corporate boards influences corporate governance outcomes that in turn impact performance. We describe extant research on theoretical perspectives, characteristics, and impact of women on corporate boards (WOCB) at micro, meso, and macro levels: individual, board, firm, and industry/environment.Research Finding/Results: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of WOCBs, incorporating and integrating research from over 400 publications in psychology, sociology, leadership, gender, finance, management, law, corporate governance, and entrepreneurship domains. In addition, we organized our findings to provide a new lens enabling the field to be readily examined by level and by theoretical perspective. The review indicates that WOCB research is about improving corporate governance through better use of the whole talent pool's capital, as well as about building more inclusive and fairer business institutions that better reflect their present generation of stakeholders.Theoretical Implications: With only one in 10 papers addressing theoretical development, the predominant perspectives are human and social capital theories and gender schema at the individual level; social identity, token, and social networks theories at board level; resource dependency, institution, and agency theories at the firm level; and institutional, critical, and political theories at the environmental level. We provide a short synopsis of findings at each level, and conclude with an outline of fruitful directions for future research.Practical Implications: There are increasing pressures for WOCBs from diverse stakeholders, such as the European Commission, national governments, politicians, employer lobby groups, shareholders, Fortune and FTSE rankings, best places for women to work lists, as well as expectations from highly qualified women who are likely to leave if they see no women board members. Rationales generally draw on the business case; however, the moral justice case is also used by those who seek a fairer gender balance in all aspects of society. From our review, the “Impact” section charts the effect of WOCB at all four levels of analysis.

A consuming passion: An interview with George Ritzer

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ritzer was co‐founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture with Don Slater. In addition to his considerable work in the area of the sociology of consumption, Ritzer is especially known for Metatheorizing in sociology (1991), The McDonaldization of society (1993), The globalization of nothing (2004), and a truly scandalous number of additional publications in social theory and sociology generally. These interviews were conducted on the 2nd and 30th of May 2006.

An Account of Immigration Studies in The United States and Canada, 1990–2004

The growth and proliferation of sociological immigration research has garnered sufficient attention to warrant a review and evaluation of the development of the field. This study took the first step by collecting detailed information about work published in the area of immigration research from major journals between 1990 and 2004. We explored three major areas: research topics addressed, theoretical frameworks employed, and population groups studied in the published literature. We compared the development of the field in the United States and Canada. The studies reveal several important patterns in the sociological publications of the United States and Canada. First, the topics studied and population groups included in the sociological publications on immigration are closely associated with the demographic and immigrant integration context of the country. Second, the publications as a whole show that in the development of immigration literature, researchers in the field are engaging in the general sociological theoretical discussion.

New publications in fiscal sociology

The essay has eight chapters. After the first chapter on the architectonics, i.e. on how to set the whole thing up, the second gets right to the core: welfare economics is a contradiction in terms: how can we speak of "welfare" if the purpose is achieved on the basis of coercion. An "enterprise-based public finance" provides the key to redoing the dilemma. Property is often thought of as necessarily private. Yet conventions of professional economists in the US take place in hotels (not motels).1 The point is that hotels provide next to private rooms commons, the defining feature and main point of distinction and competition. The analogy fits federal republics well but may frustrate colleagues working in such centralized environments as the Dutch or French. To top it, Chapter 3 covers parliamentary assemblies as "catallactical arenas".

A New Centrality Measure for Social Network Analysis Applicable to Bibliometric and Webometric Data

A fairly large number of publications in sociology, in computer science or in information sciences, as well as in studies of collaboration in science deal with the studies of social networks with unweighted ties because measures involving unweighted ties are easier to calculate. A few studies on networks with weighted ties have been conducted. Such studies not only need more complex formulas but also a process of quantification specially when quantitative empirical data are not directly available. The later are, however, directly available under the condition of using bibliometric or webometric data. Consequently, new complex measures of the degree centrality are introduced including weighted ties possible for use of the analysis of co-authorship or citation networks. Both co-authorship relations and citations are well-quantified data (weighted ties).

Trends in sociology titles

Recent reflections on the state of publications in sociology (Becker, 2003) suggest that article titles are getting longer. I test this hypothesis with data from ASR since inception and a wider sample of papers from Sociological Abstracts between 1963 and 1999. My results indicate a rapid and widespread increase in title length. Further analyses suggest that title length does not predict citation, suggesting that long titles are not an avenue for getting more readers.

Mitos coletivos, narrativas pessoais: cura ritual, trabalho terapêutico e emergência do sujeito nas culturas da "Nova Era"

Nos últimos anos, observa-se no cenário urbano brasileiro o cruzamento entre novas formas de espiritualidade e práticas terapêuticas alternativas. Diferentes denominações têm sido utilizadas para definir tais experiências. Diversas publicações antropológicas e sociológicas, porém, já convencionam tratar o fenômeno com a denominação geral de culturas da Nova Era. Neste texto, pretende-se realizar uma reflexão, do ponto de vista terapêutico, sobre este tipo de trabalho e também sobre o exercício espiritual, além dos procedimentos visando ao alívio e à cura dos males ou sintomas no interior desse universo. Questões como a noção de trabalho, o espaço e os comportamentos ritualísticos, o tempo ritual e o tempo terapêutico, a relação terapêutica, as performances narrativas, os mediadores simbólicos, a relação entre mitos coletivos e narrativas pessoais são discutidas e relacionadas aos significados deste tipo de trabalho. Observa-se que, no decorrer de cada processo de tratamento, o objeto da cura dá lugar ao indivíduo como um todo. Um dos sentidos do presente trabalho é o empoderamento do indivíduo e a emergência do sujeito.

Categorizing Urban Tasks: Functions of Museums In the Post‐Industrial City

ABSTRACTThis article is a result of a comprehensive and international literature review of corresponding sociological and urban studies publications on functions of museums in a city. A two‐dimensional taxonomy of functions is presented. In the first dimension, cities are considered in physical space (here labeled as Firstspace), mental space (Secondspace), and political space (Thirdspace). In the second dimension, museum functions are dichotomized in manifest functions that are intended and openly propagated, and latent functions that are hidden from the public and often unintended. This article will list examples for museum functions in First‐, Second‐, and Thirdspace from Europe and America. Museums shape cities, and are themselves shaped by cities in multiple ways.

MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY ? ISSUES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

More than half a century after its emergence as a formal field of study, medical sociology remains an important substantive area within our discipline, wide ranging in its appeal and the plethora of topics it engages. Tangible indicators, including the increase in the number of medical sociology journals and the number of medical sociology courses offered in colleges and universities across the country (Bloom 2000), point to the continued interest in this field. The vitality of medical sociology stems in part from the fact that today's health sector is an extraordinarily broad and vibrant arena of society (Weiss and Lonnquist 2000). Major topics of current interest have included the medicalization of society, sociocultural responses to health and illness, patterns of physician-patient interactions, health services utilization, alternative healers and alternative health practices, and comparative health care systems. The array of topics of analysis in our field continues to expand; recently emerging areas of interest include the social effects of health care technology, medical ethics, managed care, and health care reform. Indeed, it is an exciting time to be a medical sociologist. In the Call for Papers distributed for this special issue, we announced that we hoped to explore health- and illness-related topics that should continue to be influential into the new millennium. Further, we specifically encouraged submission of various formats and lengths not typically included in Sociological Spectrum or similar publications. Thus, this collection is unique in its conceptual essays, and methodological and theoretical notes. As suggested by the special issue's title, we hold a broadened view of medical sociology, a view also encouraged by scholars such as Conrad (2001), Weiss and Lonnquist (2000), and Charmaz and Paterniti (1999), that encompasses a sociology of health, healing and illness, as well as of medicine. Although not all inclusive, the organizational schema of the special issue reflects the broad range of topics that scholars who responded to our Call for Papers, our special issues reviewers, and we, as co-editors, considered particularly relevant to medical sociologists at this point in time.

The Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme: Contributions to Canadian Sociology

Abstract: The Aid to Scholarly Publication Programme (ASPP) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) has played a major role in the production of sociological research monographs in Canada. Here the Programme analysed and assessed for the magnitude and significance of participation in it by Canadian sociologists. Also highlighted are subsidized books of special importance; they constitute evidence of the critical role the Programme plays in developing Canadian sociology and advancing knowledge of key aspects of Canadian society. This leads to consideration of the future of monograph publishing in Canada. Resume: La contribution a la production des monographies sociologiques au Canada du programme d'aide a l'edition savante [much less than]PAES[much greater than] de la Federation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales [much less than]FCSHS[much greater than] a ete primordiale. Ici, j'analyse et j'evalue lampleur de la participation dans le programme des sociologues Canadiens. Aussi, j'identifie les livres subventionnes d une importance distincte; ils temoignent le role central du programme dans le developpement de la discipline. Ceci mene a la consideration de l'avenir au Canada de l'edition des monographies. The Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme (ASPP) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada has enormous import for Canadian sociology. Although impossible to conclusively demonstrate, it nevertheless likely that many, if not, most of the monographs it has subsidized would not have been released by a Canadian scholarly publishing outlet were it not for this program. The following analysis and assessment of ASPP-supported publications in sociology reveal that both francophone and anglophone sociologists owe a great deal to ASPP. Data supplied by the Programme also demonstrate that the sociological publications it has supported over the years have been highly varied; they have been quantitative and qualitative, theoretical and empirical, pure and applied, and have embraced a vast range of branches of the discipline. Recently, however, the Programme has fallen on hard times, precisely when its need has never been greater. This unhappy situation raises the spectre of possible dramatic declin e in Canada of the scholarly monograph in sociology as traditionally conceived of, accompanied by a likely increase in, among other things, such literary hybrids as monographs designed as course textbooks, referred to here as monotexts, and monographs written for the general public, referred to as popographs. The Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme: The Programme The ASPP directed by the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) with funds granted for this purpose by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). According to a recent brochure, the Programme is designed to assist the publication of works of advanced scholarship which make an important contribution to knowledge, but which are unlikely to be self-supporting. Scholarly monographs are by definition specialized, detailed research reports directed to specialists rather than the general public. Although ASPP has provided subventions to a large number of publishers, it noteworthy that it mainly scholarly presses rather than textbook publishers who have received them. In this regard, University of Toronto Press and McGill-Queen's University Press have published most of these works. Manuscripts in the various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences in both official languages are considered if they meet ASPP eligibility criteria. In general, only book-length manuscripts to be published in Canada written by an author normally resident in this country are eligible for consideration. Grants are given only for publication and marketing expenses and not for manuscript preparation of any kind. Manuscripts considered for subvention are evaluated by at least two reviewers selected by the Aid to Scholarly Publications, or ASP, Committee, typically in collaboration with a publishing house when it rather than the author submits the manuscript. …

A Response to Cherlin, Scanzoni, and Skolnick: Further Discussion of Balance, Accuracy, Fairness, Coverage, and Bias in Family Textbooks

I enjoyed reading all of the responses to my article, each being interesting for a different reason. Andrew Cherlin and I have little to debate. I downgraded his book (Cherlin, 1996) only on the criterion of coverage of crucial topics-the most subjective of the standards I used-and I agree with almost everything in his commentary. I was disappointed that his book ignores or treats lightly some of the family policy issues and child-related topics that I consider very important, but I may in some small way be responsible for his de-emphasis of some of those matters. When I reviewed the outline and sample chapters for McGraw-Hill, I said that active researchers and scholars such as Cherlin to have rather specialized interests and in a general textbook may tend to give short shrift to topics outside their areas of interest. . I doubt that this comment influenced Cherlin very much, but I regret writing it. His book would be stronger, in my opinion, if it were tilted more than it is toward his specialized interests, which include stepfamilies, the children of divorce, and similar topics. (I should have pointed out that his book does show more concern about problems in stepfamilies than any other textbook I reviewed.) One of Cherlin's statements needs to be corrected. To foster and strengthen a renewed `culture of marriage' is only one of several objectives of the Council on Families in America, and the report on marriage that Cherlin cites (Council on Families in America, 1996) is only one of a series of reports that will be issued by the Council. That this is my most important disagreement with Cherlin illustrates how closely I generally agree with his commentary. I heartily agree with Cherlin that what matters most in a textbook is whether or not it stimulates critical thought. Cherlin's book fares well in this respect, even though the reader is left with no doubt about the author's views, which are distinctly liberal. Most of the other books are much less balanced, being, intentionally or not, to a large extent arguments for orthodox liberal points of view on major family issues. Other perspectives generally fail to get a fair hearing. I appreciate Cherlin's discussion of the textbooks' treatment of differences between women's and men's behaviors-a topic I considered covering in my article but did not because of space limitations. The one-sided treatment of this topic in most of the sociology of the family textbooks is an embarrassment to the discipline of sociology. These and other unbalanced treatments of the topic in sociological publications contribute to a false image of sociologists that is widespread in the scientific community, namely, that we are dogmatic ideologues who use the mantle of science to further ideological and political agendas. The extreme social contructionist view of sex differences embraced by some sociologists and social psychologists deserves a fair hearing in the textbooks, but not to the exclusion of competing views. Whatever their personal beliefs may be, textbook authors should acknowledge the evidence that points toward an important contribution of nature to male-female differences. They should acknowledge and accurately summarize the dominant views among developmental psychologists who study sex differences, even though those views diverge substantially from the ones that prevail in sociology. However, even the books by authors who are not sociologists generally demonstrate no more than a superficial knowledge of the large literature on the psychology of sex differences. This deficiency illustrates one of the major problems with the way family textbooks are produced. Family social science is so broad that no one author can have in-depth knowledge of all of the topics that need to be covered. Although most of the best of the books I reviewed were written by one person, teams of authors from different disciplines, or at least with diverse specialized interests, might be able to produce textbooks superior to any of those now available. …

Statistical Inference for Apparent Populations

It is common in sociological publications to find statistical inference applied to datasets that are not samples in the usual sense. For the substantive issues being addressed, the data on hand are all the data there are. No additional data could be collected, even in principle. In this paper, we call the complete set of all units comprising such datasets an apparent population. Consider the following examples.

Eco‐Sociology: Inside and outside of the cocoon

Abstract The present article examines how American and German sociological theories deal with the concept of nature and with environmental problems. The results of an analysis of professional sociological publications are presented. Various conceptions of sociological theorists are discussed focussing on nature and environmental problems. It is argued that the social sciences and the mass media are becoming more and more intertwined, increasingly coming to comprise ‘parallel systems of meaning production’ (Gamson and Modgliani, 1989). The basic cultural orientations (subsystems) determine how the concept of nature is discussed. It is suggested to investigate how different conceptions of nature are used in social actions and social situations.

Regularity in the Distribution of Alcohol Consumption

The first association of the word deviance is usually not to high blood pressure, overweight and excessive salt consumption, as in the title of Rose and Day (1990). In sociology, deviance is a social construct, referring to behaviours that society regards as undesirable, abnormal, or antisocial (directed aggressively towards or indifferently away from other people). In most cases, deviant behaviour can be distinguished in a qualitative way from 'normal' behaviour, in the sense that people easily recognize or identify it. Criminal conduct, illicit drug use and prostitution, but also divorce and suicide, are examples of deviant behaviour as can be found in sociological publications. Generally, it is negatively valued and regarded destructive for the individual or for society. Often it is rooted in the subculture. Alcoholism or excessive drinking has much in common with this meaning of deviance. However, since most adults in western society drink alcoholic beverages in one way or another, recognition of deviant drinking behaviour is not as easy as in drug use or criminal behaviour (Robins, 1975). The question of what is a normal or social drinking habit and what constitutes abuse or alcoholism has bothered western society for centuries. In modern times, two main views on this issue have dominated the field. One asserts a qualitative difference between normal and pathological drinking behaviour, with little or no association between a general level of consumption and the number of alcoholics or the number of problems in society caused by excessive drinking (the socalled disease model). The other view, an epidemiological model, stresses that the whole population is at risk of experiencing the negative consequences of drinking, owing to an alleged regularity in distribution of consumption and a resulting close connection between mean consumption and excessive drinking. This latter singlepopulation model will be the focus of this paper. First, a brief description of the single-distribution model is given, together with problems of measurement and estimation. At the end some of the implications for prevention are discussed. As an explanation for the regional variations in liver cirrhosis mortality in France, the epidemiologist Ledermann (1956, 1964) proposed a close connection between average consumption and excessive use, and he set out to model this relationship statistically. Using several data sets from France and abroad, he arrived at a lognormal distribution model with a fixed relation between the mean and dispersion parameter. Knowledge of the total volume allowed for the estimation of prevalence of

GENDER AND PUBLISHING IN SOCIOLOGY

As in other fields, scholarly publication in sociology is not only the key to career success but also the route by which feminist analyses and perspectives become known to others in the discipline. A growing literature has analyzed women's and men's rates of publication, but the gender politics of the prepublication production of research and gender differences in reputation building after publication remain underexplored. This report reviews the current state of knowledge about sociological publishing at three phases: prepublication, the publication-seeking phase, and postpublication. It concludes with critical questions to be addressed in developing a comprehensive model of gender effects on sociological publishing.

Are sociologists’ publications uncited? Citation rates of journal articles, chapters, and books

Critics argue that few sociological publications are cited in the subsequent literature and that this implies many are superfluous. Data on the number of citations to three kinds of sociological documents—journal articles, chapters in edited books, and books—show that a substantial majority of each type is cited in the subsequent literature. Furthermore, the high proportions of ever-cited items do not result from authors’ citation of their own work. Average citation levels of journals are highly correlated with other measures of journal stature. The average book is cited about as often as an average article in a highly-cited journal, while an average chapter in an edited book is cited about as often as an average article in an infrequently-cited journal. Within-journal variation in article citation rates far exceeds between-journal variation.

A plea for emphasis on quality rather than quantity in sociological publications

A plea for emphasis on quality rather than quantity in sociological publications

Mezőgazdasági termelőszövetkezetek érdekeltsége természetföldrajzi adottságaik hasznosításában

The illusion that organizational and technical modernization would minimalize the impacts of natural factors on agricultural production has been ruled out by the mid-1970s. The results of Hungarian agriculture achieved so far and its role in exports have increased the importance of the reserves still available in the ecological potential of agriculture. The paper calls the attention to the fact that adaptation to natural endowments does not only depend on the use of proper methods for evaluating physical factors or optimal geographical distribution of agricultural production but first of all on how much production units (state- and co-operative farms and individual farmers) are interested in this. In the first part of the paper the author draws a conceptual outline based on available economic and sociological publications, of the impacts of socio-economic environment, influenced by the economic mechanism and the local system of interests, on the attitude of agricultural co-operatives to natural endowments. The second part summarizes the findings of two case studies made in two co-operatives with very different nautral endowments. The last part contains the author's conclusions drawn from a comparison between the results of the conceptual analysis and the empirical findings.