Sociological Questions Research Articles

Contextual Origins of Black-White Educational Disparities in the 21st Century: Evaluating Long-Term Disadvantage Across Three Domains

AbstractHow much do black-white educational disparities reflect differences in family, school, and neighborhood contexts? We use 16 years of statewide student administrative data from Michigan to update this classic sociological question with attention to observed racial differences in the duration of exposure to contextual disadvantage. We show that a longitudinal measure of family economic disadvantage explains significantly more of the black-white gap in test scores, high school completion, and college entry than a cross-sectional measure commonly used in education research. Racial differences in school context—much more than differences in neighborhood context—explain a large portion of remaining black-white educational disparities. Controlling for black-white differences in exposure to disadvantage across all three contexts reduces 8th and 11th grade test score gaps by over 60% and completely reverses educational attainment gaps, revealing a black net advantage. Our results demonstrate the need to incorporate longitudinal measures in educational administrative data and suggest that schools play a substantial role, after family disadvantage, in the persistence of racial educational inequality. More broadly, our study amplifies the argument that undoing systemic racism will require a confrontation with the deep contextual roots of black-white inequality in the 21st century.

Socio-economic aspects of potential migrants of the mountainous region of Adjaria

Maintenance of the optimum quantity of population in mountainous regions of the world and management of migration processes are among urgent matters. The problem is so difficult that it requires a complex study and foresees regional originalities. Therefore, the main objective of the research is to study the aims and factors involving potential migrants in possible migration processes, based on the example of Georgia, in particular on the example of the mountainous region of Adjaria. The research was mainly based on sociological questioning and an in-depth interview method, by which a comparison of surveys conducted in the Soviet period and in independent Georgia as well as a comparison of quantitative and qualitative properties of migration processes were performed. As a result of the research, it was concluded that main reasons causing potential migration processes in the modern period are not social, but economic and ecological factors. Besides, in different social groups, geographical originalities of trends of expected migration processes were found. Therefore, events managing the expected migration processes are set, which would bear huge importance for working out the country’s migration policy and efficiently fulfilling municipal programs.

On the universality of medical device regulations: the case of Benin

BackgroundRegulatory frameworks surrounding medical devices (MDs) and medical locations are of utter importance for safeguarding patients and users, and for granting a universal access to healthcare.Currently, as the main existing regulatory frameworks are drafted by high-income countries, they pretend to be general and applicable globally, but fail to understand particular contexts, specifically those in low-resource settings (LRSs), resulting, therefore, inapplicable. In particular, LRSs present a varied situation, with legal transplants of guidelines from their previous colonial regimes. This apparently theoretical issue, is, effectively, a tangible and rising matter of concern, given the ever-increasing number of MD patent applications per year, as well as the appearance of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) on the MD market itself.This article will focus on the European Regulation on MDs 745/2017 and its applicability in LRSs, specifically presenting the case of Benin, a Sub-Saharan African country.MethodsThis work is based on a field study conducted in 2019 in Benin, which is particularly exemplar to show the complexity of the “legal transplantation” concept. A multidisciplinary approach, comprising the standard tools and methods of ethics, law, and biomedical engineering, was used to draft a heuristic hermeneutic framework, and to analyse related bioethical issues concerning Medical Device Regulations (MDRs) in LRSs, the role of Maintenance, and other sociological questions; as well as the rural population’s perception on MDs and health technologies, and the role of ethics in the hospitals of LRSs.ResultsThe definition of these themes helped approach the local perspective and define the research questions. Downstream of the analysis of the Medical Devices Regulations, the Maintenance and other bioethical issues in Benin, the heuristic hermeneutic framework was created to guide a shift in the paradigm of law and regulation making, so as to make them more contextualised and inclusive, globally.ConclusionThis article proposes a framework that will help policymakers take into account the particularism of each context, especially those of the most vulnerable countries, when drafting and issuing regulatory frameworks, promoting an ever-evolving model of universalism.

Collaborative playbuilding and the act of crystallization

Collaborative playbuilding is an emerging arts-based research design that uses playwriting and playbuilding as tools of inquiry for artists and researchers to investigate sociological questions, dealing with such matters as racial and class conflict, youth offenders, school safety, stereotypes of urban teenage girls, women and obesity, and social justice. Researchers use the design to generate and disseminate data; however, the literature reveals a lack of studies that show how the playbuilding process – the actual structuring and crafting of the performance script – can be used as a primary means of data analysis. In this article, I discuss my study, in which I used collaborative playbuilding to investigate why some African Americans leave the Black Church and choose not to return. I argue that although I conducted my research using traditional qualitative methods (i.e. interviews, questionnaires, observations and a focus group), I relied on the playbuilding process to serve as an act of crystallization, which provided me with creative distance to analyse the narrative data in interesting ways, yielding findings not previously seen in the literature and thus supporting the efficacy of the arts-based design.

General characteristics of modern Spanish national newspapers: a brief overview of electronic publications

The subject of this study is the essence and characteristics of the order and process of digitalization of national newspapers in Spain from the point of view of readers' opinions. The purpose of the study is to systematize the most relevant characteristics of the electronic versions of the leading Spanish newspapers from the standpoint of their attractiveness to the reader. The methodology of this study is based on a systematic approach and includes the following methods: analysis of scientific literature on the research topic; content analysis of electronic publications of leading Spanish newspapers; the method of sociological questioning (mini-survey); the method of statistical analysis; the method of comparative analysis for subsequent systematization of the results of empirical research. As a result of the study, the following results were obtained: the level of digital comfort of each publication for readers was revealed based on the data obtained from a mini-survey according to the criteria selected by the author. The scope of application of the research results includes such areas as political journalism, international journalism, digital journalism. The novelty of the research lies in the methodology proposed by the author for analyzing and systematizing the characteristics of national Spanish newspapers. The author of the article came to the following conclusions: the electronic editions of modern Spanish newspapers are characterized by an average level of digital comfort, which is due to the lack of adequate feedback and a differentiated subscription system.

Principles of journalistic ethics in the publications of Spanish newspapers (on the example of "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia")

The subject of this study is the implementation of the principles of journalistic ethics in modern Spanish newspapers. The purpose of the study is to identify the level of compliance with journalistic ethics in the publications of the newspapers "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia". The author notes that the greatest compliance with the principles of professional ethics is noted by readers of the newspaper "ABC". The research methodology is based on a systematic approach and includes the following methods: analysis of scientific literature on the research topic; content analysis of publications "ABC", "El Pais", "El Mundo", "La Vanguardia"; method of sociological questioning (mini-survey); method of statistical analysis; method of comparative analysis of the obtained results. As a result of this study, we obtained the following results: the level of compliance with the principles of journalistic ethics of each newspaper was revealed based on the data obtained from a mini-survey among Spanish-speaking readers. The areas of application of the results can be such as "ethics of professional activity", "political journalism", "international journalism". The novelty of this study lies in the methodology proposed by the author for analyzing the level of compliance with the principles of journalistic ethics. The author of the article came to the following conclusions: modern Spanish newspapers are characterized by a high level of compliance with journalistic ethics, except for the newspaper "La Vanguardia" (average level according to readers).

Institutions: a promising topic insufficiently clarified

The basic question of sociology is what sets of rules and order are used in society and how they are maintained. One possible answer is based on the concept of institutions, which still provokes theoretical discussions due to, among other things, a certain ambiguity, since the term ‘institution’ is, figuratively speaking, shrouded in a kind of fog that prevents it from being captured in any direct, clear way. Today, ambitions of philosophy, political science, anthropology or mathematical game theory, which try to solve this problem outside the sociological framework, contribute to the deepening of the ambiguities surrounding the concept of institutions. Some approaches tend to define institutions as a cyber black box with inputs and outputs, whose working remains largely hidden (especially philosophical and mathematical approaches strive to find some common universal principle or even mathematical formula). From the perspective of general sociological theory, the article considers the topic of institutions. The author identifies this topic as a central issue that needs to be reconsidered in sociology. The starting point of the article is the analysis of concepts related to the topic, their definitions and paradigmatic integration. In the following part, the author considers the theoretical interpretations in the works of Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, John Searle, and the concepts inspired by game theories and rational behaviour theories. After that, ten basic issues of the current approaches are identified. The author pays particular attention to the fact that methodological individualism tends to dominate, which explains the ignorance of certain issues, especially of a holistic and macro-social nature, thus, leading to some problematic simplifications. The article shows what needs to be changed in the current social-scientific thinking on institutions in order to develop a more appropriate starting point for the further development of sociological theory.

Risk Tourism Within Viral Society: A Study Using Hybrid Discourse Analysis

In recent decades, sociologist Ulrich Beck (1992) has been warning about the risk society in which we operate today, which includes risks that are not only conjunctural but essentially structural, such as pollution and global warming. Recently, contemporaneity faces a new serious risk, the pandemic caused by COVID-19, which seems to be transforming our social formations into a viral society. In order to understand these social processes and sociological questions, the present text draws attention to one of the most relevant social and intercultural mediations in the current social framework, the articulation between the coronavirus pandemic and tourist activities. A case study deals here with the discourse produced about such themes by digital social network Wikipedia. This study is contextualized by theoretical and practical reflections from tourism studies and supported by ideas such as “viral risk” and “viral risk tourism”. A sample of content extracted from Wikipedia is analyzed and interpreted through a qualitative and quantitative method developed by the author, named “hybrid discourse analysis”, which uses, among other interpretive tools, the “alphabet of interconceptual relations”.

TO SEE A FREE MAN AND DIE? SPECIFICS OF SHARED ADHERENCE TO VALUES IN UKRAINIAN SOCIETY

The aim of this paper is to reveal the general line of sociological research questions in authors’ theoretical, methodical, and analytical developments during the 2019-2020 period. That line was related to values, moral, and social approval, as well as typification search, since authors methodically looked for clusters of opinions. The paper focuses on socially relevant cultural phenomena and processes that seem purely routine, but affect the deep foundations of socialisation in Ukrainian society. The formation and choice of values in Ukrainian society does not appear to be a comprehensive process, as it seems at first glance – they are complex, and not easy to predict. The paper identifies the dominant stereotypes about values, obligations, and information consumption in Ukrainian society, and answers three main questions: whom did Ukrainians approve by the choice of values; which moral dilemmas’ decisions were Ukrainians willing to approve themselves; and whom did Ukrainians need approval from by assessing the veracity of information.

Scale, context, and heterogeneity: the complexity of the social space

The social space refers to physical or virtual places where people interact with one another. It decisively influences the emergence of human behaviors. However, little is known about the nature and complexity of the social space, nor its relationship to context and spatial scale. Recently, the science of complex systems has bridged between fields of knowledge to provide quantitative responses to fundamental sociological questions. In this paper, we analyze the shifting behavior of social space in terms of human interactions and wealth distribution across multiple scales using fine-grained data collected from both official (US Census Bureau) and unofficial data sources (social media). We use these data to unveil how patterns strongly depend upon the observation scale. Therefore, it is crucial for any analysis to be framed within the appropriate context to avoid biased results and/or misleading conclusions. Biased data analysis may lead to the adoption of fragile and poor decisions. Including context and a proper understanding of the spatial scale are essential nowadays, especially with the pervasive role of data-driven tools in decision-making processes.

The politics of the urban green: Class, morality and attachments to place

Local urban greenspaces connect issues close to everyday life, such as recreational value, attachment to place and civic engagements, with broader questions of city planning, economy, climate change and social class. Responding to recent warnings against reductionism in critical studies of cities’ new claims to sustainability, the article mobilizes the recent ‘moral turn’ in the Bourdieusian literature on classed politics to explore these interlacing layers and themes in the politics of the urban green and to relate them to broader sociological questions about morality and politics. Based on a national survey among urban dwellers in Denmark designed specifically for this purpose, the analysis reveals a space of local urban greenspaces issues in two dimensions contrasting, respectively, (a) concerns for nature versus economy and (b) preference for planning versus grassroots modes of governance. Further analysis reveals a homology with social class and with more abstract political attitudes on how to square environmental and economic sustainability. However, the space of issues also displays traits unique to local urban greenspaces, while different positions in the space correlate with different combinations of personal attachment and civic engagement. In mapping the politics of the urban green along these lines, the article suggests new analytical avenues for moral-political sociology more broadly.

Penyebab Sulitnya Siswa Menjawab Soal HOTS dalam Pembelajaran Sosiologi di Kelas XI IPS SMAN 1 Batang Kapas Pesisir Selatan

This article was written to find out the cause of the difficulty of students answering the HOTS questions in learning sociology in class XI IPS at SMAN 1 Batang Kapas, Pesisir Selatan. This type of research uses qualitative methods with the type of case study research. The criteria for informants in this study were students of class XI IPS and sociology teachers in class XI IPS at SMAN 1 Batang Kapas. The informant selection technique in this study used purposive sampling. This study discusses that, the cause of the difficulty of students answering HOTS questions is caused by (1) Students Do not Understand the Material. Interviews with several students obtained information that they did not understand the material because of the difficulty of the teacher's teaching method, either because the teacher was difficult to understand, the delivery of the material was not good or the teacher was too quick to teach the material in the learning process. Another thing based on observations can be found the cause of difficulty understanding the material because they are not serious in learning. This can be seen from the attitude of those who watch while studying and some are related to other students. Students' disinterest in learning is caused by teachers who teach a lot using the lecture method so that students become bored and students' thinking skills are not honed. The cause of teachers who use the lecture method a lot is due to the lack of training that can be related to HOTS learning and about HOTS, so that the experience of teachers about HOTS is still relatively low and (2) Students Do not Understand Question Commands. Based on interviews, information was obtained that the reason why students did not understand the instructions about their reasons was never discussed by the teacher about what HOTS questions were and what were the requirements for a HOTS question. This is permitted by the teacher where the teacher only gives HOTS questions to students, the HOTS questions given are also still few so that students are not used to it and do not only answer the HOTS questions that are tested on them. This happened because teachers did not receive training on HOTS, besides that the comprehension ability of class XI IPS students could be said to be still in the lower middle class, which was also confirmed by the Sociology teacher.

Self-assessment of health status and its relationship with psychological and sociocultural values in elderly residents of Petrozavodsk

AIM: To analyze the relationship between the subjective assessment of their health status by elderly citizens of Petrozavodsk and the indicators of their personal and sociocultural values.
 MATERIAL AND METHODS: Psychological characteristics, leisure activity, and subjective assessment of the health of 411 elderly people were studied through medical and sociological questioning. These people consisted of residents of the city of Petrozavodsk (men: 32.6% [n=134]; women: 67.4% [n=277]). The average age of the respondents was 64.436.57 years.
 RESULTS: Elderly citizens have predominantly internal personal characteristics: responsibility (48.42%), diligence (41.36%), and accuracy (35,04% of respondents). Responsibility (p=0.021) and accuracy (p=0.017) significantly dominate in women, and courage (p=0.001), purposefulness (p=0.002), and efficiency in business (p=0.043) dominate in men. The prioritized ways of organizing their free time are passive forms: communicating with friends and relatives (24.09%), watching TV (20.68%), and reading (17.76% of respondents). Gender specificity is determined only in the following positions: visiting exhibitions and theater and concert performances (p=0.044), reading (p=0.008), and communication (p=0.041), with a predominance of women. A satisfactory subjective assessment of the health status of older Petrozavodsk residents is in direct proportion to their sociocultural values and is not associated with their psychological values.
 CONCLUSIONS: Among the elderly of Petrozavodsk, a satisfactory subjective assessment of the state of health has a healthy significantly positive correlation with sociocultural values in the absence of a statistically significant relationship with their psychological characteristics. Responsibility, diligence, and accuracy are the leading psychological characteristics of the elderly residents of Petrozavodsk. At the same time, responsibility and accuracy prevail in women, but courage, determination, and efficiency in business prevail in men. The most frequent activities older people engage in during their free time are live communication, watching TV shows, and reading. Gender specificity can be traced only in the positions of visiting exhibition and theater and concert productions, reading, and live communication. These preferences prevail in women. The revealed trends of personal properties and sociocultural characteristics are associated with the health status of elderly people. These trends may be in demand for the construction of population strategies for medical, psychological, pedagogical, and social rehabilitation among this age cohort of the population. These strategies aim to prevent diseases and improve the quality of life within the framework of the concept of successful aging.

ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ СТРЕСОВИХ ЧИННИКІВ У РОБОТІ ПРАЦІВНИКІВ ЗА ДОПОМОГОЮ НОРМУВАННЯ ПРАЦІ

The questions related to warning of stress factors’ strengthening in the workplace by means of rationing of labor s are investigated in the article. Realization of the sociological questioning by the Ukrainian platform of Gradus Research and Advisory Board, set that over 70% polled are in permanent stress. The ponderable factor of stress are professional difficulties in the workplace. It is considered to distribute professional stress on six categories by factors: personal, physical, social, description tasks, structural, role-play. In accordance with the questioning of “Deloitte” company the most stressful factors for respondents are the amount of work (overload, overstrain) and vagueness with the pandemic of Covid-19 ‒ production reorganization, passing to remote work or change of work terms. The least stress for the workers of the enterprise is the relationship with colleagues, organization management, using of out-of-date technique and technologies of decision making indicators. The research of different generations’ answers (Y, Z) in relation to mental health in working environment in the edge of the whole world and Ukraine is analyzed. By means of application of the methods of rationing of labor of business hours’ photo and time-study it is possible to discover or warn the stress factors’ strengthening in workers at the workplace. The photo of business hours allows watching the implementation of productive operation and setting the factors that influence on the worker, worsening of his behavior and labour discipline, his emotional attitude of different types of production tasks, to watch lances of overload and tiredness during the working day. The factors of direct and indirect influence on forming and use of stress management systems was offered by M.F. Honchar are analyzed. It is considered that the stress management system of the enterprise needed to be equated to management of pessimistic variant that will take into account possible problems and threats, and how to follow them for the removal of unfavorable consequences. Events in relation to the development of stress management system and introduction of wellbeing-programs in activity of the enterprise are offered.

THE INFLUENCE OF MAX WEBER ON THE REPRESENTA-TIONS OF JOSEPH SCHUMPETER ON THE RATIONALIZA-TION OF LIFE UNDER CAPITALISM: SOCIOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS

The article discusses sociological and political questions about the influence of M. Weber on I. Schumpeter’s view of the rationalization of life under capitalism, which have not yet been studied in the scientific literature. The article focuses on the social and political views of M. Weber and his influence on I. Schumpeter, as well as on the rationalization of life under capitalism of the 19th-20th centuries. The article notes that I. Schumpeter showed the elitism of any democracy and joined M. Weber’s thesis that politics encompasses all activities of independent exercise of power and leadership. Capitalist lifestyle means rationalizing and calculating everything. However, the article also focuses on discussion issues.

Catholicism in Context: Religious Practice in Latin America

A critical problem to study Catholicism in the context of Latin American modernity, is that the conceptual tools we use to study religion were designed to understand the transformations that modernity provoked in European religiosity. Studies on the religion of Latin Americans have largely explored the religiosity of the population through surveys that measure attendance, adherence and affiliation. While some anthropologists have explored religious practices among particular groups, we do not know how ordinary, urban Latin Americans practice religion. To fill this gap, a group of researchers from Boston College, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Catholic University of Córdoba, and Catholic University of Uruguay, funded by the John Templeton Foundation conducted between 2015 and 2018 a study of religion as practiced by Latin Americans in their daily lives. We saw that the transformations brought about by modernity at the social and personal level have affected religious traditions and organizations as well as the ways in which people live their religiosity. Religious sources have been pluralized, and religious practices are diverse and occur everywhere. There are no “exclusive” secular or religious spaces, objects or times; religious practices are not circumscribed to “the religious.” This way of living religion among respondents, poses future questions for sociology and religious institutions.

Connected education and the co-construction of knowledge in a joint course for law and interpreting students

This article raises questions of education sociology with a focus on one of its core concepts: connectedness. It relates the dimensions of the connected curriculum to research on didactic approaches, showing how methods of connected learning and the co-construction of knowledge can be applied at different levels to enable students to gain subject-related, methodological and transdisciplinary communicative competence in addition to building relationships and cooperation among them across fields of study. These dimensions are presented using the example of the course “Questioning techniques from the perspective of criminology and interpreting”. During this course, students of law and interpreting had the opportunity to acquire both core theoretical knowledge of and practical experience in questioning techniques. This they did through role playing the questioning of defendants and witnesses that typically occurs in a courtroom from the perspective of both criminology and interpreting. The evaluation and feedback showed that the law and the interpreting students appreciated the way the course made them aware of issues in both their own and the other field, helped them to connect academic learning to professional competences and gave them insights into interprofessional cooperation in interpreted legal settings.

Armed Conflict and Religious Adherence Across Countries: A Time Series Analysis

AbstractA fundamental question in the comparative sociology of religion is: What are the drivers of cross-national differences in religiosity? The existential insecurity argument raises the expectation of higher levels of religiosity in contexts of social crisis. We test this argument against countries’ armed conflict experiences, employing global longitudinal data on religious adherence over almost half a century. We did not find evidence of religious revival when measuring the consequences of armed conflict with a 5-year lag, indicating that armed conflict-related social crises do not tend to lead to sudden changes in the religious adherence of a country. However, we did find more consistent indications of a higher proportion of religious people when using accumulated measurements of armed conflict, highlighting the importance of investigating the armed conflict history of a country when assessing its religious consequences. Our results show that countries with a more devastating experience of armed conflict tend to present higher proportions of religious adherence in comparison with countries with a less devastating armed conflict history. We concluded that armed conflict tends to partially drive religious persistence in societies that have experienced it, and that the pace at which this takes place is gradual rather than immediate.

The sociological landscape of youth confinement

AbstractThis article examines key sociological questions that are raised by the confinement of children and young people. Globally, there are approximately one million children held in confinement, and there is an emerging body of qualitative sociological research in this area. This article examines the role that social constructions of childhood innocence and evil play in shaping the processes of protection and removal, and how these constructions play a role in mediating state strategies of punishment and rehabilitation. The article also draws from an emerging body of qualitative sociological research to examine the role of youth confinement institutions in socializing vulnerable young people.

The pharmaceuticalisation of life? A fictional case report of insomnia with a thought experiment

BackgroundThe safety of sleeping pills has increased dramatically during the last 100 years, from barbiturates to bensodiazepines to modern day so-called Z-drugs.MethodsThe circumstances of prescribing sleeping pills in the early 20th century are illustrated by summarizing the main storyline of a novel by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. This is followed by a thought experiment and a theoretical discussion.ResultsIn his 1937 novel Sömnlös (Swedish for sleepless) Vilhelm Moberg portrayed existential and relational distress in relation to insomnia. In a thought experiment, past progresses in sleeping pills safety are projected into the future. Thereby, it is claimed that important issues in the area of philosophy of medicine come to the fore. This leads to a theoretical discussion about broader questions concerning the role of the physician, the goals of medicine (as described by Lennart Nordenfelt), the concept of pharmaceuticalisation (as described notably by sociologist of sleep Simon J. Williams and co-workers), and health enhancement (c.f. Carl Elliott and the alleged wish to be better than well).ConclusionInsomnia is a prism through which important philosophical and sociological questions related to the practice of medicine can be asked.