Sociology Conferred Research Articles

Контекст и ключевые вопросы современного осмысления образов городов будущего: обзор конференции

The organizer of the section «Image of the Future of Russian Cities», which took place on May 26, 2023 in Moscow as part of the program of the XIII International Grushin Sociological Conference, was the Foundation «Moscow Center for Urban Studies «City» and the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of the Orel State University named after I.S. Turgenev. The section was the first attempt to discuss the topic of «the image of the future of cities» within the framework of an interdisciplinary approach with the participation of representatives of various fields of knowledge: philosophers, sociologists, historians, economists, architects, specialists in urbanism and tourism development of territories. Within the framework of the section, a presentation of monographs took place: “The Image of the Future” (I. V. Zheltikova), “Modern Theories of the City” (I. A. Vershinina), “Improvement of the Urban Environment” (A. N. Raskhodchikov).

In conversation: Bishop Black and Alexa Vachon on representation, knowing, and making (together)

Selections from Alexa Vachon’s series S/KIN BERLIN 52.49° N, 13.42° E were featured in the ‘What is an Image’ digital exhibition curated by Visual Studies co-editor Kate Korroch for the 2022 International Visual Sociology Conference (What is an image? is available to view online until 18 September 2023. https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/10672487/what-is-an-image). One of Vachon’s photographs of the artist and performer Bishop Black is the cover image for this issue featuring materials from the conference, roundtable, and artists’ panel. In the spirit of continued discussion for this issue, Vachon and Black spoke about the process of making S/KIN BERLIN. The following text is an edited transcript of a phone conversation between Vachon and Black. It took place on February 6th, 2023.

Aspecte ale relației maestru - discipol: Dimitrie Gusti și Mircea Vulcănescu

The present text analyzes some cultural aspects of the master-disciple relationship between Dimitrie Gusti and Mircea Vulcănescu. Insist especially on the topicality of Gustian sociology while taking Mircea Vulcănescu’s receiver. Mircea Vulcănescu’s discipleship starts with the coordination of the bachelor’s degree in sociology by Professor Dimitrie Gusti, and then continues with the writing of other studies. Participation in sociological campaigns field, seminars and sociology conferences will follow afterwards. The present study also has the interpretation that the disciple Mircea Vulcănescu gives to the sociological system of the declared teacher Dimitrie Gusti. The precise references are to the Aristotelian substrate of the relation between possibility and actuality, reflected by Dimitrie Gusti in the relation between cadres and manifestations; to the social will understood as an original expression of the voluntarism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; to the archetypal character of the four Gustavian cadres; to Gusti’s sociological system defined as “system of social philosophy”. In this sense, Dimitrie Gusti’s system does not exclude science. On the contrary, it includes it in the sense of “sufficient reason” of all those existing in social life. Finally, I illustrated the importance of the social phenomenology practiced by Mircea Vulcănescu in the field sociological campaigns coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti with two classic examples and one current one. The first two refer to the analysis of a magico-religious phenomenon (the enchantment) and to the subtleties of the speculative vocation of the Romanian reflected linguistically. The present example is an attempt, partially original, to interpret in the spirit of the phenomenology proposed by Vulcănescu certain forms of popular culture that illustrate the non-canonical power of evil in Romanian history. At the limit, these fantasies of the efficacy of evil could more deeply explain the suspicion and distrust of Romanians.

(Не)знакомое детство глазами детей, родителей, исследователей ((Not) Familiar Childhood through the Eyes of Children, Parents, Researchers)

Russian Abstract: Статья посвящена обзору секции по проблемам социологического осмысления детства, проходившей 1 июня 2020 года в рамках X Грушинской социологической конференции. В работе секции приняли участие российские и белорусские специалисты, занимающиеся изучения различных аспектов современного детства. Выступающими были сделаны акценты на вопросах благополучия ребенка в дошкольном учреждении, проанализировано отношение к дистанционному образованию у школьников и детей, проживающих в интернатах, восприятия пространственной среды, окружающей ребенка, его реальное и ожидаемое на примере проведения каникул. На основе вторичного анализа данных и интервью с родителями обсуждались проблемы трансформации детско-родительских отношений, факторов, оказывающих наибольшее влияние на это. Значительное внимание уделено методическим особенностям проведения исследований и доступа к полю в ситуациях, когда дети до 18 лет являются информантами. Показано многообразие и особенности использования методов при изучении детей – индивидуальные интервью, фокус-группы, интервью-игры, он-лайн интервьюирование и анкетирование, анализ документов, таких как детские сочинения, рисунки, анализ фотографий. Ряд выступлений основывался на результатах исследования восприятия детства с помощью ретроспективных интервью с молодежью. Этот метод позволил выделить системообразующие элементы взросления в современном обществе, а также провести сравнительный анализ трансформаций детства у разных поколений. Представлены рекомендации по специфики проведения социологических исследований в сфере детства. English Abstract: The article is devoted to the review of the section on the problems of sociological understanding of childhood, held on June 1, 2020 in the framework of the X Grushinsky sociological conference. The section was attended by Russian and Belarusian specialists who study various aspects of modern childhood. The speakers focused on the issues of child welfare in preschool institutions, analyzed the attitude to distance education among schoolchildren and children living in boarding schools, perception of the spatial environment surrounding the child, its real and expected on the example of holidays. Based on secondary data analysis and interviews with parents, the problems of transformation of child-parent relations and the factors that have the greatest impact on this were discussed. Considerable attention is paid to the methodological features of research and access to the field in situations where children under 18 are informants. It shows the variety and features of using methods for studying children – individual interviews, focus groups, interview games, online interviewing and questionnaires, analysis of documents such as children's essays, drawings, and photo analysis. A number of presentations were based on the results of research on the perception of childhood through retrospective interviews with young people. This method allowed us to identify the system-forming elements of growing up in modern society, as well as to conduct a comparative analysis of childhood transformations in different generations. Recommendations on the specifics of conducting sociological research in the field of childhood are presented.

Social Change, Concepts and Policy: on the 14th European Sociological Association Conference

Social Change, Concepts and Policy: on the 14th European Sociological Association Conference

НЕМОСКВА: практики управления на основе социологических данных в регионах. По материалам секции на IХ Грушинской социологической конференции

Материал не аннотирован.
 Благодарность. Авторы выражают благодарность Программному комитету IX Грушинской социологической конференции и лично Наталье Седовой, руководителю Департамента науки и образования ВЦИОМ, заместителю председателя Программного комитета, за внимание к проблеме и предоставленную возможность обсудить ее на конференции.

Reflections on Questions of Race, Nation, and Revolution [Plenary Address, 2017 AHS Annual Meeting

Issues of racism, nationalism, and revolution are at the core of the humanist struggle for social justice. This article, initially a plenary address at the historic 2017 Association for Humanist Sociology Conference in Havana Cuba, presents a series of guiding questions on these issues for progressive scholars and activists in these troubled times.

Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber's Calling by Thomas Kemple (review)

Book Reviews 301© Max Weber Studies 2017. (Stefan Breuer), prophets and prophecy (Bernhard Lang, Riesebrodt), asceticism (Hubert Treiber), and mysticism (Volkhard Krech), all of which would have been relevant for Buss’s work. There is no doubt that one cannot take into consideration all of the important literature on Weber’s sociology of religion, but these omissions seem striking. The book does have many positive attributes. For the most part, Buss’s explanations are relatively clear and free from technical terms and jargon. The book is clearly structured so that one can choose to focus on one major section of the book or to read to the work as a whole. And while Buss’s presentation of Christianity may seem shaky at times, it appears that he knows an impressive amount regarding many other religions. The Economic Ethics of World Religions and their Laws may not have so much to offer to the Weber scholar, but it does have much to give to the student who wishes to gain a proper overview of the various economic ethics that make up Weber’s comparative sociology of religion. Christopher Adair-Toteff University of South Florida Thomas Kemple, Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), xiv + 266 pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-1137 -37713-5. $110.00. Thomas Kemple’s book ostensibly concerns Weber’s two well-known vocation lectures, delivered in 1917 and 1919, as well as a less known and earlier ‘talk’, namely Weber’s reply from the floor to Sombart’s address on ‘Technology and Culture’ presented to the German Society for Sociology conference in 1910. It does not matter that the last of these bears little relation to the vocation lectures in structure, purpose or context, because Kemple is concerned with an extrinsic concern of his own making, not Weber’s; namely, an exploration of ‘speech acts’ as sites of intellectual engagement as read through Weber’s performances as orator. In pursuing this theme, Weber’s charisma as a person and as a public persona is core to Kemple’s account of value freedom in Weber, and paradoxically the values underlying it, and also rationality as a trope of discourse. Kemple does not find the intellectual apparatus required to execute this fascinating and more-orless behind the scenes forensic excursion into Weber’s rhetoric style in Weber himself, but in an array of culture analysts who are brought to bear on Weber’s own assessment of classical and contemporary 302 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2017. thinkers. The result is terse, dense, difficult, and at times obscure, as well as perceptive, enlightening, and surprisingly entertaining. A self-description on Kemple’s departmental website at the University of British Columbia, where he is a professor of sociology, indicates his research interests and approach: My research advances European and North American traditions of classical and contemporary social theory from the late 18th century to the present. Rather than focus on the scientific formulation and empirical testing of hypotheses, I emphasize the reappraisal of classic problems and the recovery of forgotten or undervalued ideas, texts, and authors in the history of the social sciences. I aim to show how rhetorical arguments, interpretive methods, and literary genres that contribute to the formation of concepts enhance the public significance and cultural relevance of thinking sociologically. This statement encapsulates a good deal that is represented in Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling. Kemple’s concern for the non-obvious and underlying aspects of Weber’s calling, his rhetorical disposition and emotionalized engagement with currents of his day that we are told continue in our own, reflects Kemple ’s own affective style and focus. This is not to deny Kemple’s forceful intellectual engagement that is infused throughout this book, but more than anything Kemple disarmingly displays a pure and true love for Weber. This is not said lightly, nor flippantly. But to fail to acknowledge the fact fails to identify the source of Kemple’s energy, the care with which he reveals Weber’s sensibilities, and the sense of devotion in his characterization of Weber and his calling. It is appropriate here to reflect on...

<i>Deus ex Machina</i>? Religious texts, spiritual capital and inequalities: In continuation of a current debate (a response to colleague Farisani)

Often, theological debates stand in the tension between idealist and realist perspectives. This is true too of a discussion in which I have participated on the Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance of the Bible in (South) Africa. In this debate I have at times been cast as being opposed to such Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance. Such criticism is mistaken. I am, however, critical of too idealistic views on the ways in which Old Testament research can impact African problems. In an interdisciplinary manner, the sociological concept of spiritual capital proves useful in illustrating my view. With this, I hope to be understood correctly and, more importantly, to contribute to greater realism concerning the relationship between research and societal problems. In that way, the Africanisation or contextualisation or relevance of the Bible in (South) Africa can become a greater reality. This is of increased importance in the post-secular time frame in which we currently find ourselves, in which the role of religion in the public sphere is again finding greater acceptance rather than being side-lined. On all counts, thus, the plight of the marginalised may be better served. Such broader acceptance of religion also demands that Bible scholarship takes full cognisance of the societal processes through which such upliftment can occur in reality. Therefore, en route to publication, this contribution is presented for critical consideration in three intellectual fora:��The Religious and Spiritual Capital session, XVIIIth International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology (conference theme: �Facing an unequal world�), Yokohama, Japan, 13�19 July 2014.� The Old Testament Society of South Africa Annual Conference (conference theme: �Studying the Old Testament in South Africa, from 1994 to 2014 and beyond�), University of Johannesburg, 03�05 September 2014.� The Research Day of the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa, 25 September 2014, at which colleague E. Farisani�s University of South Africa inaugural lecture of 03 September 2013, �Dispelling myths about African biblical hermeneutics: The role of current trends in African biblical hermeneutics in the post-apartheid South Africa� was re-presented as �Current trends and patterns in African Biblical Hermeneutics in postapartheid South Africa: Myth or Fact?� for the purpose of critical discussion.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The intersection of Theology and Sociology adds concrete avenues for furthering the cause of the Africanisation of Biblical Studies.

Все мы вышли из «грушинской шинели» (к 85-летию со дня рождения Б.А. Грушина)

B.A. Grushin belongs to a small group of researchers, rightfully called the founders of Soviet theoretical and empirical sociology. As a philosopher and methodologist he contributed significantly to the conceptual language of sociology, addressed many of the complex problems of the genesis of mass consciousness and behavior. A special place in his work was given to questions of the study of public opinion, he was the first in the USSR to begin conducting public opinion polls and publishing the results of the analysis of people’s opinions in the press. B.A. Grushin was one of the founders of the Russian (former all-Union) center for the study of public opinion.The material published herein is a synopsis statement in the format of a journal article of the main ideas of the eponymous book, which was dedicated to the IV International sociological conference “Following Grushin’s traditions” (2014). It acquaints the reader with the main stages of the biography and scientific achievements of B.A. Grushin.

The Disenchantment and Measurement of the Media World: Weber's Universal Press Project, its Fate and its Legacy

The media became the most important research subject at the First German Sociological Conference in 1910 when Max Weber presented a detailed description of a 'Survey of the Press'. This rather sophisticated study, which fitted his research program of a 'disenchantment of the world', was supposed to prove the sociologists' expertise in the area of empirical research. But it was never realized and after its failure the topic even disappeared from the discipline's agenda for many years. In Germany, this only changed more than a decade after the Second World War when communication studies were looking for a new identity as a social science. But there was no systematic research on the question whether and how Weber's suggestions had become relevant. This article seeks to demonstrate that Weber's concerns remain relevant in the area of journalism research. Based on bibliometrics and a keyword-oriented content analysis, it investigates whether Weber's traces can be found in studies aimed to answer the research questions he initially posed and also whether the categories and key terms contained in his œuvre have been used. The results suggest that Weber's ideas were a valuable contribution to the 'measurement of the media world' that took place only decades later.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Men's Enlightened Sexism & Hegemonic Masculinity in Academia

In the spring of 2008, I presided over and served as discussant for a session on hegemonic masculinity at a regional sociology conference. Going into the 8:30 a.m. session, my primary concern was t...

Embeddedness and beyond. Conference on the state of economic sociology

Do Sociological Theories Meet Economic Realities?– went the provocative subtitle of the most recent international economic sociology conference ´Embeddedness and Beyon ´, held in Moscow, October 2012. Indeed, approaches towards dealing with the current economic turbulence show how different narratives can sometimes coexist in contested spaces without speaking to each other, as was the case of the Occupy Movement. Here, with their post capitalist vision, participants pitched their tents in front of the very symbol of capitalism: the London Stock Exchange. At the conference, Sandy Ross from the London School of Economics suggested that, as with the Occupy Movement, speaking at cross-purposes should be avoided in science as well. To better capture reality scholars should breach boundaries within economic sociology and between disciplines. To this end the conference was a success, as scholars with various academic backgrounds and inspiration ranging in fields from sociology to cognitive science, economic history and complex system research to science and technology studies gathered from around the world with their palette of research techniques, from ethnographic research to the state-of-the-art mathematicised (network) analytics.

Look Who's Talking: Compositional Effects of Gender and Status on Verbal Contributions at Sociology Conferences

Making a verbal contribution is an efficient means to increase one's visibility in the academic job market. Therefore, we examine the duration and word density of spoken contributions made in debates at sociology conferences held in Germany, thus enriching the discussion on the gender gap in scientific careers. We differentiate between the contributors' age and gender, and the social context of the conferences. Hidden observation of 392 verbal contributions on 64 topics at five different conferences using hierarchical linear models shows that with increasing age, women speak more slowly and for longer, while the duration of verbal contributions of men rises up to the age of 53 and then decreases again. Contrary to our hypothesis, the duration of spoken contributions of men is not longer than that of women; in fact if there is a majority of female associate or full professors in the audience, contributions by women become significantly longer. This finding underlines the importance of social context for gender‐related features of communication. In addition, we find that word density depends on the age and gender of the speaker.

The 9th Conference of the European Sociological Association: European sociology or European sociologies?

The European Sociological Association (ESA) is a non-profit, Europe-wide academic organization with over 1,500 members. It aims at facilitating "European sociological research, and teaching and communication between sociologists and between sociologists and other scientists " (ESA 2009). The association was established in Vienna in 1992, at the first European sociological conference. The latest biennial ESA conference was held in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, from between September 2-5, 2009. The main question of the conference was whether we can look at European society as an increasingly cohesive entity or whether divisions of nation, class, ethnicity, region, gender, and so on continue to be more salient. Is there one European society or are there many European societies? Is the nation-state the most appropriate unit of analysis or are other approaches needed? Is there convergence or divergence between the regions of Europe? A particular focus of the conference was the role of sociology in understanding the European area and how sociologists from different countries and with different traditions can work together toward this end. The aim of our analysis is to provide a special description of contemporary European sociology, based on the presentations of the 9th ESA conference. We will examine to what extent European sociological life is homogeneous, how it is structured, and which subjects attract major research attention.

In Remembrance of the Sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf

[MWS 10.1 (2010) 23-27] ISSN 1470-8078 In Remembrance of the Sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf M. Rainer Lepsius Countless tributes have been made to Lord Dahrendorf, both on his eightieth birthday 1 May 2009 and his death on 17 June 2009. At the centre of all these appreciations stands his international impor tance as a 'public intellectual', and indeed he was an Anglo-German intellectual to an outstanding degree. He himself designated as 'Erasmians' the few who, under threat of their lives, withstood the temptations of Communism and of National Socialism. He could count himself, like his father, as one of them. For him, individual freedom was the highest good, and the preservation and the secur ing of freedom his life's aim. Dahrendorf once distinguished between 'sociology as a world view and sociology as a profession'. He had become a 'sociologist with a world view' after he had switched to politics in 1969, and after he had settled in England in 1974 where he had taken up a major position in university life, finally taking a seat in the House of Lords. In the earlier part of his life, however, he was a pre-eminently influential and trend-setting 'professional sociologist'. This I recall as a member of his generation that fought for the strengthening of sociology. Fifty years before, in November 1956, we were elected to the German Sociological Association, together with forty others who included Hans Albert, Karl Martin Bolte, Ludwig von Friede burg, Heinz Kluth, Renate Mayntz, Heinrich Popitz and Erwin K. Scheuch. Dahrendorf was always the first among us: the first to habilitate, the first to hold a professorship, the first who took the chairmanship of the German Society of Sociology. We were impressed—at least I certainly was—by the clarity of his arguments and by the decisiveness of his expositions. He was the most visible among us, and at the sociology conference of 1959 in Berlin he was the representative of the cohort that built up sociology in Germany in the sixties.© Max Weber Studies 2010, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EY. 24 Max Weber Studies Dahrendorf became a sociologist when he studied at the London School of Economics from 1952-54. Before then he had already gained his postgraduate degree in Hamburg with a dissertation on Karl Marx. For a postwar German, London was the gateway to the world —lively, open to new horizons, its traditions still intact—and the London School of Economics was an incomparable urban intel lectual milieu. It was there that Dahrendorf met Karl Popper whose theory of science guided him beyond hermeneutics and the dialectic, close to Kant and distanced from Hegel. T.H. Marshall with his book Citizenship and Social Class directed him towards his central theme: citizenship and civil society. Under the rubric of 'education as a citizenship right' Dahrendorf later extended Marhall's schema of developing citizenship rights beyond legal equality, political partici pation and social equality to the equality of cultural chances. Work ing with David Lockwood he also developed a 'conflict sociology', which he advanced against Parson's integrationist sociology. These orientations were further supported by an invitation to the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto for the year 1957-58. Dahrendorf positioned himself outside the sociologi cal milieu in Germany, then dominated by H. Schelsky, Th. Adorno and René König with a habilitation, in 1957 in marginal Saarbrücken. Dahrendorf had established linkages to Anglo-Saxon sociology at a time when provincialism prevailed in Germany. It was at this time that Dahrendorf in quick succession published books and essays that set the direction and now count as classics. With Soziale Klasse und Klassenkonflikt in der industriellen Gesellschaft (1957), whose second enlarged edition only appeared in English (as Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, 1959), he seized what for most of us were the central themes: a rediscovery of the sociologi cal legacy of Karl Marx, the problematic of class formation, social inequality and social conflict. Under National Socialism Marx was taboo and in place of classes there was only the people's commu nity ('Volksgemeinschaft'), and conflicts...

Le lLexique mobilisé lors de trois congrès de sociologues : Permanence et sensibilité a la conjoncture

The Vocabulary Mobilized over Three Sociology Conferences — Permanence and Sensitiveness to the Current Situation: The Association Française de Sociologie (AFS) held its third congress in Paris in April 2009 and its 1,051 abstracts of presentations have been analyzed by two different text analysis programs in the BMS, n. 102. Here, the author used two others programs- Alceste and Multiple Correspondence Analysis - to analyze those same abstracts and to compare the results with those of the 2004 and 2006 AFS congresses analyzed by the same programs.

Interview for the 9th Spanish Sociology Conference, 2007

Born in La Plata (Argentina) in 1939, Néstor García Canclini took his doctorate in the Humanities Faculty there, and, in 1978, obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the Université de Paris with a thesis on epistemology and history under the direction of Paul Ricoeur. He has resided in Mexico since 1976, and for many years was Director of the Program in the Study of Urban Culture at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana de Mexico. He has worked as a professor in the universities of Buenos Aires, San Pablo, Barcelona, Austin, Duke, and Stanford, and is the author of several books, some of which have become standard references in the field, such as Hybrid Cultures. In 2005, he was nominated by the French magazine Nouvel Observateur as one of the 25 most important world thinkers outside France.

Announcement: The Third US-UK Medical Sociology Conference, July 29-31 2008

Announcement: The Third US-UK Medical Sociology Conference, July 29-31 2008

More than Words: Some Reflections on Working Visually

1.1 These papers are drawn from the International Visual Sociology conferences of 2004 (Southampton) and 2005 (San Francisco). They have been collected together here because of the possibilities offered by Sociological Research Online to pursue the visual beyond the usual limits of the printed academic journal. On-line publishing allows us to show more images, without losing text: enabling a more sustained and iterative engagement between pictures and text than is normally permitted. More than this, the on-line format of SRO allows us to pursue the visual beyond the flat surface of the page and the, often beautiful but motionless, pictures produced in quality journals devoted to Visual Studies with video forays into movement and sound. The authors published here exploit these opportunities, working visually to transcend the dissonance between the lived theatres of social research on everyday life and the dull and inanimate surfaces on which sociological work is usually rendered. Working visually is not just about methodology although it is mostly seen in these terms it is more broadly about how we 'do' sociology.