Lessons For Sociology Research Articles

The Interactional Zoo: Lessons for Sociology from Erving Goffman’s Engagement with Animal Ethology

Erving Goffman is one of sociology’s most influential thinkers. Scholars debate the extent to which he worked in competing theoretical traditions (e.g., interactionist or structuralist), yet few acknowledge his intellectual indebtedness to animal ethology. This article traces how naturalistic studies of paralinguistic animal communication influenced Goffman’s corpus and specifies the ideas he built on from that field, especially territoriality and ritualized display. Goffman’s comparative approach to animal and human interaction reveals the shortcomings of sociologists’ lingua-centric approach to interaction; elevates animals to social actors, capable of metacommunication, reading others’ intentions, and adjusting their behavior accordingly; and humbles humans, who he finds enacting rituals of civility for the same reason animals engage in ritualized display: to manage threats and facilitate bonding. Goffman’s thesis on the similarities between animal and human social behavior compels sociology to consider animal studies, and his use of ethology helps reconcile his interactionist and Durkheimian tendencies.

Class and relative wealth accumulation in five European countries: Sociological Lessons from the Household Financial and Consumption Survey (European Central Bank, 2014 Wave)

AbstractRecent sociological research tends to move beyond the divide between economics and sociology in the study of socioeconomic inequality. It focuses primarily on the relationship between social class and work-related income. Yet, it has been shown that wealth, rather than income, was the decisive feature of contemporary inequality and that wealth and income increasingly tend to be captured through the same households. To bridge the gap between the two disciplines and provide a comprehensive understanding of socioeconomic inequality, this article developed an integrated analysis of wealth and income distribution among occupational groups at different ages in five major European countries. To that end, we used the Household Financial and Consumption Survey [2014 wave] of the European Central Bank network.

Disconnecting from digital news: News avoidance and the ignored role of social class

While research on news avoidance has surged in the last couple of decades, we are still at a scholarly shortage in terms of understanding and theorizing the relationship between social class and the inclination to tune out on the news. In addressing this gap, we rely on a mail-back survey with ten thousand Swedes to study how social class predicts the likelihood of avoiding news from different digital outlets. Results show that people at lower social positions, measured as their relative lack of cultural and economic capital, are significantly more likely to avoid online news. A lack of cultural capital predicts total news avoidance online, avoiding online public service news and the “quality news,” while it lessens the likelihood of avoiding “popular news” online. Lacking economic capital predicts total news avoidance online and avoiding the “popular news.” We conclude the article with three cultural sociological lessons for the study of news avoidance. We call for sensitivity in regard to (1) the multi-dimensional character of social inequality, (2) the symbolic value of different types of news genres and outlets, and (3) social inequality in the normative problematizations of news avoidance.

Karl Mannheim on Fascism: Sociological Lessons About Populism and Democracy Today?

The parallels and differences between current forms of populism and early 20th-century fascism have been the focus for much discussion. This article examines the relevance today of Karl Mannheim’s analysis of fascism and of its relationship to democracy in the 1930s. He argued that the threat of fascism arose from the very nature of liberal democratic society, rather than being a product of external forces. He claimed that liberal democracy is transitional, rather than stable in character, and that the new emerging form of governance that was required to replace it shared a key component with fascism: a high level of social and economic planning. At the same time, he insisted that, as a pathological development, fascism served to illustrate the disastrous consequences that a failure to engage realistically with the process of societal development can have for upholding Western civilisational ideals. This article explores Mannheim’s arguments against the background of current thinking about populism and ‘post-democracy’.

Transplanting institutional innovation: comparing the success of NGOs and missionary Protestantism in sub-Saharan Africa

Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonial missionaries’ ability to enforce new ways of life on small exemplary communities; second, in local adaptations (African prophetic movements, Pentecostalism) that deepened and widened the social reach of congregational principles; and third in the incentives Protestantism created for propagating the congregational form.

The war against forgetfulness: Sociological lessons from Bauman’s writings on European Jewry

This paper argues against assigning Zygmunt Bauman to the category of a ‘white’, ‘European’ theorist and the tendency to speak of an undifferentiated ‘Eurocentrism’. To argue this, I return to a set of articles by Bauman which reflected on the history of European Jewry. These encourage us to place Bauman in a historical and social context in which he is best identified as emerging from the racialized and classed politics of East European Jewry. Bauman traces how this group were made the outsiders of the assimilatory project of West European Jewry then, as Jewish socialists, were victims of the political anti-Semitism of communist regimes. Not only does this encourages us to be critical of the claims that he spoke from an elite ‘white European’ position, it also has further lessons for sociology which, in its own ‘war against forgetfulness’, has tended to impose simplistic racialized and political categories onto theorists.

Sociology and Sisyphus: postcolonialism, anti-positivism, and modernist narrative in Patterson’s oeuvre

This article argues that Orlando Patterson is a key contributor to postcolonial fiction and postcolonial theory as well as historical sociology and social theory, whose work contains crucial lessons for sociology in general. Patterson has coined striking concepts such as social death and human parasitism and made original historical interpretations such as the origins of freedom in the experiences of female slaves. Patterson has contributed to historical knowledge, social theory, and an alternative epistemology of interpretive social science. And through his fiction, he exemplifies an alternative understanding of the metier of the social scientist, in which literary-aesthetic sensuousness and lyrical pleasure are combined with analytic rigor. The first part of the article suggests that Patterson’s work represents an overlooked foundation for postcolonial sociology. Demonstrating this involves reconstructing Patterson’s early intellectual context and then tracing the interplay between fiction and social analysis in his work. The article then analyses Patterson’s fictional writing, arguing that it is a crucial part of his overall production of social knowledge. The article’s final section argues that Patterson’s work lays out a non-positivist foundation for historical sociology and sociology as a whole.

Developmental Landmarks and the Warnock Report: A Sociological Account of Biological Translation

AbstractAt a crucial meeting during their proceedings, on 9 November 1983, the sixteen members of Britain's influential Warnock Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology reached a key decision on how to base proposals for comprehensive legislation governing this largely uncharted territory. Famously, they chose the formation of the “primitive streak” in the early embryo as the basis for the fourteen-day rule that has now served as the global benchmark for experimental research in this area for nearly thirty years. Based on newly available archival material and interviews, this article offers a sociological account of the ways in which a specific translation of biological facts became the basis for an enduring social contract governing controversial bioinnovation in the UK. In particular, the combined roles of Committee Chair Mary Warnock and biologist Anne McLaren are examined in terms of how a decision, or “iterative settlement,” was reached as to “where to draw the line” using specific “developmental landmarks” to establish a basis for legal regulation. Drawing from this analysis, I offer a broader argument concerning the sociology of biological translation and biogovernance that is germane to ongoing debates such that over how to limit CRISPR-Cas 9 gene editing. I contend also that we have yet to fully grasp the historical and sociological lessons to be drawn from the early histories of establishing governance over new forms of technological assistance to human reproduction, and in particular the formation of the “Warnock Consensus.”

The Holocaust and Humanity

The Holocaust and Humanity

PENERAPAN METODE MAKE AND MATCH DAPAT MENINGKATKAN KEAKTIFAN BELAJAR SOSIOLOGI PADA SISWA KELAS X3 SMA NEGERI 1 GUNUNG TULEH KABUPATEN PASAMAN BARAT

ociology is one of the subjects that could make people understand themselves and their surroundings, that foster the harmony of life and have a good mental to carry out positive activities. The research objective of this class action is to enhance the activity of studying Sociology in class X SMAN 1 Gunung Tuleh West Pasaman using the Make and Match. This classroom action research conducted in SMA Negeri 1 Mount Tuleh West Pasaman in class X in Ganji semester of academic year 2014/2015. Number of students 30 people. Discussion involving undertaken by students to run well and smoothly, as shown in observations of students in the group collaborative activities "make and match" with the average percentage in the first cycle by 50%. While in the second cycle increased, namely to 73.1%. So cooperation has included students in the group is good. The evaluation results indicate that the bulls are thoroughly studied of 11 students (36.67%) in the pre-action to 18 students (60%) in the first cycle, and to 24 students (80%) in the second cycle. While that has not been thoroughly studied decreased from 19 students (67.33%) in the pre-action, to 12 students (40%) in the first cycle, and being 6 students (20%) in the second cycle. The hypothesis of action which states that "if the Make and Match methods used in learning, the activity of learning the lessons of Sociology at X3 grade students SMA N 1 Mount Tuleh, West Pasaman will increase", is acceptable. This study also provides recommendations to the teachers to be more active and creative in choosing methods of teaching and learning activities in order to improve student achievement. The Principal shall be able to take the policy on the need to implement the Action Research (PTK) for each teacher, so that students' motivation have also increased.

Frames of Reference

Unforeseen obstacles and inefficiencies may arise when medical organizations seek to implement protocols that rely upon cooperation and coordination by clinical practitioners from multiple disciplines, departments, and professional orientations. In this reflection, we discuss some ways in which sociological concepts may be useful in forestalling and mitigating such obstacles and inefficiencies in clinical settings. Echoing recent decisions by professional organizations like the American Medical Association, we use the concept of “framing” to suggest how interdisciplinary medical protocols and policy formulations may benefit greatly from sociological lessons and demonstrate some ways by which the incorporation of sociological insights can facilitate greater communication between varied disciplines and departments seeking shared outcomes. In conclusion, we provide some concrete ways by which interdisciplinary medical programs may benefit from sociological concepts and practices.

Facing Nuclear Risks: Lessons from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

AbstractThis paper discusses the sociological lessons learnt from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident that occurred on 11 March 2011. This disaster is the second largest nuclear accident after the Chernobyl accident. Meltdown and explosions occurred because of the hydrogen released from the damaged core. A large amount of radioactive materials has been released. Many people, around 150 000, are still in evacuation by government order or by their own choice. The incident has several characteristics. First, it is the first severe accident of a nuclear power station, the complex disaster being triggered by a large earthquake and tsunami. Second, the four reactors were simultaneously endangered. Third, the uncontrolled situation of the melted‐down reactors has continued for more than 9 months. Fourth, it is the first severe accident of a nuclear power plant on the coast. Scientists are worried about serious contamination of seawater and damages to the ecosystem. This accident is a human disaster which an electric company and the national government are very much responsible for due to a series of “underestimates,” such as that of the height of a possible tsunami, the possibility of a “station blackout” and lengthy periods of no AC power. A lot of confusing and misleading information, along with the deliberate concealment of information and delay in information disclosure occurred. Located in the background of all of this is the “Atomic Circle,” a very closed relationship between politicians, government, academics, industry and the media. We should try and learn from all of this in building a post‐nuclear East Asia. This would be the greatest lesson from the tragic Fukushima disaster and the greatest message to East Asia, the world and future generations.

Recent Trends in the Philosophy of Science: Lessons for Sociology

Auguste Comte's positivist claim of sociology was readily accepted by the succeeding generations of sociologists. Their efforts to vindicate this claim served to establish sociology on firm empirical foundations. Within a relatively short period, sociology succeeded in amassing a vast body of empirical data. Although meticulous attention was paid to methodology, most of it seemed to be misplaced, as it was mainly concerned with the tools and techniques of empirical research rather than with the logic of scientific procedure. It was however at the theoretical level that the limitations of sociology as a positivistic discipline were most apparent. Though some attempts had been made to develop general theories, these were far from satisfactory. In the natural sciences, whose model sociology has been trying to emulate, the terms science and scientific methodology have no longer the same meaning as in Newton's time. But unfortunately, the debate about the scientific status of sociology is still carried on in terms of an antiquated concept of science.

Crossing Boundaries: Sociology in the Wilderness

This article describes an experiential course that centers on a week-long wilderness journey through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The course promotes development of the sociological perspective through a tripartite experiential pedagogy of social removal, social construction, and sociological reflection. Pairing this experiential pedagogy with a wildernessjourney has helped to vivify a number of sociological lessons for students in the course. We present a model of the wilderness journey as a social ritual, which frames our past course offerings and has proved useful in charting future directions for the course.

Practical programmer: software teams

I have often heard the phrase, “We see what we know.” As technicians, we concentrate on technical ways to manage complexity: abstraction, design techniques, high-level languages, and so on. That is what we know best. But when the tale is told of a project that failed, the blame is often laid not on technical difficulties, but on management and interpersonal problems. In the last six months, I have seen firsthand how attention to the social organization of a software team can make a big difference in the success of a development project. I work in a “Research and Development” group. “Research” means that some aspects of the project are experimental—we do not know for sure what is going to work. “Development” means we are expected to produce high-quality software for real users. So while we want to encourage creative thought, we must pay heed to the lessons of commercial software developers in quality assurance, testing, documentation, and project control. Our all-wise project leader decided we also needed to pay heed to the lessons of sociology. In particular, we began to apply the ideas found in Larry Constantine's work on the organization of software teams. Our efforts have resulted in a team that is productive, flexible, and comfortable. I thought these qualities are unusual enough to merit a column on the subject.

Robert K. Merton as postwar prophet

Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton’s ideas on leadership in postwar America, the article examines the nature and impact of Merton’s “sociological parables.” This term refers to short tales from social life from which sociological lessons with moral implications can be drawn. These parables, such as the bank insolvency story told in “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” illustrate the manner in which Merton merged moral and sociological messages in his writings. Suggestions are made along the lines that these parables, or at least the moral messages they contain, contributed to Merton’s postwar fame.

Religious Sociology: Interfaces and Boundaries

Preface Issues and Interfaces Faith, Facts, and Values in the Sociology of Religion by Benton Johnson Sociology, Christianity,, and Humanity by Jack O. Balswick Theology and Sociology Theology Lessons for Sociology by Ronald J. McAllister The Sociological Theory of H. Richard Niebuhr by William R. Garrett A Sociological and Fraternal Perspective on James M. Gustafson's Ethics by Paul M. Gustafson Ethics and the Image of Self in the Theology of Story by L. Shannon Jung The Sociology of Faith On Freedom, Love, and Community by George A. Hillery, Jr. The Power of Prayer: Observations and Possibilities by William H. Swatos, Jr. The Invisible Religion of Catholic Charismatics by Pierre Hegy Militant Religion by Eugen Schonfeld Applying Religious Sociology The Psychological Captivitiy of Evangelicalism by Jack O. Balswick Clinical Pastoral Sociology by William H. Swatos, Jr. Bibliography Index Contributors