Trends In Sociology Research Articles

Research trends in sociological studies on social security and welfare

This article reviews the research trends in welfare sociology (sociological studies on social security and welfare), one of the many subfields of active research in sociology in Japan. For this purpose, several research streams formed from the 1970s to the 2000s are described, and some of the most important research results produced within these in the past two decades are introduced. In the latter part of this article, a broad overview of the research trends in Japanese welfare sociology is attempted by focusing on the contents of the journal published by the Japan Welfare Sociology Association (JWSA).

Russian Society's Civilizational Transit

This paper deals with the issue of specific civilizational process formation in Russia as a new figuration and configuration of the forms of modernity. It is argued that explanations of the dynamics of Russian society are often based on the idea of predestination of the trajectory of its development (path dependency) that is caused either by the universal logic of modernization and globalization or by persistence of the basic cultural program or matrix which is reproduced in social practices. A civilizational transit of Russian society phenomena is discussed within multiple modernities theory as a new perspective that allows overcoming some of the problems with the predominant approaches to Russian modernization. Civilizational approaches to analyses of Russian culture, politics and society have been associated mostly with theories of ‘historical cycles’ worked out in late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. More recently a considerable attention has been devoted to different versions of ‘neoEurasianism’. In addition, the notion of ‘clash of civilizations’ proposed by Samuel Huntington became prominent in the political discourse in Russia at the end of 1990s. At the same time, the concept of civilization is discussed widely in today’s historical sociology. A specific school of ‘civilizational analysis’ that draws on the ideas of Shmuel Eisenstadt emerged at the end of the 1990s. This perspective has already influenced some new trends in sociology of religion, political sociology and international relations theory. The panel seeks to demonstrate the relevance of a new wave of civilizational analysis for understanding contemporary Russian culture, politics and society.
 Keywords: Russian society, civilizational transit, multiple modernities

Shaping Curriculum: Interreligious Education at the Toronto School of Theology

This essay explores interreligious education at the Toronto School of Theology (TST) through a survey of some recent programs and curricular offerings, ecclesial commitments, sociological trends, and developments in scholarship. These contextual realities continue to shape theological education at TST especially as they relate to cultural texturality and post-coloniality. The article demonstrates that interreligious engagement, as much as it has been part of the history of TST, remains a significant feature today, with creative promise for the future.

“Print Capitalism in the Global Village”: Information and Communication Aspects of Nation-Building

The subject of the article is information and communication aspects of the socio-political processes of our time, which in general can be characterized as related to the phenomenon and concept of the nation. The close relationship between modernization in a broad sense, the development of a more or less unified information space and nation-building processes was noted and analyzed back in the 1980s. in the works of representatives of the constructivist trend in sociology and historical science (E. Gellner, B. Anderson, E. Hobsbawm, etc.). It seems that at present there are many grounds for “rechecking” this theory in relation to the current state of mass communications in multicultural societies, including post-Soviet ones. It is suggested that in the current state of the infosphere, the traditional mechanisms of mass information that contributed to the policy of nation states are currently competing, and not always successfully, with the network communities of “national citizenship”. Conclusions are made about how the specificity of this experience influences the formation of national identity, discourse of the nation, as well as images of historical memory.

Рецепция религиозной тематики в творчестве Н.С. Лескова критикой рубежа XIX - XX вв. (1890-е - 1917 г.)

The article aims to consider tendencies predominating in literary criticism at the turn of the 20th century in its reception of religious issues in Nikolai Leskov's works, to identify the peculiarities of their understanding by representatives of diverse groups and trends, to examine their influence on changes in Leskov's literary reputation. The role of the spiritual atmosphere of the Silver Age in changing attitudes towards Leskov's legacy is mentioned, as well as the consequences of the duality of his reception formed at that time. The research materials consists of various works of literary criticism (articles, notes, reviews) written and published in Russia between 1895 and 1917. They are studied using the methods of the thematic, discourse and comparative analysis of the text. The research demonstrated that the comprehension of Leskov's legacy, which began at the end of the writer's life, took place in the critical period of the coexistence of realism and symbolism in literature, and sociological and modernist trends in criticism. Leskov's literary works attracted mainly critics of the sociological trend, who emphasized the writer's evolution from a photographic depiction of Russian Orthodox clergymen's everyday life to the finding of peace, rational and moral understanding of religiosity akin to Protestantism and Leo Tolstoy's teaching. The approach of the less numerous modernist critics was different as they appreciated Leskov's depiction of the mystical depths of Orthodoxy, his penetration into the secrets of the popular faith and ability to juxtapose them with the mundane life. They evaluated the late works of the writer as less interesting, excessively rationalistic and moralising. Thus, the analysis of literary reviews of the turn of the 20th century allows making a conclusion about a strong influence of the artistic principles of the two main literary movements of the epoch, and critics' desire to incorporate Leskov into the modern context, thereby updating his legacy. Such a possibility is, in particular, the result of Leskov's ideological evolution and of the peculiarity of his manner of writing, with its elusive author's position, which still makes it feasible to formulate contradictory assessments of his works and personal religiosity, varying between a ‘heretic' and ‘profoundly Orthodox'. In addition, the author observed the fundamental importance of the category of literary reputation and noted the fact of transition from assessing the personality and socio-political stance of the author to evaluating his artistic output. It was also due to the beginning of the ‘linguistic turn' of the literary critics of the time, which resulted in the reception of Leskov's works becoming more complex and multifaceted. The contradictory assessment of his works and, in particular, their religious component, still continue to shape the position of many contemporary researchers.

Exploration on the Research Direction of World Sports Sociology

As an important research field of sociology, sociology of sports resonates with the development of the times at the same frequency. The research trend of sociology of sports in the world is of great significance to the research trend of sociology of sports in China. This article uses research methods of literature and logical deductive to interpret the research hotspots of world sports sociology. The research finds: sports and scientific and technological development, sports and gender, youth sports, sports policy in a global perspective, and sports and sports national identity and race issues are still the hotspots and difficulties in the research of world sports sociology under the background of the development of the new era. The research believes that only by immersing in the reality of sports and cultivating the reality of sports can we understand the reality of sports, analyze the social problems behind the reality of sports, and make sports sociological research that fits our era. Of course, this is also the mission of sports sociologists.

The Trend and Prospect of Medical Sociology: Its Concepts and the Interface with Medical History.

Medical sociology has a long history, and it has been institutionalized and developed since the 1940s. This paper is about the history, trends, and prospects of medical sociology from the perspective of concepts as well as its interface with medical humanities. Sociology is a discipline that conceptualizes and theorizes social phenomena on the basis of collected data to best understand them. For this reason, we think that one of the best ways to understand medical sociology is to track the changes and developments in the concept and theory of medical sociology over time. Moreover, the development of concepts and theories does not occur only within the discussion of experts but also actively in interactions with the institutional position of medical sociology, medical knowledge and institutions and society. By reflecting on the changes in the theory and concept of medical sociology over the past 70 years from the 1950s to the present, we were able to understand the changes in research interests and research subject of medical sociology. Medical sociology has developed in response to the needs of the medical community and society. On the one hand, it developed a diverse understanding of healthcare, one of the key elements of the structure and culture of modern society, and on the other hand, it developed an understanding of how each individual experiences medical care as a dominant power. Since the 1990s, these seemingly conflicting two areas integrated into one through research subjects such as the growth of the general population and the health and social movement. Furthermore, the emergence of biotechnology, which began to develop in earnest beginning in the 1980s, presented a challenge for medical sociology. If the role of Parsons in the 1950s was to reflect the American medical system based on bacteriology and therapeutic drugs, after the 1960s, chronic disease became an important health problem due to changes in American society, and the experiences of patients suffering from chronic diseases became an important research subject. However, the rapid development of biotechnology from the 1980s was powerful enough to change the way we perceive our bodies. Our society has regarded our body as a sum of cells and a combination of various organs and body parts since the birth of modern medicine, but with the development of biotechnology, including genetics, we began to recognize our body as an expression of information contained in genes. The capitalist force driving biotechnology has degraded our bodies to the extent of our resources for the accumulation of genomic information. Finally, the concepts and theories developed by medical sociology can also be applied to understand the trends of medical history in the Korean Journal of Medical History provided that medical sociology and the medical history were embedded in the particular Korean historical context. Therefore, we hope these two medical disciplines cooperate further on the medical issues in Korea.

Reading the city through its neighbourhoods: Deep text embeddings of Yelp reviews as a basis for determining similarity and change

This paper develops novel methods for using Yelp reviews as a window into the collective representations of a city and its neighbourhoods. Basing analysis on social media data such as Yelp is a challenging task because review data is highly sparse and direct analysis may fail to uncover hidden trends. To this end, we propose a deep autoencoder approach for embedding the language of neighbourhood-based business reviews into a reduced dimensional space that facilitates similarity comparison of neighbourhoods and their change over time. Our model improves performance in distinguishing real and fake neighbourhood descriptions derived from real reviews, increasing performance in the task from an average accuracy of 0.46 to 0.77. This improvement in performance indicates that this novel application of embedded language analysis permits us to uncover comparative trends in neighbourhood change through the lens of their venues' reviews, providing a computational methodology for reading a city through its neighbourhoods. The resulting toolkit makes it possible to examine a city's current sociological trends in terms of its neighbourhoods' collective identities.

Dominations in Indian Sociology

The growth trajectory of Indian Sociology in the past few decades is unsurpassed. From being treated as a ‘residual category’ and a subordinate disciple, it is now a well-developed and self-sustaining discipline. There are various demands placed on sociology after Independence which explicitly contributed to its development. But this development of Indian sociology is not free from certain dominations: (1) Domination of popular trends in sociology produced by western scholars, (2) Domination of certain sections in India, (3) Domination of State and Identity Politics. These domains of domination are significantly hindering the development of Indian sociology in an inclusive manner and degrading the efficacy of the knowledge produced in this field. The only way forward for Indian sociology is to develop indigenous sociological traditions, concepts, and methods to explain the social reality of India, to recognize the diverse trends of sociological knowledge being produced and promote civility, reason, and reflexivity among diverse perspectives of sociological knowledge.

Unintended consequences of prohibiting advocacy of hatred and regulating campaign finance: The weakening status of freedom of speech in Israel

Abstract A central dilemma in human rights law is how to reconcile the government’s duty to respect freedom with its obligation to protect individuals that might be harmed by the exercise of said freedom. Intolerance toward the dissemination of certain illiberal positions may have adverse social and political unintended results. One central concern is that such a policy would create a common culture that does not appreciate the critical importance of a vibrant public discourse. As such, it might enable governments, in terms of popular legitimacy, to curtail speech beyond the limits of justifiable infringements. Recent developments in Israel illustrate this concern. In recent years, normatively legitimate antiracism legislation was unjustifiably expanded by imposing sanctions on expressions that were deemed harmful to national sentiments or questioning the legitimacy of Israel’s Constitutional Identity as a Jewish state. Similarly, laws against the support of terrorism were followed by prohibitions on advocating boycotts against Israel. This Article proposes to halt the sociological slippery-slope trend of curtailing speech far and beyond the permissible scope of such a policy, by implementing rules-based legal doctrines that may foster a stronger public pressure on the government to protect free speech; restricting the scope of “harm-in-one-step” approach; and providing a clearer definition of the requirement of state neutrality in the context of regulating speech.

Cuerpos viales, cultura y ciudadanía

The present work uses a “road-anthropology” perspective to analyze the way in which our individual bodies are historically and culturally conformed as road-bodies. The conceptual framework largely draws on various sociological trends in Goffman and Bourdieu, as well as performance-anthropology, proxemics, phenomenology and the political economy of culture. I analyze street-anthropology’s various origins based on my own biography as an anthropologist as well as how ethnographic experience gave rise to a new conceptualization of street-cultures and their connections to real corporeal practices on streets and paths. I include experienced and observed comparative ethnographic cases from England, the United States, Uruguay and Argentina that illustrate how culture, society and the state lend form to our street-bodies.

Mayilasalak Kalampakam: The Editorial Methods

Edition history is an aid to understanding how literary creation occurred during a particular period. It also includes various Editions of a book, religious and sociological trends. Contemporary forms of devotional literature have now emerged. The bibliographical editions published by monasteries and research institutions need to be looked at as to how their source is followed. Through this it is possible to find out how the editions have transcended the scholarly community and what kind of flexibility the editions environment has embedded within it. This article is intended to illustrate this with various editions of the book on the Mayilasala Kalampakam that wrote by Vannacharabham Dhandapani Swamikal.

On the Influence of Top Journals

We study the evolution of the influence of journals over the period 1970-2017. In the early 1970's, a number of journals had similar influence, but by 1995, the `Top 5' journals, QJE, AER, RES, Econometrica, and JPE, had acquired a major lead. This dominance has remained more or less unchanged since 1995. To place these developments in a broader context, we also study trends in sociology. The trends there have gone the other way; the field journals rose in influence, relative to the Top General journals. A model of journals as platforms is developed to understand these trends across time and across disciplines.

80th anniversary of the journal Sociološki Pregled/Serbian Sociological Review

In 2018, the journal Sociološki Pregled/Sociological Review celebrated its 80th anniversary. The first Serbian sociological journal Društveni Život/ Social Life was published in Belgrade in 1920 and 1921, and then renewed in 1930 in Novi Sad. The editor-in-chief and publisher of this journal was Mirko Kosić, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Subotica. After establishing Society for Legal Philosophy and Sociology in 1935 and Society for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1938, a new sociological journal - Sociological Review , edited by a professor from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, Đorđe Tasić - began to be published. Thematically it covered various sociological disciplines and other social sciences for sociology is a multidisciplinary science. The work of the Sociological Society and the journal was interrupted by the II World War, in which Đorđe Tasić was killed. Other members of the Society for Sociology and Social Sciences and associates of Sociološki Pregled were no longer interested in sociology and sociological topics. Sociološki Pregled was renewed in 1961 by the Serbian Sociological Society, first as a collection of papers and then as a journal in 1964. Since then, the journal has been an active participant of scientific and academic life in this region providing an overview of current trends in sociology in the world and in our country. The intellectual elite of Serbia has participated in its publishing both directly and indirectly, both its oldest and prominent members and the youngest ones. About 200 issues of Sociološki Pregled with more than 30,000 pages were published from 1938 to 2018 and present a valuable material for sociological life and an irreplaceable information manual on decades of contemporary history of Serbia and Yugoslavia. Such a role could not have been played by any other journal. Sociološki Pregled is a theoretical journal, a manual, an informative newsletter, a reminder, a witness, an informer - all at the same time. That is why it is necessary to consider the journal in both historical and contemporary perspectives.

History and the Current State of Sociology in Taiwan

This article discusses specifics of the formation and development of sociology, which arises in the local conditions of the island East Asian region of Taiwan in the context of general trends of world sociology. It is shown that in the historical development of sociology in Taiwan there are several key points and «forces of influence». The first was associated with political interests and Japanese influence in Taiwan in 1930–1945. The next turning point in the history of Taiwanese sociology is associated with the sociologists’ resettling from mainland China to Taiwan (Lung Kung-Hoi, Hsieh Cheng-Fu, Chang Ching-yu and etc.). These sociologists did not agree with the political course in the People’s Republic of China headed by Communist Party. During this period, research developed in the spirit of Japanese-Western-American traditions. The article notes that up to the 1980s attention of Taiwanese sociologists was focused on the study of issues of population, family, juvenile crime, urban development. The rapid economic development and rising confidence in the future by the Taiwanese society makes it possible to emerge the new character of sociology in Taiwan in the 1980s together with the beginning of indigenization and liberalization processes. The emphasis in the article is on the fact that by the end of the first half of the 20th century existing scientific sociological trends in mainland China had a strong influence on the discipline. In the 21st century there were taking place two multidirectional processes – «Sinicization» of the Taiwanese sociology and, at the same time, the moves of the Taiwanese sociological community towards creation of own unique sociological academic characteristics. Nowadays there are several sociology departments at the largest universities on the island, the Taiwan Sociological Association; specialized journals and monographs are being published. In general, public impact of sociological knowledge in Taiwan is high, because of its focus on the study of new social processes and active ties of sociologists with the socio-political life of society. The authors conclude that the prevailing trend in the development of sociology in Taiwan is the desire to preserve identity while being involved in the globalization processes.

A Survey of Healthcare Internet-of-Things (HIoT): A Clinical Perspective.

In combination with current sociological trends, the maturing development of IoT devices is projected to revolutionize healthcare. A network of body-worn sensors, each with a unique ID, can collect health data that is orders-of-magnitude richer than what is available today from sporadic observations in clinical/hospital environments. When databased, analyzed, and compared against information from other individuals using data analytics, HIoT data enables the personalization and modernization of care with radical improvements in outcomes and reductions in cost. In this paper, we survey existing and emerging technologies that can enable this vision for the future of healthcare, particularly in the clinical practice of healthcare. Three main technology areas underlie the development of this field: (a) sensing, where there is an increased drive for miniaturization and power efficiency; (b) communications, where the enabling factors are ubiquitous connectivity, standardized protocols, and the wide availability of cloud infrastructure, and (c) data analytics and inference, where the availability of large amounts of data and computational resources is revolutionizing algorithms for individualizing inference and actions in health management. Throughout the paper, we use a case study to concretely illustrate the impact of these trends. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the emerging directions, open issues, and challenges.

Socionomics as a Scientific Basis for the Development of the Concept of Social State Development

The Object of the Study. The concept of development of the social state.The Subject of the Study. Socionomics formed as an interdisciplinary trend in sociology, and considered as a theoretical basis for the development of the concept of the social state. The Purpose of the Study is presenting the possibilities of socionomics for the scientific substantiation of the foundations of the social state and the development of the concept of its development.The Main Provosions of the Article. Socionomics is presented as an interdisciplinary trend in sociology, and considered as a theoretical basis for the development of the concept of social state. Socionomics is considered a “scientific trend in sociology, the subject of which is the study of the system of laws, theories, categories, methods, techniques common to all Humanities in order to create a unified theoretical and methodological science. In Rossiya, the basic concepts of the social state, social policy, the activities of the relevant authorities, the totality of social rights and obligations are developed within the scientific framework of socionomics. On the basis of analyzing the genesis of socionomics its possibilities for scientific substantiation of bases of the social state and development of the concept of its development are opened. The author's socionomic paradigm provides other researchers with a conceptual basis for conducting research on the problems of the social state at the intersection of sociology, political science, law and economics. The preliminary model of the concept of development of the social state has been described.

Study the position of woman in the works of three contemporary Iranian painters with a feminist approach

Today, by various and diverse approaches in the artistic critique and analysis, different aspects of sociological concepts and trends can be deduced from artistic works. Feminism and its different approaches can also be effective and successful in understanding and revealing some of the concepts related to the art. Feminist art in the contemporary world can have media function as a method and means for expressing the female-oriented demands and views. In the current society of Iran, painting as a collection of tendencies and different perspectives has female-oriented and feminist concepts in itself. This research, by studying the works of three painters (Shideh Tami, Saeed Rafiee Monfared, Zeinab Movahhed) seeks to follow represented position of the woman in the works and determined how each of these artists in her or his painting deals with the issue of woman, her role and her picture. The research is conducted by descriptive-analytical method. The method of collecting research data was field and library-documentary and questionnaire and interviews were used for this process. This study implies that every painter with a personal way was involved with the issue of woman in his/her work and each of them used this concept in their works in terms of their own thinking and personal attitude. The works of these painters have been avoided from a sexism view as far as possible; but the arrangement of this view is seen in the works of these painters i.e. Zeinab Movahhed, Saeed Rafiee Monfared and Shideh Tami. Keywords : Woman, female-oriented, Feminism, contemporary painting of Iran, feminist art DOI : 10.7176/ADS/73-04 Publication date :May 31 st 2019

Identifying Interdisciplinary Trends of Humanities, Sociology, Science and Technology Research in Korea Using Topic Modeling and Network Analysis

Identifying Interdisciplinary Trends of Humanities, Sociology, Science and Technology Research in Korea Using Topic Modeling and Network Analysis

Against the Backdrop of Niagara Falls, International Sociology Marches Left

Based on his observations at the XIX World Sociological Congress and on his many years of experience on the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association, the author shares his subjective notes on current trends in modern sociology. Can the World Congress of Sociology accurately reflect the state of the science it purports to represent? Over the past few years, the politicization of the ISA agenda has tended to increase in tandem with an inexorable decrease in the scientifically-substantive content of the Congress. World sociology itself is in the process of the transformation into an nebulous form of public activity, into a kind of social movement for universal justice contending with a world of violence and inequity. Nevertheless, the active grassroots work of research committees within the ISA continues despite the ideological inclination of its higher echelons.