Sociology Of Science Research Articles

Sociology of the University and Sociology of Professions: Conceptual Articulation and Current Issues

The purpose of this article is to present the elements necessary to understand the current relationship between the sociology of higher education and the sociology of the professions. First, the relevance of a sociological study of higher education is made clear in view of the problems raised by knowledge society. Secondly, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber conceptual contributions to the tradition of sociology are outlined to further the understanding of Universities and professions as pursued by higher education graduates. Next, a presentation is made of the model of the sociology of science and of higher education based on the contributions of structural functionalism, focusing on the contributions of Robert K. Merton and Burton Clark. Thirdly, an articulation between the sociology of higher education and the sociology of the professions is introduced and supported by the elucidation of the relationship between the sociology of higher education, different modalities of knowledge production and distinct types of professional habits: science as a career, liberal professions and the new innovative entrepreneurship. It is intended to make it apparent how these various professional profiles perform differently in connection with the triangle of coordination in higher education system. Finally discussed will be the emerging issues of trends in professions and careers in the labor market.

Scientists, censorship, and suppression: A combined comparative‐processual analysis of U.S. cases involving chemical and climate change expertise

AbstractAlthough scientific research is often crucial for efforts to achieve improved environmental regulation for industrial products and processes, scientists who document or publicize research on possible risks can face suppression or censorship by industry, government, and other actors. This study contributes to the sociology of science by examining the challenges and responses of environmental scientists in the U.S. in two research areas: toxic chemicals and climate change. Drawing on comparative and processual methods applied to a small‐N, unique data set of cases, the study conducts formal coding of variables for contextual conditions and four general categories of the suppression sequence: triggering circumstances and actions, suppression actions, responses, and outcomes. The first stage of the analysis identifies significant relationships between contextual conditions and the suppression sequence, such as the different forms of suppression that government employees and university professors face. The second stage identifies three composite processual sequences: employment risk for government scientists, records attacks for both government and university scientists, and reputation attacks on university scientists. Together, the two types of analysis advance research by identifying novel relationships in a more systematic way than is accomplished with the standard approach of one or a few cases. The approach also examines the benefits of a mode of comparative analysis that can be more readily connected with theory testing via process tracing at the case level. The practical issue of responding to suppression or censorship is considered, which could be of value to environmental scientists and their partners.

Accentuation Networks of IT Students, Managers and Journalists: an Interdisciplinary Approach in Comparative Analysis

Introduction. Network diagnostic methods have an important advantage, which is the ability to integrate data from various scientific studies. In particular, the potential of the possibility of conducting diagnostics aimed at identifying the connectedness of the social and psychological characteristics of the accentuations of students of various fields of study is relevant.Methodology and sources. The conceptual ideas of various sciences involving the construction of a synthetic research methodology are used. The provisions of sociological science, social psychology and psychology on the nature, factors of formation and features of the manifestation of personality accentuations, as dependent on a wide variety of conditions, are integrated.Results and discussion. The obtained research results are presented in the form of accentuation networks, reflecting some features of the connectedness of accentuations. The main hypotheses of the study were confirmed, networks of accentuation of student journalists are built around mobile-emotional accentuations; networks of student managers are formed around aspirations to lead; networks of IT students are the most dense among the intellectual qualities and characteristics of students.Conclusion. Building networks of accentuation of students of various training profiles has a good prospect for the practice of diagnosis and correction of the educational process. Network modeling of the dynamics of the formation of students' accents as they study at the university provides a reliable basis for evaluating and managing the educational process.

Repossession Through Community Participation: A Study of Vrihi Community Seed Bank in Odisha

Seeds are the building blocks of food security, and their free exchange amongst the farming community has formed the bedrock for maintaining genetic diversity in addition to food security and sovereignty. The appropriation of production, exchange, and marketing of seeds by the corporate over the past decades has altered the agricultural scene in the Global South. Given the conflicting perspectives, mandates, and practices of multiple stakeholders, this article attempts to critically evaluate seed policies in India considering the cultural, economic, and social undertones that characterise them. From the perspective of the sociology of science, this article attempts to trace the shifts in the decline of the ‘rural,’ erosion of national agriculture, policy gaps, and why values matter in India’s development narratives vis-à-vis science and technology solutions. Further, this article investigates, through a case study of Vrihi Community Seed Bank (CSB),1 located in the eastern state of Odisha, how CSBs are progressively being seen as a possible long-term solution to combat the diverse challenges posed by changing agro-climatic conditions, increasing corporatisation, and industrialisation of agricultural and allied practices of food production.

Ethnography of Science: A Literature Review

<p class="7Abstract"><em>The study of how certain communities or ethnic groups perceive and comprehend science is known as ethnoscience. This discipline investigates how various communities use, comprehend, and interpret science. While some communities could be more skeptics and hesitant to adopt new science and technology, others might be more receptive to both. Beliefs, culture, and religion may all have an impact on how society applies science.</em><em> </em><em>In addition, ethnoscience investigates the ways in which science affects society. An educational strategy called ethnoscience links the actual knowledge of a society to scientific understanding . It is a new type of ethnography that allows cultural researchers to develop grassroots ideas based on ethno and folk without necessarily accepting western cultural theories that may be irrelevant.Ethnoscience is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines the principles of ethnography and science. This field aims to understand the relationship between culture and science. This article discusses the origins of ethnoscience, the scope of the field of ethnoscience studies, and the future of ethnoscience. Ethnoscience encompasses a variety of scientific disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, and philosophy of science. One of the main research areas in ethnoscience is the study of indigenous knowledge systems. Ethnoscience also studies the relationship between science and religion. Ethnoscience can help us understand how scientific knowledge is produced and used in different cultural contexts.</em></p>

Sociotechnical imaginaries in academic medicine strategic planning: a document analysis

Purpose Along with other industries, healthcare is becoming increasingly digitized. Our study explores how the field of academic medicine is preparing for this digital future. Method Active strategic plans available in English were collected from faculties of medicine in Canada (n = 14), departments in medical schools (n = 17), academic health science centres (n = 23) and associated research institutes (n = 5). In total, 59 strategic plans were subjected to a practice-oriented form of document analysis, informed by the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Results On the one hand, digital health is discursively treated as a continuation of the academic medicine vision, with expansions of physician competencies and of research institutes contributions. These imaginaries do not necessarily disrupt the field of academic medicine as currently configured. On the other hand, there is a vision of digital health pursuing a robust sociotechnical future with transformative implications for how care is conducted, what forms of knowledge are prioritized, how patients and patienthood will be understood, and how data work will be distributed. This imaginary may destabilize existing distributions of knowledge and power. Conclusions Looking through the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, this study illuminates strategic plans as framing desirable futures, directing attention towards specific ways of understanding problems of healthcare, and mobilizing the resources to knit together social and technical systems in ways that bring these visions to fruition. There are bound to be tensions as these sociotechnical imaginaries are translated into material realities. Many of those tensions and their attempted resolutions will have direct implications for the expectations of health professional graduates, the nature of clinical learning environments, and future relationships with patients. Sociology of digital health and science and technology studies can provide useful insights to guide leaders in academic medicine shaping these digital futures.

On the discussion of the confrontation between Lamarckism and Mendelism in Russia (Novosibirsk Academgorodok, methodological seminars and social embedding of knowledge)

The article aims at providing grounds for the analysis of the confrontation of scientific views in the context of E. Agassi’s famous thesis: “science is always socially engaged, but it should not be socially dependent”. This socio-epistemological analysis focuses on the clash between Lysenko’s interpretation of the Lamarckian methodology of H. Spencer’s views and representatives of the Russian school of classical Mendelian genetics. A distinctive feature of Akademgorodok in the 1970s-1980s was that almost every academic institute had a person responsible for organizing a specialized scientific-methodological seminar on philosophical and methodological problems of a particular field of knowledge. Recollections of the participants of these seminars and reconstruction of the issues discussed at that time are rich empirical material, providing an opportunity to test modern conceptions in the field of social anthropology, social epistemology, and sociology of science. The revival of genetics in our country began with the founding of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences/SB RAS. It is shown that this confrontation between Lamarckism and Mendelism in 1930s-1960s develops from the denial of the theses of the ideological opponents to the emergence of accompanying interdisciplinary research. At the same time, a special role is given to the specification of the methodological function of philosophy and to those forms of its realization that scientists personally participating in scientific-methodological seminars, were more inclined to associate with “substantive” rather than “sociological” aspects of the description of the situation.

The problem of context revisited: Moving beyond the resources model

The problem of context, which explores relations between societal conditions and science, has a long and contentious tradition in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. While the problem has received little explicit attention in recent years, two contemporary positions remain evident. First is the resources model, which seeks to maintain the autonomy of scientists by denying contextual influence, restricting the role of contexts to providing a pool of ‘novel inputs’. Second is the contextual shaping position which recognizes that societal conditions influence science but remains conceptually vague and theoretically undeveloped. This paper argues, given current disciplinary conditions, the problem of context deserves renewed attention. In this paper I first review the history of the debate from the 1930s, highlighting several anxieties that continue to hamper the open study of the problem. After this historical review, I provide a critique of the resources model and assess the possibilities and shortfalls of the contextual shaping position. By addressing past and present perspectives, my goal is to move firmly beyond narrow accounts of context, as exemplified by the resources model. Instead, I propose a renewed program of research in which rich empirical studies are combined with equally rich theoretical work directed toward developing conceptual tools better able to capture the multiple intricacies evident in context-science relations.

Этика – война – медицина: научный портрет проблемы в современных публикациях

Background: The search for the meaning of war, the justification of violence, the acceptance of guilt and other moral problems worried Russian thinkers of the 19th century. Russian religious philosophy considers morally justified only war in defense of the highest spiritual shrines, which I.A. Ilyin, N.A. Berdyaev, L.P. Karsavin, A.A. Kersnovsky and others call the defense of the home-land, life and peace. Aim: To assess research interest in the problems of ethics of war, ethics of military medicine, biomedical ethics in the intellectual field of open databases of scientific publications and offer a predictive plot of this scientific direction. Materials and methods: A comparative analysis of open databases of scientific publications RSCI, NEB, CyberLeninka was carried out. The study of literature sources in the problem field under consideration made it possible to determine the directions of the research search using vectors – keywords "ethics", "war", "military medicine". Publications from the open CyberLeninka data-base were used and analyzed as a model scientific network database. Quantitative (number of publications) and qualitative (annota-tions) indicators were studied. To identify attitudes towards the ethical problems of war, a sociological survey of medical university students was conducted, N = 154, average age of respondents (19.2 ± 1.9) years. Standards of confidentiality and autonomy were respected for respondents. Results: An analysis of the distribution of scientific publications by area of the international OECD classifier demonstrates the in-terest of researchers in the problem field of "Philosophy, ethics, religious studies" in 2020–2024. In all search options (using the key-words "War and Ethics", "War and Medicine", "Military Medicine") there are a larger number of publications in this area than in other social or sociological sciences. In the search query "war and ethics", there were 2 times more such publications than others. A pilot sur-vey of future doctors confirms the interdisciplinary connection between the ethics of war and medicine. Conclusion: The study demonstrates modern scientific interest in the ethics of war when studying problems related to war and mili-tary medicine. It would be of interest to conduct a more detailed study of the relationship between the ethics of war and medical ethics (bio-ethics) as an element of the ethical training of future doctors for professional activities in extreme conditions of peace and war.

People, Peace, Prosperity, and the Planet: A Journey toward Sustainable Development in Consumer Research

Abstract With its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations (UN) developed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a “blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” This initiative raises the question: how has the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) shed light on the SDGs? This research analyzes 50 years of consumer research through the lens of the SDG and makes four contributions. First, the authors provide a content analysis of articles in JCR and how it relates to the SDGs over time; they also analyze the Journal of Consumer Psychology (JCP) and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M) with regard to the SDGs. Second, this research reveals where JCR has made progress and achieved impact (via Altmetric) but also identifies gaps in the literature. Thus, the analyses shed light on what research in JCR, JCP, and JPP&M understands (and does not understand) about consumer behavior and points the way to future SDG-oriented research. Finally, based on insights from interviews with thought leaders, sociology of science, UN data dashboards, and an exploratory survey in three countries (the U.S., France, and Singapore), the authors provide recommendations on how the field can (better) incorporate the SDGs in research, teaching, and service.

METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF RESEARCH ON PROBLEMS OF SOCIALIZATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

Relevance. Despite being traditional and important for psychological and sociological sciences, the problem of socialization remains vulnerable to criticism due to the apologetic nature of its theoretical and methodological foundations. Within the limits of traditional approaches, the success or failure of the process and results of socialization are considered, in fact, in the interests of the officially recognized state ideology with a corresponding set of ideals and values. This may be acceptable for countries with established democratic regimes, but it generates many insidious questions in the conditions of confrontation between societies with different civilizational reference points. This is the situation we have today in the context of the russian-Ukrainian war. Methodology is based on the discursive approach, which does not deprive the researcher of the right to evaluate socialization from his or her ideological position, but excludes the extrapolation of these evaluations to the psychological (procedural) content of socialization. According to this approach, the discourses in which socialization takes place, rather than its psychological content itself, can be evaluated from a moral or ideological perspective. This allows for a more realistic evaluation of the socialization experience of different societies, different countries and peoples, for comparison, etc. People’s participation in the reproduction and development of discourse can be traced by the results of monitoring all-Ukrainian representative surveys conducted by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since the early 1990s. Results. During this time, the territorial-state discourse has gradually formed as a leading one in Ukrainian society. Its value imperative is the attitude of state independence. About 80% of citizens believe that although there are many obstacles in the way of our statehood, Ukraine should still be independent.

Using machine learning to identify key subject categories predicting the pre-clerkship and clerkship performance: 8-year cohort study.

Medical students need to build a solid foundation of knowledge to become physicians. Clerkship is often considered the first transition point, and clerkship performance is essential for their development. We hope to identify subjects that could predict the clerkship performance, thus helping medical students learn more efficiently to achieve high clerkship performance. This cohort study collected background and academic data from medical students who graduated between 2011 and 2019. Prediction models were developed by machine learning techniques to identify the affecting features in predicting the pre-clerkship performance and clerkship performance. Following serial processes of data collection, data preprocessing before machine learning, and techniques and performance of machine learning, different machine learning models were trained and validated using the 10-fold cross-validation method. Thirteen subjects from the pre-med stage and 10 subjects from the basic medical science stage with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) >0.7 for either pre-clerkship performance or clerkship performance were found. In each subject category, medical humanities and sociology in social science, chemistry, and physician scientist-related training in basic science, and pharmacology, immunology-microbiology, and histology in basic medical science have predictive abilities for clerkship performance above the top tertile. Using a machine learning technique based on random forest, the prediction model predicted clerkship performance with 95% accuracy and 88% AUC. Clerkship performance was predicted by selected subjects or combination of different subject categories in the pre-med and basic medical science stages. The demonstrated predictive ability of subjects or categories in the medical program may facilitate students' understanding of how these subjects or categories of the medical program relate to their performance in the clerkship to enhance their preparedness for the clerkship.

Strong Scientific Meritocratism: Standpoint Epistemology as a Middle Ground in the Debate over Personal Merit in Science

Abstract Dorian Abbot and twenty-eight coauthors from many quarters of science have recently published a spirited defense of a perceived ‘liberal’ scientific meritocratism—roughly the view that rivalrous or excludable goods in the sphere of scientific work should be distributed entirely based on potential recipients’ merits in that sphere. They propose to understand merit in terms of ‘achievements,’ not least in the form of individual academic track records. A closer examination of their argument reveals their implicit reliance on several incompatible conceptions of merit. Moreover, they conspicuously ignore the typical collective nature of academic achievements in modern science. In this paper, I argue that a different version of scientific meritocratism, based on the central theses of standpoint epistemology, represents an attractive compromise between Abbot et al. and anti-meritocratic theories informed by the sociology of science. Ultimately, however, the credentials of this ‘strong scientific meritocratism’ rest on empirical hypotheses which remain underexamined.

Characteristics of Poststructuralism in Jesse Shera’s Social Epistemology

ABSTRACT Jesse Shera (1903–1982) was a twentieth-century American librarian and information scientist. This article discusses Shera’s social epistemology (SE) and its similarities with structuralism and poststructuralism. Previous research on Shera’s SE has clarified its position and influences. John Budd has pointed out that his SE was sociological rather than philosophical, resembling a sociology of knowledge, while Jonathan Furner adduced similarities between Shera’s SE and related areas, such as the sociology of science, and showed that Shera’s SE was influenced by Paul Otlet. Patrick Wilson frames his body of research as an extension of Shera’s SE. Accordingly, I show that Shera’s SE exhibits characteristics of structuralism and poststructuralism. Shera argued that the semantic relationship between two groups of written materials depends on the perceptions of the individuals (or groups) involved, rejecting traditional library classification methodology aimed at a universal classification of knowledge that was the contemporary mainstream. This article discusses the background of Shera’s poststructuralism.

History and Sociology of Science During the Crisis and Transitional Periods of Social Development

History and Sociology of Science During the Crisis and Transitional Periods of Social Development

Theoretical and conceptual foundations of research on religious Conservatism as a social structure in the works of Karl Mannheim and Talcott Parsons

The article is devoted to the study of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the research field of religious conservatism. By itself, religious conservatism as a phenomenon of public life and social structure, since its inception, has had a great influence not only on the religious sphere of society, but also on the political and even economic spheres. The modern research field of religious conservatism is quite diverse, there are a large number of different directions and schools in it, but most of them borrow their methodological foundations from a certain number of classical works on sociology, formed within the framework of mainstream sociological secularism. In this regard, secularism attitudes continue to be reproduced quite often in modern sociological science. The purpose of this work is to examine the early, fundamental theoretical and methodological positions created in classical sociological works on the topic of religious conservatism as a social structure and social phenomenon. To achieve the goal, it was necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) To characterize the works of the early stage of the study of religious conservatism in sociology; 2) To identify and characterize the theories of society in which the main works were created; 3) To define the concept of religious conservatism as a social phenomenon or social structure; 4) Describe the impact of these concepts on further sociological discussion. The research materials were theoretical studies by foreign authors devoted to the conceptualization of the theme of religious conservatism. The research methodology is based on secondary analysis. The results revealed the main patterns of the theoretical foundations of religious conservatism in the works of the classics of sociology.

Maternal and Child Health Habitus in Coastal Areas

This research explores the health habits of mothers and children in coastal communities. Habitus is interpreted as habits carried out by mothers and children to improve health status. This research uses a qualitative approach. The aim of collecting qualitative data is to explore the health habits of mothers and children in coastal communities, especially in the Dompak sub-district area. Qualitative data collection used in-depth interview procedures with officials and native housewives (not immigrants) on Dompak Island. The selection of informants was based on purposive sampling procedures, this was with the aim of exploring more deeply the research questions with native female informants on Dompak Island. This research contributes to the development of cross-disciplinary science in the social sciences, especially the science of health sociology regarding the health habits of mothers and children in coastal areas. This scientific contribution is theoretically useful when the results of this research are published in the form of scientific publications. This research is planned to be published in the reputable national journal Sinta. In addition to publication output, this research is expected to be an academic contribution as a recommendation for policy makers, especially in health policy, to understand community culture in the health sector so that they can take a more appropriate approach so that the goals of health policy are accepted by the community.

Strengthening the professional training of staff in EU higher education

The article reveals the most relevant and important for developing world societies to the professional training of personnel in the EU countries in the educational space. The methodological principles of the research are leading provisions of the theory of scientific knowledge; general scientific principles of historicism, systematicity, and scientificity; conceptual provisions of pedagogical, psychological, and sociological sciences; ideas of comparative research experience; and philosophical and pedagogical ideas of the development of modern education. The principles on which the reform of higher education is based are described and the main trends of the structure of world higher education are clarified. The significance of developing educational information networks in the professional training of personnel in the educational space of higher education institutions in the EU countries is shown. The main tasks of the organization of educational institutions in the world's countries are highlighted. The conducted experimental research is aimed at researching: the effectiveness of professional training of personnel in the educational space; determination of suitability for employment in EU countries; and effectiveness of continuous professional training at the workplace in EU countries. The conclusions summarize ways of professional training of personnel in the EU countries in the educational space of universities.

MICHEL FOUCAULT AS THE FOUNDER OF THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOURSE

The article deals with topical issues of the contribution of the French sociologist Michel Foucault to the development of sociological science. The authors of the article show that the scientist became one of the founders of the doctrine of discourse, considering the issues of interaction between society and government. The article also identifies milestones in the biography of the sociologist, and presents his main works. The views of the French scientist on the nature of power are analyzed. The authors conclude that the significance of M. Foucault's works for sociological science lies in the fact that he developed the concept of "archaeology of knowledge", which allows us to explore the historical, social and political conditions of the emergence and operation of knowledge, introduced the concept of discourse.

Analysis of justification for author order and gender bias in author order among those contributing equally.

First-author publications are important for early career scientists to secure funding and educational opportunities. However, an analysis published in eLife in 2019 noted that female authors are more likely to be placed second even when both authors report they have contributed equally. American Society for Microbiology announced in response that they would require submissions to include a written justification of author order. In this paper, we analyze the resultant data and show that laboratories are most likely to use some combination of alphabetical order, seniority, and chance to determine author order. However, the prevalence of these methods varies based on the research team's geographic location. These findings highlight the importance of equal contributor statements to provide clarity for readers, funding agencies, and tenure committees. Furthermore, this work is critically important for understanding how these decisions are made and provides a glimpse of the sociology of science.