Sociological Texts Research Articles

الاستشراق: الماضي والحاضر

This paper sheds light on the various stages, reasons, goals and agendas that the discourse of Orientalism has gone through since early centuries onwards. It exposes the critical ideological hostility between the West and the East, as well as Christianity and Islam, which has resulted in the proliferation of countless fabrications, misconceptions and lies within the discourse of Orientalism considering the Orient. The paper attempts to prove that Orientalism is a solely Western style that has never ever been pure or realistic in representing the Islamic East. However, it has always been negative and unfair in dealing with everything related to the Orient. Indeed, it is used as both a preparation and justification for the Western military and ideological clashes and colonization on the Orient. This paper includes an introduction, two sections and a conclusion. The first section provides a detailed background about the various reasons behind the appearance and development of Orientalism throughout history while the following section tracks the origin of Orientalism from the past up to the present day. The paper concludes that Orientalism is not a new phenomenon and it cannot be understood as a homogeneous discourse, yet it has changed, transformed and mutated throughout history. It is the huge Western body of literary, historical or sociological texts that only aims at dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient.

Foreshadowing Du Bois

Abstract W. E. B. Du Bois is widely regarded as the foundational Black social scientist in the United States. He lived during a historical period when social science was predominantly considered the creation and domain of White scholars. In primary sociology texts, Du Bois is typically mentioned in passing, often as the sole Black social scientist acknowledged in social science historiography. At the other end of the spectrum, many Black social scientists today begin their exploration with Du Bois, recognizing his brilliant and groundbreaking contributions. However, both of these approaches seemingly imply that there were no notable Black social scientists before Du Bois. This paper aims to challenge that assumption by examining early nineteenth-century Black social science through the lens of James McCune Smith. Despite being a close friend to prominent figures like Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, John Brown, and Alexander Crummell, McCune Smith has been relegated to a historical footnote in most accounts, except in a few recent notable works.

Зомби, или Триумф коллективной воли

Sociological texts on zombies are mostly interested in human problems (capitalism, pop culture, etc), not in zombies as such. Zombies as a specific form of (non) life remain a blindspot for sociologists. Scientists of other disciplines, like epidemiology and neurosciences, have already declared their ways for studying zombies. Our task is to outline the concepts and hypotheses that sociology could contribute to this emerging interdisciplinary project. The main focus is on the social organization of zombies in relation to the observed features of their behavior. One of the key questions (without a satisfactory answer) of the future sociology of zombies was formulated by the neuroscientists Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek: why single zombies look dumb and clumsy, while big groups of zombies act like a well-coordinated formidable force? In search of a basis for understanding zombies, the essay turns to the classical ideas of sociology (Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde) and to the later anthropological insights of Mary Douglas, Victor Turner and René Girard. A sociological approach to zombies makes it possible to describe them not as a pathology, but as a special way of organizing a collective (non)life that can successfully compete with the human one.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro: A Book History

The Philadelphia Negro pioneered the field of urban sociology. As a result, scholars often highlight its academic interventions that over a century after its publication remain germane to the study of cities and multiethnic populations in urban settings. While emphasis on the text’s scholarly originality and contemporary analytic relevancy is central to demonstrate its importance, consideration of The Philadelphia Negro’s book history provides an equally compelling account of its enduring significance. Book history addresses the creation of a book as a physical publication. Book history also considers the authorial choices behind infrastructural, textual adornments such as appendixes or maps. In addition, book history deals with subjects like cover art and how publishers and authors often cocreate the external visual presentation of a book’s interior contents. In this brief book history, I explore an editorial history of critical scholarly editions of The Philadelphia Negro, an analysis occasioned by a recent 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press updated edition of the text that features sociologist Elijah Anderson’s revised editorial introduction, first published in 1996. In other words, I historicize critical scholarly editions of The Philadelphia Negro to trace the book’s reception and meaning over time. I also examine selected textual and infrastructural features of each critical edition, most especially the book covers. Historical analysis of sociological writing summons historians (like me) to perform cross-disciplinary intellectual labor while it also invites sociologists to consider historical context more expansively in their assessment of sociological texts.

On Practical Uses of Ten Sefirot: Material Readings in an Early Modern Kabbalistic Collectaneum (MS Michael 473)

AbstractBy the end of the sixteenth century, textual manifestations of kabbalah—a variety of Jewish mysticism that first emerged in medieval Provence and Catalonia—achieved the status of elite but authoritative lore in Eastern and Central Europe, even if at times they stirred religious opposition. At the same time, and especially in the seventeenth century, the so-called practical kabbalah, associated with magic and a talismanic approach to religious ritual, gained substantial popularity among Ashkenazi (i.e., Eastern and Central European) Jews. This study centers on a multiple-text and composite codex, Oxford-Bodleian MS Michael 473, and throws into relief the dynamics of circulation of various kabbalistic traditions in early modern Eastern and Central Europe. By zooming in on a single codex, this article foregrounds the hermeneutic potential of contextual reading of texts in complex manuscripts and of interpreting material choices taken by their cocreators. It does so with a methodological agenda that goes beyond tracing of authorial genealogies, and beyond the sociology of texts and their producers, toward exploring the interpretive relations of literary and material form in early modern handwritten kabbalistic texts. The article showcases a single textual unit, Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, that MS Michael 473 contains, in order to focus on the position of practical kabbalistic texts and practices within the spectrum of kabbalistic traditions of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Eastern and Central Europe, ushered in by the contemporary modes of reading and transcription of texts.

Confronting Reflexivity: Sociological Trajectories of Teaching Sociology in Liberal Arts Spaces

This article invites the reader to reflect on the practice and teaching of sociology through reflexivity in India in a new emerging space of liberal arts in private universities. These spaces can be considered as the fringe of sociology teaching. I argue that students in private universities grapple with a ‘crisis of relatedness’ regarding sociological discourse, and the debates they study leave them with different questions. I suggest that the understanding of social facts and issues is different and distant from those studying in public universities. The different lived experiences produce different sociological imaginations with the engagement of the same sociological texts. Teaching sociology in liberal arts spaces could mark the emergence of a generation of sociologists in India who have their training rooted in private universities. This new location of sociology students asks us to revisit the ongoing debate of skill-based sociology versus critical sociology that generates new questions for reflexivity and social location of both practitioner and student of sociology.

Review of “Webbed Connectivities: The Imperial Sociology of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality”

On the back cover, Jyoti Puri writes that Patil’s text “make[s] it impossible to return to the business of gender and sexuality (and sociology) as usual.” I fully agree with this statement, as the volume denaturalizes the concepts of sex, sexuality, and gender, which are thoroughly pervasive in our discipline and are often consumed without much contemplation of their history. Patil informs us that thoughtless repetition of the current scholarship reproduces imperial power relations and, therefore, racism. The volume’s explanation structure is pleasantly surprising. While the bulk of sociological texts deploy gender, sex, and sexuality as explanans to their explananda, Patil treats these concepts as spatially and temporally specific events (or effects or consequences) that should be explained. Successfully doing so, Patil’s explanans is “webbed connectivities,” that is, “historic imperial, racial, and colonial networks” (pp. 3–4) wherein racial-colonial discourse circulated among Euro-American empire-racial states, Catholic church, merchant capitalists, western scientists, and travel writers. In this sense, Patil’s volume is a history of knowledge that reveals the ways in which sociological concepts are the effects of imperial power: Sex, sexuality, and gender are not empty vessels applicable universally, but are particular consequences of colonial modernity.

Literatura científica y mapas mentales: una práctica docente desde los clásicos de la Sociología del Trabajo

The paper presents a teaching experience implemented in two Sociology of Work courses at two Spanish universities. The teaching practice consists of the leisurely, reflective and critical reading of a classic text of the Sociology of Work, after which the students must prepare a mind map, that is, a graphic representation in which ideas are schematically organized and associated. The analysis of the students’ responses to a questionnaire allows us to affirm that the practice of mind maps is a creative, visual and useful method of synthesizing and memorizing a classic sociological text.

What Is Going On? An Analysis of the Interaction Order

Seeing sociology visually adds a sense of realness to the viewer compared to only reading sociological texts. In this paper, I aim to provide an example of how a single scene from a feature film can be utilized as a practical and meaningful means to analyze a social situation and to help students of sociology to grasp key features of Goffman’s theory of interaction order. More precisely, the main aims of the paper are 1) to illustrate Goffman’s theory of the interaction order by identifying acts of disruption and alignment in interaction through a film clip; and 2) to attempt to analyze, in a Goffmanian sense, what is really going on in the situational interaction. The scene is from the 2013 American movie August: Osage County and follows a dinner of immediate family in the wake of the funeral of the hostess’s late husband. The normative and civilized interaction of the meal is, however, jeopardized by the hostile and provocative mood of the hostess, as she repeatedly disrupts the interaction order with attempts to mock and/or uncover the hidden and vulnerable truths of the immediate members of her family, exemplifying her power status in the particular situation. The dinner guests, however, try to overlook and resist the provocation of the hostess and stick to their predetermined roles to save and sustain their idealized selves (their faces) and the interaction order (the faces of others), In doing so they, on the one hand, discard the uncomfortable truths acclaimed by the hostess and, on the other, explain the hostess’s provocative actions in terms of their claim that she is unwell and in need of medical attention. Thus, the attacked dinner guests in the scene align more alliance to the interaction order than to truth itself.

DYNAMICS OF GENDER CONFLICT IN SOCIETY

In sociological texts, the definition of gender conflict is still at novice stage due to its nature in the society. This research paper attempts a holistic understanding of Gender Conflict. The term ‘Gender Conflict’ is new in sociological research and it is discussed here thoroughly. The research paper describes sexuality, roles, social construct and also explains phases of social change in the context of Gender. The gender and conflict are described in diagram and pictorial formats with step-by-step process of dynamics of gender conflict in society. 
 
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The literature/science boundary in sociological articles: Using fiction to discover patterns in co-authorship, author gender, and citation rank

Sociology has been described as a ‘third culture’ between science and literature. The distinctions between different orientations in sociological writing have been studied primarily through their non-textual manifestations (publication genres or venues, methodologies used, scientometric indicators, etc.). Our knowledge of how the science–literature boundary relates to the rhetorical composition of sociological texts therefore remains limited. We mixed a bespoke corpus of Czech sociological articles with a corpus of Czech short fiction to straightforwardly account for the relationship between sociology and literature. Unsupervised classification based on the distribution of most frequent verbs yielded two categories of sociological articles. Each cluster exhibited significant association with non-textual variables. Articles less similar to literature were associated with higher rates of co-authorship, citation counts, and number of women as first authors. Both clusters also displayed clear semantic differences. The signal from literary works increased variance in the textual feature space and subsequent pseudo-experimental validation confirmed its indispensability for the discovery of the association between the rhetorical pattern of verbs usage and non-textual variables related to sociological articles.

The Promises and Pitfalls of Path Dependence Frameworks for Analyzing Penal Change

Although the study of penal changes throughout history is central to punishment studies, the field has taken little from historical institutionalists’ theories of institutional change. One of the most relevant such theories is path dependence. This article outlines path dependence frameworks’ most fruitful elements for studying penal change. Drawing on foundational political science and historical sociology texts, as well as several punishment scholars’ works, this article highlights the advantages of thinking through stasis and change, mechanisms of inertia such as feedback effects, and exogenous shocks. While path dependence offers a powerful framework, it can also be an unsatisfying explanation at times, particularly when path dependence is itself a seemingly uphill battle, when apparent stasis hides ongoing change, or when institutions survive hypothesized mechanisms of change. This paper closes by discussing some ways in which punishment scholars can strengthen the path dependence framework by blending it with recent theoretical developments in the punishment studies field.

Using role play and explicit strategy instruction to improve first-year students’ academic reading proficiency

Background: Many first-year students find the reading of academic texts to be challenging and overwhelming. In particular, first-year students studying sociology at the South African institution where the study was conducted complain of comprehension challenges. This may be due to the presence of numerous theoretical and abstract concepts in sociology texts, which have to be unpacked in order to gain a greater understanding of social phenomena. A high level of reading proficiency is required in the reading of sociology texts; however, some students are poor readers and find it difficult to cope.Objectives: The article reports on a support programme aimed at improving first-year sociology students’ academic reading proficiency.Method: In addition to explicit strategy instruction, which has been used by many researchers to improve reading comprehension, role play was introduced to the reading of sociology texts during tutorials in order to promote deep reading and improve comprehension. Pre-tests and post-tests, together with closed-ended and open-ended questionnaires, were used to determine the efficacy of the intervention. The tests were analysed using t-tests, and the questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics for the closed-ended section and content analysis for the open-ended questions.Results: The findings showed that a significant number of students had improved their reading proficiency and reported both cognitive and affective benefits.Conclusion: Recommendations are made in relation to the use of role play in addition to explicit strategy instruction in order to maximise the improvement of students’ academic reading ability.

The promises and pitfalls of path dependence frameworks for analyzing penal change

Although the study of penal changes throughout history is central to punishment studies, the field has taken little from historical institutionalists’ theories of institutional change. One of the most relevant such theories is path dependence. This article outlines path dependence frameworks’ most fruitful elements for studying penal change. Drawing on foundational political science and historical sociology texts, as well as several punishment scholars’ works, this article highlights the advantages of thinking through stasis and change, mechanisms of inertia such as feedback effects, and exogenous shocks. While path dependence offers a powerful framework, it can also be an unsatisfying explanation at times, particularly when path dependence is itself a seemingly uphill battle, when apparent stasis hides ongoing change, or when institutions survive hypothesized mechanisms of change. This paper closes by discussing some ways in which punishment scholars can strengthen the path dependence framework by blending it with recent theoretical developments in the punishment studies field.

La sociologia a confronto con l’immaginario

Sociology in comparison with the imaginary. In recent years we hear more and more often about the imaginary. This term, most of the times, emerges as an ambiguous notion. Yet there no shortage of texts by important authors suggesting how considerable the subject is. The imaginary keep on avoiding classification of a rational logic: it remains often inexplicable and therefore problematic. The volume “The social ways of the imaginary. For a sociology of the profound is an ambitious sociological text that does not reduce the complexity of the topic; through the various contributions of the authors highlights indeed how the variety of approaches and visions should be enhanced. Imaginary a real, natural and continuous process that does not distract from the real. The becoming of the world can be investigated through the imaginary, by connecting the planes of the micro, meso and macro, nature and culture, the self and the other, recognizing the subtle links moving every dimension.

Genealogies of the Study of Material Texts

This essay is devoted to the different branches of the French material textual tree. Analytical bibliography was not one of them. The decisive elements were the attention paid by H.-J. Martin to the lay-out of the texts as a fundamental source for the history of reading, the reception of McKenzie’s sociology of texts and motto “forms effect meaning”, and the appropriation of Petrucci’s association between morphological description and social history of the written objects.

Creative Concurrence. Gearing Genetic Criticism for the Sociology of Writing

This essay is an attempt to come to terms with a phenomenon that characterizes many authors’ oeuvres: the concurrent composition of several works. My suggestion is to refer to this phenomenon as creative concurrence, drawing on experiences from two related disciplines, bibliography and the history of the book — notably D. F. McKenzie’s “sociology of texts” and the concept of “concurrent production” — in order to cross-pollinate genetic criticism.

Portraits of the Nigerian Soldier in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty and Festus Iyayi’s Heroes

An essential feature of Nigerian literatures is their capacity to exploit history and social experience to bring to light the human condition in society without compromising literary aesthetics. Thus, Nigerian novels often appear to be more educative than entertaining by their ability to illuminate social realities far more effectively than historical or sociological texts. This is evident in the representations of soldiers in Nigerian novels which are highly influenced by historical and social circumstances. This paper carries out a comparative and descriptive analysis of portrayals of Nigerian soldiers in Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty and Festus Iyayi’s Heroes from a new historical perspective. Most studies on the military in Nigerian novels often focus on their actions in war situations and their disruptive and undemocratic activities in politics. However, these studies frequently explore the military as a group with little attention to the texts as expositions on character types in the Nigerian military. This study therefore contributes to criticism on the nexus between literary representation, history, and society. It further highlights historical and social contexts of military explorations in Nigerian novels and their impacts on the perception of the Nigerian soldier in society. These are aimed at showing that depictions of the military in Nigerian novels go beyond their capacities for disruptions and destructions in society; they represent artistic probing of the nature and character of persons in the Nigerian military.

Teaching sociological subjects in English to university students: a case study of the Polish university

Nowadays, the role of English in teaching sociology has been increasing significantly, as far as the English language is an international medium of academic communication worldwide. Polish universities also follow this global trend. Students are offered not only general English courses but also specialised facultative courses in English. Taking into account the last one, a reflexive qualitative research has been carried out at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw. The objective of four face-to-face expert interviews with the academic teachers was exploring teaching methods and techniques, as well as difficulties in the process of teaching sociology with the use of English as a foreign language. An expert interview was designed starting from the teaching background, followed by teaching reflections on their didactic practice and ending with the academic teachers’ thoughts on the role of English in sociology. The following issues were considered: 1) methods and techniques of incorporating English in teaching sociology to Polish students; 2) strategies of motivating students to use English in sociology; 3) the perception of difficulties; 4) reflections on empowering students.The research results in the field of the sociological facultative English-based courses revealed the dominance of some ways of using the language over others. All experts acknowledged that they aimed to develop sociological English through the communicative and task-based approaches. They engaged students in reading sociological texts and critically discussed them. Some of the academic teachers referred also to watching and listening to native speakers as important ways to activate students during their classes. Moreover, the experts took into account students specific interests and encouraged them to prepare a presentation or to write a short essay. Some experts used also the collaborative methods when students were involved in group projects and group presentations. In general, the experts developed interesting and important topics of social life and research to strengthen the students’ intrinsic motivation. It was noticed that the presence of foreign students becomes a reasonable factor of improving English-based communication among Polish and foreign students in classroom. The experts pointed out that there were various linguistic, psychological and institutional barriers in teaching sociological subjects in English for Polish university students. Nevertheless, they tried to overcome those obstacles whenever it was possible.

Towards a reflexive intelligence of emerging sociology in France around 1900

Abstract Recent years have seen a proliferation of publications reconsidering the emergence of sociology in France. The present review discusses and compares three of these works: S. Mosbah-Natanson’s bibliometric study on the fashion of sociology around 1900 (2017a); Th. Hirsch’s history of the idea of social time from the Durkheimians to Les Annales (2016a); and M. Joly’s enquiry into a purported sociological revolution in France and Germany at around the same time (2017a). Pushing respectively for a sociological, a historical and an epistemological history of sociology, they represent three distinct ways of renewing the historiography of the social sciences. The article argues that qualities and limitations of these works alike suggest two challenges for the history of sociology: (1) integrating sociological, historical and epistemological competences in a comprehensive intelligence of sociological texts; and (2) accounting for the reflexivity involved in a social history of the social sciences.