Special Issue Research Articles

On Doing Concept‐Driven Sociology

In this article, we elaborate on both bread‐and‐butter and epistemological features of concept‐driven sociology (CDS). First, we highlight the specific link between this framework and Zerubavel's approach by outlining how CDS is especially suited to deepen the understanding of unmarked dimensions and intersubjective phenomena, reflexively re‐employing the insights of cognitive sociology while crossing thematic (as well as disciplinary) boundaries. Then, we examine four theoretico‐methodological linchpins of CDS, with particular attention to their relationship with symbolic interactionism: the primacy of analytic novelty (and the tool‐like character of sensitizing concepts); the distinct modus operandi regarding the theory‐and‐research‐integration conundrum; the Simmelian legacy of prioritizing geometric and formal dimensions of social features; and the “etic” perspective in re‐constructing sociological problems. Thus, after discussing why CDS should not be judged as appealing only to qualitative scholars, we proceed to present the contributions to the special issue. We conclude this article by briefly stressing the open character of CDS—its essential call for new conceptually guided empirical research.

Norway, deterrence, reassurance and strategic stability in Europe

ABSTRACT The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed stability in Europe under severe strain. This special issue explores Norway’s policy of balancing deterrence and reassurance of Moscow and the deterrent interaction between NATO and Russia to produce insights into how NATO states can craft a more stable Europe. It emphasizes how new technologies and capabilities reshape the landscape of strategic stability. Although the prospects for a more stable European continent seem dim with Moscow as an unwilling partner, calibrating deterrence and reassurance has proven adaptable and will likely remain important in Norway’s and potentially NATO’s future efforts to mitigate the security dilemma.

AIDSImpact special issue: latent class analysis of ART barriers among adolescents and young adults living with HIV in South Africa

ABSTRACT This study examined adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) among adolescents and young adults living with HIV in South Africa. Using survey data from 857 youth on ART, the study employed latent class analysis to identify subgroups based on self-reported reasons for missed ART doses. Three distinct classes emerged: the largest class (85%) occasionally forgot to take their medication or missed a dose because others were around, the second class (9%) missed doses only due to feeling sick, and the third class (6%) faced multiple barriers such as forgetting, feeling sick, worrying about side effects, or doubting the effectiveness of ART. Youth who reported multiple barriers to adherence had significantly lower adjusted odds (AOR = 0.35, 95% CI = 0.16-0.78) of reporting 90% past month adherence compared to those who occasionally forgot their medication. Additionally, contextual factors such as food security, being treated well at the clinic, and being accompanied to the clinic were associated with higher odds of adherence. The findings highlight the importance of considering co-occurring barriers to adherence and tailoring interventions accordingly. Addressing contextual factors, such as ensuring food security and providing supportive clinic environments, is also crucial for promoting optimal adherence among adolescents and young adults living with HIV.

Legal identity in a looking-glass world: documenting citizens of aspirant states

ABSTRACT This introductory article, and the additional 11 contributions that comprise this special issue of Citizenship Studies, uses political science, international law and anthropology literature to unmoor the primacy of the nation-state as the sole entity able to confer legal identity on individuals. It does this by examining legal identity documents, and their ramifications, in entities that exist physically but do not exist (entirely) legally or politically, what we term aspirant states. We find that doing so highlights that these aspirant states are not a set of problems to be redressed by integrating these anomalous spaces into the international order with better governance or juridical disambiguation. Rather, legal identity documents issued by aspirant states raise more fundamental questions about contemporary citizenship regimes in general and about the way law and state authority are constructed and reproduced. Such arguments force us to contest and reconsider the violent and circular logic of the current nation-state system and how legal identity, and citizenship, is conferred and maintained.

Frontline and Relapsed Rhabdomyosarcoma (FAR-RMS) Clinical Trial: A Report from the European Paediatric Soft Tissue Sarcoma Study Group (EpSSG).

The Frontline and Relapsed Rhabdomyosarcoma (FaR-RMS) clinical trial is an overarching, multinational study for children and adults with rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS). The trial, developed by the European Soft Tissue Sarcoma Study Group (EpSSG), incorporates multiple different research questions within a multistage design with a focus on (i) novel regimens for poor prognostic subgroups, (ii) optimal duration of maintenance chemotherapy, and (iii) optimal use of radiotherapy for local control and widespread metastatic disease. Additional sub-studies focusing on biological risk stratification, use of imaging modalities, including [18F]FDG PET-CT and diffusion-weighted MRI imaging (DWI) as prognostic markers, and impact of therapy on quality of life are described. This paper forms part of a Special Issue on rhabdomyosarcoma and outlines the study background, rationale for randomisations and sub-studies, design, and plans for utilisation and dissemination of results.

Introduction: Verticality, radicalism, resistance

In recent decades urban scholarship has witnessed a ‘vertical’ or ‘volumetric’ turn that has advanced understandings of the multi-modal power asymmetries cutting through and organising urban space. Yet, this volumetric scholarship often remains locked into binary critiques – of success/failure, inclusion/exclusion, luxury/abjection, dispossession/accumulation, arborescent/rhizomatic, horizontal/vertical. This special issue tinkers with the limitations of these (unwittingly) binary urban geometries and volumetrologies – material as well as metaphorical ones. By building the etymological opposition of ‘the vertical’ with ‘the radical’ into the title of the volume (via the Latin root radix, meaning ‘root’), we seek to make the radical itself work with geometric and morphological associations. The papers in this special issue proffer diverse ethnographic, geographic and conceptual material for considering and theorising urban verticality in concert with rather than in opposition to its incumbent horizontalisms, diagonals, curls, zigzags and scattered planes. As we completed work on the special issue, the horrors of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territory played out before our eyes. Accordingly, we make use of the introduction to reflect upon the insight that the war in Ukraine brings to bear on the intersection between domains of the urban, the vertical and the radical in the fraught, tense, vicious, fragile – but resistant – urban worlds of today. In doing so, we seek not only to render more clearly visible the violent effects of power verticals on lives, worlds and cities, but also to find seeds of hope in emergent, insurgent forms of (vertical as well as horizontal, and neither vertical nor horizontal) resistance.

The power of the “weak” and international organizations

AbstractBy nearly every measure, power in the international system is concentrated, meaning that most states lack significant power resources. And yet international relations theory tends to focus on the behavior of great powers. This special issue instead explores the strategies that “weak” states use in the context of international organizations both to advance their interests and to resist pressure from stronger states. We define weakness as a relative lack of power across one or more dimensions. While the literature, to the extent it has focused on weak actors, has too often defined weakness solely in material terms, we adopt a broader conception that builds on the influential typology of power by Barnett and Duvall (Barnett and Duvall, 2005a, Barnett and Duvall, International Organization59, 39–75, 2005b). A multidimensional conceptualization of power allows analysts to show how actors that are weak in one dimension (often material power) may be stronger on other dimensions, giving them greater capacity for action than is often recognized. From this framework we create a typology of “strategies of the weak” that emphasizes the agency of weaker actors to make the most of their positions. The contributions to the special issue, summarized here, illuminate and substantiate many of these strategies across a diverse range of international organizations, understood as both forums and actors. As the articles show, these alternative theoretical mechanisms help explain how and why seemingly weak states sometimes fare better than a simplistic assessment of their material capabilities might suggest. By deepening our understanding of weakness and how it influences state behavior, the volume advances our theoretical understanding of how power is built, wielded, and resisted in and through international organization.

Imperial algorithms: Contemporary manifestations of racism and colonialism.

In this special issue, we invited contributions that critically examined issues of imperialism, colonialism, power, justice, etc. to expand the canon of anticolonial scholarship and critical scholarship in community psychology. Our two objectives were: (1) to build on the canon of anticolonial and critical race scholarship to cultivate an empirical and theoretical body of work and conceptual frameworks about racism and colonialism within the field of community psychology and (2) to unpack the different manifestations of racism in society from the lens of community psychology and reflect on the implications of these varied forms of injustice in the contemporary moment. Rooted in African epistemology and methodology (Martin, 2012), we find the concept of the algorithm to serve as a potent metaphor for the ways in which these oppressive structures operate given the prevalence of algorithms in our daily lives and the algorithm is symbolic of the information age and predictive powers that seem to govern society beyond conscious control. In this sense, imperial algorithms are these structures, patterns, processes, and procedures that perpetuate imperialism. These imperial algorithms manifest as neo-colonialism, surveillance, social engineering, carcerality, reality warping of contemporary racism, health disparities exacerbated by COVID-19, and environmental grids of oppression.

Moving post-socialist publics: citizens, spaces, and practices

ABSTRACT This Introduction to the Special Issue on moving post-socialist publics aims to lay out how existing mobility politics and discourses in the region under scrutiny are intertwined with historical, socialist-era mobility practices, and infrastructures. Mobility paths and policies are imbued with a contested understanding of socialist legacies as well as capitalist realities. The Special Issue explores how transport options and choices confront citizens with social diversity, transformations of social norms, institutions and routines, values, concepts, and traditions. Valuable lessons can be learnt in terms of critical mobility geographies beyond the region as post-socialist transformations address justice and changing social norms and understandings of state roles. A decolonial inspiration that challenges existing readings of the formerly socialist region and transgresses the analytical “Othering” of its transition experience can be traced throughout the papers. Instead of arguing whether or not post-socialism is still a valid analytical framework, authors see the region as marked by multiple experiences of modernity and coloniality. In the former Soviet peripheries, urban mobility shapes socio-spatial contentions, making visible multiple and conflicting narratives of modernity and coloniality, tracing flows and dependencies at different scales, and taking into account complex constellations of actors, cultures, and materialities. The post-socialist lens is meant to critically scrutinize continuities and changes, providing particular interpretations for contemporary issues: mobile post-socialist publics are thus a turn away from what was before but in a context in which a strong relation to the past is embedded in several continuities in institutions, materialities, and practices.

Understanding Ethnoracial Disparities and Advancing Mental Health Equity Through Clinical Psychological Science: Introduction to Special Issue

Mental health disparities persist in countries such as the United States and across the world. Research with disparity populations is underrepresented in mainstream clinical psychological journals, and existing science has not focused on group specific lived experiences. Achieving mental health equity requires examination of determinants of psychopathology and health disparities and personal and cultural attributes that promote mental health. Clinical psychological science ideally also encourages and values research with underrepresented minority and underserved populations, novel and underused study designs, and research produced by diverse scholars. Our special issue highlights research that considers systematically culture specific processes, examines not only individual- but also community-level factors that relate to psychopathology and mental-health care, and challenges structural limitations in the current literature. We review these articles that incorporate innovative and community engaged approaches and showcase the importance of diversity in researcher and research participant demographics and perspectives in the advancement of equity in clinical psychological science.

Special Issue on “Ecotechnological Green Approaches to Environmental Remediation and Restoration”

Ecological technology (or ecotechnology for short) is an ecofriendly technology used to develop sustainable ecosystems that integrate human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both [...]

Introduction to the Special Issue on Innovations in Nonverbal Deception Research: Promising Avenues for Advancing the Field

Introduction to the Special Issue on Innovations in Nonverbal Deception Research: Promising Avenues for Advancing the Field

Preface of the JAA Special Issue Recent Advances in Non-Commutative Ring Theory

Preface of the JAA Special Issue Recent Advances in Non-Commutative Ring Theory

Case Article—Racial Bias in Automated Traffic Law Enforcement and the Price of Unjustness

This case study has been developed for students to practice their data analysis and optimization skills in a contemporary societal issue: that of injustice in automated traffic law enforcement. Specifically, this case study is for students of modern data analysis and statistical modeling courses that focus on hypothesis testing; it also has a component for students in optimization and mathematical modeling courses that focus on linear and network optimization. The case study has been used since Spring 2023 in a combination of two courses from the Industrial Engineering (Analysis of Data, an introduction to probability and statistics) and Civil Engineering (Transportation Systems, an introduction to mathematical modeling and optimization for civil engineers with a focus on transportation) curricula. History: This paper has been accepted for the INFORMS Transactions on Education Special Issue on DEI in ORMS Classrooms. Supplemental Material: The Teaching Note and data files are available at https://www.informs.org/Publications/Subscribe/Access-Restricted-Materials .

Case—Racial Bias in Automated Traffic Law Enforcement and the Price of Unjustness

This case study has been developed for students to practice their data analysis and optimization skills in a contemporary societal issue: that of injustice in automated traffic law enforcement. Specifically, this case study is for students of modern data analysis and statistical modeling courses that focus on hypothesis testing; it also has a component for students in optimization and mathematical modeling courses that focus on linear and network optimization. The case study has been used since Spring 2023 in a combination of two courses from the Industrial Engineering (Analysis of Data, an introduction to probability and statistics) and Civil Engineering (Transportation Systems, an introduction to mathematical modeling and optimization for civil engineers with a focus on transportation) curricula. History: This paper has been accepted for the INFORMS Transactions on Education Special Issue on DEI in ORMS Classrooms.

Progressing the research on systemic risk, cascading disasters, and compound events

Disaster risk in the 21st century differs from the experience of past generations and is defined by its evolving systemic nature. The increased role of technological networks, societal interdependencies and climate change dynamics make crises more complex and unpredictable. Cascading and compounding dynamics are becoming the new “business as usual”, challenging emergency management to maintain operations in face of complex disruptions while requiring the development of good practices and strategy for facilitate the recovery process. Our special issue aimed to support the development of a paradigm shift in the understanding of complex events, utilizing a network-based, cross-disciplinary approach to resilience. This editorial introduces and summarizes 18 papers across four thematic areas: 1) Resilience Challenges; 2) Area Studies and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; 3) Community and Health; 4) Enhancing New Methodologies. The conclusions highlight open research challenges for future exploration.

Clinical Psychology in the Era of Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDoC): Reconciling Individually-Focused Practice with a Broader Biopsychosocial Context.

There is growing consensus that diagnostic labels are insufficient to describe the individual child's psychiatric profile, much less inform the precise combination of interventions that will minimize the impact of risk and/or bolster protective factors over the course of a particular child's development. Moreover, investigations of neurobiological and genetic mechanisms associated with psychopathology have revealed considerable cross-diagnostic overlap, undermining the validity of models that propose a 1:1 relationship between risk and psychiatric disorder. Accordingly, recent publications have advocated for neurodevelopmental models that utilize trait-based measurement, as well as increased emphasis on integration of biological and experiential mechanisms. Despite an expanding body of literature supporting this conceptual shift, the practical implications remain unclear. In this special issue, we compile a collection of novel empirical research papers and reviews that build on the trans-diagnostic principles of the RDoC framework.

Introduction to Everyday Internationalism: Socialist–South Connections and Mass Culture during the Cold War

AbstractThis Special Issue brings together scholars working in a variety of contexts to explore the concepts of solidarity and socialist internationalism as a mass phenomenon. While recent scholarship has begun to document linkages between the socialist and (post)colonial world during the Cold War, most of this work has eschewed a focus on the mass, social experience of internationalism, instead emphasizing the transformative role played by small groups of mobile elites. But if the direct experience of socialist internationalism was limited to a privileged few, how then was it experienced by the majority, for whom actual travel outside of their state was a distant possibility? This issue explores how socialist internationalism and its attendant practices of solidarity functioned within and between socialist societies. Where it does take border-transcending groups as its subject, it explores the socio-historical, everyday implications of this transnational story. For much of the Cold War, state and party-led practices of internationalism were a central component of everyday life, but little is known about these practices as they manifested on the ground. To shed light on this, this Special Issue explores how depictions of solidarity manifested in mass culture; how everyday practices emerged out of socialist internationalism and anti-imperialism; and how institutions that sought to bridge gaps between societies through solidarity emerged and then transformed or disappeared after 1989.

Sustainable Development of Industrial Engineering with the Application of Intelligent Systems

This Special Issue focuses on Intelligent Systems (ISs) in the context of sustainable development for industrial engineering [...]

Learning from success and failure: implications for entrepreneurs, SMEs, and policy

AbstractDespite the valuable contributions of earlier learning studies, the specific analysis of how entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) learn has been sidelined in the literature. Significant research opportunities remain open in various unexplored realms. By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective that combines a variety of frameworks (i.e., organizational, economic, and innovation management), the collection of 11 studies of this special issue dedicated to learning delivers valuable insights into how entrepreneurs and SMEs capitalize on learning processes, while identifying how these processes are affected by the type of experience (i.e., success and failure). This paper first overviews the contributions of the 11 papers included in the special issue. Next, we discuss a number of yet unresolved topics that deserve academic attention, paying special attention to entrepreneurs’ direct and indirect experiences, knowledge obsolescence caused by technology upgrading, and the role of digital technologies—i.e., Internet-of-things and artificial intelligence—in the learning processes.