Sample records for rural sociology

  1. Rural Sociology at the Crossroads

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Krannich, Richard S.

    2008-01-01

    A complex array of socio-historical, demographic, and organizational factors have combined in recent years to threaten both the current status of and future prospects for the discipline of rural sociology, and for the Rural Sociological Society (RSS). This paper examines the somewhat problematic recent trajectories of the RSS as a professional…

  2. Rural Sociology in Brazil: Institutional Growth (1965-1977).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hansen, David O.; And Others

    Growth and present status of graduate programs, major research interests, and potential for US-Brazilian collaboration indicate the present state of rural sociology in Brazil. In contrast to US rural sociology's identity crisis of the past decade, the field in Brazil has blossomed. Graduate programs are underway at universities of Rio Grande do…

  3. Rural Sociology in the South: 1982. Proceedings of the Rural Sociology Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (Orlando, Florida, February 7-10, 1982).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wimberly, Ronald C., Comp.

    A total of 33 papers are collected for dissemination to other sociologists and graduate/undergraduate students, and represent the broad thrusts southern sociology brings to bear on rural and agricultural problems. The seven sessions are entitled: The Sociology of Agriculture (three papers); The Sociology of Communities (six papers); Social Change…

  4. Teaching Rural Sociology to Students with Non-Rural Backgrounds.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Spaulding, Irving A.

    A course designed to teach rural sociology to urban and suburban university students is described in this paper. Introductory material sets forth the objectives and the conceptual approach of the course, which systematically examines social changes associated with food and fiber production throughout the world. Five concepts--group, imperative…

  5. The Empty Shops Project: Developing Rural Students' Sociological Insight

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Willis, Evan; Burns, Edgar

    2011-01-01

    An informal research project with high local relevance was developed for a first-year sociology course at an Australian rural university campus. The project developed students' sociological insight by challenging them to investigate "truths" about their own region, rather than immediately pushing them to comprehend new and different…

  6. Climate Change and Rural Sociology: Broadening the Research Agenda

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dunlap, Riley E.

    2010-01-01

    Climate change is the preeminent environmental problem of this time, and Joseph Molnar's call for greater attention to it by rural sociologists is both welcome and timely. The agenda he lays out for rural sociology's engagement with climate change, however, seems rather narrow and restrictive. Examining the potential impacts of climate change,…

  7. Rural Sociology in the South: 1980. Proceedings of the Rural Sociology Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (Hot Springs, Arkansas, February 3-6, 1980).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Frese, Wolfgang, Ed.

    A total of 47 papers representing the broad research and extension interests related to rural areas are included in this volume. The 13 sessions are entitled Rural Structure and Process, Industrialization, Migration, Health and Alcohol, Quality of Life, Occupations and Work, Applied Sociology, Education, Network Analysis, Poverty, Status…

  8. Sociological Perspectives on Energy and Rural Development: A Review of Major Frameworks for Research on Developing Countries.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Koppel, Bruce; Schlegel, Charles

    The principal sociological frameworks used in energy research on developing countries can be appraised in terms of the view of the energy-rural development problem that each framework implies. "Socio-Technical Analysis," which is used most in industrial and organizational sociology and in ecological anthropology, is oriented to the decomposition…

  9. Rural Theory.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gilbert, Jess

    To be scientific, rural sociology must have a distinctive conceptual basis; therefore, defining "rural" has long been a major concern of rural sociologists. Recently faced with similar problems, political economists have revitalized the field of urban sociology by looking beyond the city to the social production of spatial forms under…

  10. Bibliography of the Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, July 1967-October 1979. Supplement 2 for Bulletin No. 48.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    State Univ. of New York, Ithaca. Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell Univ.

    The more than 500 items listed in this bibliography of the publications of the Cornell University Department of Rural Sociology for the period July 1, 1967 through October 30, 1979 consist of those published works of present and former staff members which appeared during their affiliations with the Department or were the result of research done…

  11. Agricultural lands preservation: a sociology of survival

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    White, T.S.

    1983-01-01

    This is a rural sociological study investigating the viability of agricultural lands use-values and rural communities in the context of the structure of US agriculture. It outlines the theoretical foundation, ideology, and praxis of a sociology of survival. It is undertaken within the framework of environmental sociology, which focuses on the dynamic interpenetration of social and biotic systems. The concepts of carrying capacity, sustained multiple-use yield, and land-use compatibility and their significance are discussed. The phenomenon of phantom carrying capacity is explored, and its ominous portent noted; but the astonishing potential of agricultural lands to produce huge net gains inmore » use values and in real carrying capacity is affirmed. The theory of unlimited resources, substitution, and market-allocation is falsified. Absolute shortages of renewable and nonrenewable resources are documented, and the necessity for population control, conservation, expanded sustained-yield production, and social allocation is established.« less

  12. Rural Policies for the 1990s. Rural Studies Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Flora, Cornelia B., Ed.; Christenson, James A., Ed.

    Written by some of the foremost experts on rural America, this book focuses on policy-relevant research on the problems of rural areas. In each chapter, rural policy needs are identified by examining the flow of events and rural sociology of the 1980s. Chapters are: (1) "Critical Times for Rural America: The Challenge for Rural Policy in the…

  13. Persistent Poverty in Rural America. Rural Studies Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rural Sociological Society, Bozeman, MT.

    In this volume, the Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty analyzes the leading explanations of persistent rural poverty and points out new directions in theory that should provide a firmer foundation for antipoverty policies and programs. Written by over 50 leading social scientists, the Task Force report explains that…

  14. Change in Rural Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Edington, Everett D.

    1981-01-01

    Discusses nine major characteristics of rural schools which affected their willingness to accept change, as revealed in a study of the five-year Rural Experimental Schools Program. Available from: Rural Sociological Society, 325 Morgan Hall, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37916. (NEC)

  15. Rural and Urban Youth Programs.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Backman, Kenneth; And Others

    This publication provides a variety of information on prevention and intervention programs for rural and urban children and adolescents. Drawing from a rural sociological perspective, the introductory paper defines "rural," discusses rural-urban economic and social differences, and lists indicators of risk for rural youth. It discusses the extent…

  16. Bringing the immigrant back into the sociology of taste.

    PubMed

    Ray, Krishnendu

    2017-12-01

    The sociology of food consumption has emerged as a robust field with rich empirical material and engaged theorization about taste, omnivorousness, distinction, and practice theory. Nevertheless, there are continuing empirical and conceptual lacunae. Although transnational and rural-to-urban migrants play a crucial role in food businesses in many global cities, they are mostly unaccounted for in the sociology of taste. Taking the American case, in particular based on data from New York City, this article provides reasons for that gap and shows what might be gained if migrants were accounted for in the urban sociology of taste. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Poverty in the Rural United States.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dudenhefer, Paul

    1993-01-01

    The 1990 Rural Sociological Society's Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty describes rural poverty, comparing it to urban poverty; rejects human-capital, economic-organization, and culture-of-poverty theories of rural poverty and proposes research on 10 other theories; and discusses rural policy and its inequitable emphasis on farmers. (KS)

  18. Reaching Out to Rural Learners. Rural Economy Series Bulletin 1.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Further Education Unit, London (England).

    This bulletin explores sociological and technological problems encountered in a project undertaken by the East Devon College of Further Education using an audio teleconferencing system to deliver community college courses to the rural unemployed in English villages. The project team identified the characteristics of several types of rural Devon…

  19. Agriculture and Rurality: Beginning the "Final Separation"?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Friedland, William H.

    2002-01-01

    When is a farm a farm? When is rural rural? Has the issue of the rural-urban continuum returned? Decades ago rural sociology worked itself into two blind alleys: rural-urban differences and attempts to define the rural-urban fringe. Although these conceptual problems eventually were exhausted, recent developments in California raise the…

  20. Rural Public Transportation: An Instructional Module.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hayden, Linda

    A concept-based introduction to rural public transportation is provided in this instructional module for undergraduate and graduate transportation-related courses for disciplines such as engineering, business, sociology, and technology. Rural public transportation involves systems in rural and small urban areas with populations under 50,000…

  1. Monographs on the Rural Community in Poland.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wierzbicki, Zbigniew T.

    Documenting the development of monographs on the rural community in Poland, this paper discusses: (1) development of monographic community studies from the beginning of the 19th century to the contemporary period (ethnographic, socioeconomic, socio-historical, economic, historical-sociological, and sociological monographs); (2) the present state…

  2. The Church and Rural Tennessee.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cleland, Charles L.

    Involvement of the church in rural community life was investigated by examining the "Fifty-Year Index to Rural Sociology." Findings revealed that 43 separate articles were published from 1944 to 1977 under categories of community life (7 articles); ministers: elite control (4); attitudes (5); beliefs, practices (6); churches (6); church…

  3. Integrating Sociological Practice into Traditional Sociology Courses.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Basirico, Laurence A.

    1990-01-01

    Outlines a model of instruction that uses Marvin Olsen's reconceptualization of sociology as "sociological practice" to integrate sociological practice into traditional courses. States that this approach helps students gain a critical perspective and overcome personal and cultural ideological constraints in dealing with real issues…

  4. Rural Ties to Computer Networks: A Sociological Overview.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shane, Jackie C.

    1994-01-01

    Discusses using the Internet as a tool for delivering information to rural areas and the possible benefits, such as telecommuting, effective dissemination of medical information, and the promotion of grass-roots activism. The means rural residents use to connect to the Internet and their use of bulletin board systems are described. (nine…

  5. Sociological Perspectives.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Townley, Charles; Middleton, Mike

    This monograph examines sociological perspectives and their applications. It is intended to help the college student coming to sociology for the first time to recognize that there are several perspectives within sociology and to disentangle the mass of terms associated with each. The first distinctive sociological perspective came from the work of…

  6. A sociological dilemma: Race, segregation and US sociology.

    PubMed

    Bhambra, Gurminder K

    2014-07-01

    US sociology has been historically segregated in that, at least until the 1960s, there were two distinct institutionally organized traditions of sociological thought - one black and one white. For the most part, however, dominant historiographies have been silent on that segregation and, at best, reproduce it when addressing the US sociological tradition. This is evident in the rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other 'African American Pioneers of Sociology', as Saint-Arnaud calls them, are presented as core sociological voices within histories of the discipline. This article addresses the absence of African American sociologists from the US sociological canon and, further, discusses the implications of this absence for our understanding of core sociological concepts. With regard to the latter, the article focuses in particular on the debates around equality and emancipation and discusses the ways in which our understanding of these concepts could be extended by taking into account the work of African American sociologists and their different interpretations of core themes.

  7. How Sociological Leaders Rank Learning Goals for Introductory Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Persell, Caroline Hodges

    2010-01-01

    In 2001, the American Sociological Association launched a task force to articulate learning goals for an introduction to sociology course and design an advanced high school sociology curriculum that could also be a model for introductory sociology courses in colleges and universities. This research note describes one of several efforts to validate…

  8. Typology of Leisure of Rural People.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tapilina, Vera Sergeevna

    Utilizing data from a 1972 sociological survey of rural inhabitants working in the public economy of the province of Novosibirsk, this study examined leisure as an element of the residents' life style. Rural residents with common leisure behaviors were identified through the classification of the behavior's function and quality. Leisure functions…

  9. Multidisciplinary Rural Studies in the Land Grant University Context.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brown, David L; Ranney, Christine

    1991-01-01

    Proposes a multidisciplinary graduate program in rural studies within the land grant university context. Requires a universitywide Rural Studies Center to coordinate efforts across the various colleges. Students could earn dual-title master's and Ph.D. degrees in rural studies and applied economics, sociology, geography, public administration,…

  10. Dimensions of Research in Rural Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ruesink, David C.; And Others

    Two papers are presented which were given before the Social Science Section of the 1968 Annual Conference of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. The first paper reports on the results of a research effort designed to identify factors associated with successful relocation of people from a rural or small community environment into large,…

  11. Changing Rural Social Systems: Adaptation and Survival.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Nan E., Ed.; Wang, Ching-li, Ed.

    This book includes studies of globalization-related social changes in rural areas of the United States and other countries and implications of these studies for sociological theory. Although no chapter focuses exclusively on education, education-related themes include rural school dropouts and intergenerational poverty, the migration of rural…

  12. A sociological dilemma: Race, segregation and US sociology

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    US sociology has been historically segregated in that, at least until the 1960s, there were two distinct institutionally organized traditions of sociological thought – one black and one white. For the most part, however, dominant historiographies have been silent on that segregation and, at best, reproduce it when addressing the US sociological tradition. This is evident in the rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other ‘African American Pioneers of Sociology’, as Saint-Arnaud calls them, are presented as core sociological voices within histories of the discipline. This article addresses the absence of African American sociologists from the US sociological canon and, further, discusses the implications of this absence for our understanding of core sociological concepts. With regard to the latter, the article focuses in particular on the debates around equality and emancipation and discusses the ways in which our understanding of these concepts could be extended by taking into account the work of African American sociologists and their different interpretations of core themes. PMID:25418995

  13. No Time to Fool around with the Wrong Education: Socialization Frames, Timing and High Stakes Educational Decision Making in Changing Rural Places

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corbett, Michael

    2009-01-01

    There have been as yet few qualitative analyses of either the lives of rural youth or their schooling in North America. While urban or suburban sociologies of education have focused heavily on the social mobility of youth, rural sociologies of education have focused on the geographic mobility of youth, typically out of rural areas. Indeed there…

  14. Rural-Urban Differences in Environmental Concern in Canada

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Huddart-Kennedy, Emily; Beckley, Thomas M.; McFarlane, Bonita L.; Nadeau, Solange

    2009-01-01

    Distinctions between rural and urban populations are well documented in environmental sociology literature. Rural and urban places may exert different influences on participation in environmentally supportive behavior (ESB) as well as on other forms of environmental concern (EC). The influence of these distinct geographies may be due to present…

  15. Rural U.S.A.: Persistence and Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ford, Thomas R., Ed.

    In 1974 the Rural Sociological Society commissioned a survey on changes that were occuring in different segments of rural society in the United States; information from that survey is presented in the volume of readings. Using an ecological perspective as the analytic framework, the readings focus on the adaption of humans to their environment a…

  16. Towards a Rural Sociological Imagination: Ethnography and Schooling in Mobile Modernity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corbett, Michael

    2015-01-01

    In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the phrase "the sociological imagination" to offer a critical assessment of a discipline he saw descending into a technical or abstract empiricist practice that he feared would ultimately deepen human alienation and oppression. Mills positioned the sociologist as a careful, critical scholar working in the…

  17. Rural Development Literature 1976-1977: An Updated Annotated Bibliography.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Buzzard, Shirley, Comp.

    More than 100 books and articles on rural development published during 1976-77 are annotated in this selective bibliography. Concentrating on social science literature, the bibliography is interdisciplinary in nature, spanning agricultural economics, anthropology, community development, community health, and rural sociology. Types of works…

  18. Nutrition and inequalities. A note on sociological approaches.

    PubMed

    Murcott, Anne

    2002-09-01

    This article provides an overview of three approaches taken to illuminate the sociological contribution to the field of nutrition and inequalities, in the hope of prompting future researchers to pursue the lines of enquiry suggested. Under the heading of inequalities in food use, the paper first exemplifies the utility of 'political arithmetic', possibly the sociological approach best known in public health. This includes socio-economic patterning in food purchases as well as disadvantage in access, where studies of poverty represent a longstanding focus. A rural/urban dimension has, however, been left dormant. A second approach is illustrated by work on public understandings of nutrition, encompassing primarily small-scale studies of beliefs about nutrition, which emphasise the plurality of lay definitions of diet and health. Lacking are studies which build on this work to uncover the relation to health inequalities. Third to be introduced is sociological work on the social distribution of taste, which illuminates the potential for examining enduring, shared ideas of styles in eating embedded in forms of the social organisation of the home that is associated with different socio-economic levels. The paper ends with comment on practical implications for public health practice and policy designed to reduce inequalities in nutrition.

  19. The Corpus Status of Literature in Teaching Sociology: Novels as "Sociological Reconstruction"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carlin, Andrew P.

    2010-01-01

    Using fiction in teaching sociology involves what Harvey Sacks calls "sociological reconstruction". Numerous comments on teaching sociology provide advice and suggestions on the use of literature and "what counts" as "sociological" literature, including specific titles. This paper goes further: while the use of literature is a routine feature of…

  20. Physical Education, Sociology, and Sociology of Sport: Points of Intersection.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sage, George H.

    1997-01-01

    Examines the rise of sociology and physical education (PE), discussing linkages that initially existed and the separation that transpired between them. Also examines connections between social theory and PE before the sociology of sport was formally developed. Details the rise of sociology of sport, highlighting roles of physical educators. (SM)

  1. Revisiting Rurality and Schooling: A Teacher's Story

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pillay, Daisy; Saloojee, Sheeren

    2012-01-01

    This paper presents an understanding of what it means to be a teacher in a school defined as "rural". From a sociological perspective, we consider the mechanisms and ways of knowing that are adopted by a teacher for understanding not only the external world but for being a certain kind of teacher for a school in a rural setting.…

  2. The Many Faces of Ephraim: In Search of A Functional Typology of Rural Areas.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whitaker, William H.

    The literature of social work and rural sociology lacks conceptualization of the term "rural" and treats the term imprecisely. According to a 1960 survey, authors dealing with rural/urban differences do not agree on the attributes of "rural." However, if the rural concept is to be a useful analytical tool and guide to social work practice, its…

  3. Committing Canadian sociology: developing a Canadian sociology and a sociology of Canada.

    PubMed

    Matthews, Ralph

    2014-05-01

    This paper is a slightly revised version of the author's "Outstanding Career Award Lecture" presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociological Association in Victoria, British Columbia on June 6, 2013. The paper distinguishes between Canadian Sociology and the Sociology of Canada. The former involves the explanatory stance that one takes to understanding Canada. The latter addresses the significant social dimensions that underlie Canadian social organization, culture, and behavior. I make a case for a Canadian Sociology that focuses on the unique features of Canadian society rather than adopting a comparative perspective. I also argue that there is a continuing need within the Sociology of Canada to address the issues of staples development. However, I argue that "new" staples analysis must have a directional change from that of the past, in that social processes now largely determine the pattern of staples development. Moreover, new staples analysis must include issues that were never part of earlier staples analysis, such as issues of environmental impacts and of staples depletion under conditions, such as climate change. The paper concludes by analyzing four factors that provide the dominant social contexts for analyzing modern staples development: (1) the rise of neoliberal government, (2) the implementation of globalization and its social consequences, (3) the assumption of aboriginal rights and entitlement, and (4) the rise of environmentalism. These factors were generally not considered in earlier staples approaches. They are critical to understanding the role of staples development and its impact on Canada in the present time.

  4. Should We Talk about the Pain? Personalizing Sociology in the Medical Sociology Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nowakowski, Alexandra C. H.; Sumerau, J. E.

    2015-01-01

    This article discusses the potential of personalizing sociology curriculum, specifically in Medical Sociology courses, to increase student engagement and sociological awareness. Based on our experiences offering separate Medical Sociology courses at a large public research university and a small private teaching university, respectively, we…

  5. Measures of Biochemical Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snell, Joel; Marsh, Mitchell

    2008-01-01

    In a previous article, the authors introduced a new sub field in sociology that we labeled "biochemical sociology." We introduced the definition of a sociology that encompasses sociological measures, psychological measures, and biological indicators Snell & Marsh (2003). In this article, we want to demonstrate a research strategy that would assess…

  6. Sport Sociology and the Discipline of Sociology: Present Status and Speculations about the Future.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snyder, Eldon E.; Spreitzer, Elmer

    The status of the sociology of sport within the discipline of sociology is explored. Review of the subfield since 1971 indicates an increase in the number of publications and communication relating to sport sociology topics. It is hypothesized, however, that sport sociology will not in the near future receive equal acceptance within sociology with…

  7. Applying Sociology to the Teaching of Applied Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wallace, Richard Cheever

    A college-level applied sociology course in which students use sociological theory or research methodology to solve social problems is described. Guidelines for determining appropriate projects are: (1) the student must feel there is a substantial need for the project; (2) the project must be approachable through recognized sociological…

  8. Desperately seeking sociology: nursing student perceptions of sociology on nursing courses.

    PubMed

    Edgley, Alison; Timmons, Stephen; Crosbie, Brian

    2009-01-01

    This paper will present the findings of a qualitative study exploring the perceptions of students confronted by a requirement to learn sociology within a nursing curriculum. Those teaching sociology have a variety of explanations (more or less desperate), seeking to justify its place on the nursing curriculum. While there may be no resolution to the debate, the dispute thus far, has largely been between sociology and nursing academics. Absent from this debate are the voices of students 'required' to learn both nursing and sociology. What do students make of this contested territory? When students are trying to learn their trade, and know how to practice safely and efficaciously what do they make of the sociological imagination? How realistic is it to expect students to grasp both the concrete and practical with the imaginative and critical? Findings from this qualitative, focus group study suggest that students do indeed find learning sociology within a nursing curriculum "unsettling". It would seem that students cope in a number of ways. They fragment and compartmentalise knowledge(s); they privilege the interception of experiential learning on the path between theory and practice; and yet they appear to employ sociological understanding to account for nursing's gendered and developing professional status.

  9. The Fourth Sociology and Music Education: Towards a Sociology of Integration

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wright, Ruth

    2014-01-01

    By identifying three main sociologies that characterise broad movements in the field since its inception, this paper provides a background to considerations of music education from the perspective of sociology. A fourth sociology is then proposed that may be useful to interrogate the complexities of the field of 21st century music education. This…

  10. Social Activity of Rural Local Community as a Sociological Phenomenon.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Urgacz, Barbara

    In view of the 1973 changes brought about by the State's attempt to bring its authority closer to society and create new arrangements to satisfy rural needs, Poland's rural communities were analyzed in terms of a typology of social action. Defined as action and the desire to act resulting from membership in the local community, social action was…

  11. Syringe sociology.

    PubMed

    Vitellone, Nicole

    2015-06-01

    In this article I consider the impact of social epistemologies for understanding the object of the syringe. My aim is to examine the process through which the syringe transforms from an injecting device to a tool of social and political inquiry. Paying particular attention to the uses of Foucault, Becker, Bourdieu, Freud and Latour in empirical studies of injecting heroin use, I examine the sociology of the syringe through the lens of habit and habitus, discourse and deviance, mourning and melancholia, attachment and agencement. In pursuing the theory behind the object my goal is to address a sociological object in the making. In so doing I show how the syringe has been significant for social research, social theory, and sociology. It is the difference the object makes that this article seeks to describe. In tracing the epistemology of the syringe I show how the object is important not just for knowledge of addiction but sociology itself. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

  12. Theory in rural health.

    PubMed

    Farmer, Jane; Munoz, Sarah-Anne; Threlkeld, Guinever

    2012-08-01

    This paper offers theories to explain persistent rural health challenges and describes their application to rural health and research. Review of theories from several disciplines. Key issues in rural health are poorer health status and access to health care, staff shortages, relationship-based health provision and the role of health services in community sustainability. These could be fruitfully addressed by applying theory and findings around social determinants of health, economic sociology, the role of culture and capitals approaches to measuring assets. In particular, the concept of rural health might be a barrier to progressing knowledge; and relational approaches, common in geography, offer a more useful conceptual framework for studying health and place. To move beyond its current stage, rural health needs to look to other disciplines' theories and ideas; particularly, it needs a more contemporary understanding of what place means so that health status and service provision can be improved by more thoughtful research. © 2012 The Authors. Australian Journal of Rural Health © National Rural Health Alliance Inc.

  13. Sociology as a Vocation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lechner, Frank J.

    1990-01-01

    Examines the meaning of practicing sociology, claiming to "commit a social science" still makes sense. Accepts Max Weber's arguments that sociology clarifies human affairs and is oriented to certain virtues. Suggests, however, that sociology is a passion as well as a profession, something Weber recognized but did not elaborate. (NL)

  14. Mobile sociology. 2000.

    PubMed

    Urry, John

    2010-01-01

    This article seeks to develop a manifesto for a sociology concerned with the diverse mobilities of peoples, objects, images, information, and wastes; and of the complex interdependencies between, and social consequences of, such diverse mobilities. A number of key concepts relevant for such a sociology are elaborated: 'gamekeeping', networks, fluids, scapes, flows, complexity and iteration. The article concludes by suggesting that a 'global civil society' might constitute the social base of a sociology of mobilities as we move into the twenty-first century.

  15. Secrets and the Sociological Imagination: Using PostSecret.com to Illustrate Sociological Concepts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noy, Shiri

    2014-01-01

    Introductory sociology classes afford instructors an opportunity to expose students, often from a variety of backgrounds and majors, to the sociological imagination. In this article, I describe how the use of secrets from a popular website, PostSecret.com, can help teach students about the sociological imagination and incorporate biographical…

  16. The idea of philosophical sociology.

    PubMed

    Chernilo, Daniel

    2014-06-01

    This article introduces the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the relationships between implicit notions of human nature and explicit conceptualizations of social life within sociology. Philosophical sociology is also an invitation to reflect on the role of the normative in social life by looking at it sociologically and philosophically at the same: normative self-reflection is a fundamental aspect of sociology's scientific tasks because key sociological questions are, in the last instance, also philosophical ones. For the normative to emerge, we need to move away from the reductionism of hedonistic, essentialist or cynical conceptions of human nature and be able to grasp the conceptions of the good life, justice, democracy or freedom whose normative contents depend on more or less articulated conceptions of our shared humanity. The idea of philosophical sociology is then sustained on three main pillars and I use them to structure this article: (1) a revalorization of the relationships between sociology and philosophy; (2) a universalistic principle of humanity that works as a major regulative idea of sociological research, and; (3) an argument on the social (immanent) and pre-social (transcendental) sources of the normative in social life. As invitations to embrace posthuman cyborgs, non-human actants and material cultures proliferate, philosophical sociology offers the reminder that we still have to understand more fully who are the human beings that populate the social world. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.

  17. A Sociological Perspective.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wong, Paul

    1990-01-01

    Finds that "Strangers from a Different Shore" is a balanced and successful example of sociological research in the comparative/historical manner, and recommends it highly. Notes that quantitative sociological research on Asian Americans is relatively undeveloped. (DM)

  18. Sociology by Any Other Name: Teaching the Sociological Perspective in Campus Diversity Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burke, Meghan A.; Banks, Kira Hudson

    2012-01-01

    This article suggests that the way in to sociology may not always be through the front door. The authors demonstrate how students in a three-day campus diversity program develop a sociological imagination despite not having a formal affiliation with the sociology department. In particular, students demonstrate a move from color blindness into…

  19. Rural Youth Out-Migration and Education: Challenges to Aspirations Discourse in Mobile Modernity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corbett, Michael; Forsey, Martin

    2017-01-01

    We argue here that critical educational scholarship is crucial to developing educational analysis attuned to the nuances of place, mobility, and change in rural locations. Critical sociological analysis, we argue, can also nuance and complicate simplistic portrayals of rural communities and their social, economic, and cultural character. Two…

  20. The National Seminar on Rural Education (College Park, Maryland, May 29-31, 1979).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wallace, Judi

    Representing over 72 different groups and agencies, 107 participants attended the May 29-31, 1979, National Seminar on Rural Education. Prior to the seminar, experts and practitioners in the fields of rural education and sociology were commissioned to produce 22 papers documenting, summarizing, and interpreting research and practice in 6 areas:…

  1. Sociology through Photography

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hyde, Katherine

    2015-01-01

    This chapter describes how photography can inspire and cultivate sociological mindfulness. One set of assignments uses self-portraiture to highlight the complexity of visual representations of social identity. Another uses photography to guide sociological inquiry. Both sets of assignments draw on the Literacy Through Photography methodology,…

  2. Toward Publicly Responsive Sociology Curricula: The Role of Introductory Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Greenwood, Nancy A.

    2013-01-01

    Introductory sociology casts a wide net with regard to its audience and plays an important role in capturing the public eye as well as helping students to make more informed choices in their lives and communities. I ask six questions that help us as sociologists to think about how introductory sociology can better serve our discipline, our…

  3. Sociology of Sport.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Greendorfer, Susan L.

    1985-01-01

    The author describes the issues which created the schism between physical education and sociology. If the subdiscipline of sports sociology is to survive, these misunderstandings must be erased. Current investigations of relevant topics are of interest to both physical educators and coaches and could begin to bridge the gap. (MT)

  4. "It's Not Rocket Science!": High School Sociology Teachers' Conceptions of Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeCesare, Michael

    2006-01-01

    Since academic sociology's birth in this country, sociologists have not been shy about publicly praising and ridiculing the discipline. Though sociologists have been the primary participants in the seemingly endless debates about sociology's proper subject matter, methods, and purpose, there is another group that has also struggled over the past…

  5. Basic Questions for Introductory Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parmley, Ingram C.

    1980-01-01

    Looks at five questions that serve as the core of an introductory sociology course, presenting the essence of sociology without inundating the student with information: What is sociology? How do societies develop rules for living? What if the rules don't work? How are new rules developed? So what? (AYC)

  6. A Sociology "of" or a Sociology "for" Education? The New Zealand Experience of the Dilemma

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rata, Elizabeth

    2010-01-01

    The sociology of education in New Zealand, as in other countries, is affected by the dilemma inherent to the discipline, namely: is it a sociology "of" education or a sociology "for" education? In this article I analyse three factors in which the dilemma is played out: "cultural oppositionism" in the indigenous…

  7. Medical sociology for whom?

    PubMed

    Chaska, N L

    1977-12-01

    This article defines the role of a medical sociologist in a medical institution concerned with health care delivery. The role in applied research and teaching is also discussed. The distinction is made between sociology in medicine and sociology of medicine. Five broad areas of research included under the category of sociology of medicine are the consumer of health care; the social, cultural, and economic enviroments as they relate to health and illness; health and illness behavior; patient education; and the evaluation of services provided to the consumer. Research methodologies utilized by sociologists are briefly presented, and research issues of concern in the sociology of medicine are outlined. The knowledge and information provided by a medical sociologist are supplemental to the physician's practice and are expressed ultimately as a benefit for the patient.

  8. The Poor Little Rich District: The Effects of Suburbanization on a Rural School and Community

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Howley, Aimee; Carnes, Marilyn; Eldridge, Anita; Huber, Donna; Lado, Longun Moses; Kotler, Ruth; Turner, Maryalice

    2005-01-01

    Contextualized in relationship to other case studies about rural districts that have experienced population growth and decline as well as in relationship to the small sociological literature on "boom towns," this study considered the dynamics that seem to be interfering with one previously rural and now suburbanizing district's ability to address…

  9. Sociology: a view from the diaspora.

    PubMed

    Rosenfeld, Richard

    2010-12-01

    From the vantage point of criminology, one of sociology's main export subject areas, the present and future of sociology appear a good deal more promising than John Holmwood's essay on the discipline's misfortune would suggest. Sociology remains in high demand by students and faculty hiring remains strong, even in its more critical sub-fields, such as race and ethnicity, sex and gender, and social inequality. Holmwood is correct that sociology is vulnerable to external pressures to demonstrate its relevance to social practice, but those pressures come from left-wing social movements as well as from centres of power. He is also correct that external pressures contribute to internal disagreement, but sociology has been at war with itself since the 1960s, with little evident decline in its academic standing or intellectual vitality. Those of us on the discipline's diaspora, who depend on sociology for both support and light, must remain hopeful about sociology's continued good fortune.

  10. Sociology Dismissing Religion? The Presentation of Religious Change in Introductory Sociology Textbooks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Featherstone, Richard; Sorrell, Katie L.

    2007-01-01

    This paper explores whether the field of sociology harbors a dismissive attitude towards religion. Specifically it examines whether introductory sociology textbooks present the classic secularization theory over the more recent religious economies explanation of religious change. The classical secularization thesis suggests that religion is…

  11. Annual Review of Sociology. Volume 9, 1983.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Turner, Ralph H., Ed.; Short, James F., Jr., Ed.

    Twenty-six essays describing current research in sociology are included in this publication. The essays fall into 10 categories: differentiation and stratification; political sociology; social processes; institutions; individual and society; formal organizations; urban sociology; theory and methods; sociology of world regions; and historical…

  12. [From sociology in medicine to the sociology of collective health: contributions toward a necessary reflexivity].

    PubMed

    Castro, Roberto

    2016-03-01

    This text looks at the difference between sociology in medicine (collaborator of health institutions) and the sociology of medicine (independent of health institutions). If consistent, sociology in medicine should become a sociology of medicine. As an example, it is shown how the study of the social determinants of health and illness begins by assuming non-problematically the ontological reality of health and illness, but ends up problematizing the very concept of health-disease, demonstrating that the study of health determinants also requires the study of the determinants of the social construction of disease. The urgent necessity of objectifying collective health itself is argued. By applying sociological tools we can examine the so-called objective factors in the determination of health and disease, the socially constructed nature of these categories of knowledge, and the struggles and power relations that determine whether or not such categories are viable.

  13. Comparative education and the ?new? sociologies

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Trusz, Andrew R.; Parks-Trusz, Sandra L.

    1981-12-01

    The authors examine the impact of the `new' sociologies on comparative education by reviewing five comparative readers published during the past twenty years. While the `new' sociologies have had considerable impact within sociology and the sociology of education, minimal impact is found within comparative education. The authors further show that while critical new sociologies such as Marxism, neo-Marxism, and Critical theory have had some penetration into comparative education, use of the interpretative sociologies such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and semiotics has generally been absent. The authors conclude by suggesting that a synthesis of the critical and interpretative modes would prove fruitful for further work in comparative education. The five texts are: Halsey, Floud and Anderson (eds.), Education, Economy and Society (1961); Eckstein and Noah (eds.), Scientific Investigations in Comparative Education (1969); Beck, Perspectives on World Education (1970); Karabel and Halsey (eds.), Power and Ideology in Education (1977); and Altbach and Kelly (eds.), Education and Colonialism (1978).

  14. A Life with the Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whitty, Geoff

    2012-01-01

    In this article, the author talks about a life with the sociology of education. He begins by describing the "old" and "new" sociologies of education. Then, he discusses the sociology of education policy and the relevance of Basil Bernstein, who remained the dominant presence within the sociology of education in the UK until his…

  15. Rapid Rural Appraisal: A Study of Gullah Culture.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jarrett, Charles W.; Lucas, David M.

    Principles of rural sociology and interpersonal communication provide the foundation for a study of "Gullah" culture. The Gullahs are a group of African Americans living along the southwestern U.S. coastal territory. Gullah culture began to evolve with the enslavement of African people in the Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia,…

  16. Principles of Sociology in Systems Engineering

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Watson, Michael D.; Andrews, James G.; Larsen, Jordan A.

    2017-01-01

    Systems engineering involves both the integration of the system and the integration of the disciplines which develop and operate the system. Integrating the disciplines is a sociological effort to bring together different groups, often with different terminology, to achieve a common goal, the system. The focus for the systems engineer is information flow through the organization, between the disciplines, to ensure the system is developed and operated with all relevant information informing system decisions. Robert K. Merton studied the sociological principles of the sciences and the sociological principles he developed apply to systems engineering. Concepts such as specification of ignorance, common terminology, opportunity structures, role-sets, and the reclama (reconsideration) process are all important sociological approaches that should be employed by the systems engineer. In bringing the disciplines together, the systems engineer must also be wary of social ambivalence, social anomie, social dysfunction, insider-outsider behavior, unintended consequences, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. These sociological principles provide the systems engineer with key approaches to manage the information flow through the organization as the disciplines are integrated and share their information. This also helps identify key sociological barriers to information flow through the organization. This paper will discuss this theoretical basis for the application of sociological principles to systems engineering.

  17. Work and Workers: A Sociological Analysis.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Braude, Lee

    The relationship between work, society, and the individual is explored in sociological terms, proceeding under the assumption that what people are is in large measure a function of what they do. Six chapters include: (1) An Approach to Work, presenting work from historical and sociological perspectives, a sociological definition, and the social…

  18. Can sociology help to improve nursing practice?

    PubMed

    Matthews, David

    The first in a five-part series on sociology offers an overview of the debate about the relationship between sociology and nursing. Although sociological education is currently limited within nurse education, there is a long-held argument for its relevance. With a growing emphasis on preventative and public healthcare, sociology may yet prove its usefulness. Subsequent articles cover four of the key social factors affecting health.

  19. Bringing the Sociological into the Discussion: Teaching the Sociology of Genocide and the Holocaust.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abowitz, Deborah A.

    2002-01-01

    Illustrates how to use sociological concepts and theory in teaching about genocide and the Holocaust. Offers three examples to demonstrate how sociology can be integrated into the study of genocide and the Holocaust. Relates topics addressed in examples, such as gender issues. (CMK)

  20. Regarding Bioethics: A Sociology of Morality.

    PubMed

    De Vries, Raymond

    2017-01-01

    C. Wright Mills said that when done well, sociology illuminates the intersection of biography and history. This essay examines how the author's vocational choices and career path were shaped by historical circumstance, leading him to a degree in sociology and to participation in the odd and interesting interdiscipline of bioethics. Drawing on a distinction between sociology in bioethics and sociology of bioethics, the essay considers the value of sociology to the bioethical project.

  1. Inside the Hatch Valley: A Study of a Rural New Mexico Community. Resident Instruction Series No. 1.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McComas, J. D.; And Others

    Personnel enrolled in the course Rural Organization and Development at New Mexico State University made an active study of the rural community of Hatch, New Mexico. The results of the study were included in this report, along with some sociological concepts and considerations which may be of use to those in agricultural and extension education. A…

  2. Sociology as Moral Philosophy (and Vice Versa).

    PubMed

    Vandenberghe, Frédéric

    2017-11-01

    In this article, I want to make an attempt to reconnect sociology to moral philosophy and moral philosophy to sociology. The thesis I want to defend is that sociology continues by other means the venerable tradition of practical and moral philosophy. Like its forebears, it stands and falls with a defense of "practical wisdom" (Aristotle) and "practical reason" (Kant). The development of a moral sociology presupposes, however, that one recognizes and rejects Max Weber's theory of axiological neutrality as an extremist position and that one carefully articulates prescriptive and descriptive, internal and external, as well as observer and actor positions. © 2017 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  3. Sociology, medicine and the construction of health-related sociology.

    PubMed

    Barros, Nelson Filice de; Nunes, Everardo Duarte

    2009-02-01

    Starting from a paper about closing the gap between sociology and medicine in Brazil and the United Kingdom that was published in 1971, a historical update was made with the aim of reflecting on the new shapes of health-related teaching and research within the social and human sciences, in these two countries. The methodology was qualitative and the study was developed using secondary data. The reflections were developed through the authors' immersion in Brazilian and British realities. It was concluded that the interface between sociology and health has expanded, although persistent old difficulties exist in relation to the structure and focus of the healthcare system, medical school power and medical student culture.

  4. First Contact: Teaching and Learning in Introductory Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Greenwood, Nancy A.

    2011-01-01

    The Introduction to Sociology course is usually the first contact that students have with the discipline of sociology. This course can determine whether students take other sociology courses or learn to use sociology in their lives as adults and citizens. "First Contact" identifies important issues facing instructors in introducing students to the…

  5. The Strength of Strong Ties for Older Rural Adults: Regional Distinctions in the Relationship between Social Interaction and Subjective Well-Being

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mair, Christine A.; Thivierge-Rikard, R. V.

    2010-01-01

    Classic and contemporary sociological theories suggest that social interaction differs in rural and urban areas. Intimate, informal interactions (strong ties) are theorized to characterize rural areas while urban areas may possess more formal and rationalized interactions (weak ties). Aging and social support literature stresses social interaction…

  6. Why, Where, and How to Infuse the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory into the Sociology Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wright, Earl, II

    2012-01-01

    The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory is the moniker bestowed on scholars engaged in sociological research at Atlanta University between 1895 and 1924. Under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1897-1914, this school made substantive yet marginalized contributions to the discipline. Its accomplishments include, but are not limited to, its…

  7. Annual Review of Sociology. Volume 7, 1981.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Turner, Ralph H., Ed.; Short, James F., Jr., Ed.

    Fifteen essays describing current research in sociology are included in this publication. Almost all the authors are with departments of sociology in U.S. colleges and universities. The essays fall into ten broad categories: theory and method, social processes, institutions, formal organizations, political and economic sociology, differentiation…

  8. Toward a Sociology of Oceans.

    PubMed

    Hannigan, John

    2017-02-01

    Despite covering around 70 percent of the earth's surface, the ocean has long been ignored by sociology or treated as merely an extension of land-based systems. Increasingly, however, oceans are assuming a higher profile, emerging both as a new resource frontier, a medium for geopolitical rivalry and conflict, and a unique and threatened ecological hot spot. In this article, I propose a new sociological specialty area, the "sociology of oceans" to be situated at the interface between environmental sociology and traditional maritime studies. After reviewing existing sociological research on maritime topics and the consideration of (or lack of consideration) the sea by classic sociological theorists, I briefly discuss several contemporary sociological approaches to the ocean that have attracted some notice. In the final section of the paper, I make the case for a distinct sociology of oceans and briefly sketch what this might look like. One possible trajectory for creating a shared vision or common paradigm, I argue, is to draw on Deleuze and Guattari's dialectical theory of the smooth and the striated. Même s'il couvre 70% de la surface de la Terre, l'océan a été longtemps ignoré en sociologie ou traité comme une extension des systèmes terrestres. De plus en plus, toutefois, l'océan retient l'attention, en étant vu comme une nouvelle frontière en termes de ressources, un médium pour les rivalités et les conflits géopolitiques, et un lieu écologique névralgique et unique. Dans cet article, je propose une nouvelle spécialisation sociologique, la 'sociologie des océans', se situant dans l'interface entre la sociologie environnementale et les études maritimes traditionnelles. Après une recension de la recherche sociologique existante sur les sujets maritimes et la prise en compte (ou l'absence de prise en compte) de l'océan par les théoriciens de la sociologie classique, je discute brièvement quelques approches sociologiques contemporaines de l

  9. Data Visualization in Sociology

    PubMed Central

    Healy, Kieran; Moody, James

    2014-01-01

    Visualizing data is central to social scientific work. Despite a promising early beginning, sociology has lagged in the use of visual tools. We review the history and current state of visualization in sociology. Using examples throughout, we discuss recent developments in ways of seeing raw data and presenting the results of statistical modeling. We make a general distinction between those methods and tools designed to help explore datasets, and those designed to help present results to others. We argue that recent advances should be seen as part of a broader shift towards easier sharing of the code and data both between researchers and with wider publics, and encourage practitioners and publishers to work toward a higher and more consistent standard for the graphical display of sociological insights. PMID:25342872

  10. Declining Enrollments of Sociology Majors: Department Responses.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fabianic, David

    1991-01-01

    Discusses the falling enrollments in sociology departments. Suggests that the decline may be a result of quality of subject matter presentation, an increase in career-oriented students, and the development of social work and criminal justice into departments separate from sociology. Urges sociology departments to strengthen their political…

  11. Global Neo-Liberalism, Global Ecological Modernization, and a Swine CAFO in Rural Bulgaria

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glenna, Leland L.; Mitev, Georgi V.

    2009-01-01

    Rural and development sociology studies have tended to credit globalization with low-wage, extractive, environmentally destructive outcomes. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have been treated as a local manifestation of the destructive tendencies of globalization. However, recent scholarship on globalization suggests that…

  12. Annual Review of Sociology. Volume 6, 1980.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Inkeles, Alex, Ed.; And Others

    Sixteen essays provide a perspective on the range and depth of current research in sociology. Almost all the authors are with departments of sociology in U.S. colleges and universities. The essays fall into ten broad categories: theory and methods, social processes, institutions, formal organization, political and economic sociology,…

  13. Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bensalam Township School District, Cornwells Heights, PA.

    GRADES OR AGES: High school (grades not specified). SUBJECT MATTER: Sociology. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The course contains 13 units. The material is set out in columns--content, student activities, time, teacher activity or strategy, materials, and evaluation. The guide is mimeographed and spiral bound with a soft cover. OBJECTIVES…

  14. Teaching Sociology through Student Portfolios

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trepagnier, Barbara

    2004-01-01

    After several years of teaching Sociological Thought--an upper division course that focuses on classical, modern, and contemporary sociological theories--the author came across the idea of student portfolios. As a consequence, the course has undergone far-reaching changes. The content remains relatively intact; however, today the theory course…

  15. Designing E-Learning Programs for Rural Social Transformation and Poverty Reduction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Murthy, C. S. H. N.; Mathur, Gaurav

    2008-01-01

    While the conventional education system with different forms of E-learning and rigid academic instructive curriculum could not bring desired changes in specified timeframe work at rural level in the targeted communities and groups, a multipronged sociological approach with a sociable and flexible curriculum in new E-Learning programs becomes need…

  16. Sociological Paradoxes and Graduate Statistics Classes. A Response to "The Sociology of Teaching Graduate Statistics"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hardy, Melissa

    2005-01-01

    This article presents a response to Timothy Patrick Moran's article "The Sociology of Teaching Graduate Statistics." In his essay, Moran argues that exciting developments in techniques of quantitative analysis are currently coupled with a much less exciting formulaic approach to teaching sociology graduate students about quantitative analysis. The…

  17. Practicing Sociological Imagination through Writing Sociological Autobiography

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kebede, Alem

    2009-01-01

    Sociological imagination is a quality of mind that cannot be adopted by simply teaching students its discursive assumptions. Rather, it is a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced. Adhering to this important pedagogical assumption, students were assigned to write their…

  18. The sociology of medical screening: past, present and future.

    PubMed

    Armstrong, Natalie; Eborall, Helen

    2012-02-01

    Medical screening raises fundamental issues for sociological inquiry, but at present a well-developed sociology of medical screening is lacking. This special issue on the sociology of screening brings together an exciting collection of new work that tackles medical screening from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. In this opening paper, we begin by explaining what we mean by screening, and why we believe screening merits sociological attention. Secondly, we reflect on the sociology of screening to date and provide an introduction for those new to this area. We then provide an overview of the papers in this collection, highlighting links and contrasts between papers. We conclude by reflecting on sociology's potential contribution to wider debates about screening, and propose future research directions. © 2011 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2011 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  19. Factors Affecting Post-High School. Educational and Job Plans of Rural Youth in Eight Illinois Counties in the 1963-64 School Year.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lindstrom, D.E.

    A study designed to determine aptitudes, skills, and sociological and personal factors characterizing rural youth analyzed educational and personal differences of 2,929 students in eight rural Illinois counties during 1963-64. From data obtained through academic tests and personal questionnaires, it was concluded that although three-fourths of…

  20. Frontiers in Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hallinan, Maureen T., Ed.

    2011-01-01

    Scholarly analysis in the sociology of education has burgeoned in recent decades. "Frontiers in Sociology of Education" aims to provide a roadmap for sociologists and other social scientists as they set bold new directions for future research on schools. In Part 1 of this forward-looking volume, the authors present cutting-edge research…

  1. Towards a global environmental sociology? Legacies, trends and future directions.

    PubMed

    Lidskog, Rolf; Mol, Arthur Pj; Oosterveer, Peter

    2015-05-01

    A current debate on environmental sociology involves how the subdiscipline should conceptualise and investigate the environment and whether it should be prescriptive and deliver policy recommendations. Taking this debate as a point of departure this article discusses the current and future role of sociology in a globalised world. It discusses how environmental sociology in the US and Europe differ in their understandings of sociology's contribution to the study of the environment. Particular stress is placed on how these two regions differ with respect to their use of the tradition of sociological thought, views on what constitutes the environment and ways of institutionalising environmental sociology as a sociological field. In conclusion, the question is raised of whether current versions of environmental sociology are appropriate for analysing a globalised world environment; or whether environmental sociology's strong roots in European and US cultures make it less relevant when facing an increasingly globalised world. Finally, the article proposes some new rules for a global environmental sociology and describes some of their possible implications for the sociological study of climate change.

  2. Social Indicators for Rural Development: Descriptive Social Reporting. Final Report, Sociology Report No. 141.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carter, Keith A.; And Others

    Project 2142 was a multi-phase effort to discover and mobilize for dissemination to rural decision-makers various information and findings pertaining to the quality of life experienced by rural people. The initial research phases involved design of a conceptual framework that placed some parameters on the variety of social phenomena studied.…

  3. On the nature and sociology of bioethics.

    PubMed

    Sheehan, Mark; Dunn, Michael

    2013-03-01

    Much has been written in the last decade about how we should understand the value of the sociology of bioethics. Increasingly the value of the sociology of bioethics is interpreted by its advocates directly in terms of its relationship to bioethics. It is claimed that the sociology of bioethics (and related disciplinary approaches) should be seen as an important component of work in bioethics. In this paper we wish to examine whether, and how, the sociology of bioethics can be defended as a valid and justified research activity, in the context of debates about the nature of bioethics. We begin by presenting and arguing for an account of bioethics that does justice to the content of the field, the range of questions that belong within this field, and the justificatory standards (and methodological orientations) that can provide convincing answers to these questions. We then consider the role of sociology in bioethics and show how and under what conditions it can contribute to answering questions within bioethics. In the final section, we return to the sociology of bioethics to show that it can make only a limited contribution to the field.

  4. American Sociology in a Transnational World: Against Parochialism.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lie, John

    1995-01-01

    Maintains that, in spite of its cosmopolitan origins, U.S. sociology is regarded widely as parochial in its outlook and concerns. Discusses factors contributing to the intellectual isolationism of U.S. sociological research and pedagogy. Provides suggestions for internationalizing the sociology curriculum. (CFR)

  5. Habitat Maintenance and Local Economic Ethics in Rural Atlantic Canada.

    PubMed

    Foster, Karen

    2018-02-01

    Inspired by Jane Jacobs's writing on "habitat maintenance," this paper seeks to identify the ethics that sometimes compel rural residents to act in ways that preserve their communities in the long run, despite short-term incentives to do otherwise. Data from focus groups in four rural Atlantic Canadian communities suggest shared ethics around entrepreneurship, market competition, buying local, and subsistence, some of which underlie the rural practices and perspectives that appear, to some outsiders, as irrational and "backwards." Understanding these ethics and the practices they incite as components of habitat maintenance-and judging them by their situated pragmatism rather than their fit with the placeless ideologies of growth-centric global capitalism and competitiveness-highlights their rationality and utility. Findings could help direct discussions of rural economic development toward notions of prosperity, sustainability, and economy that fit better with rural realities. © 2018 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  6. The sociology of popular music, interdisciplinarity and aesthetic autonomy.

    PubMed

    Marshall, Lee

    2011-03-01

    This paper considers the impact of interdisciplinarity upon sociological research, focusing on one particular case: the academic study of popular music. 'Popular music studies' is an area of research characterized by interdisciplinarity and, in keeping with broader intellectual trends, this approach is assumed to offer significant advantages. As such, popular music studies is broadly typical of contemporary intellectual and governmental attitudes regarding the best way to research specific topics. Such interdisciplinarity, however, has potential costs and this paper highlights one of the most significant: an over-emphasis upon shared substantive interests and subsequent undervaluation of shared epistemological understandings. The end result is a form of 'ghettoization' within sociology itself, with residents of any particular ghetto displaying little awareness of developments in neighbouring ghettos. Reporting from one such ghetto, this paper considers some of the ways in which the sociology of popular music has been limited by its positioning within an interdisciplinary environment and suggests two strategies for developing a more fully-realized sociology of popular music. First, based on the assumption that a sociological understanding of popular music shares much in common with a sociological understanding of everything else, this paper calls for increased intradisciplinary research between sociologists of varying specialisms. The second strategy, however, involves a reconceptualization of the disciplinary limits of sociology, as it argues that a sociology of popular music needs to accept musical specificity as part of its remit. Such acceptance has thus far been limited not only by an interdisciplinary context but also by the long-standing sociological scepticism toward the analysis of aesthetic objects. As such, this paper offers an intervention into wider debates concerning the remit of sociological enquiry, and whether it is ever appropriate for sociological

  7. Toward a Sociology of Being: The Humanistic Potential.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glass, John F.

    The holistic, synergistic, normative, self-actualization motivated, transpersonal psychology developed by Maslow and others has opened enormous opportunities for a new sociology, a humanistic, transcultural, value-committed sociology. Such a sociology would not have the glorification of science or knowledge for its own sake as its highest goal,…

  8. [Psychological theory and implicit sociology.].

    PubMed

    Sévigny, R

    1983-01-01

    This text is based on the hypothesis that every theory on the psychology of personality must inevitably, in one manner or another, have a sociological referent, that is to say, it must refer to a body of knowledge which deals with a diversity of social contexts and their relations to individuals. According to this working hypothesis, such a sociology is implicit. This text then discusses a group of theoretical approaches in an effort to verify this hypothesis. This approach allows the extrication of diverse forms or diverse expressions of this implicit sociology within this context several currents are rapidly explored : psychoanalysis, behaviorism, gestalt, classical theory of needs. The author also comments on the approach, inspired by oriental techniques or philosophies, which employs the notion of myth to deepen self awareness. Finally, from the same perspective, he comments at greater length on the work of Carl Rogers, highlighting the diverse form of implicit sociology. In addition to Carl Rogers, this text refers to Freud, Jung, Adler, Reich, Perls, Goodman, Skinner as well as to Ginette Paris and various analysts of Taoism. In conclusion, the author indicates the significance of his analysis from double viewpoint of psychological theory and practice.

  9. Sociological analysis and comparative education

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Woock, Roger R.

    1981-12-01

    It is argued that comparative education is essentially a derivative field of study, in that it borrows theories and methods from academic disciplines. After a brief humanistic phase, in which history and philosophy were central for comparative education, sociology became an important source. In the mid-50's and 60's, sociology in the United States was characterised by Structural Functionalism as a theory, and Social Survey as a dominant methodology. Both were incorporated into the development of comparative education. Increasingly in the 70's, and certainly today, the new developments in sociology are characterised by an attack on Positivism, which is seen as the philosophical position underlying both functionalism and survey methods. New or re-discovered theories with their attendant methodologies included Marxism, Phenomenological Sociology, Critical Theory, and Historical Social Science. The current relationship between comparative education and social science is one of uncertainty, but since social science is seen to be returning to its European roots, the hope is held out for the development of an integrated social theory and method which will provide a much stronger basis for developments in comparative education.

  10. Incorporating Sociology into Community Service Classes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hochschild, Thomas R., Jr.; Farley, Matthew; Chee, Vanessa

    2014-01-01

    Sociologists and instructors who teach about community service share an affinity for understanding and addressing social problems. While many studies have demonstrated the benefits of incorporating community service into sociology courses, we examine the benefits of incorporating sociological content into community service classes. The authors…

  11. Toward a Buddhist Sociology: Theories, Methods, and Possibilities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schipper, Janine

    2012-01-01

    This article explores potential links between Buddhism and sociology, highlighting the many commonalities between sociology and Buddhism, with an emphasis on ways that Buddhist thought and practice may contribute to the field of sociology. What could Buddhism offer to our understanding of social institutions, social problems, and to the dynamics…

  12. Teaching Sociology in the Community College.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bradford, S. Y.

    1980-01-01

    Examines the difficulty of determining sociology course objectives for the diverse student populations at community colleges. Argues that sociology instructors, in light of this diversity, should use a combination of teaching modalities and should stress content relating to college survival skills, enhanced social awareness, and increased…

  13. Towards a global environmental sociology? Legacies, trends and future directions

    PubMed Central

    Lidskog, Rolf; Mol, Arthur PJ; Oosterveer, Peter

    2014-01-01

    A current debate on environmental sociology involves how the subdiscipline should conceptualise and investigate the environment and whether it should be prescriptive and deliver policy recommendations. Taking this debate as a point of departure this article discusses the current and future role of sociology in a globalised world. It discusses how environmental sociology in the US and Europe differ in their understandings of sociology’s contribution to the study of the environment. Particular stress is placed on how these two regions differ with respect to their use of the tradition of sociological thought, views on what constitutes the environment and ways of institutionalising environmental sociology as a sociological field. In conclusion, the question is raised of whether current versions of environmental sociology are appropriate for analysing a globalised world environment; or whether environmental sociology’s strong roots in European and US cultures make it less relevant when facing an increasingly globalised world. Finally, the article proposes some new rules for a global environmental sociology and describes some of their possible implications for the sociological study of climate change. PMID:25937642

  14. Renewing Sociology of Education? Knowledge Spaces, Situated Enactments, and Sociological Practice in a World on the Move

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Seddon, Terri

    2014-01-01

    Sociology of education is caught in a dilemma. The study of education and society that unfolded through the twentieth century produced educational vocabularies that spoke into education policy and practice about inequality and social justice. Now that sociologically informed educational discourse is marginalised by individualistic…

  15. [Pierre Bourdieu: sociology as a "symbolic revolution"].

    PubMed

    Suaud, Charles

    2014-03-01

    The article combines two objectives: understand the genesis and development of the sociology of Bourdieu in connection with his social and intellectual positioning. The sociology of Bourdieu is a theory of Action which reconciles the double requirement of objectification and taking account of the practical logic bound by social agents. From the character both objective and subjective of social space, he analyzes how different institutions (firstly School) are doing that mental structures match the objective structures of society. By making acceptable reality and registering it in the body, these instances contribute to reproduce social divisions and participate in the work of domination. Gradually, Bourdieu develops a general theory about Power, which leads to a sociology of State. But he refuses any sociological fatalism. Because he perceived homologies between the sociologist and the artist facing the social order, each in their own way, he devoted two researches to Flaubert and Manet, seized in the same enterprise of aesthetic subversion he described as a 'symbolic revolution'. In many aspects, the sociology of Bourdieu opens ways of looking for an objectification of caregivers and their practices.

  16. The Institution of Sociological Theory in Canada.

    PubMed

    Guzman, Cinthya; Silver, Daniel

    2018-02-01

    Using theory syllabi and departmental data collected for three academic years, this paper investigates the institutional practice of theory in sociology departments across Canada. In particular, it examines the position of theory within the sociological curriculum, and how this varies among universities. Taken together, our analyses indicate that theory remains deeply institutionalized at the core of sociological education and Canadian sociologists' self-understanding; that theorists as a whole show some coherence in how they define themselves, but differ in various ways, especially along lines of region, intellectual background, and gender; that despite these differences, the classical versus contemporary heuristic largely cuts across these divides, as does the strongly ingrained position of a small group of European authors as classics of the discipline as a whole. Nevertheless, who is a classic remains an unsettled question, alternatives to the "classical versus contemporary" heuristic do exist, and theorists' syllabi reveal diverse "others" as potential candidates. Our findings show that the field of sociology is neither marked by universal agreement nor by absolute division when it comes to its theoretical underpinnings. To the extent that they reveal a unified field, the findings suggest that unity lies more in a distinctive form than in a distinctive content, which defines the space and structure of the field of sociology. © 2018 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  17. Toward a Global Sociology of Religion

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parvez, Z. Fareen

    2017-01-01

    This article offers an example of a global approach to teaching the sociology of religion, a course that typically focuses on American religious phenomena. It builds on three interventions in the movement for a global sociology: connecting the local and global, moving beyond methodological nationalism, and developing an ethical orientation toward…

  18. Origins and canons: medicine and the history of sociology.

    PubMed

    Collyer, Fran

    2010-01-01

    Differing accounts are conventionally given of the origins of medical sociology and its parent discipline sociology. These distinct "histories" are justified on the basis that the sociological founders were uninterested in medicine, mortality and disease. This article challenges these "constructions" of the past, proposing the theorization of health not as a "late development of sociology" but an integral part of its formation. Drawing on a selection of key sociological texts, it is argued that evidence of the founders' sustained interest in the infirmities of the individual, of mortality, and in medicine, have been expunged from the historical record through processes of "canonization" and "medicalization."

  19. Analytical Sociology: A Bungean Appreciation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wan, Poe Yu-ze

    2012-10-01

    Analytical sociology, an intellectual project that has garnered considerable attention across a variety of disciplines in recent years, aims to explain complex social processes by dissecting them, accentuating their most important constituent parts, and constructing appropriate models to understand the emergence of what is observed. To achieve this goal, analytical sociologists demonstrate an unequivocal focus on the mechanism-based explanation grounded in action theory. In this article I attempt a critical appreciation of analytical sociology from the perspective of Mario Bunge's philosophical system, which I characterize as emergentist systemism. I submit that while the principles of analytical sociology and those of Bunge's approach share a lot in common, the latter brings to the fore the ontological status and explanatory importance of supra-individual actors (as concrete systems endowed with emergent causal powers) and macro-social mechanisms (as processes unfolding in and among social systems), and therefore it does not stipulate that every causal explanation of social facts has to include explicit references to individual-level actors and mechanisms. In this sense, Bunge's approach provides a reasonable middle course between the Scylla of sociological reification and the Charybdis of ontological individualism, and thus serves as an antidote to the untenable "strong program of microfoundations" to which some analytical sociologists are committed.

  20. Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crowe, Jessica A.

    2006-01-01

    Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the…

  1. Tales of sociology and the nursing curriculum: revisiting the debates.

    PubMed

    Aranda, Kay; Law, Kate

    2007-08-01

    The relationship between nursing and sociology has been extensively debated for more than two decades [Cox, C.A., 1979. Who cares? Nursing and sociology: the development of a symbiotic relationship. Journal of Advanced Nursing 4, 237-252; Cooke, H., 1993. Why teach sociology? Nurse Education Today 13, (3) 210-216; Sharpe, K., 1994. Sociology and the nursing curriculum: a note of caution. Journal of Advanced Nursing 20, (2) 391-395; Sharpe, K., 1995. Why indeed should we teach sociology? A response to Hannah Cooke. Nurse Education Today 15, (1) 52-55; Sharpe, K., 1996. Feedback - sociology and the nursing curriculum: a reply to Sam Porter. Journal of Advanced Nursing 23, (7) 1275-1278; Balsamo, D., Martin, S.I., 1995a. Developing the sociology of health in nurse education: towards a more critical curriculum. Part 1. Andragogy and sociology in Project 2000. Nurse Education Today 15, 427-432; Balsamo, D., Martin, S.I., 1995b. Developing the sociology of health in nurse education: towards a more critical curriculum. Part 2. Linking methodology and epistemology. Nurse Education Today 15, 427-432; Porter, S., 1995. Sociology and the nursing curriculum: a defence. Journal of Advanced Nursing 21, (6) 1130-1135; Porter, S., 1996. Why teach sociology? A contribution to the debate. Nurse Education Today, 16, 170-174; Porter, S., 1997. Sociology and the nursing curriculum: a further comment. Journal of Advanced Nursing 26, (1) 214-218; Porter, S., 1998. Social Theory and Nursing Practice. Macmillan, Basingstoke; Corlett, J., 2000. The perceptions of nurse teacher, student nurses and preceptors of the theory-practice gap in nurse education. Nurse Education Today 20, 499-505; Allen, D., 2001. Review article: nursing and sociology: an uneasy marriage?. Sociology of Health and Illness 23, (3) 386-396; Pinikahana, J., 2003. Role of sociology within the nursing enterprise: some reflections on the unfinished debate. Nursing and health Sciences 5, (2) 175-180; Holland, K., 2004

  2. Comte Unplugged: Using a "Technology Fast" to Teach Sociological Theory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hoop, Katrina C.

    2012-01-01

    Sociology majors learn that sociological theory is foundational to our field; it frames the way we look at the world and provides guiding questions for our social inquiry. But sociology instructors know that teaching theory is a challenge. A number of activities have been created to engage students in sociological theory courses. This note…

  3. One of Sociology's Most Influential Scholars

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chronicle of Higher Education, 2006

    2006-01-01

    Robert N. Bellah turns 80 early next year, and Duke University Press is honoring him with "The Robert Bellah Reader," edited by Bellah, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, and Steven M. Tipton, a professor of sociology at Emory University. The book, just published, presents a selection of…

  4. Agriculture, Communities, and New Social Movements: East European Ruralities in the Process of Restructuring

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gorlach, Krzysztof; Lostak, Michal; Mooney, Patrick H.

    2008-01-01

    This paper examines the usefulness of the new social movements (NSMs) paradigm in the changing context of East European post-communist societies and their agricultural systems and rural communities. Starting with statements formulated in Western sociology in the context of Western democratic societies about NSMs as a protest against modernity, the…

  5. Practical Application of Sociology in Systems Engineering

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Watson, Michael D.; Andrews, James G.; Eckley, Jeri Cassel; Culver, Michael L.

    2017-01-01

    Systems engineering involves both the integration of the system and the integration of the disciplines which develop and operate the system. Integrating the disciplines is a sociological effort to bring together different groups, who often have different terminology, to achieve a common goal, the system. The focus for the systems engineer is information flow through the organization, between the disciplines, to ensure the system is developed and operated will all relevant information informing system decisions. The practical application of the sociology in systems engineering brings in various organizational development concepts including the principles of planned renegotiation and the application of principles to address information barriers created by organizational culture. Concepts such as specification of ignorance, consistent terminology, opportunity structures, role-sets, and the reclama (reconsideration) process are all important sociological approaches that help address the organizational social structure (culture). In bringing the disciplines together, the systems engineer must also be wary of social ambivalence, social anomie, social dysfunction, and insider-outsider behavior. Unintended consequences can result when these social issues are present. These issues can occur when localized subcultures shift from the overarching organizational culture, or when the organizational culture prevents achievement of system goals. These sociological principles provide the systems engineer with key approaches to manage the information flow through the organization as the disciplines are integrated and share their information and provides key sociological barriers to information flow through the organization. This paper will discuss the practical application of sociological principles to systems engineering.

  6. Mapping the field of medical sociology: a comparative analysis of journals.

    PubMed

    Seale, Clive

    2008-07-01

    A comparative keyword analysis of the content of nine leading journals is used to suggest potential new directions for medical sociology. The major British and American journals in sociology and medical sociology tend to publish authors based in their own countries, contrasting with the internationalism of other social science disciplines relevant to health, although Sociology of Health and Illness is an exception to this. Medical sociology journals on both sides of the Atlantic focus on individual experience more than general sociology journals, which focus more on social systems levels of analysis. While journal contents reveal British medical sociology to be relatively atheoretical when compared with British general sociology journals, American medical sociology appears relatively apolitical on the same comparison with American general journals. American journals of sociology publish more quantitative studies than their British equivalents, more studies concerning race and other social divisions in American society, and less work drawing on social constructionist perspectives or that is engaged with social theory. Analysis of health and health care at societal and global levels and a deeper engagement with the political and public issues that concern non-sociologists represents a possible future for a medical sociology that is internationally relevant and outward looking.

  7. Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social.

    PubMed

    Turner, Bryan S

    2006-03-01

    It is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation-state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation-state. My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of 'the social' not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of 'flexible citizenship' to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and 'sociology beyond society'. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.

  8. One Hundred Years of Sociological Solitude?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rumbaut, Ruben G.

    2005-01-01

    This Cuban-born author presents a narrative on the social events in the United States that marked his life as he embarked on a career in the field of sociology in the 1960s and 70s. He advocates for sociologists' awareness of social realities and the evolution of sociological studies from a socially-conscious perspective.

  9. Sociology: A Student's Guide to Reference Sources.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Waiser, Joni, Comp.

    This guide lists selective reference sources which are useful for research in sociology. The guide is arranged by document type: guides, dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories and biographical sources, statistics, book reviews, theses and dissertations, general social science bibliographies, sociology bibliographies, special subject…

  10. The sociology of subjectivity, and the subjectivity of sociologists: a critique of the sociology of gender in the Australian family.

    PubMed

    Uhlmann, Allon J

    2004-03-01

    In this era of reflexive sociology it is commonplace that subjectivity is of great sociological concern, and that the comprehension by social researchers of their own subject position is essential. Still, old habits die hard. Focusing on selected texts in the sociology of the Australian family, this paper traces the effects of failing to focus the sociological gaze on subjectivity and its variation across society. Highlighted are some patterns of analytic misconstruction of subjectivity, especially the substitution of measurement for a theory of practice, and the projection by sociologists of their own class-specific subjectivity onto society at large. Ultimately, this misconstruction turns works like those discussed in this paper into a powerful denial of alternative subjectivities, and a reinforcement of the socially dominant perspective.

  11. Chronic Illness in Adolescents: A Sociological Perspective.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Silber, Tomas J.

    1983-01-01

    Relates chronic illness in adolescents to a sociological model of deviance. Four situations are discussed in which the issues of prognosis, responsibility, and stigma elicit societal response. The usefulness of a sociological model consists in making vague societal perceptions and rules explicit. (JAC)

  12. [Where are we in general sociology ?].

    PubMed

    Brian, Eric

    2012-01-01

    Over the last two decades, history and social sciences have experienced a kind of merging, and a vast number of specialized domains have emerged. Yet the durkheim - ian register of "general sociology" seems somehow neglected. Firstly, this article analyzes the reasons for this neglect, and secondly, it indicates how, through a long-term reflexivity, one can formulate a new agenda for general sociology.

  13. Introduction: why a Sociology of Pandemics?

    PubMed

    Dingwall, Robert; Hoffman, Lily M; Staniland, Karen

    2013-02-01

    Infectious disease has re-emerged as a public health threat in an increasingly globalised era, adding trans-national actors to traditional national and local government actors. This special issue showcases new sociological work in response to this challenge. The contributors have investigated the social construction of new and re-emerging diseases; the development of surveillance systems, public health governance; the impact of scientific/technical modalities on uncertainty and risk, the interplay of infectious disease, public health and national security concerns, and public and media responses. The case studies range broadly across North America, Europe and Asia and define new agendas for medical sociologists and public health policymakers. © 2012 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2012 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  14. Medical sociology as a vocation.

    PubMed

    Bosk, Charles L

    2014-12-01

    This article extends Weber's discussion of science as a vocation by applying it to medical sociology. Having used qualitative methods for nearly 40 years to interpret problems of meaning as they arise in the context of health care, I describe how ethnography, in particular, and qualitative inquiry, more generally, may be used as a tool for understanding fundamental questions close to the heart but far from the mind of medical sociology. Such questions overlap with major policy questions such as how do we achieve a higher standard for quality of care and assure the safety of patients. Using my own research, I show how this engagement takes the form of showing how simple narratives of policy change fail to address the complexities of the problems that they are designed to remedy. I also attempt to explain how I balance objectivity with a commitment to creating a more equitable framework for health care. © American Sociological Association 2014.

  15. Connected care in a fragmented world: lessons from rural health care

    PubMed Central

    Farmer, Jane

    2007-01-01

    This paper uses the phenomenon of very high satisfaction with remote rural health services in Scotland as a trigger for exploring what consumers want and like in health service utilisation — and why. It draws on the business literature in customer services marketing and economic sociology to illuminate why long-term associations between consumers and providers in health care are important and beneficial. In doing so, it highlights wider lessons about the experience of good health care to be learned from the satisfaction expressed by rural residents and suggests, as health services become increasingly fragmented, the relevance of maintaining a connected experience for patients. PMID:17359611

  16. The Sociological Imagination and Community-Based Learning: Using an Asset-Based Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garoutte, Lisa

    2018-01-01

    Fostering a sociological imagination in students is a central goal for most introductory sociology courses and sociology departments generally, yet success is difficult to achieve. This project suggests that using elements of asset-based community development can be used in sociology classrooms to develop a sociological perspective. After…

  17. Exploring the "Learning Careers" of Irish Undergraduate Sociology Students through the Establishment of an Undergraduate Sociology Student Journal

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Neville, Patricia; Power, Martin J.; Barnes, Cliona; Haynes, Amanda

    2012-01-01

    In 2009, a faculty-reviewed student undergraduate journal titled "Socheolas: The Limerick Student Journal of Sociology" was officially launched. The journal, now in its fourth volume, is produced, edited, and managed by a small team from within the Department of Sociology at the University of Limerick in Ireland. The objective of this…

  18. Global Interconnectedness and Multiculturalism in Undergraduate Sociology Courses in the USA

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shin, Kyoung-Ho

    2014-01-01

    This study attempts to explain a process of inserting global transnational elements into an undergraduate sociology course. After a review of global themes covered in introductory sociology textbooks, the author administered two projects (Global Multiculturalism and Sociology of Wal-Mart) in an undergraduate sociology course. The current study…

  19. Enriching Sociology 100: Using the Novel "Things Fall Apart"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hartman, Cheryl J.

    2005-01-01

    The author has been teaching Introduction to Sociology for several years, and each semester new students bring their own perspectives to the study of sociology, making the content fresh and new. In order to help students understand sociological concepts in more experiential ways and to give them a glimpse into a culture that may be different from…

  20. Back to Hegel? On Gillian Rose's critique of sociological reason.

    PubMed

    Fuller, Brian W

    2017-08-22

    Thirty-five years ago, Gillian Rose articulated a significant critique of classical sociological reason, emphasizing its relationship to its philosophical forebears. In a series of works, but most significantly in her Hegel contra Sociology, Rose worked to specify the implications of sociology's failure, both in its critical Marxist and its 'scientific' forms, to move beyond Kant and to fully come to terms with the thought of Hegel. In this article, I unpack and explain the substance of her criticisms, developing the necessary Hegelian philosophical background on which she founded them. I argue that Rose's attempted recuperation of 'speculative reason' for social theory remains little understood, despite its continued relevance to contemporary debates concerning the nature and scope of sociological reason. As an illustration, I employ Rose to critique Chernilo's recent call for a more philosophically sophisticated sociology. From the vantage point of Rose, this particular account of a 'philosophical sociology' remains abstract and rooted in the neo-Kantian contradictions that continue to characterize sociology. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  1. The Sociological Core: Conceptual Patterns and Idiosyncrasies in the Structure and Content of Introductory Sociology Textbooks, 1940-2000

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Keith, Bruce; Ender, Morten G.

    2004-01-01

    Sociology is often portrayed as an errant discipline, driving forward without any apparent direction or purpose. We contend that these perceptions about the central tenets of our discipline derive from a lack of standardization of core material, which reduces the social value of sociology as a scientific field and erodes its credibility as a…

  2. Toward an Understanding of "Genetic Sociology" and Its Relationships to Medical Sociology and Medical Genetics in the Educational Enterprise

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fredericks, Marcel; Odiet, Jeff A.; Miller, Steven I.; Fredericks, Janet

    2004-01-01

    In this research, we have demonstrated that a new subdiscipline in the field of Medical Sociology is urgently needed to integrate, interpret, and synthesize the interrelationships and implications of genetic discoveries, treatments, and prognoses upon societal behavior. That subdiscipline in our view is "Genetic Sociology."We applied the…

  3. School to Work Transition: Employer Attitudes towards Employees, Jobs, and the Workplace in Rural Arizona.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Danzig, Arnold

    By telephone, 33 employers in a rural Arizona county were surveyed concerning their experiences with new employees in the workplace. It drew from two strands to understand employers' workplace expectations. The first drew from sociology and looked at the workplace in terms of how young workers experience the labor market. The second strand looked…

  4. The sociological imagination in a time of climate change

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Norgaard, Kari Marie

    2018-04-01

    Despite rising calls for social science knowledge in the face of climate change, too few sociologists have been engaged in the conversations about how we have arrived at such perilous climatic circumstances, or how society can change course. With its attention to the interactive dimensions of social order between individuals, social norms, cultural systems and political economy, the discipline of sociology is uniquely positioned to be an important leader in this conversation. In this paper I suggest that in order to understand and respond to climate change we need two kinds of imagination: 1) to see the relationships between human actions and their impacts on earth's biophysical system (ecological imagination) and 2) to see the relationships within society that make up this environmentally damaging social structure (sociological imagination). The scientific community has made good progress in developing our ecological imagination but still need to develop a sociological imagination. The application of a sociological imagination allows for a powerfully reframing of four key problems in the current interdisciplinary conversation on climate change: why climate change is happening, how we are being impacted, why we have failed to successfully respond so far, and how we might be able to effectively do so. I visit each of these four questions describing the current understanding and show the importance of the sociological imagination and other insights from the field of sociology. I close with reflections on current limitations in sociology's potential to engage climate change and the Anthropocene.

  5. [Margot Jefferys: the British voice of medical sociology].

    PubMed

    Nunes, Everardo Duarte

    2011-03-01

    Margot Jefferys (1916-1999) was not only the person who introduced medical sociology into Great Britain, but also the researcher and professor who, during thirty years, exerted the most deep influence on the teaching of health social sciences either in undergraduate or especially graduate studies, since the beginning of her career, in 1953, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In addition to create a global panorama concerning the Jefferys' works, this study highlights two texts, which are situated into the field we are researching: the history of health sociology. The first one, published in 1991, discusses the relationships between epidemiology and sociology; and the second, published in 1996, discusses the field of medical sociology. Both texts are a series of considerations regarding the Jefferys' thought and the more recent questions of the field in Great Britain.

  6. Durkheim's Sociology of Education: Interpretations of Social Change Through Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldstein, Marc A.

    1976-01-01

    Three questions are examined: (1) Why have contemporary American educators generally ignored Durkheim's sociology of education? (2) What were Durkheim's contributions to the sociology of education as his analysis related to social change through education? and (3) What is the relationship between Durkheim's sociology of education, social change,…

  7. The sociologist and the state. An assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology.

    PubMed

    Schinkel, Willem

    2015-06-01

    This paper provides an assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology based on a reading of his posthumously published lectures on the state in Sur l'État. It argues that the state was a foundational element in Bourdieu's rendition of the symbolic order of everyday life. As such, the state becomes equally pivotal in Bourdieu's sociology, the applicability of which rests on the existence of the state, which stabilizes the social fields and their symbolic action that constitute the object of sociology. The state, which Bourdieu considers a 'meta'-ordering principle in social life, ensures that sociology has a well-ordered object of study, vis-à-vis which it can posit itself as 'meta-meta'. The state thus functions as an epistemic guarantee in Bourdieu's sociology. A critical analysis of Bourdieu's sociology of the state offers the chance of a more fundamental overall assessment of Bourdieu's conception of sociology that has relevance for any critical sociological perspective that rests on the assumption of a meta-social entity, such as the state in Bourdieu's work, as a final ordering instance. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

  8. How Sociological Leaders Teach: Some Key Principles

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Persell, Caroline Hodges; Pfeiffer, Kathryn M.; Syed, Ali

    2008-01-01

    This paper arose from a larger study designed to explore what leaders in the field of sociology think are the most important goals and principles for students to understand after taking a college-level introductory course and how they teach those principles. A population of scholarly leaders in sociology was defined by various forms of peer…

  9. Simulating Secularization: A Pedagogical Strategy for the Sociology of Religion

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    May, Matthew

    2015-01-01

    Instructing students in sociological theory is a foundational part of the discipline, but it can also be a challenge. Readers of "Teaching Sociology" can find a number of activities designed to improve students' understanding of sociological theory in their general theory courses, but there are fewer activities designed to improve…

  10. The case for a sociology of dying, death, and bereavement.

    PubMed

    Thompson, Neil; Allan, June; Carverhill, Philip A; Cox, Gerry R; Davies, Betty; Doka, Kenneth; Granek, Leeat; Harris, Darcy; Ho, Andy; Klass, Dennis; Small, Neil; Wittkowski, Joachim

    2016-01-01

    Dying, death, and bereavement do not occur in a social vacuum. How individuals and groups experience these phenomena will be largely influenced by the social context in which they occur. To develop an adequate understanding of dying, death, and bereavement we therefore need to incorporate a sociological perspective into our analysis. This article examines why a sociological perspective is necessary and explores various ways in which sociology can be of practical value in both intellectual and professional contexts. A case study comparing psychological and sociological perspectives is offered by way of illustration.

  11. Medical sociology and technology: critical engagements.

    PubMed

    Casper, Monica J; Morrison, Daniel R

    2010-01-01

    In this selective review of the literature on medical sociology's engagement with technology, we outline the concurrent developments of the American Sociological Association section on medicine and advances in medical treatment. We then describe theoretical and epistemological issues with scholars' treatment of technology in medicine. Using symbolic interactionist concepts, as well as work from the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies, we review and synthesize critical connections in and across sociology's intellectual relationship with medical technology. Next, we discuss key findings in these literatures, noting a shift from a focus on the effects of technology on practice to a reconfiguration of human bodies. We also look toward the future, focusing on connections between technoscientific identities and embodied health movements. Finally, we call for greater engagement by medical sociologists in studying medical technology and the process of policy-making--two areas central to debates in health economics and public policy.

  12. Teaching Mills in Tokyo: Developing a Sociological Imagination through Storytelling

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Storrs, Debbie

    2009-01-01

    Here I emphasize the applicability of the sociological imagination to an international audience by sharing my journey of teaching sociology in Japan. I found my own sociological imagination helpful in critically evaluating the literature on Japanese higher education and the construction of the Japanese student as a form of Orientalism. As I…

  13. Recursive Exercises to Help Students Engage and Recognize Sociological Shifts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whitaker, Julie

    2017-01-01

    Introductory sociology courses encourage students to shift from understanding social relations and inequalities through an individualistic lens toward a more sociological one. It is difficult for students to know how far they have advanced toward a sociological perspective if they do not have a good sense of where they began. This paper describes…

  14. The Influence of Married Couples' Needs on the Stability of Rural and Urban Young Families

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kravchenko, Iu V.

    2014-01-01

    Research on the influence that the needs of married couples have on family stability in Russia shows that there are marked differences in expectations in rural and urban areas. This article describes a sociological survey carried out in the territory of Rostov oblast in the spring of 2011. The basis for the study consisted of cities and rural…

  15. Avoiding Chaos in the Sociology of Sport Brickyard.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McPherson, Barry D.

    1978-01-01

    If the sociology of sport is to flourish as a legitimate field of inquiry which can contribute valid knowledge rather than an array of bits of knowledge, a sociological perspective based on a sound philosophy of science must be adopted. (Author/LH)

  16. Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

    PubMed Central

    Curran, Sara R.; Shafer, Steven; Donato, Katharine M.; Garip, Filiz

    2016-01-01

    A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably. PMID:27478289

  17. [Theoretical construction in the sociology of health: a reflection on its trajectory].

    PubMed

    Nunes, Everardo Duarte

    2014-04-01

    The scope of this paper is to reflect on the theoretical construction in the constitution of the sociology of health, still called medical sociology in some countries. Two main ideas constitute the basis for this: interdisciplinarity and the degree of articulation in the fields of medicine and sociology. We sought to establish a dialogue with some dimensions - macro/micro, structure/action - that constitute the basis for understanding medicine/health in relation to the social/sociological dimension. The main aspects of these dimensions are initially presented. Straus' two medical sociologies and the theory/application impasses are then addressed, as well as the dilemmas of the sociology of medicine in the 1960s and 1970s. From these analyses the theoretical production before 1970 is placed as a counterpoint. Lastly, the sociology of health is seen in the general context of sociology, which underwent a fragmentation process from 1970 with effects in all subfields of the social sciences. This process involves a rethinking of the theoretical issues in a broadened spectrum of possibilities. The 1980s are highlighted when theoretical issues in the sociology of health are reinvigorated and the issue of interdisciplinarity is once again addressed.

  18. Architecture and health care: a place for sociology.

    PubMed

    Martin, Daryl; Nettleton, Sarah; Buse, Christina; Prior, Lindsay; Twigg, Julia

    2015-09-01

    Sociologists of health and illness have tended to overlook the architecture and buildings used in health care. This contrasts with medical geographers who have yielded a body of work on the significance of places and spaces in the experience of health and illness. A review of sociological studies of the role of the built environment in the performance of medical practice uncovers an important vein of work, worthy of further study. Through the historically situated example of hospital architecture, this article seeks to tease out substantive and methodological issues that can inform a distinctive sociology of healthcare architecture. Contemporary healthcare buildings manifest design models developed for hotels, shopping malls and homes. These design features are congruent with neoliberal forms of subjectivity in which patients are constituted as consumers and responsibilised citizens. We conclude that an adequate sociology of healthcare architecture necessitates an appreciation of both the construction and experience of buildings, exploring the briefs and plans of their designers, and observing their everyday uses. Combining approaches and methods from the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies offers potential for a novel research agenda that takes healthcare buildings as its substantive focus. © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

  19. Piketty's challenge for sociology.

    PubMed

    Savage, Mike

    2014-12-01

    This paper argues that Piketty's book should not simply be seen as that of an economist, but that it contains significant resources for sociologists to draw upon. These are firstly, this approach to social science and his use of visualizations which chime closely with recent claims about the power of description. Secondly I consider his conceptualization of time and history - which in rebutting epochal arguments about the speed of contemporary change allows for a much better appreciation of the 'long durée'; and finally his conceptualization of social classes and privilege through his elaboration of a sociology of accumulation and inheritance. In all these ways, Piketty's work assists in developing an account of elites and wealth which should be highly productive for future sociology. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.

  20. Sociology, environment and health: a materialist approach.

    PubMed

    Fox, N J; Alldred, P

    2016-12-01

    This paper reviews the sociology of environment and health and makes the case for a postanthropocentric approach based on new materialist theory. This perspective fully incorporates humans and their health into 'the environment', and in place of human-centred concerns considers the forces that constrain or enhance environmental capacities. This is not an empirical study. The paper uses a hypothetical vignette concerning child health and air pollution to explore the new materialist model advocated in the paper. This paper used sociological analysis. A new materialist and postanthropocentric sociology of environment and health are possible. This radically reconfigures both sociological theory and its application to research and associated policies on health and the environment. Theoretically, human health is rethought as one among a number of capacities emerging from humans interactions with the social and natural world. Practically, the focus of intervention and policy shifts towards fostering social and natural interactions that enhance environmental (and in the process, human) potentiality. This approach to research and policy development has relevance for public health practice and policy. Copyright © 2016 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline.

    PubMed

    Turner, Bryan S

    2006-06-01

    The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005. This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.

  2. Towards a sociology of healthcare safety and quality.

    PubMed

    Allen, Davina; Braithwaite, Jeffrey; Sandall, Jane; Waring, Justin

    2016-02-01

    The contributions to this collection address technologies, practices, experiences and the organisation of quality and safety across a wide range of healthcare contexts. Spanning three continents, from hospital to community, maternity to mental health, they shine a light into the boardrooms, back offices and front-lines of healthcare, offering sociological insights from the perspectives of managers, clinicians and patients. We review these articles and consider how they contribute to some of the dilemmas that confront mainstream approaches to quality and safety and then look ahead to outline future lines of sociological inquiry to progress the theory and practice of quality and safety. © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.

  3. The Cartoon Society: Using "The Simpsons" To Teach and Learn Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Scanlan, Stephen J.; Feinberg, Seth L.

    2000-01-01

    Presents the animated television series "The Simpsons" as a tool to reach undergraduate students by using popular culture to teach sociology. Discusses "The Simpsons" and sociology, provides a sample of the sociological themes embedded within the show, and how to use "The Simpsons." Provides information gleaned from…

  4. Information Literacy: The Partnership of Sociology Faculty and Social Science Librarians

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Caravello, Patti S.; Kain, Edward L.; Kuchi, Triveni; Macicak, Susan; Weiss, Gregory L.

    2008-01-01

    This paper discusses a joint project of the American Library Association and the American Sociological Association. The goal of this collaboration is to guarantee that students of sociology, particularly sociology majors, develop strong information literacy skills during their undergraduate experience. The article talks about national standards…

  5. Teaching Writing in Sociology: A Social Constructionist Approach.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, Leon; Holt, Mara

    1990-01-01

    Provides an overview of the "social constructionist" approach to teaching composition in sociology courses. Describes a course that is team taught by the authors and is based on the social constructionist paradigm. Stresses that sociological writing is a special type of discourse that can be taught most effectively by sociologists who…

  6. Comparative approaches to gentrification: Lessons from the rural.

    PubMed

    Phillips, Martin; Smith, Darren P

    2018-03-01

    The epistemologies and politics of comparative research are prominently debated within urban studies, with 'comparative urbanism' emerging as a contemporary lexicon of urban studies. The study of urban gentrification has, after some delay, come to engage with these debates, which can be seen to pose a major challenge to the very concept of gentrification. To date, similar debates or developments have not unfolded within the study of rural gentrification. This article seeks to address some of the challenges posed to gentrification studies through an examination of strategies of comparison and how they might be employed within a comparative study of rural gentrification. Drawing on Tilly ( Big structures Large Processes Huge Comparisons . New York: Russell Sage), examples of four 'strategies of comparison' are identified within studies of urban and rural gentrification, before the paper explores how 'geographies of the concept' and 'geographies of the phenomenon' of rural gentrification in the United Kingdom, United States and France may be investigated using Latour's ( Pandora's Hope . London: Harvard University Press) notion of 'circulatory sociologies of translation'. The aim of our comparative discussion is to open up dialogues on the challenges of comparative studies that employ conceptions of gentrification and also to promote reflections of the metrocentricity of recent discussions of comparative research.

  7. A health economist on medical sociology: reflections by an unreconstructed reductionist.

    PubMed

    Culyer, A J

    1985-01-01

    Eleven papers in medical sociology, recommended as representative by the Medical Sociology Group of the British Sociology Association, are evaluated by a health economist using five criteria: appeal of intellectual content, insights into political philosophy, explanatory power, predictive power and opportunities for social improvements. The paper concludes that the medical sociology literature is quite weak when judged by these criteria, though stronger on some than others. Sociologists often seem to confuse issues that involve value judgements with ones that do not, and generally seem to display a disconcerting obsession with methodological issues of the most fundamental kind that has inhibited medical sociology from developing interesting analyses of many issues on which, in principle, it ought to have much to offer.

  8. Understanding the World of High School Sociology: Views from an Insider

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Greene, Robert

    2007-01-01

    Having been placed in the unique position of teaching high school sociology at the same time when a renewed interest from professional sociological associations led to a revival of scholarly research on the topic, a commitment from professional sociological associations, my insider's view from the high school classroom and from various…

  9. Teaching Sociology of Education in Canada: A Comparative Study of the "Two Solitudes"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jean-Pierre, Johanne

    2013-01-01

    This study aims to contribute to the fields of sociology of education and Canadian sociological teaching. English and French Canadian sociology of education course outlines were systematically analysed in order to assess how national context, language and internal divisions influence the undergraduate teaching of sociology of education. The…

  10. Guidelines for Teaching Undergraduate Sport Sociology. Guidance Document

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Coakley, Jay; Riemer, Brenda; Sailes, Gary; Harrison, Louis; Pittman, Beverly

    2009-01-01

    Sport sociology is a subdiscipline of sociology that, since the late 1960s, has produced knowledge about sports as social phenomena in a wide range of societies. It may be included as a major specialization area in graduate programs in kinesiology, sports studies and physical education departments, and is widely offered as a single undergraduate…

  11. Sociological theory and Jungian psychology.

    PubMed

    Walker, Gavin

    2012-01-01

    [[disenchantmentCarl JungpsychoanalysissociologyMax Weber ] In this article I seek to relate the psychology of Carl Jung to sociological theory, specifically Weber. I first present an outline of Jungian psychology. I then seek to relate this as psychology to Weber’s interpretivism. I point to basic methodological compatibilities within a Kantian frame, from which emerge central concerns with the factors limiting rationality. These generate the conceptual frameworks for parallel enquiries into the development and fate of rationality in cultural history. Religion is a major theme here: contrasts of eastern and western religion; the rise of prophetic religion and the disenchantment of modernity. Weber’s categories ‘ascetic’ and ‘mystic’ seem applicable to his own and Jung’s approaches and indeed temperaments, while a shared ironic view of rationality leads to similar visions of the disenchanted modern world. I conclude that Jung is sociologically coherent, but in an entirely different sense from Freud: rather than a constellation of family, socialization, ideology, social continuity, there is an analysis of cultural history against a background of adult normal psychology. I conclude that sociology should acknowledge Jung, but not in terms of over-arching theory. Rather Jungian insights might be used to orient new enquiries, and for reflexive analysis of sociology’s methodological debates.

  12. The Good Sociology Departments: Will We Ever Find Them? Will We Even Try?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rau, William C.

    1992-01-01

    Observes that there has been no accounting of the history of the teaching of sociology. Suggests that the journal, "Teaching Sociology," can help bring attention to teaching. Notes that sociology majors' grades and standardized tests scores have declined. Argues that sociology instruction must become more effective and must implement value added…

  13. In Praise of Sociology.

    PubMed

    Connell, Raewyn

    2017-08-01

    This reflection on the relevance of sociology starts with the different forms of social knowledge, and some autobiographical reflection on my engagement with the discipline. A research-based social science is made urgent by the prevalence of distortion and pseudoscience in the public realm. However, the research-based knowledge formation is embedded in a global economy of knowledge that centers on a privileged group of institutions and produces major imbalances on a world scale. Sociological data collection has important uses in policy and public discussion. But data need to be embedded in a larger project of understanding the world; this is what gives excitement to the work. Sociology has a potential future of marginality or triviality in the neoliberal economy and its university system. There are better trajectories into the future-but they have to be fought for. Cette réflexion sur l'utilité de la sociologie commence avec les différentes formes de savoir social, ainsi que quelques réflexions biographiques sur mon engagement avec la discipline. Le besoin d'une science sociale orientée vers la recherche est devenue nécessaire suite à la prédominance de la distorsion et de la pseudoscience dans la sphère publique. Par contre, ce savoir centré sur la recherche est lié à une économie globale de la connaissance qui est proche d'un groupe privilégié d'institutions et produit des déséquilibres majeurs au niveau mondial. La collecte de données sociologiques a une grande utilité en politique et dans les discussions publiques. Mais ces données doivent être liées à un projet plus large de compréhension du monde ; c'est ce qui rend ce travail excitant. La sociologie risque la marginalisation ou la trivialité dans une économie néo-libérale et son système universitaire. Il existe de meilleures trajectoires pour l'avenir - mais elles doivent être défendues. © 2017 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  14. Revitalizing sociology: urban life and mental illness between history and the present.

    PubMed

    Fitzgerald, Des; Rose, Nikolas; Singh, Ilina

    2016-03-01

    This paper proposes a re-thinking of the relationship between sociology and the biological sciences. Tracing lines of connection between the history of sociology and the contemporary landscape of biology, the paper argues for a reconfiguration of this relationship beyond popular rhetorics of 'biologization' or 'medicalization'. At the heart of the paper is a claim that, today, there are some potent new frames for re-imagining the traffic between sociological and biological research - even for 'revitalizing' the sociological enterprise as such. The paper threads this argument through one empirical case: the relationship between urban life and mental illness. In its first section, it shows how this relationship enlivened both early psychiatric epidemiology, and some forms of the new discipline of sociology; it then traces the historical division of these sciences, as the sociological investment in psychiatric questions waned, and 'the social' become marginalized within an increasingly 'biological' psychiatry. In its third section, however, the paper shows how this relationship has lately been revivified, but now by a nuanced epigenetic and neurobiological attention to the links between mental health and urban life. What role can sociology play here? In its final section, the paper shows how this older sociology, with its lively interest in the psychiatric and neurobiological vicissitudes of urban social life, can be our guide in helping to identify intersections between sociological and biological attention. With a new century now underway, the paper concludes by suggesting that the relationship between urban life and mental illness may prove a core testing-ground for a 'revitalized' sociology. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.

  15. Self-Referent Constructs and Medical Sociology: In Search of an Integrative Framework*

    PubMed Central

    Kaplan, Howard B.

    2010-01-01

    A theoretical framework centering on four classes of self-referent constructs is offered as a device for integrating the diverse areas constituting medical sociology. Guidance by this framework sensitizes the researcher to the occurrence of parallel processes in adjacent disciplines, facilitates recognition of the etiological significance of findings from other disciplines for explaining medical sociological phenomena, and encourages transactions between sociology and medical sociology whereby each informs and is informed by the other. PMID:17583268

  16. The media of sociology: tight or loose translations?

    PubMed

    Guggenheim, Michael

    2015-06-01

    Sociologists have increasingly come to recognize that the discipline has unduly privileged textual representations, but efforts to incorporate visual and other media are still only in their beginning. This paper develops an analysis of the ways objects of knowledge are translated into other media, in order to understand the visual practices of sociology and to point out unused possibilities. I argue that the discourse on visual sociology, by assuming that photographs are less objective than text, is based on an asymmetric media-determinism and on a misleading notion of objectivity. Instead, I suggest to analyse media with the concept of translations. I introduce several kinds of translations, most centrally the distinction between tight and loose ones. I show that many sciences, such as biology, focus on tight translations, using a variety of media and manipulating both research objects and representations. Sociology, in contrast, uses both tight and loose translations, but uses the latter only for texts. For visuals, sociology restricts itself to what I call 'the documentary': focusing on mechanical recording technologies without manipulating either the object of research or the representation. I conclude by discussing three rare examples of what is largely excluded in sociology: visual loose translations, visual tight translations based on non-mechanical recording technologies, and visual tight translations based on mechanical recording technologies that include the manipulation of both object and representation. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

  17. Classroom Interaction: A Sociological Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Calonico, James M.; Calonico, Beth Ann

    1972-01-01

    The authors employ Bales' IPA and apply hypotheses from Homans' Human Group'' to present a sociological approach to the scientific study of classroom interaction at the elementary school level. (Authors)

  18. East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1984-01-20

    075056 JPRS-EPS-84-010 20 January 1984 East Europe Report POLITICAL , SOCIOLOGICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS Approved for ■&;+ tU...Service, 1000 North Glebe Road, Arlington, Virginia 22201. JPRS-EPS- 84-010 20 January 1984 EAST EUROPE REPORT POLITICAL ,, SOCIOLOGICAL AND MILITARY...Campaign at Konskie Need for Intraparty Introspection, Kazlmierz Morawski Interview Problem of Divorcing Economics From Politics Viewed at PZPR

  19. Sociological Competencies and Business Careers: Toward an Expanded Dialogue

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Woldoff, Rachael A.; Litchfield, Robert C.

    2006-01-01

    We use a cross-disciplinary approach and multiple sources of data to investigate and outline sources of comparative advantage that undergraduate sociological study provides to students who are preparing for careers in business. We identify and discuss three core competencies that sociology specifically develops in students--structural…

  20. What has become of critique? Reassembling sociology after Latour.

    PubMed

    Mills, Tom

    2017-09-06

    This paper offers a defence of sociology through an engagement with Actor Network Theory (ANT) and particularly the critique of 'critical' and politically engaged social science developed by Bruno Latour. It argues that ANT identifies some weaknesses in more conventional sociology and social theory, and suggests that 'critical' and 'public' orientated sociologists can learn from the analytical precision and ethnographic sensibilities that characterize ANT as a framework of analysis and a research programme. It argues, however, that Latour et al. have too hastily dispensed with 'critique' in favour of a value neutral descriptive sociology, and that the symmetrical and horizontalist approach adopted in ANT is particularly ill-suited to the development of scientific knowledge about social structures. It argues that a more straightforwardly realist sociology would share many of the strengths of ANT whilst being better able to interrogate, empirically and normatively, the centres of contemporary social power. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  1. Engaging the Sociological Imagination: My Journey into Design Research and Public Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mehan, Hugh

    2008-01-01

    I chronicle the changes in my research, especially those that have moved me closer to C. Wright Mills's call for a "sociological imagination" and Dell Hymes's reinvented anthropology. As I spend more time attempting to create and describe equitable educational environments and less time documenting educational inequality, I have adopted a version…

  2. Fifty years of sociological leadership at Social Science and Medicine.

    PubMed

    Timmermans, Stefan; Tietbohl, Caroline

    2018-01-01

    In this review article, we examine some of the conceptual contributions of sociology of health and illness over the past fifty years. Specifically, we focus on research dealing with medicalization, the management of stigma, research on adherence and compliance, and patient-doctor interaction. We show how these themes that originated within sociology, diffused in other disciplines. Sociology in Social Science and Medicine started as an applied research tradition but morphed into a robust, stand-alone social science tradition. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Service-Learning and the Sociological Imagination: Approach and Assessment.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Balazadeh, Nancy

    Undergraduate sociology students at Rust College, Mississippi, an historically black college, have been given the opportunity to connect with the lives of others in institutional settings, thus making a generational connection between the college and a local nursing home. During the 1995-96 academic year, students in three sociology courses…

  4. Sociology and Essential Elements: A Challenge for Secondary Teachers of Social Studies.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Short, Alvin P.; And Others

    1989-01-01

    Reviews the status of sociology in the public schools through four studies carried out over an eight-year period in the public schools. Examines the core content of high school sociology courses along with the core sociological knowledge, values and skills that have been integrated into other social studies courses. (LS)

  5. The Emergence and Development of the Sociology of Sport as an Academic Specialty.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Loy, John W.; And Others

    1980-01-01

    Sport sociology as an academic specialty and its stages of development are described. Problems confronting future developments in sport sociology include critical mass, academic status, and ideological orientation, both in physical education and in sociology. (CJ)

  6. The Introductory Sociology Survey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Best, Joel

    1977-01-01

    The Introductory Sociology Survey (ISS) is designed to teach introductory students basic skills in developing causal arguments and in using a computerized statistical package to analyze survey data. Students are given codebooks for survey data and asked to write a brief paper predicting the relationship between at least two variables. (Author)

  7. Sport Sociology: Contemporary Themes.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yiannakis, Andrew, Ed.; And Others

    Intended for beginning and intermediate level students of sport and society, this anthology of 43 articles is organized into twelve, self-contained teaching units with unit introductions and study questions. Topics addressed include: (1) the sociological study of sport; (2) sport and American society; (3) the interdependence of sport, politics,…

  8. When Worlds Collide: Sociology, Disciplinary Nightmares, and Fromm's Revision of Freud.

    PubMed

    McLaughlin, Neil

    2017-08-01

    After decades of neglect, sociology is experiencing a revival of interest in psychoanalytic insights, and Erich Fromm's work is uniquely valuable for encouraging dialogue between the two fields. A recipient of a PhD in sociology as a young man in the 1920s, Fromm was a prominent psychoanalytic theorist and clinician, as well as a social researcher and public intellectual in the 1930s, up to his death in 1980. After a historical account of the relative neglect of Fromm in both disciplines, this paper examines the place of his psychoanalytic theory within sociology today as a way of discussing sociology's complicated relationship to psychoanalysis and the insights each field can offer the other.

  9. Pour une Sociologie des Apprentissages (Toward a Sociology of Learning)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Porcher, Louis

    1977-01-01

    A language, a social practice, cannot be taught or learned apart from determining sociological factors. The effect of this sociological understanding on foreign language methodology, particularly the functional approach, and learner-centered education is discussed. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

  10. Adolescent Crime in the Mirror of Sociological Expert Appraisal

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Klimova, S. V.

    2007-01-01

    The importance of empirical sociological surveys in providing legal support for Russia's social development has a substantive foundation. Sociology and the juridical sciences share a common viewpoint when it comes to the study of social relations, namely the analysis of normative behavior. Social norms and the norms of law differ a great deal,…

  11. Sport and Society: An Introduction to Sociology of Sport.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ibrahim, Hilmi

    A theoretical framework for the study of sport sociology is provided in this text. It is intended for students of sport, arts and humanities, sociology, and social psychology. Sport and social organization are discussed first. Three models of societies and six theories of social organization are presented which form the basis of the eclectic…

  12. Through a Double-Crossed Eye: Sociology and the Movies.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Demerath, N.J., III

    1981-01-01

    Claiming that movies are used increasingly as teaching aids in sociology classes on the high school and college levels, this article evaluates their potential and their limitations. Suggestions are offered on how to avoid sociological distortion while viewing films. Also discussed are ways in which film can be seen as a source of cultural…

  13. Perspectives and Plans for Graduate Studies. 7. Sociology 1973.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ontario Council on Graduate Studies, Toronto. Advisory Committee on Academic Planning.

    This document reports on a formal planning assessment for sociology conducted by the Advisory Committee on Academic Planning of the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies. Data, reports and comments, and recommendations on a plan for graduate work in sociology in the province is set out. Recommendations are: (1) That the high rates of delay and…

  14. Truth and Truthfulness in the Sociology of Educational Knowledge

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Young, Michael; Muller, Johan

    2007-01-01

    The aim of this article is to reflect on and explore questions of truth and objectivity in the sociology of educational knowledge. It begins by reviewing the problems raised by the social constructivist approaches to knowledge associated with the "new sociology of education" of the I970s. It suggests that they have significant parallels…

  15. Using the Sociological Imagination to Teach about Academic Integrity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nell Trautner, Mary; Borland, Elizabeth

    2013-01-01

    The sociological imagination is a useful tool for teaching about plagiarism and academic integrity, and, in turn, academic integrity is a good case to help students learn about the sociological imagination. ?We present an exercise in which the class discusses reasons for and consequences of dishonest academic behavior and then examines a series of…

  16. Sociological Aspects of Deafness.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    World Federation of the Deaf, Rome (Italy).

    Nine conference papers treat the sociological aspects of deafness. Included are "Individuals Being Deaf and Blind and Living with a Well Hearing Society" by A. Marx (German Federal Republic), "A Deaf Man's Experiences in a Hearing World" by A. B. Simon(U.S.A.), "Problem of Text Books and School Appliances for Vocational…

  17. Qualitative medical sociology: what are its crowning achievements?

    PubMed Central

    Chard, J A; Lilford, R J; Court, B V

    1997-01-01

    Doctors and epidemiologists seldom read or cite qualitative medical sociology; it is little published in medical journals. A large number of articles bewail this lack and provide arguments explaining and justifying the subject. Any examples used in such articles are selected ad hoc. We made a systematic search for the literature and used citation analysis to select the world's top 100 articles. We analysed this trawl and provide resumés of a selection from the 'classics'. Mental health and the organization of medicine are the themes within medical sociology with highest impact. Much highly cited work consists of historical and theoretical analysis done 'at the desk' rather than observation or interview 'in the field'. Citation rates, even for the most famous works in medical sociology, are a small fraction of those for high impact biomedical research. PMID:9496271

  18. Sociological aspects of earthquake prediction

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Spall, H.

    1979-01-01

    Henry Spall talked recently with Denis Mileti who is in the Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo. Dr. Mileti is a sociologst involved with research programs that study the socioeconomic impact of earthquake prediction. 

  19. A child of the empire: British sociology and colonialism, 1940s-1960s.

    PubMed

    Steinmetz, George

    2013-01-01

    British sociology was established as an academic discipline between 1945 and 1965, just as the British Empire was gearing up for a new phase of developmental colonialism backed by the social and other sciences. Many parts of the emerging sociological discipline became entangled with colonialism. Key themes and methods in sociology and the staff of sociology departments emerged from this colonial context. Historians have tended to place postwar British sociology in the context of expanding higher education and the welfare state, and have overlooked this colonial constellation. The article reconstructs this forgotten moment of disciplinary founding and explores three of the factors that promoted colonial sociology: the Colonial Social Science Research Council, the so-called Asquith universities, and the social research institutes in the colonies; and the involvement of sociologists from the London School of Economics in training colonial officials. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  20. Choices and Chances: The Sociology Role-Playing Game--The Sociological Imagination in Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Simpson, Joseph M.; Elias, Vicky L.

    2011-01-01

    This article introduces a sociology role-playing game (RPG) used to demonstrate the broad range of social forces, institutions, and structures in a semester-long series of in-class and homework assignments. RPGs and other simulation games have been frequently suggested as a useful teaching methodology because of their unique ability to allow…

  1. Gender and physics: a sociological approach

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mendick, Heather

    2016-09-01

    In this paper, I take a sociological approach to understanding the under-representation of gender and physics. I argue that gender is something we do not something that we are. Thus, every aspect of our behaviour, including our engagement (or not) with physics becomes part of our performance of gender. I then use a brief historical analysis and an example from popular culture to show how physics is culturally aligned with masculinity. The impact is that the subject feels more ‘natural’ for men than for women. I end with some of the implications of this for those who want to make physics more accessible to girls and women. (EDITORS NOTE: This paper was given at the Improving Gender Balance (IGB) conference in Cambridge, UK, in March 2015, organised by the Institute of Physics. This conference was for schools and their supporters who were part of the IGB strand of the Stimulating Physics Network, funded by the Department for Education. It aimed to summarise some of the sociological perspectives on girls and physics for the benefit of the teachers attending the conference. We feel that it may be a useful summary for those teachers of physics who are unfamiliar with sociological approaches to gender and the classroom.)

  2. Sociological aspects of permanent manned occupancy of space.

    PubMed

    Bluth, B J

    1981-01-01

    The author examines human experiences with isolation and confined groups to determine the sociological aspects of social isolation in space. Precedent experiences include Antarctic stations, oceanographic research vessels, submarines, undersea laboratories, and space simulators. The Soviet experience with multiple-person crews on the Salyut 6 space station is explored. Sociological aspects of isolation and confinement aboard a space station include physiological stress, social and psychological stress, group size and composition, group organization, architectural programming, privacy, and work/rest scheduling.

  3. The Contradictions of Public Sociology: A View from a Graduate Student at Berkeley

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noy, Darren

    2009-01-01

    Reflecting on my experiences as a graduate student, I argue that the terminology of public sociology should be dropped. The public sociology rhetoric is at odds with the fundamental professional reality in the discipline. Sociology, as a "hyper-professionalized" endeavor, primarily values abstract, explanatory theories, even if those theories make…

  4. Sociology of Education: Outlines towards a Diagnosis and Thoughts on Some Major Challenges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baeck, Unn-Doris Karlsen

    2012-01-01

    Sociology of education in Norway has traditionally been preoccupied with the classic problems related to education and the reproduction of social inequality. As the general social scientific and political focus on inequality decreased, the sociology of education also became less visible. At the same time, the sociology of youth evolved, and…

  5. Sisyphus Had It Easy: Reflections of Two Decades of Teaching the Sociological Imagination

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dandaneau, Steven P.

    2009-01-01

    "The Sociological Imagination" is among the most recognized books in the history of American Sociology. Yet, the sociological imagination as such, a radical form of self-consciousness, is not commonly well understood nor easily acquired. This essay examines the challenges thus faced by instructors who seek to accurately impart what Mills…

  6. Towards a Realist Sociology of Education: A Polyphonic Review Essay

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grenfell, Michael; Hood, Susan; Barrett, Brian D.; Schubert, Dan

    2017-01-01

    This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's "Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Education" as a recent examination of the sociological causes and effects of education in the tradition of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. Maton's book synthesizes the…

  7. New Frontiers: "Milieu" and the Sociology of American Jewish Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Horowitz, Bethamie

    2008-01-01

    Over the course of the twentieth century changing circumstances have prompted American Jewish educators to develop new educational strategies to address these needs, and these developments are an important aspect of the sociology of American Jewish education. Using the method of historical sociology, I examine the educational configuration at…

  8. Let's dance: Organization studies, medical sociology and health policy.

    PubMed

    Currie, Graeme; Dingwall, Robert; Kitchener, Martin; Waring, Justin

    2012-02-01

    This Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine investigates the potential for positive inter-disciplinary interaction, a 'generative dance', between organization studies (OS), and two of the journal's traditional disciplinary foundations: health policy and medical sociology. This is both necessary and timely because of the extent to which organizations have become a neglected topic within medical sociology and health policy analysis. We argue there is need for further and more sustained theoretical and conceptual synergy between OS, medical sociology and health policy, which provides, on the one-hand a cutting-edge and thought-provoking basis for the analysis of contemporary health reforms, and on the other hand, enables the development and elaboration of theory. We emphasize that sociologists and policy analysts in healthcare have been leading contributors to our understanding of organizations in modern society, that OS enhances our understanding of medical settings, and that organizations remain one of the most influential actors of our time. As a starting point to discussion, we outline the genealogy of OS and its application to healthcare settings. We then consider how medical sociology and health policy converge or diverge with the concerns of OS in the study of healthcare settings. Following this, we focus upon the material environment, specifically the position of business schools, which frames the generative dance between OS, medical sociology and health policy. This sets the context for introducing the thirteen articles that constitute the Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. The Current Status of Sport Sociology within American and Canadian Colleges and Universities.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brooks, Dana D.

    The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of sport sociology within American and Canadian Colleges and Universities. The study investigated: (1) the number of graduate and undergraduate courses offered in sport sociology; (2) current research area(s) of interest within sport sociology; (3) current text used as reference and…

  10. Representing the Other in Sociology of the Family Texts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dunham, Charlotte Chorn; Cannon, Julie Harms; Dietz, Bernadette

    2004-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of otherness as it applies to the content of sociology of the family texts. We conducted a study of the content of the indexes and the body of texts on sociology of the family, examining the way in which the experiences of whites were addressed relative to families of color. We found that whites…

  11. Science Fiction and Introductory Sociology: The "Handmaid" in the Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Laz, Cheryl

    1996-01-01

    Focuses on the uses of science fiction to teach sociology and develop critical and creative thinking. Maintains that in the last 20 years science fiction has become concerned increasingly with social themes. Concludes with a detailed description of the use of "The Handmaid's Tale" in an introductory sociology course. (MJP)

  12. The "Biographical Turn" in University Sociology Teaching: A Bernsteinian Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McLean, Monica; Abbas, Andrea

    2009-01-01

    Little is known about what happens to disciplinary knowledge when it is taught in contemporary UK universities of different status. Here, Basil Bernstein's theories are applied to what sociology lecturers say about teaching, demonstrating that in conditions in which students are less likely to engage with sociological theory, lecturers,…

  13. Sociology of education, comparative education and social problems: A Polish comment

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zelazkiewicz, Marek

    1981-12-01

    The interaction and co-operation between the sociology of education and comparative education may lead to the realisation of the three basic functions of science: descriptive, explanatory and operative. A presentation of these issues is difficult because of the blurring of lines of division between related scientific disciplines. In the past two decades, Polish sociology has developed without experiencing any serious inner conflicts. Two basic orientations — empirical and humanistic — have co-existed, and the Marxist approach has gradually become more firmly established. The sociological approach applied to the sciences can be viewed as first, the adoption of sociological concepts and theories; and secondly, the application of the methods and techniques used in sociological research. The history of the relationship between the sociology of education and comparative education goes back to the works of J. Chałasiński in the 'thirties: he approached the school as a social institution functioning in a system of social relations and social groups, such as classes, vocational groups, nations and states. The application and impact of the sociological approach is evident in the methodological foundations of pedagogy — as e.g., in the work of Muszyński in 1975 — and also in many specific fields of comparative education. The so-called humanistic orientation and the descriptive function have predominated over empirical studies and the explanatory function in these areas. The 1973 Report of the Committee of Experts, on the state of education in Poland, was the result of co-operation between sociologists end educationists. This enterprise brought about the actualisation of the operative function of both scientific disciplines. However, the situation in Poland today raises new questions needing to be answered.

  14. Positivism in sociological research: USA and UK (1966-1990).

    PubMed

    Gartrell, C David; Gartrell, John W

    2002-12-01

    Positivism has been declared dead in sociological theory circles, yet questions remain as to its viability among researchers. The authors present diagnostic evidence about positivism in sociological practice through a content analysis of journal articles published in the late 1960s and the late 1980s in the sociological journals of the USA and Britain. Using an index based on seven elements of positivism that were characteristic of the 'theory construction' movement of the late 1960s, the authors find evidence of the effects of time and nation on the use of positivism. Disaggregation of the index reveals that most of the observed change is associated with the elements of 'instrumental' positivism, particularly statistics. The results raise questions about the relationship between theory and research and about sociologists' philosophies of science.

  15. The Educational Imagination and the Sociology of Education in Australia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Matthews, Julie

    2013-01-01

    A remarkable feature of the sociology of education is its proliferation under a broad gamut of research themes and topics. Understanding the relationship of education to social reproduction and social change are pivotal to the sociology of education, and have fruitfully informed research in fields such as gender and education, vocational education…

  16. Theoretical Notes on the Sociological Analysis of School Reform Networks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ladwig, James G.

    2014-01-01

    Nearly two decades ago, Ladwig outlined the theoretical and methodological implications of Bourdieu's concept of the social field for sociological analyses of educational policy and school reform. The current analysis extends this work to consider the sociological import of one of the most ubiquitous forms of educational reform found around…

  17. Analytical Sociology: A Bungean Appreciation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wan, Poe Yu-ze

    2012-01-01

    Analytical sociology, an intellectual project that has garnered considerable attention across a variety of disciplines in recent years, aims to explain complex social processes by dissecting them, accentuating their most important constituent parts, and constructing appropriate models to understand the emergence of what is observed. To achieve…

  18. The social nature of health and illness--evolution of research approaches in Polish classical medical sociology.

    PubMed

    Piątkowski, Włodzimierz; Skrzypek, Michał

    2012-01-01

    The cognitive identity of medical sociology has developed in a historical perspective in the context of a specific double frame of reference comprising medicine and general sociology. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the process of the development of the subdiscipline's research specificity in Poland, drawing attention to the general-sociological context of the conceptualization of basic interpretive and analytical sociomedical categories. In this aspect, the presented study is based on the analysis of Polish sociomedical and general-sociological research published from the early 1960s until 1989. The purpose of the study is also to describe in this perspective the structure of the research field of contemporary Western medical sociology, which was a major point of reference in this process. A look at the chronology of how the scientific identity of medical sociology developed in Poland from a historical perspective shows the gradual balancing-out of the subdiscipline's medical references, typical of the early stage of its development, and manifested in the implementation of research projects for the requirements of doctors, through consistently developed and cultivated connections with general sociology manifested in complementing the knowledge of society with aspects related to health and illness. A sine qua non condition for undertaking this scope of research was to work out strictly sociological formulations of these concepts, which was accomplished as a result of the successful reception of general sociology by the subdiscipline in question. The contemporary understanding of the research field of Polish medical sociology defined by Magdalena Sokołowska and developed as part of the 'school of medical sociology', which she initiated, is characterized by the maintenance of close relations with general sociology (affiliations of sociomedical departments in academic sociological institutions, etc.), and at the same time, by partnership cooperation with

  19. Tapping into Parallel Universes: Using Superhero Comic Books in Sociology Courses.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hall, Kelley J.; Lucal, Betsy

    1999-01-01

    Provides objectives and guidelines for preparing and executing a classroom exercise using superhero comic books. Discusses variations on the exercise for topics such as sociology of gender, social inequality, research methods, and introduction to sociology. Addresses purchasing comic books for the course. (CMK)

  20. Reconceptualizing resistance: sociology and the affective dimension of resistance.

    PubMed

    Hynes, Maria

    2013-12-01

    This paper re-examines the sociological study of resistance in light of growing interest in the concept of affect. Recent claims that we are witness to an 'affective turn' and calls for a 'new sociological empiricism' sensitive to affect indicate an emerging paradigm shift in sociology. Yet, mainstream sociological study of resistance tends to have been largely unaffected by this shift. To this end, this paper presents a case for the significance of affect as a lens by which to approach the study of resistance. My claim is not simply that the forms of actions we would normally recognize as resistance have an affective dimension. Rather, it is that the theory of affect broadens 'resistance' beyond the purview of the two dominant modes of analysis in sociology; namely, the study of macropolitical forms, on the one hand, and the micropolitics of everyday resistance on the other. This broadened perspective challenges the persistent assumption that ideological forms of power and resistance are the most pertinent to the contemporary world, suggesting that much power and resistance today is of a more affective nature. In making this argument, it is a Deleuzian reading of affect that is pursued, which opens up to a level of analysis beyond the common understanding of affect as emotion. I argue that an affective approach to resistance would pay attention to those barely perceptible transitions in power and mobilizations of bodily potential that operate below the conscious perceptions and subjective emotions of social actors. These affective transitions constitute a new site at which both power and resistance operate. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2013.

  1. (Re)igniting a Sociological Imagination in Adult Education: The Continuing Relevance of Classical Theory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lange, Elizabeth

    2015-01-01

    This article argues that sociology has been a foundational discipline for the field of adult education, but it has been largely implicit, until recently. This article contextualizes classical theories of sociology within contemporary critiques, reviews the historical roots of sociology and then briefly introduces the classical theories…

  2. A Sociological Journey into Sexuality.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reiss, Ira L.

    1986-01-01

    Proposes that sexuality is universally linked to the social structure in three specific areas: (a) marital jealousy, (b) gender role power, and (c) beliefs about normality. Variations and interrelations of these three linkages are explained by the logical structure of this sociological theory. The relevance of this theory for the applied…

  3. "Working Lives": The Use of Auto/Biography in the Development of a Sociological Imagination

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stephenson, Carol; Stirling, John; Wray, David

    2015-01-01

    This article critically evaluates the attempt of the authors to develop a sociological imagination within first-year undergraduate students studying the discipline of sociology at a British university. Through a sociological analysis of biography and autobiography (of both teachers and students), we attempted to create a quality of mind that would…

  4. "Laughing Matters": The Comedian as Social Observer, Teacher, and Conduit of the Sociological Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bingham, Shawn Chandler; Hernandez, Alexander A.

    2009-01-01

    Much of the sociological curriculum often represents society as tragedy. This article explores the incorporation of a society as comedy component in introductory courses at two institutions using the sociological insight and social critique of comedians. A general discussion of parallels between the comedic eye and the sociological imagination is…

  5. From bioethics to a sociology of bio-knowledge.

    PubMed

    Petersen, Alan

    2013-12-01

    Growing recognition of bioethics' shortcomings, associated in large part with its heavy reliance on abstract principles, or so-called principlism, has led many scholars to propose that the field should be reformed or reconceptualised. Principlism is seen to de-contextualise the process of ethical decision-making, thus restricting bioethics' contributions to debate and policy on new and emergent biotechnologies. This article examines some major critiques of bioethics and argues for an alternative normative approach; namely, a sociology of bio-knowledge focussing on human rights. The article discusses the need for such an approach, including the challenges posed by the recent rise of 'the bio-economy'. It explores some potential alternative bases for a normative sociology of bio-knowledge, before presenting the elements of the proposed human rights-focused approach. This approach, it is argued, will benefit from the insights and concepts offered by various fields of critical scholarship, particularly the emergent sociology of human rights, science and technology studies, Foucaultian scholarship, and feminist bioethics. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. The Sociology of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine

    PubMed Central

    Gale, Nicola

    2014-01-01

    Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and traditional medicine (TM) are important social phenomena. This article reviews the sociological literature on the topic. First, it addresses the question of terminology, arguing that the naming process is a glimpse into the complexities of power and history that characterize the field. Second, focusing on the last 15 years of scholarship, it considers how sociological research on users and practitioners of TM/CAM has developed in that time. Third, it addresses two newer strands of work termed here the ‘big picture’ and the ‘big question’. The big picture includes concepts that offer interpretation of what is happening at a societal level to constrain and enable observed patterns of social practice (pluralism, integration, hybridity and activism). The big question, ‘Does it work?’, is one of epistemology and focuses on two developing fields of critical enquiry – first, social critiques of medical science knowledge production and, second, attempts to explain the nature of interventions, i.e. how they work. Finally, the article examines the role of sociology moving forward. PMID:25177359

  7. Traditional Birth Attendants in Rural Northern Uganda: Policy, Practice, and Ethics.

    PubMed

    Rudrum, Sarah

    2016-01-01

    The current emphasis on skilled attendants as a means to reduce maternal mortality contributes to a discouraging policy environment for traditional birth attendants (TBAs). They continue to attend a significant number of births, however, such that their role and the policies and practices affecting their work remain important to understanding maternity health care and maternal health in the global South. In this article, I examine the policies and practices governing community elders practicing as TBAs in rural northern Uganda. This discussion is relevant to health workers in developing countries and to scholars in fields such as women's studies, sociology, and public health.

  8. The Integration of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning into the Discipline of Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McKinney, Kathleen

    2018-01-01

    Despite decades of sociology scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research, integration of SoTL in sociology remains insufficient. First, some reasons for the insufficient integration of SoTL in the discipline are noted, and the foci of publications on the history and status of the SoTL in sociology are briefly summarized. Literature…

  9. Educational Sociology and Educational Administration: Problems with Paradigms, Epistemology, Research and Theory.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berrell, Michael M.; Macpherson, R. J. S.

    1995-01-01

    Traces the different paradigmatic pathways followed by educational sociology and educational administration. Educational sociology has followed ideostructural, interpretive, and psychosocial paradigms, with emergent holistic critical perspectives and sociobiological materialism. Educational administration has had one dominant tradition,…

  10. Health, illness, and healing in an uncertain era: challenges from and for medical sociology.

    PubMed

    Pescosolido, B A; Kronenfeld, J J

    1995-01-01

    The current situation in health care organizations, among providers and for people, dramatically challenges the "business as usual" roles of medicine, government, insurance companies, the community, and the university. Health care reform marks the first attempt in a century to consider a reconstruction of the social contract between society and medicine. While sociology stands as one of the earliest social sciences to systematically study the health care arena and create a health-focused subfield, there is a perception, not without support, of a desertion of identity from within, an encroachment by other areas from without, and abandonment by the parent discipline. We argue that these situations in medical arenas and in research fields require serious rethinking. The key lies in understanding how these phenomena are related to each other and to larger social forces, and how they offer opportunities, rather than signal limitations, to medical sociologists. We turn to the theoretical tools of sociology to help unravel the complicated challenges that face both policymakers and researchers. After framing these issues in a sociology of knowledge perspective, we use the case of "utilization theory" to illustrate the connections between society and systems of care (as well as studies of them) and to create a future agenda. We end by raising three basic questions: (1) Why is a sociological perspective critical to the understanding of change and reform in health care? (2) Why is medical sociology critical to the survival of the general sociological enterprise? and (3) Why is general sociology critical to the research agenda in medical sociology?

  11. Health sociology from post-structuralism to the new materialisms.

    PubMed

    Fox, Nick J

    2016-01-01

    The article reviews the impact of post-structuralism and postmodern social theory upon health sociology during the past 20 years. It then addresses the emergence of new materialist perspectives, which to an extent build upon insights of post-structuralist concerning power, but mark a turn away from a textual or linguistic focus to address the range of materialities that affect health, illness and health care. I conclude by assessing the impact of these movements for health sociology. © The Author(s) 2015.

  12. The emergence of sociology from political economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940.

    PubMed

    Young, Cristobal

    2009-01-01

    Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890-1905), collaboration (1905-1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics-sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact.

  13. Developing the sociology of health in nurse education: towards a more critical curriculum--part I: andragogy and sociology in Project 2000.

    PubMed

    Balsamo, D; Martin, I S

    1995-12-01

    This paper examines the potential for developing a more critical and reflexive curriculum around the sociology of health in nurse education. In Part One a review of the literature on Project 2000 to date suggests that insufficient attention has been paid to the scope for linking methodological and epistemological issues. it is argued that the status of 'andragogy' as a strategy of teaching and learning is ill-defined and that the nature of sociological theory in nurse education remains too crude and dichotomous to produce the 'knowledgeable doer', a qualitatively different kind of professional nurse practitioner.

  14. Teaching for Social Justice: Motivations of Community College Faculty in Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brown, Sonia; Blount, Stacye; Dickinson, Charles A.; Better, Alison; Vitullo, Margaret Weigers; Tyler, Deidre; Kisielewski, Michael

    2016-01-01

    This article evaluates the reasons for career choice and job satisfaction among community college faculty who teach sociology, in relation to a social justice motivation for teaching. Using closed- and open-ended response data from a 2014 national survey of community college sociology faculty, this study finds that a preponderance of faculty do…

  15. Castells' Catalan routes: nationalism and the sociology of identity.

    PubMed

    MacInnes, John

    2006-12-01

    Castells' analysis of the rise of a global network society and information age is underpinned, paradoxically, by a nationalist vision with organic links in a Gramscian sense to Catalan nationalism. This leads to various weaknesses in his theory, especially an over-emphasis on language and nation at the expense of class. Exploring the specifically Catalan origins of his work, and testing its adequacy there, helps us to understand Castells' broader approach. Discussion of Castells has perhaps overlooked his commitment to nationalism because the sociology of identity sometimes unwittingly adopts what Billig has called a banal nationalist perspective. A stricter distinction between the different meanings of the term identity would help sociology to avoid arguments, such as that of Castells, that risk becoming determinist, teleological or both. The article concludes by asking whether the 'sociological imagination' has been alert enough to its banal nationalist form, facilitated by its intimate relationship with the state, its concern for policy relevance and methods of data gathering.

  16. Sociology of Education: A Critical History and Prospects for the Future

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lauder, Hugh; Brown, Phillip; Halsey, A. H.

    2009-01-01

    This paper examines the sociology of education from the perspective of its recent history and attempts to assess the current state of the field. The authors argue that cognate disciplines such as economics and social policy have taken over some of the key questions that were once the preserve of sociology of education. This raises the question of…

  17. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Teaching Sociology: 1973-2009

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Paino, Maria; Blankenship, Chastity; Grauerholz, Liz; Chin, Jeffrey

    2012-01-01

    This article updates and extends research by Baker and Chin, who tracked changes in studies published in Teaching Sociology from 1973 to 1983 (Baker) and 1984 to 1999 (Chin). The current study traces manuscripts published in "Teaching Sociology" from 2000 to 2009. We examine both who publishes in the journal and what gets published. In particular,…

  18. Psychological Time and Sociology: A Research Agenda.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hogan, H. Wayne

    1979-01-01

    Psychological time is hypothesized as potentially being both an independent and a dependent dimension associated with such sociological and psychological phenomena as social change, environmental design, personal space, esthetics, and color considerations. (Author)

  19. How Do Students' Accounts of Sociology Change over the Course of Their Undergraduate Degrees?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ashwin, Paul; Abbas, Andrea; McLean, Monica

    2014-01-01

    In this article we examine how students' accounts of the discipline of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of 86 interviews with 32 sociology and criminology students over the course of their undergraduate degrees, we constituted five different ways of accounting for sociology.…

  20. What's in a Name? An Examination of Sociology of Aging Versus Social Gerontology Course Content

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dossey-Newby, Paula; Krull, Amy C.

    2005-01-01

    This study examines the comparability of sociology of aging courses, a core component in many undergraduate multidisciplinary gerontology minor programs. A content analysis of syllabi in the 5th edition of Teaching Sociology of Aging and the Life Course (Harris, 2000) was undertaken to determine the presence of 7 core sociological concepts. Among…

  1. The Sociology of Youth: A Reflection on Its Contribution to the Field and Future Directions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wyn, Johanna

    2011-01-01

    This article expands on a piece in the inaugural "Sociology of Youth Newsletter," edited by Steven Threadgold (Wyn 2010). The present article provides an opportunity to engage in a more critical exploration of the issues that youth sociology in Australia contributes to the wider field of sociology and to reflect on challenges that it…

  2. Rural women in Africa and technological change: some issues.

    PubMed

    Date-bah, E; Stevens, Y

    1981-01-01

    The attempt is made in this discussion to highlight some of the important sociological and technical issues relating to rural women in Africa and technological change which appear to have been underplayed, misconceived or overlooked in the past. Attention is directed to the rural woman as a member of the family unit, the image of the rural man, rural women as a diversified group, community and national governmental commitment to rural technology innovations, the use of already existing traditional groups and institutions to effect rural technological change, and design specifications and shortcomings of equipment and tools (manufacturing costs, exploitation of locally available energy resources, the simplicity of the devices), and infrastructural and marketing problems. Numberous projects aimed at improving the lot of women in the rural areas have focused only on women, rather than the woman as a member of an extended as well as a nuclear family unit. Consequently, they have failed, for rural women do not exist or operate in isolation. It is difficult to believe the overall image in much of the literature that the husbands of rural women show no sympathy or regard for their wives. In the effort to attract investment to improve upon the position of rural women, reality should not be distorted with this one-sided view. Men should be involved in the technology planned for rural women, and the technological change should be planned and implemented in such a way that it results in an improvement in the relationship between the rural couple and generally between members of the rural family and between males and females in the village. Another problem is overgeneralization, and it must be recognized that considerable differentiation exists between rural women themselves. The importance of community, governmental and political commitment to rural technology innovations in order to ensure their success is neglected in the literature. The government and polictical leadership

  3. Professor Goes Gaga: Teaching Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deflem, Mathieu

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents an account of the conditions and consequences of a university-level teaching experience in the sociology of fame centered on the case of Lady Gaga. When the course "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame" at the University of South Carolina was announced in the autumn of 2010, it became the number-one Lady Gaga news…

  4. Going Public: Networking Globally and Locally

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sachs, Carolyn E.

    2007-01-01

    Rural sociologists figure prominently in the move towards public sociology. The paper takes up Michael Burawoy's call for public sociology and discusses what rural sociologists have to offer to publics and how we stand to gain as a discipline in working with publics. The paper argues that rural sociologists' ability to adopt a cosmopolitan view…

  5. Some Computer-Based Developments in Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heise, David R.; Simmons, Roberta G.

    1985-01-01

    Discusses several ways in which computers are being used in sociology and how they continue to change this discipline. Areas considered include data collection, data analysis, simulations of social processes based on mathematical models, and problem areas (including standardization concerns, training, and the financing of computing facilities).…

  6. Peculiarities of medical sociology: application of social theories in analyzing health and medicine.

    PubMed

    Kaminskas, Raimundas; Darulis, Zilvinas

    2007-01-01

    To reveal the peculiarities of medical sociology introducing the application of social theories in analyzing public health and medicine. Comparative and descriptive analysis of scientific references found and current situation. During the last decade of the 20th century, the discussions about the sociology of health and medicine as separate discipline and its practical applications became more active. Main factors determined the growing importance of discipline were institutionalization of medicine and health care, changing patterns in doctor-patient relationships, different health perceptions, understanding of the influence of social factors on health, cardinal changes in the area of health technologies, consumeristic attitude towards health, appearance of market relationships within health care, and other global phenomena. In sociology, usual social theories such as structural functionalism, conflict, symbolic interaction, poststructuralism, feminist often attempt to explain the changes within health care. There is a relation of medical sociology and other types of sociology having common areas with medicine and health being analyzed in the article; social theories and their application in the field of health and medicine are being introduced attempting to explain the ongoing social changes in both Lithuania and the world. More and more attention in various areas of medical activities is being paid to the social aspects (both individual and society levels) of these activities, and there is a shift from applied sociology towards medical one. Despite the cessations of the development of medical sociology as separate branch of sciences, the researches of recent years are demonstrating obvious approaching modern research issues and methods, which do exist in contemporary world. Such tendencies show the prompt approaching of the academic community of Lithuania the general scientific standards which are dominating in the globalization-effected world.

  7. Debating DSM-5: diagnosis and the sociology of critique

    PubMed Central

    Pickersgill, Martyn D

    2014-01-01

    The development of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5—has reenergised and driven further forward critical discourse about the place and role of diagnosis in mental health. The DSM-5 has attracted considerable criticism, not least about its role in processes of medicalisation. This paper suggests the need for a sociology of psychiatric critique. Sociological analysis can help map fields of contention, and cast fresh light on the assumptions and nuances of debate around the DSM-5; it underscores the importance of diagnosis to the governance of social and clinical life, as well as the wider discourses critical commentaries connect with and are activated by. More normatively, a sociology of critique can indicate which interests and values are structuring the dialogues being articulated, and just how diverse clinical opinion regarding the DSM can actually be. This has implications for the considerations of health services and policy decision-makers who might look to such debates for guidance. PMID:24327375

  8. Can a deprivation index be used legitimately over both urban and rural areas?

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Although widely used, area-based deprivation indices remain sensitive to urban–rural differences as such indices are usually standardised around typical urban values. There is, therefore, a need to determine to what extent available deprivation indices can be used legitimately over both urban and rural areas. Methods This study was carried out in Brittany, France, a relatively affluent region that contains deep rural areas. Among the 1,736 residential census block groups (IRIS) composing the Brittany region, 1,005 (57.9%) are rural. Four deprivation indices were calculated: two scores (Carstairs and Townsend) developed in the UK and two more recent French measures (Havard and Rey). Two standardisation levels were considered: all of the IRIS and only the urban IRIS of the region. Internal validity (Kappa coefficients and entropy values) and external validity (relationship with colorectal cancer screening [CCS] attendance) were investigated. Results Regardless of the deprivation measure used, wealthy areas are mostly clustered in the West and at the outskirts of major towns. Carstairs and Rey scores stand out by all evaluation criteria, capturing both urban and rural deprivation. High levels of agreements were found across standardisation levels (κ = 0.96). The distributions of deprivation scores were balanced across urban and rural areas, and high Shannon entropy values were observed in the capital city (≥0.93). Similar and significant negative trends were observed between CCS attendance and both deprivation indices, independent of the degree of urbanisation. Conclusions These results provide support, despite potential sociological objections, for the use of a compromise index that would facilitate comparisons and interpretations across urban and rural locations in public health research. PMID:24929662

  9. Max Weber in the American Journal of Sociology: A case of circulating knowledge.

    PubMed

    Rijks, Marlise

    2012-01-01

    By the middle of the 1970s, a Max Weber revival commenced in American sociology. Almost 75 percent of the articles on Weber in the American Journal of Sociology published in the past six decades appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. The Weber revival in American sociology is a phenomenon observed in leading literature. New translations and publications are frequently indicated reasons for the renewed interest in Weber. Without dismissing this factor, it is not an entirely satisfactory explanation. This article accounts for the Weber revival in a new way. Taking the American Journal of Sociology as a case study, I argue that the Weber revival was a case of circulating knowledge. Certain historically set issues led to a reorientation of Weber, which meant that knowledge about Weber was moved, extended, and transformed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  10. Teaching the Sociology of Sport: Using a Comic Strip in the Classroom.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snyder, Eldon E.

    1997-01-01

    Observes that contemporary sociology pays little attention to the narrative and graphic aspects of comic strips. Presents classroom experiences using "Gil Thorpe," a comic strip with an ongoing storyline about suburban high school athletics, and gives reasons for the effectiveness of this instructional tool in the sociology of sport.…

  11. Imagination and society: the role of visual sociology.

    PubMed

    Cipriani, Roberto; Del Re, Emanuela C

    2012-10-01

    The paper presents the field of Visual Sociology as an approach that makes use of photographs, films, documentaries, videos, to capture and assess aspects of social life and social signals. It overviews some relevant works in the field, it deals with methodological and epistemological issues, by raising the question of the relation between the observer and the observed, and makes reference to some methods of analysis, such as those proposed by the Grounded Theory, and to some connected tools for automatic qualitative analysis, like NVivo. The relevance of visual sociology to the study of social signals lies in the fact that it can validly integrate the information, introducing a multi-modal approach in the analysis of social signals.

  12. [For a sociology of intervention in mental health.].

    PubMed

    Rhéaume, J; Sévigny, R

    1988-01-01

    Mental health workers develop a solid understanding of social phenomenon, which gives them direction and on which they are able to base their interventions. This is what the authors call the "implicit sociology" ("sociologie implicite") of workers. The article describes the principal elements of this special knowledge through information gathered from workers in clinical environments, private practice and "alternative" organizations. The authors focus on the idea workers make of health/mental handicaps, of their clientele, of their involvement, of the organizational and societal context of their work, of their "role" in society. Finally, the authors show how a sociological approach can help improve one's understanding of how to deal with mental health.

  13. Defining the public, defining sociology: hybrid science-public relations and boundary-work in early American sociology.

    PubMed

    Evans, Michael S

    2009-01-01

    In this paper, I examine how scientific disciplines define their boundaries by defining the publics with whom they engage. The case study is an episode in the development of early American sociology. In response to the dual challenge of credibility set up by the conflict between religious Baconian science and secular positivist science, key actors engaged in specific strategies of boundary-work to create their desired "sociological public"--a hybrid form of science-public relations that appealed to hostile university scientists while excluding a supportive religious audience from participation in the production of scientific knowledge. Using this case, I offer two specific insights. First I illustrate how, in the pursuit of scientific credibility, actors engage in boundary-work to differentiate audiences, not just practitioners. Such defining of publics is constitutive of scientific disciplines in their formative stage. Second, I demonstrate how audience boundaries can be redefined through the capture of existing boundary objects. Specifically, the removal of informational content in key boundary objects creates durable boundaries that are difficult to overcome.

  14. Understanding Australian rural women's ways of achieving health and wellbeing - a metasynthesis of the literature.

    PubMed

    Harvey, Desley J

    2007-01-01

    Although Australian rural women appear to be coping well despite a lack of services, harsh environmental conditions and overall rural health disadvantage, there is little research into the factors which promote good health among them. The aim of this article is to document and analyse current understandings about how rural Australian women maintain health and wellbeing, by conducting a metasynthesis of peer reviewed empirical qualitative research. Searches were conducted of CINAHL, MEDLINE, Proquest, Blackwell Synergy, Informit, Infotrac, National Rural Health Alliance and Indigenous Health Infonet data bases. A definition of health and wellbeing as a positive concept emphasising social and personal resources as well as physical capacities, provided a framework for the review. Six studies published in rural health, nursing and sociology journals between 2001 and 2006 were selected. Common and recurring themes from the original studies were identified. Reciprocal translation was used to synthesise the findings among the studies, leading to interpretations beyond those identified in the original studies. Four themes emerged from the metasynthesis: isolation, belonging, coping with adversity, and rural identity. The findings of this study exhibit a tension between a sense of belonging and the experience of social and geographical isolation. The study findings also reveal tension between adherence to a strong gendered rural identity which fosters a culture of stoicism and self reliance and feelings of resistance to societal expectations of coping with adversity. Metasynthesis enabled a deeper understanding of the health and wellbeing of rural women in Australia. The social experiences of rural women influence the way they construe their health and wellbeing. Understanding how women maintain health and wellbeing is critical in ensuring that policies and services meet the needs of rural women and do not entrench existing inequalities.

  15. Parental Concerns in 100th Year Anniversary of Sociology Education in Turkey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kasapoglu, Aytul

    2016-01-01

    Although sociology education is celebrating its 100th year anniversary in Turkish higher education, the field itself is not known quite well by the society. Familial worries in the context of emotional sociology are very important because families may have when they think of their child's future especially after graduation from university. Primary…

  16. Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis: History and Reflections, 1906-1989.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pittman, David J.; Boden, Deirdre

    1990-01-01

    Traces the history of sociology at Washington University (Missouri) from 1906 to 1989 in relation to the decision to abolish the department. Maintains that this decision began in 1968. Defines the contours of the sociology department, including a discussion of prominent scholars, contending that the decision will harm the discipline in the long…

  17. The Challenge of Training in Applied Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Doyle Paul; And Others

    1987-01-01

    Explores the challenge of expanding nonacademic employment opportunities for sociologists and training sociology students for such employment. Suggests several interrelated strategies for these students that address issues of marketing and public relations as well as curriculum revision. (Author/BSR)

  18. Cooperation between medicine and sociology in head and neck oncology.

    PubMed

    Babin, Emmanuel; Grandazzi, Guillaume

    2014-05-01

    Twenty-first-century medicine is facing many challenges--knowledge and command of technical advances, research development, team management, knowledge transmission, and adaptation to economic constraints--without neglecting "human" aspects, via transformed carer-patient relationships, social change, and so on. The "modern" physicians know that simply treating disease is no longer enough. One of their essential missions lies in offering the individual patient overall care, which implies acknowledging the latter as an individual within a family, social, and professional environment. Indeed, medical practice requires pluridimensional knowledge of the patients' experience of their disease. Yet the contribution sociology can offer to health care remains largely unknown to many physicians, and medical training includes only limited instruction in the human sciences. On the basis of a few observations taken from sociological research, we would like to demonstrate how, in head and neck oncology, interdisciplinary collaboration between medicine and sociology can prove propitious to improving patient care and attention to their close relations.

  19. Sociological Research in a Military School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ignat'ev, V. V.

    2008-01-01

    What is the content of a system of sociological support for the administration of a higher military educational institution, and what problems are involved? From October 2006 to February 2007, instructors in the department of the humanities and the social-economic disciplines at Eisk F. M. Komarov Higher Military Aviation School (EVVAU) carried…

  20. "World Religions" in Introductory Sociology Textbooks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carroll, Michael P.

    2017-01-01

    A section on "world religions" (WRs) is now routinely included in the religion chapters of introductory sociology textbooks. Looking carefully at these WR sections, however, two things seem puzzling. The first is that the criteria for defining a WR varies considerably from textbook to textbook; the second is that these WRs sections…

  1. The Sociological Imagination and Social Responsibility

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hironimus-Wendt, Robert J.; Wallace, Lora Ebert

    2009-01-01

    In this paper, we maintain that sociologists should deliberately teach social responsibility as a means of fulfilling the promise that C. Wright Mills envisioned. A key aspect of the sociological imagination includes a sense of social responsibility, but that aspect is best learned through a combination of experience and academic knowledge.…

  2. Regression Analysis and the Sociological Imagination

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    De Maio, Fernando

    2014-01-01

    Regression analysis is an important aspect of most introductory statistics courses in sociology but is often presented in contexts divorced from the central concerns that bring students into the discipline. Consequently, we present five lesson ideas that emerge from a regression analysis of income inequality and mortality in the USA and Canada.

  3. Critical Sociological Thinking and Higher-Level Thinking: A Study of Sociologists' Teaching Goals and Assignments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kane, Danielle; Otto, Kristin

    2018-01-01

    We argue that the literature on critical thinking in sociology has conflated two different skill sets: critical sociological thinking and higher-level thinking. To begin to examine how sociologists weigh and cultivate these skill sets, we interviewed 20 sociology instructors and conducted a content analysis of 26 assignments. We found that while…

  4. The Founding and Development of the Sociology of Youth in This Country

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zubok, Iu. A.; Chuprov, V. I.

    2009-01-01

    Russian and Soviet sociology have always paid considerable attention to the study of youth. Interest in the problems of youth first emerged in Russian sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. It was manifested with special clarity, however, in the 1920s through the 1980s, when the research came to include problems of the daily life and…

  5. Critical Nexus or Pluralist Discipline? Institutional Ambivalence and the Future of Canadian Sociology.

    PubMed

    Puddephatt, Antony J; McLaughlin, Neil

    2015-08-01

    While some scholars believe in a transdisciplinary future for the social sciences and humanities, we argue that sociology would do well to maintain its disciplinary borders, while celebrating the plurality of its intellectual, social, and political content. Although a pluralist position can threaten disciplinary coherence and increase fragmentation, we argue the counterbalance ought to be convergence around shared institutional norms of knowledge production. Establishing these norms is not easy, since there is a great deal of institutional ambivalence at play in the field of sociology. As such, sociology is pushed and pulled between two poles of at least four major continuums of knowledge production, which include the following: (1) interdisciplinary versus discipline-based research; (2) political versus analytical scholarship; (3) professional versus public/policy sociology; and (4) local/national versus global audiences. Since both sides of these ideal-typical continuums contain their own pathologies, we propose adopting a balanced position to correct for the shortcomings of each. Rather than imposing one philosophical or theoretical paradigm for the field, we suggest that embracing the "chaos" of our diverse forms of knowledge and centralizing and integrating findings will serve to strengthen our collective efforts in the long term. © 2015 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  6. Sociology: A Guide to Reference Sources.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Giffin, Meredith

    Sociology, the study of the organization and activities of human societies, encompasses many fields of inquiry and consequently the literature of the discipline is vast. In providing access to some of this literature, this guide concentrates on reference sources which may be found in McLennan Library of McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Areas…

  7. New Biological Sciences, Sociology and Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Youdell, Deborah

    2016-01-01

    Since the Human Genome Project mapped the gene sequence, new biological sciences have been generating a raft of new knowledges about the mechanisms and functions of the molecular body. One area of work that has particular potential to speak to sociology of education, is the emerging field of epigenetics. Epigenetics moves away from the mapped…

  8. Debating DSM-5: diagnosis and the sociology of critique.

    PubMed

    Pickersgill, Martyn D

    2014-08-01

    The development of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-the DSM-5-has reenergised and driven further forward critical discourse about the place and role of diagnosis in mental health. The DSM-5 has attracted considerable criticism, not least about its role in processes of medicalisation. This paper suggests the need for a sociology of psychiatric critique. Sociological analysis can help map fields of contention, and cast fresh light on the assumptions and nuances of debate around the DSM-5; it underscores the importance of diagnosis to the governance of social and clinical life, as well as the wider discourses critical commentaries connect with and are activated by. More normatively, a sociology of critique can indicate which interests and values are structuring the dialogues being articulated, and just how diverse clinical opinion regarding the DSM can actually be. This has implications for the considerations of health services and policy decision-makers who might look to such debates for guidance. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

  9. Translations on Eastern Europe, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, Number 1590

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1978-09-29

    j’Wv3 7155? 2D September 1978 TRANSLATIONS ON EASTERN EUROPE POLITICAL., SOCIOLOGICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS No, 1590 < Sis PS c 2l C 60S...AND MILITARY AFFAIRS, No. 1590 5. Report Date 29 September 19 78 6. 7. Autlior(s) 8’ Performing Organization Rept. No. 9. Performing...USCOMM-DC 14952-P72 JPRS 71957 29 September 1978 TRANSLATIONS ON EASTERN EUROPE POLITICAL., SOCIOLOGICAL, AND MILITARY AFFAIRS No. 1590

  10. JPRS Report, Soviet Union, Sociological Studies, No. 5, September-October 1987

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1988-06-10

    of the Methodology and History of Sociology of the Institute of Sociological Research, USSR Academy of Sciences, author of the books "Tekhnika i...the problem is perpetuated. It is no secret that the history of several liberal arts institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the last few...most important revolutionary process since Great October, is that it, for the first time in our country’s history , is not only creating the

  11. How Sociology Texts Address Gun Control

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tonso, William R.

    2004-01-01

    William R. Tonso has chosen an issue that he knows something about to examine how sociology textbooks address controversy. Appealing for gun control is fashionable, but it is at odds with a fondness that ordinary Americans have for their firearms--one that is supported by a growing body of research on deterrence to crime. There are two sides to…

  12. Integrating Sociological Research into Large Introductory Courses: Learning Content and Increasing Quantitative Literacy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Atkinson, Maxine P.; Czaja, Ronald F.; Brewster, Zachary B.

    2006-01-01

    Sociologists can make meaningful contributions to quantitative literacy by teaching sociological research skills in sociology classes, including introductory courses. We report on the effectiveness of requiring a research module in a large introductory class. The module is designed to teach both basic research skills and to increase awareness of…

  13. "Ghosts of Sociologies Past": Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Era at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    MacLean, Vicky M.; Williams, Joyce E.

    2012-01-01

    This embedded case study of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP) illustrates the development of disciplinary boundaries during a transitional period of professionalization in the social sciences, particularly for the fields of sociology and social work. Drawing on archival data (e.g., reports, scholarly and autobiographical…

  14. The Sociological Study of Minority Groups as Reflected by Leading Sociological Journals Who Gets Studies and Who Gets Neglected?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lavender, Abraham D.; Forsyth, John M.

    1976-01-01

    In view of the small amount of attention given to non-black ethnic groups in the sociological literature, this paper suggests that it is no wonder that so little is known about ethnic-ethnic, ethnic-black, and ethnic-dominant society relations. (Author)

  15. Philosophy, history and sociology of science: interdisciplinary relations and complex social identities.

    PubMed

    Riesch, Hauke

    2014-12-01

    Sociology and philosophy of science have an uneasy relationship, while the marriage of history and philosophy of science has--on the surface at least--been more successful I will take a sociological look at the history of the relationships between philosophy and history as well as philosophy and sociology of science. Interdisciplinary relations between these disciplines will be analysed through social identity complexity theory in oider to draw out some conclusions on how the disciplines interact and how they might develop. I will use the relationships between the disciplines as a pointer for a more general social theory of interdisciplinarity which will then be used to sound a caution on how interdisciplinary relations between the three disciplines might be managed.

  16. Reflexivity over and above convention: the new orthodoxy in the sociology of personal life, formerly sociology of the family.

    PubMed

    Gilding, Michael

    2010-12-01

    There is a new orthodoxy in the field that was once understood as the sociology of the family, and is increasingly understood as the sociology of 'personal life', 'intimacy', 'relationships' and 'families'. The orthodoxy highlights the open-endedness of intimate relations at the expense of the family as an institution; that is, reflexivity over and above convention. This article argues that the new orthodoxy not only overstates reflexivity at the expense of convention, but abdicates understanding to frameworks grounded in biologistic and economistic understandings of human behaviour. The article makes its point through attention to three areas of research at odds with the new orthodoxy: paternity uncertainty, inheritance and family business. It then proposes that conceptualization of the family as an institutional regime gives due weight to the reflexive reconfiguration of family relationships and practices on the one hand, and their institutional embeddedness on the other.

  17. 2015 Hans O. Mauksch Address: How Departments Can Respond to the Changing Popularity of the Sociology Major

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sweet, Stephen

    2016-01-01

    While the popularity of the psychology major and the sociology major were comparable in 1970, sociology witnessed a decline while psychology witnessed expansion. This article considers strategies of expanding the popularity of the sociology major, considering data from a variety of sources. Primary recommendations are to configure programs to…

  18. Toward a Sociology of Acceptance: The Other Side of the Study of Deviance.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bogdan, Robert; Taylor, Steven

    1987-01-01

    This article discusses the history of the sociology of deviance and the exclusion from society of individuals who do not meet norms, and argues for a sociology emphasizing acceptance of differences on individual, group, and societal levels. Types of relationships based on mutual acceptance are discussed along with generalizations regarding the…

  19. Applying Sociology through Social Marketing: Student Reflections on an Intimate Violence Awareness Project

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hertzog, Jodie; Williams, Renee

    2007-01-01

    Introducing students to sensitive social issues like intimate violence in lower level courses can spark their sociological imaginations motivating them to do further research in order to gain reflective knowledge about such topics. In order to promote two course objectives: (1) recognizing and applying sociological concepts and theories, and (2)…

  20. Ilya Neustadt, Norbert Elias, and the Leicester Department: personal correspondence and the history of sociology in Britain.

    PubMed

    Goodwin, John; Hughes, Jason

    2011-12-01

    The central aims of this paper are: (1) to explore the utility of using personal correspondence as a source of data for sociological investigations into the history of sociology in the UK; (2) in relation to this undertaking, to advance the beginnings of a figurational analysis of epistolary forms; and (3), to provide an empirically-grounded discussion of the historical significance of the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester (a University largely ignored in 'standard histories' of the subject) at a formative phase in the development of the discipline within the UK. The correspondence drawn upon in the paper is between Norbert Elias and Ilya Neustadt between 1962 and 1964 when Elias was Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana and Ilya Neustadt was Professor of Sociology and Head of the Sociology Department at the University of Leicester. From an analysis of this correspondence, we elucidate an emergent dynamic to the relationship between Neustadt and Elias, one which, we argue, undergirds the development of sociology at Leicester and the distinctive character of the intellectual climate that prevailed there during the 1960s. The paper concludes with a consideration of whether it was a collapse of this dynamic that led to a total breakdown in the relationship between Neustadt and Elias, and by extension, an important phase in the expansion of sociology at Leicester. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2011.

  1. Sociology of health textbooks and narratives: historical significance.

    PubMed

    Nunes, Everardo Duarte

    2016-03-01

    This article has as its starting point two central ideas: textbooks as a means of production and dissemination of knowledge and narrative as an approach. After a brief review of studies on health/medical sociology textbooks, I analyze a few of these textbooks from the 1900-2012 period, produced in the United States and England. I have selected eleven textbooks which I thought were representative. In addition to a content analysis, the textbooks are located within the process of constitution of the health/medical sociology with brief references to the biographies of the authors. The textbooks analyzed were classified according to the main narrative features: doctor-centered; interdisciplinary; pedagogical; analytical; almost autobiographical; critical; and synthetic-reflective. In the final remarks, some points about the textbooks, limits and possibilities are presented.

  2. The Sociology of Education in the USSR.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Soviet Education, 1981

    1981-01-01

    Six articles discuss the state of the art of educational sociology in the Soviet Union. Topics discussed include demographic influences on education, the relationship between higher education and the national social structure, and the problem of the adaptation of newly trained teachers to their profession. (DB)

  3. Doing a Good Deed or Confounding the Problem? Peer Review and Sociology Textbooks.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kendall, Diana

    1999-01-01

    Examines how the peer review process influences the writing and publication of sociology textbooks and the teaching of sociology. States that the peer review process may influence the final textbook in five ways: (1) degree of innovation; (2) length; (3) reading level; (4) cloning ancillaries and accessories; and (5) using reviewers as marketing…

  4. Developing a Critical Lens: Using Photography to Teach Sociology and Create Critical Thinkers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Eisen, Daniel B.

    2012-01-01

    Sociology instructors strive not only to teach their students the essential aspects of sociology but also to help students develop their critical thinking abilities. One way to help students become better critical thinkers is to assign projects that encourage students to critically assess their world by relating the course content to their…

  5. Identifying socio-ecological networks in rural-urban gradients: Diagnosis of a changing cultural landscape.

    PubMed

    Arnaiz-Schmitz, C; Schmitz, M F; Herrero-Jáuregui, C; Gutiérrez-Angonese, J; Pineda, F D; Montes, C

    2018-01-15

    Socio-ecological systems maintain reciprocal interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic structures. As a result of these interactions key essential services for society emerge. Urban expansion is a direct driver of land change and cause serious shifts in socio-ecological relationships and the associated lifestyles. The framework of rural-urban gradients has proved to be a powerful tool for ecological research about urban influences on ecosystems and on sociological issues related to social welfare. However, to date there has not been an attempt to achieve a classification of municipalities in rural-urban gradients based on socio-ecological interactions. In this paper, we developed a methodological approach that allows identifying and classifying a set of socio-ecological network configurations in the Region of Madrid, a highly dynamic cultural landscape considered one of the European hotspots in urban development. According to their socio-ecological links, the integrated model detects four groups of municipalities, ordered along a rural-urban gradient, characterized by their degree of biophysical and socioeconomic coupling and different indicators of landscape structure and social welfare. We propose the developed model as a useful tool to improve environmental management schemes and land planning from a socio-ecological perspective, especially in territories subject to intense urban transformations and loss of rurality. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. Towards a Sociology of Languages in Canada.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    De Vries, John

    This examination of the sociology of language in Canada focuses on the social or societal aspects of the relationship between languages and society rather than on linguistic aspects. The study is developed in seven sections: (1) an introductory discussion of language and communication systems, language acquisition, messages, and language…

  7. 'Laboratory talk' in U.S. sociology, 1890-1930: the performance of scientific legitimacy.

    PubMed

    Owens, B Robert

    2014-01-01

    This paper examines one aspect of early twentieth century debates over the meaning of scientific methodology and epistemology within the social sciences: the tendency of sociologists to invoke "laboratory" as a multivalent concept and in reference to diverse institutions and sites of exploration. The aspiration to designate or create laboratories as spaces of sociological knowledge production was broadly unifying in early American sociology (1890-1930), even though there was no general agreement about what "laboratory" meant, nor any explicit acknowledgment of that lack of consensus. The persistence of laboratory talk in sociology over decades reflects the power of "laboratory" as a productively ambiguous, legitimizing ideal for sociologists aspiring to make their discipline rigorously scientific. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  8. The sociology of health in the United States: recent theoretical contributions.

    PubMed

    Cockerham, William C

    2014-04-01

    This paper examines recent trends in theory in health sociology in the United States and finds that the use of theory is flourishing. The central thesis is that the field has reached a mature state and is in the early stage of a paradigm shift away from a past focus on methodological individualism (in which the individual is the primary unit of analysis) toward a growing utilization of theories with a structural orientation This outcome is materially aided by research methods (e.g. hierarchal linear modeling, biomarkers) providing measures of structural effects on the health of the individual that were often absent or underdeveloped in the past. Structure needs to be accounted for in any social endeavor and contemporary medical sociology appears to be doing precisely that as part of the next stage of its evolution. The recent contributions to theory in the sociology of health discussed in this paper are fundamental cause, medicalization, social capital, neighborhood disadvantage, and health lifestyle theories.

  9. Beyond the Core: The Hot Topic(al) Alternative to the Survey-Based Introduction to Sociology Course.

    PubMed

    Schwartz, Michael; Smith, R Tyson

    2010-10-01

    In the following paper we argue that the conventional "Introduction to Sociology" survey course should be restructured because such courses try to survey an unsurveyable body of knowledge and they do not teach the application of sociological research. The conventional intro course should be replaced with an intro course that surveys the types of social dynamics that sociologists typically research and the methods they use to do so. We propose a semester-long intro course with four case study learning-units that are chosen for their coverage of the underlying sociological dynamics, methods, and core concepts. We contend that case study learning-units which concentrate on topical issues and core sociological concepts are better suited for an introduction course.

  10. Trends in Funding for Dissertation Field Research: Why Do Political Science and Sociology Students Win so Few Awards?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Agarwala, Rina; Teitelbaum, Emmanuel

    2010-01-01

    Despite the size and growth of political science and sociology relative to other disciplines, political science and sociology graduate students have received a declining share of funding for dissertation field research in recent years. Specifically, political science and sociology students are losing out to competitive applicants from…

  11. On the New Approach in Sociological Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russian Education and Society, 2012

    2012-01-01

    A roundtable was held in April 2010, by correspondence and with participants in attendance; it was organized by the editorial board of "Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia" jointly with the faculty of sociology of the Russian State University of the Humanities [RGGU]. The focus of the proceedings was a discussion (taking account of…

  12. Future Directions in the Sociology of Religion

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Christian, Ed.

    2008-01-01

    The sociology of religion today faces new and remarkable opportunities to contribute interesting and important knowledge and understanding about the role of religion in social, political, economic and cultural life for scholarly and public audiences. But in order to meet and capitalize successfully upon those opportunities, the field at present…

  13. Cross Course Collaboration in Undergraduate Sociology Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Waltermaurer, Eve; Obach, Brian

    2007-01-01

    In this article, the authors describe a cross course collaborative research project designed to provide students with an opportunity to integrate aspects of sociological study that are typically addressed in a compartmentalized course by course manner. They used this approach on two separate occasions. The first involved collaboration between a…

  14. Goffman's Dramaturgical Sociology: Developing a Meaningful Theoretical Context and Exercise Involving "Embarrassment and Social Organization."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brown, David K.

    2003-01-01

    Depicts a useful participatory exercise in teaching Erving Goffman's dramaturgical sociology by drawing upon his essay about embarrassment and social organization. Argues the need to devise new ways to involve students in sociological theorists' insights. (Author/KDR)

  15. Teaching Sociology Students to Become Qualitative-Researchers Using an Internship Model of Learner-Support

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tolich, Martin; Scarth, Bonnie; Shephard, Kerry

    2015-01-01

    This article examines the experiences of final year undergraduate sociology students enrolled in an internship course where they researched a local community project, mostly in small groups, for a client. A sociology lecturer supervised their projects. Course-related outcomes were assessed using conventional university procedures but a research…

  16. Cosmopolitan sociology and the classical canon: Ferdinand Tönnies and the emergence of global Gesellschaft.

    PubMed

    Inglis, David

    2009-12-01

    How relevant are figures from the classical sociological canon for present day efforts to found cosmopolitan forms of sociological thought? According to the critique of Ulrich Beck, the classical sociologists remain far too wedded to nation-state-centred ways of thinking to play an important role in the development of cosmopolitan sociology. This paper argues that such a critique fails to account for the ways in which certain classical sociologists were attuned to the emerging cosmopolitical conditions of their own time, were not wholly wedded to nation-state-based conceptualizations, and thus can function as both groundings of, and inspirations for, cosmopolitan sociological endeavours. The apparently unpromising case of Tönnies is focused on, the paper showing how he outlined an account of how and why a planet-spanning condition of Gesellschaft developed a position which diverges from and counterpoints Marx's analysis of similar phenomena in important ways. The stereotype of Tönnies as an arch-conservative is also dissolved, allowing him to be considered as one of the most important antecedents of contemporary cosmopolitan sociological practice and a canonical figure still relevant for present-day purposes.

  17. One Starfish at a Time: Using Fundamentals in Sociology to Rethink Impressions about People Living with HIV/AIDS

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moremen, Robin D.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to document how a course in the fundamentals of sociology encouraged students to rethink negative impressions about people with AIDS. Multimethod, active learning processes were utilized to introduce the sociological imagination, critical thinking, and theory and methods in sociology. The intent was to apply basic…

  18. Sociology and Citizenship: The Concept of Culture.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wronski, Stanley P.

    1981-01-01

    Focusing on the question of how Americans would look to a visitor from outer space, this article relates culture to citizenship and explains how sociology can help students become better citizens. Learning exercises on several topics are suggested, including deciding on the proper role of guns in American culture and analyzing alternative futures…

  19. Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Giuffre, Patti; Anderson, Cynthia; Bird, Sharon

    2008-01-01

    This paper describes two teaching strategies from our workshop, "Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work," that can help students understand the mechanisms and consequences of workplace gender inequality at the macro- and micro-levels. Cynthia Anderson's class project uses wage and sex composition data that allows students to learn actively how…

  20. Teaching the Vietnam War: A Sociological Approach.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Starr, Jerold M.

    1995-01-01

    Maintains that, because of its importance in modern U.S. history, over 300 college courses are taught on the Vietnam War. Asserts that studying the war helps students develop critical thinking skills needed for citizenship. Describes the texts, formats, and assignments used in a college sociology course on the Vietnam War. (CFR)

  1. Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 3, 1977

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Inkeles, Alex, Ed.

    This book contains 15 articles reviewing significant developments in sociology in 1977. The first paper discusses the major trends and research evidence on the relationship between work-related technology and job satisfaction. A review of research dealing with social crisis and disaster is presented in the next article. The third paper reviews…

  2. The Future, Extraterrestrial Space Humanization and Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    MacDaniel, William E.

    This paper suggests that sociologists should become actively involved with the study of the future as a means for revitalizing the profession of sociology. One aspect of the future that may be most exciting and challenging is the development of human society and culture in extraterrestrial human communities. A unique combination of technological…

  3. [The sociology of gender: an original perspective for a better understanding of suicide in men].

    PubMed

    Roy, Philippe

    2012-01-01

    There is a general consensus that suicide is a social problem. But what exactly is the contribution of sociology to research on suicide? This paper proposes a brief overview of the historical bases of the sociology of suicide and its evolution through the study of deviance and exclusion. On the level of application, the sociology of gender contributed to better understand how some aspects of male socialisation, such as the rigid relations with norms of the male role, may act as suicide risk factors or as a path to recovery.

  4. A Third Use of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: A Lens for Studying Teacher Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Meyer, Daniel Z.; Avery, Leanne M.

    2010-01-01

    Over the last two decades, science educators and science education researchers have grown increasingly interested in utilising insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) to inform their work and research. To date, researchers in science education have focused on two applications: results of sociological studies of science have been…

  5. Provoking misunderstanding: a comment on Black's defence of value-free sociology.

    PubMed

    Hammersley, Martyn

    2014-09-01

    This paper is a response to a recent article dealing with the concept of value-free sociology by Donald Black. It argues that while a defence of Weber's position on the role of values in sociological research is necessary and important, what is offered by Black is counter-productive in important respects. This is because it encourages some of the misunderstandings that it is aimed at remedying and, even more importantly, offers a simplistic discussion of what are complex issues. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.

  6. Technical and Sociological Approaches for Curriculum Innovation on Clothing Education Department

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tristantie, N.

    2018-02-01

    Education in the context of social and technical development is defined as the main factor in the learning process which is implied into curriculum. It needs to be anticipated responsively how the goals of Clothing Education Department should be achieved. The sociological and technological through curriculum innovation at Clothing Education Department aims to gain good profile of the professional graduates in the future. By using the literature study, it is found out that sociological development and technological approach are the main foundation for sustainability of Clothing Education Department.

  7. US Forest Service and National Park Service Wilderness Aircraft Overflight Study: Sociological background and study plans

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Harrison, Robin T.; Hartmann, Lawrence

    1990-01-01

    The background and sociological aspects of the combined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service Wilderness Aircraft Overflight Study (WACOS) are presented. The WACOS broaches a new area of research by combining aspects of outdoor recreation sociology and aircraft noise response studies. The tasks faced create new challenges and require innovative solutions. Background information on the WACOS is presented with special emphasis on sociological considerations. At the time of this writing, no data have yet been collected, so this paper will present background information, related issues, and plans for data collection. Some recent studies indicate that managers of Forest Service wildernesses and National Park Service areas consider aircraft overflights to be a problem to their users in some areas. Additional relevant background research from outdoor recreation sociology is discussed, followed by presentation of the authors' opinions of the most salient sociological issues faced by this study. The goals and desired end products are identified next, followed by a review of the methods anticipated to be used to obtain these results. Finally, a discussion and conclusion section is provided.

  8. Sociology and the Liberal Arts: A Sociohistorical Integration.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Christopher B.

    1990-01-01

    Outlines a newly designed foundations of sociology course at Mount Saint Mary's college (California) that attempts to integrate the course into the College's liberal arts core curriculum. Suggests teaching this integrated, sociohistorical curriculum furthers students understanding and attraction to the discipline. (NL)

  9. USSR Report, Political and Sociological Affairs, No. 1416

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-06-07

    Permission for further reproduction must be obtained from copyright owner, JPRS 83624 7 June 19 83 USSR Report POLITICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL...13,400 various documents, 10,200 of which were reports and information. These papers literally hypnotize some workers. While not probing their

  10. The Sociology of Family Health. A Bibliography.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jumba-Masagazi, A. H. K., Comp.

    This unannotated bibliography is on man, his family, the society he makes and lives in, and his health. It is about man and his East African environment. It attempts to bring together both the applied and social sciences as they affect the family. Among the disciplines drawn from are: anthropology, sociology, medicine, religion, economics, labor…

  11. Seasonality of suicides: environmental, sociological and biological covariations.

    PubMed

    Souêtre, E; Salvati, E; Belugou, J L; Douillet, P; Braccini, T; Darcourt, G

    1987-01-01

    The monthly rates of completed suicides in France from 1978 until 1982 were analyzed. The seasonal variations of environmental (daylight and sunlight durations, mean temperature, geomagnetism), sociological (unemployment, deaths of all causes, birth and conception rates), and biological (melatonin, cortisol and serotonin circannual rhythms) factors were compared to the seasonal patterns of suicides. A clear seasonal variation (with peaks in May and September) in suicidal behavior was detected. These patterns tended to differ as a function of age (bimodal in young, unimodal in old people). The component analysis clearly pointed out that seasonal patterns of suicides may be considered as the sum of two components, unimodal and bimodal. Almost similar covariations were found between the main seasonal (unimodal) component of suicides and environmental (daylight duration and mean monthly temperature) or sociological factors whereas the secondary component was more correlated to variations in environmental factors and, to some extent, to biological parameters.

  12. Sociology of Modern Cosmology

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    López-Corredoira, M.

    2009-08-01

    Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to sociological phenomena such as the ``snowball effect'' or ``groupthink''. We might wonder whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology.

  13. Another Nibble at the Core: Student Learning in a Thematically-Focused Introductory Sociology Course

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Howard, Jay R.; Novak, Katherine B.; Cline, Krista M. C.; Scott, Marvin B.

    2014-01-01

    Identifying and assessing core knowledge has been and continues to be a challenge that vexes the discipline of sociology. With the adoption of a thematic approach to courses in the core curriculum at Butler University, faculty teaching Introductory Sociology were presented with the opportunity and challenge of defining the core knowledge and…

  14. Cultures of choice: towards a sociology of choice as a cultural phenomenon.

    PubMed

    Schwarz, Ori

    2017-09-07

    The article explores different ways to conceptualize the relationship between choice and culture. These two notions are often constructed as opposites: while sociologies of modernization (such as Giddens') portray a shift from cultural traditions to culturally disembedded choice, dispositional sociologies (such as Bourdieu's) uncover cultural determination as the hidden truth behind apparent choice. However, choice may be real and cultural simultaneously. Culture moulds choice not only by inculcating dispositions or shaping repertoires of alternatives, but also by offering culturally specific choice practices, ways of choosing embedded in meaning, normativity, and materiality; and by shaping attributions of choice in everyday life. By bringing together insights from rival schools, I portray an outline for a comparative cultural sociology of choice, and demonstrate its purchase while discussing the digitalization of choice; and cultural logics that shape choice attribution in ways opposing neoliberal trends. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  15. Analysis of Attainments and Evaluation Questions in Sociology Curriculum According to the SOLO Taxonomy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Korkmaz, Fahrettin; Unsal, Serkan

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: This research aims at analyzing the attainments identified in the sociology curriculum for 11th grade implemented by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in 2010, and the evaluation questions in the sociology textbook which was taught in the 2016-2017 academic year, based on the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO)…

  16. The Madoffization of Irish society: from Ponzi finance to sociological critique.

    PubMed

    Monaghan, Lee F; O'Flynn, Micheal

    2017-12-01

    Financialization and neoliberal policy created the Celtic Tiger. This economic 'miracle' furthered creditors' and property developers' speculative interests, leading to an unstable financial pyramid that eventually imploded in 2008 with catastrophic consequences for Irish society. Using the sociological imagination as social critique, this paper offers a lens on fictitious capital and Ponzi finance in the context of Ireland's boom and bust. Critique is advanced using the Madoffization of society thesis, a sociological heuristic that draws formal comparisons between Bernie Madoff's US$65 billion Ponzi scheme, which collapsed in 2008, and financialized capitalism. The Madoff case exhibits five main elements or forms which, it has been argued, underlie the varying content of life on a much broader scale: accumulation by debt expansion, mass deception, efforts to maintain secrecy and silence, obfuscation, and scapegoating. In conclusion, a crucial difference between the Madoff case and the Madoffization of Irish society is underscored. Discussion also moves from critique to hope amidst calls to renew sociology and transform financialized capitalism. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  17. Taking the Plunge: Open Access at the "Canadian Journal of Sociology." Case Studies in Open Access Publishing. Number Five

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Haggerty, Kevin D.

    2008-01-01

    Introduction: Presents a personal account of the transfer to open access of the leading Canadian journal of sociology. Background: The Canadian Journal of Sociology had established a strong position, internationally, among sociology journals. However, subscriptions were falling as readers increasingly accessed the resource through libraries and a…

  18. The Inclusion of Disability in Introductory Sociology Textbooks.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Taub, Diane E.; Fanflik, Patricia L.

    2000-01-01

    Investigates the portrayal of disability in 25 introductory sociology textbooks that were published between 1996 and 1998. Focuses on textual representation and pictorial depiction of individuals with disabilities using content analysis. Reveals that the textbooks provide a limited amount of information on disability. (CMK)

  19. The First Class: An Exercise for Introductory Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Riffer, Roger L.

    1983-01-01

    The objectives of this learning activity, which compares students' estimates for selected death rates with government census figures, are to orient college students to sociology's methods and content and to increase their comprehension of their first reading assignment on Durkheim's study of suicide. (Author/RM)

  20. Time for creative integration in medical sociology.

    PubMed

    Levine, S

    1995-01-01

    The burgeoning of medical sociology has sometimes been accompanied by unfortunate parochialism and the presence of opposing intellectual camps that ignore and even impugn each other's work. We have lost opportunities to achieve creative discourse and integration of different perspectives, methods, and findings. At this stage we should consider how we can foster creative integration within our field.

  1. Meta-Analysis for Sociology – A Measure-Driven Approach

    PubMed Central

    Roelfs, David J.; Shor, Eran; Falzon, Louise; Davidson, Karina W.; Schwartz, Joseph E.

    2013-01-01

    Meta-analytic methods are becoming increasingly important in sociological research. In this article we present an approach for meta-analysis which is especially helpful for sociologists. Conventional approaches to meta-analysis often prioritize “concept-driven” literature searches. However, in disciplines with high theoretical diversity, such as sociology, this search approach might constrain the researcher’s ability to fully exploit the entire body of relevant work. We explicate a “measure-driven” approach, in which iterative searches and new computerized search techniques are used to increase the range of publications found (and thus the range of possible analyses) and to traverse time and disciplinary boundaries. We demonstrate this measure-driven search approach with two meta-analytic projects, examining the effects of various social variables on all-cause mortality. PMID:24163498

  2. G. H. Mead in the history of sociological ideas.

    PubMed

    da Silva, Filipe Carreira

    2006-01-01

    My aim is to discuss the history of the reception of George Herbert Mead's ideas in sociology. After discussing the methodological debate between presentism and historicism, I address the interpretations of those responsible for Mead's inclusion in the sociological canon: Herbert Blumer, Jürgen Habermas, and Hans Joas. In the concluding section, I assess these reconstructions of Mead's thought and suggest an alternative more consistent with my initial methodological remarks. In particular, I advocate a reconstruction of Mead's ideas that apprehends simultaneously its evolution over time and its thematic breadth. Such a historically minded reconstruction can be not only a useful corrective to possible anachronisms incurred by contemporary social theorists, but also a fruitful resource for their theory-building endeavors. Only then can meaningful and enriching dialogue with Mead begin. Copyright 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  3. Resources for Teaching the Sociology of Sex and Gender.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    King, Kim M.; And Others

    1985-01-01

    A computer game called "Sex Roles" for use in college level sociology classes is described. A learning activity for teaching about sex roles is presented and three criminology textbooks that treat women are described. (RM)

  4. How to Study History: The View from Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldstone, Jack A.

    1986-01-01

    Reviews two recent books: Charles Tilly's 1985 work, "Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons," and the 1984 volume edited by Theda Skocpol, "Vision and Method in Historical Sociology." Concludes that historians who still harbor negative images of historical sociologists would benefit by gaining a more accurate…

  5. Reading Michael Apple--The Sociological Imagination at Work

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ball, Stephen J.

    2007-01-01

    This article discusses Michael Apple's contribution to the sociology of education and education policy analysis and the politics of education. It focuses on ways of "reading" Apple as an intellectual and an activist and looks at the trajectory of his work over a long and illustrious career.

  6. Rescuing from oblivion: social characteristics and career destinations of early British 'sociology' graduates, 1907-39.

    PubMed

    Husbands, Christopher T

    2015-12-01

    Those students who were among the first sociology graduates in the UK barely feature in standard histories of the discipline, which all have an intellectual and institutional focus. This article remedies this neglect by researching the social backgrounds and later careers of sociology graduates from the London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE] and Bedford College for Women from the first such graduate in 1907 until those graduating in the 1930s. Data for this exercise were compiled from a variety of sources. The more important are: UK censuses, especially that of 1911; various civil registration records; archived student files; and, for the graduates who entered university teaching, issues of the Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire [later the Commonwealth Universities' Yearbook]. The dataset includes all identified graduates in the BSc(Econ), Special Subject Sociology, degree from 1907 to 1935 and all in the BA (Honours) in Sociology degree from 1925 to 1939. LSE sociology graduates tended to be older and to have more cosmopolitan backgrounds, with fathers more likely than for Bedford College graduates to come from commercial rather than professional backgrounds. Both institutions' graduates' careers tended to the Civil Service and local government. LSE graduates gravitated to education, especially to higher education if male, whilst those of Bedford College went into welfare work, countering a stereotype from some previous literature that especially women graduates were heavily constrained to follow careers in schoolteaching. The article also gives comparisons with the social-class profile and career destinations of several cohorts of postwar sociology graduates, noting a number of similarities. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.

  7. Physiological Sociology. Endocrine Correlates of Status Behaviors,

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1975-01-01

    affiliative bonding. One psychiatric illness which manifests itself in social structural relationships in a profound was is sociopathic behavior. By the...very nature of the sociopathic individual, persons with the disorder display altered social behavior (Robins, 1966). The question as to whether such...Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Goldman, H., Lindner, L., Dinitz, S., and Allen, H. The simple sociopath : Physiologic and sociologic

  8. Emile Durkheim's Contribution to the Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barnes, Grace M.

    1977-01-01

    Few sociologists and fewer educators have recognized Emile Durkheim's significant contribution to the sociology of education. His major theories of education are discussed under three main groupings--education developing as a social process, education's function in the socialization of the young, and education in the development of morality.…

  9. Enhancing Student Compositional Diversity in the Sociology Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lyon, Katherine A.; Guppy, Neil

    2016-01-01

    It is well documented that interaction between diverse students encourages positive learning outcomes. Given this, we examine how to enhance the quantity and quality of student diversity in university classrooms. Drawing on sociological theory linking life experiences with ways of knowing, we investigate how to increase classroom diversity by…

  10. Epistemology, Sociology, and Learning and Teaching in Physics

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sin, Cristina

    2014-01-01

    This paper explores the relationship between epistemology, sociology, and learning and teaching in physics based on an examination of literature from research in science studies, history and philosophy of science, and physics pedagogic research. It reveals a mismatch between the positivist epistemological foundation which seems to underpin the…

  11. "The man who committed a hundred burglaries": Mark Benney's strange and eventful sociological career.

    PubMed

    Lee, Raymond M

    2015-01-01

    This article examines the life and career of the sociologist Mark Benney. It describes the processes, not all of them edifying, by which he made the transition from life as a career criminal, via literature, to become a sociologist first at the London School of Economics and then at the University of Chicago. Benney's career is then used to illuminate particular episodes in the history of sociology, including the attempt to introduce into British sociology in the period after the Second World War quantitative survey techniques of the kind that were then becoming more widely used in the United States, and his work with David Riesman on the Interview Project, Riesman's attempt to develop a empirically based sociology of the interview. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  12. The Changing Academic Ecology of Sociology: Learning to Live with More Frogs in the Pond

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Clark, Robert A.

    2008-01-01

    Sociology exists in a dynamic academic environment that influences how students view and evaluate the discipline. This essay explores the changing academic context of sociology through the author's experience as a professor and department chair over a span of four decades. Increased co-curricular programming, changing student goals, and more…

  13. The Study on the Core Concepts of Contemporary Sociology of Education and Its Theoretical Construction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Qian, Min-hui

    2006-01-01

    Within the sphere of contemporary social sciences, the terms "modernity," "post-modernity" and "globalization" have penetrated, as the core concepts, into various fields of social sciences in a logical way. In constituting the concept of "modernity," sociology of education develops the educational theory, as sociological theory does, into a "grand…

  14. Statistical Features of Complex Systems ---Toward Establishing Sociological Physics---

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kobayashi, Naoki; Kuninaka, Hiroto; Wakita, Jun-ichi; Matsushita, Mitsugu

    2011-07-01

    Complex systems have recently attracted much attention, both in natural sciences and in sociological sciences. Members constituting a complex system evolve through nonlinear interactions among each other. This means that in a complex system the multiplicative experience or, so to speak, the history of each member produces its present characteristics. If attention is paid to any statistical property in any complex system, the lognormal distribution is the most natural and appropriate among the standard or ``normal'' statistics to overview the whole system. In fact, the lognormality emerges rather conspicuously when we examine, as familiar and typical examples of statistical aspects in complex systems, the nursing-care period for the aged, populations of prefectures and municipalities, and our body height and weight. Many other examples are found in nature and society. On the basis of these observations, we discuss the possibility of sociological physics.

  15. Sports Tribes and Academic Identity: Teaching the Sociology of Sport in a Changing Disciplinary Landscape

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dart, Jon

    2017-01-01

    Using data from 15 semi-structured interviews with UK-based early/mid-career academics, this paper offers an empirically informed assessment of how lecturers teaching/researching the sociology of sport are managing their careers in a changing higher education landscape. Those interviewed were involved in the delivery of sociological content to a…

  16. The Development of the E-Learning Course "Sociology"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Aleksic-Maslac, Karmela; Magzan, Masa; Maslac, Ilena

    2008-01-01

    The fast development of information and communication technologies (ICT) improves greatly education quality. E-learning is an important education component at Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM) and, in addition, it is obligatory for all our teachers and students. In this paper, the development process of course "Sociology"…

  17. Establishing Sociological Imagination before Blame in Historical Events

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bousalis, Rina

    2017-01-01

    Although finding fault with someone or something is part of human nature, blame is merely a perception. Before assigning blame in the causation of historical events, students should be given the opportunity to look past textbook generalizations and establish sociological imagination, or the ability to recognize history's connection to society and…

  18. Producing Better Writers in Sociology: A Programmatic Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Migliaccio, Todd; Carrigan, Jacqueline

    2017-01-01

    High-quality undergraduate student writing is a common and important objective for sociology programs while at the same time a continuous challenge. Programs often struggle to address writing adequately because of the difficulty of fully evaluating student writing and responding to any identified limitations, largely because of the impact on…

  19. Teaching Sociology of Sport: An Active Learning Approach.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Blinde, Elaine M.

    1995-01-01

    Asserts that sport is a pervasive aspect of society. Presents and describes four learning activities designed to help students understand the significance of sport as a social institution. Maintains that, while the activities focus on the institution of sport, they can be used in a variety of sociology courses. (CFR)

  20. A Conversation on Classroom Etiquette in Introductory Sociology Courses.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Emerick, Robert E.

    1994-01-01

    Discusses the inclusion of rules regarding classroom etiquette in an introductory college sociology course. Reports on rules regarding tardiness, leaving early, absenteeism, paying attention, and/or sleeping in class. Concludes that students and colleagues are generally positive about the approach. (CFR)

  1. Psyche, soma, and science studies: new directions in the sociology of mental health and illness.

    PubMed

    Pickersgill, Martyn D

    2010-08-01

    With the expanding scope of scientific and technological discourse within psychiatry, social scientists need new theoretical tools to grapple with the complex links between psychiatry, science and society. Benefit may be afforded through engagement with the discipline of science and technology studies (STS), which is concerned explicitly with the relationships between science and society. To highlight existing engagements between STS and the sociology of (mental) health, and to encourage researchers to consider ways in which insights from these traditions may be developed further through interdisciplinary debate and analysis. Some of the key works in STS and the sociology of mental illness that use the empirical or theoretical writings of the other were reviewed and appraised. Whilst it is clear that some research synthesizing insights from STS and the sociology of mental health exists, this is currently limited. Sociologists and others concerned with longstanding and emergent issues in mental health might usefully familiarize themselves with some work in STS. A new sociology of psychiatric knowledge production and application represents an important way forward.

  2. The limits of historical sociology: Temporal borders and the reproduction of the 'modern' political present.

    PubMed

    Lundborg, Tom

    2016-03-01

    This article develops a poststructuralist critique of the historical sociology of International Relations project. While the historical sociology of International Relations project claims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the state and the international, this article argues that it lacks critical reflection on the notion of a common ground on which 'history' and 'sociology' can successfully be combined. In order to problematize this 'ground', the article turns to Jacques Derrida's critique of attempts to solve the history-structure dichotomy by finding a perfect combination of historicist and structuralist modes of explanation. Exploring the implications of Derrida's critique, the article considers how the combination of 'history' and 'sociology' can be linked to a sovereign politics of time, which reaffirms rather than challenges the limits of the 'modern' political present and its relationship to the past, as well as the future. In response, it is suggested that a more radical critique is needed, one that seeks to disrupt the 'modern' political present and the contingent ground on which it rests.

  3. [Sociology as a Major Factor for the Psychiatrie-Enquete in the Federal Republic of Germany - Results from Expert Interviews and Document Analyses].

    PubMed

    Söhner, Felicitas; Fangerau, Heiner; Becker, Thomas

    2018-05-01

    This paper examines the influence of sociology as a discipline on the Psychiatrie-Enquete by analysing interviews with expert (psychiatrist, psychologist, sociologist etc.) witnesses of the Enquete process and by analysing pertinent documents. 24 interviews were conducted and analysed using qualitative secondary analysis. Sociological texts and research results influenced the professional development of psychiatrists at the time. Cross-talk between psychiatry and sociology developed through seminal sociological analyses of psychiatric institutions and the interest taken in medical institutions in a number of sociological texts. Inter-disciplinary joint studies (of sociologists and psychiatrists) affected the research interest and professional behaviour of psychiatrists involved in the process on the way to the Psychiatrie-Enquete. Tenacity of psychiatrists' systems of opinion was dissolved by impulses from the sociological thought community. The forms of contact between the psychiatric and the sociological thought collective which we could reconstruct are an example of the evolution of knowledge and practice through transdisciplinary communication. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

  4. Anomie and the "Brain Drain": A Sociological Explanation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Karadima, Oscar

    The concept of anomie is proposed as one sociological variable that may explain the "brain drain" phenomenon (i.e., the movement of highly qualified personnel from their country of origin to another, most often a more developed, technologically advanced country). It is hypothesized that the higher the level of anomie found among…

  5. Clarification? Yes! Standarization? No. Or: What Kind of Cooperation for the Sociology of Culture?

    PubMed

    Krause, Monika

    2016-01-01

    Christian Smith's paper "The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology" is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture.

  6. The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: a Sociological Analysis.

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Romesberg, Daniel Ray

    1992-01-01

    This study examines the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, as it has been conducted by scientists over the past century. The following questions are explored: (1) What are the historical patterns of American scientific interest in extraterrestrial intelligence? From a sociology of science perspective, how can these patterns of interest be explained? (2) Who are the most prominent scientists involved in SETI? What are their academic backgrounds? (3) How has the rather exotic idea of extraterrestrial intelligence managed to penetrate the realm of respectable science?. In order to measure the historical fluctuations of scientific interest in extraterrestrial intelligence, a frequency distribution of relevant articles published in American scientific journals over the past century has been constructed. The core scholars of the "extraterrestrial" field have been determined via citation analysis, in a selected portion of the scientific literature. An analysis of recent scientific literature on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has revealed a number of tactics of legitimation and de-legitimation used by SETI proponents, as well as opponents. This study has generated the following findings: (1) Historically, there are three factors which tend to stimulate general scientific interest in extraterrestrial intelligence: First, the strong demonstration of the plausibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, or life, especially in a tangible, and therefore studiable location. Scientific laboratories are primary agents of plausibility here. Second, the organized political activity of SETI scientists. Third, the availability of government funding for searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, or life. (2) Statistically, the leading scholars of modern SETI are Sagan, Drake and Morrison. The field itself tends to be dominated by astronomers and physicists. (3) Because SETI has no concrete data, and is easily stigmatized as an illegitimate scientific activity

  7. The Coordinated Curriculum: How Institutional Theory Can Be Used to Catalyze Revision of the Sociology Major

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sweet, Stephen; McElrath, Kevin; Kain, Edward L.

    2014-01-01

    Content analysis of 77 college and university catalogs and department websites assesses conformity with select recommendations for the sociology major. The majority of institutions have programs that fulfill some recommendations examined, but the minority fulfills most of the recommendations. Some sociology programs are much more coordinated than…

  8. Social Realism and the Problem of the Problem of Knowledge in the Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moore, Rob

    2013-01-01

    This paper examines from a Social Realist perspective a set of issues in the sociology of education regarding the problem of knowledge. It focuses upon the issue of relativism associated with the constructionist approach that since the time of the New Sociology of Education in the 1970s has constituted in different forms the dominant perspective…

  9. Table ronde "linguistique et sociologie du langage" (A Round Table Discussion "Linguistics and Sociology of Language")

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bourdieu, Pierre; And Others

    1977-01-01

    A panel discussion on sociology and language which leads one to think that a relationship between linguistics and sociolinguistics could be effected if linguists would consent to move toward a situation in which linguistics and sociolinguistics would establish a definite bond with sociology. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

  10. Beyond capital? The challenge for sociology in Britain.

    PubMed

    Holmwood, John

    2014-12-01

    This article offers a 'local', British, reading of Piketty's landmark book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, suggesting that the challenge it offers to sociological approaches to inequality is more fundamental than hitherto recognized. The variations in 'national trajectories' exposed by Piketty reveal Britain to be anomalous in terms of standard approaches to the path dependencies embedded in different welfare regimes. Using the recent work of Monica Prasad on 'settler capitalism' in the USA and the tax and debt-finance regime associated with it, the article suggests that colonialism and empire and its postwar unravelling has had deep consequences for British social stratification, albeit largely neglected by British sociologists. Finally, it points to the fact that the form of tax and debt-finance regime that has become reinforced in Britain is at the heart of recent radical reforms to higher education. These are the currently unexplicated conditions of our future practice as sociologists and, therefore, an obstacle to building a critical sociology on the foundations laid out by Piketty. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.

  11. Sociological Theory and Youth Aspiration Research: A Critical Overview.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Picou, J. Steven; Wells, Richard H.

    Reviewing sociological theories relative to youth aspiration research, the following thesis was presented: "pre-path analysis aspiration research was characterized by a person-centered, middle-range functionalist approach which eventually shifted to a person-centered, functionalist-system approach with the introduction of the path model…

  12. Man (Embracing Woman): The Generic in Sociological Writing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schulz, Muriel

    Philosophical works and sociological writings from the seventeenth through the twentieth century are analyzed in this paper to learn the degree to which their use of generics (linguistic terms such as "mankind" that are used to refer to all humans) can be said to have actual reference to all adults without consideration of sex. The paper notes…

  13. Sociology of Sport: Expanding Horizons in the Subdiscipline

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harris, Janet C.

    2006-01-01

    Sociology of sport began to take shape as a subdiscipline in the mid-1960s, and the quotes presented in the first part of this article provide a useful orientation to this formative period and to some of the most important developments in methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and topics of study that have occurred since then. This article offers…

  14. Examining the Impact of a Domestic Violence Simulation on the Development of Empathy in Sociology Classes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Latshaw, Beth A.

    2015-01-01

    Increasing empathy toward others is an unspoken goal of many sociology courses, but rarely do instructors measure changes in empathy throughout a semester. To address this gap in the literature, I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data gathered before and after students from five sociology classes participated in a simulation on…

  15. Sociological Ambivalence and Funeral Consumption

    PubMed Central

    Canning, Louise

    2015-01-01

    This article builds on Hillcoat-Nallétamby and Phillips’ (2011) conceptualization of sociological ambivalence within the relational framework to examine a particular consumption practice, the funeral. We develop understanding of social, cultural and relational issues that arise from the experience associated with funeral-arranging. This is not a voluntary behaviour but one engaged with through force of circumstance and which involves commercial and relational decisions. Drawing on data from 10 interviews from a larger UK study, we focus on ambivalence surrounding choice and its impact on relations, showing how sentiments including love, obligation, regret and revenge evolve and transform past and future relationships. PMID:26236046

  16. Beyond the Core: The Hot Topic(al) Alternative to the Survey-Based Introduction to Sociology Course

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Michael; Smith, R. Tyson

    2010-01-01

    In the following paper we argue that the conventional "Introduction to Sociology" survey course should be restructured because such courses try to survey an unsurveyable body of knowledge and they do not teach the application of sociological research. The conventional intro course should be replaced with an intro course that surveys the types of…

  17. Connecting a sociology of childhood perspective with the study of child health, illness and wellbeing: introduction.

    PubMed

    Brady, Geraldine; Lowe, Pam; Olin Lauritzen, Sonja

    2015-02-01

    In the last decades we have seen a growing interest in research into children's own experiences and understandings of health and illness. This development, we would argue, is much stimulated by the sociology of childhood which has drawn our attention to how children as a social group are placed and perceived within the structure of society, and within inter-generational relations, as well as how children are social agents and co-constructors of their social world. Drawing on this tradition, we here address some cross-cutting themes that we think are important to further the study of child health: situating children within health policy, drawing attention to practices around children's health and well-being and a focus on children as health actors. The paper contributes to a critical analysis of child health policy and notions of child health and normality, pointing to theoretical and empirical research potential for the sociology of children's health and illness. © 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  18. Survey of Quantification and Distance Functions Used for Internet-based Weak-link Sociological Phenomena

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-03-01

    well as the Yahoo search engine and a classic SearchKing HIST algorithm. The co-PI immersed herself in the sociology literature for the relevant...Google matrix, PageRank as well as the Yahoo search engine and a classic SearchKing HIST algorithm. The co-PI immersed herself in the sociology...The PI studied all mathematical literature he can find related to the Google search engine, Google matrix, PageRank as well as the Yahoo search

  19. Is a Sociology of Special and Inclusive Education Possible?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tomlinson, Sally

    2015-01-01

    This article discusses the expansion of education systems that now, following international declarations, are expected to offer an "Education for All" to children, young people and adults. Since in these declarations special education and inclusive education are conjoined, sociological questions can be asked as to what sort of social…

  20. Revising Laboratory Work: Sociological Perspectives on the Science Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jobér, Anna

    2017-01-01

    This study uses sociological perspectives to analyse one of the core practices in science education: school children's and students' laboratory work. Applying an ethnographic approach to the laboratory work done by pupils at a Swedish compulsory school, data were generated through observations, field notes, interviews, and a questionnaire. The…

  1. Changing Students' Perceptions of Inequality?: Combining Traditional Methods and a Budget Exercise to Facilitate a Sociological Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garoutte, Lisa; Bobbitt-Zeher, Donna

    2011-01-01

    Budget exercises are frequently used in introductory and social problems courses to facilitate student understanding of income inequality. But do these exercises actually lead to greater sociological understanding? To explore this issue, the authors studied undergraduate students enrolled in introductory sociology courses during the 2008-2009…

  2. The Center Does Hold: The Sociological Literacy Framework

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ferguson, Susan J.

    2016-01-01

    This article provides a critique and an addition to observations raised by Ballantine et al. in this issue. After reviewing the strengths of Ballantine et al.'s article about the need for a core in sociology, I argue that this debate has gone on long enough and needs to be reframed around areas of agreement. Three major curricular projects (that…

  3. The Crisis of the Sociology of Education and Its Reflections in Turkey: On the Critique of Functionalist and Eclecticist Pragmatic Tradition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Esgin, Ali

    2013-01-01

    Basis of the study: The claims that the sociology of education has been in a crisis seem to be dependent upon the insufficiencies in doing science and acquiring results with the ontological and epistemological foundations of sociology as a discipline of science. The sociology of education has taken shape from the outset in the framework of…

  4. The Sociology Research Experience Capstone Course at Three Institutions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McKinney, Kathleen; Busher, Melissa

    2011-01-01

    This study describes the objectives, structures, and outcomes of a one-semester, required sociology research capstone course as taught at three institutions. Pre- and postquestionnaires from students, syllabi from instructors, and a random sample of final research papers were analyzed. Results indicate that the main foci of the course are to…

  5. Teaching Sociological Theory through Active Learning: The Irrigation Exercise

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holtzman, Mellisa

    2005-01-01

    For students, theory is often one of the most daunting aspects of sociology--it seems abstract, removed from the concrete events of their everyday lives, and therefore intimidating. In an attempt to break down student resistance to theory, instructors are increasingly turning to active learning approaches. Active learning exercises, then, appear…

  6. Coverage and Representations of Sexuality in Introductory Sociology Textbooks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Suarez, Alicia E.; Balaji, Alexandra

    2007-01-01

    Mirroring increased cultural and disciplinary attention to sexuality, many introductory sociology textbooks have begun to include coverage of the topic. Our study first assesses the extent of textual coverage of sexuality in a sample of 38 introductory textbooks published after 2000. Secondly, we focus on 14 textbooks with a sexuality chapter…

  7. Class and Culture: Sources of Confusion in Educational Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wrigley, Terry

    2013-01-01

    This paper reiterates the centrality of economics (relations of production) in Marxist models of class, while avoiding the crude determinism which results from a neglect of cultural aspects of class formation. It explores the confusion in education and educational sociology arising from non-Marxist conceptions of class which place an exaggerated…

  8. Sociological and economic theories of suicide: a comparison of the U.S.A. and Taiwan.

    PubMed

    Yang, B; Lester, D; Yang, C H

    1992-02-01

    Time-series analyses were carried out to explore the importance of sociological and economic variables in accounting for the suicide rate in the U.S.A. and in Taiwan for 1952-1984. Sociological variables (divorce and female labor force participation) played similar roles in the multiple regressions for both nations while economic variables (GNP per capita/growth and unemployment) played a role only in the U.S.A.

  9. Some Sociological Alternatives to Human Capital Theory and Their Implications for Research on Post-Compulsory Education and Training.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fevre, Ralph; Rees, Gareth; Gorard, Stephen

    1999-01-01

    Based on research in South Wales, a sociological theory of participation in education and training is developed, identifying types of orientations: functional avoidance, instrumental credentialism, and vocational transformation. The inclusion of sociological insights in human-capital development policy is recommended. (SK)

  10. Connecting Life Span Development with the Sociology of the Life Course: A New Direction.

    PubMed

    Gilleard, Chris; Higgs, Paul

    2016-04-01

    The life course has become a topic of growing interest within the social sciences. Attempts to link this sub-discipline with life span developmental psychology have been called for but with little sign of success. In this paper, we seek to address three interlinked issues concerning the potential for a more productive interchange between life course sociology and life span psychology. The first is to try to account for the failure of these two sub-disciplines to achieve any deepening engagement with each other, despite the long-expressed desirability of that goal; the second is to draw attention to the scope for enriching the sociology of the life course through Erik Erikson's model of life span development; and the last is the potential for linking Eriksonian theory with current debates within mainstream sociology about the processes involved in 'individualisation' and 'self-reflexivity' as an alternative entry point to bring together these two fields of work.

  11. Connecting Life Span Development with the Sociology of the Life Course: A New Direction

    PubMed Central

    Gilleard, Chris; Higgs, Paul

    2015-01-01

    The life course has become a topic of growing interest within the social sciences. Attempts to link this sub-discipline with life span developmental psychology have been called for but with little sign of success. In this paper, we seek to address three interlinked issues concerning the potential for a more productive interchange between life course sociology and life span psychology. The first is to try to account for the failure of these two sub-disciplines to achieve any deepening engagement with each other, despite the long-expressed desirability of that goal; the second is to draw attention to the scope for enriching the sociology of the life course through Erik Erikson’s model of life span development; and the last is the potential for linking Eriksonian theory with current debates within mainstream sociology about the processes involved in ‘individualisation’ and ‘self-reflexivity’ as an alternative entry point to bring together these two fields of work. PMID:27041774

  12. Matters of Scale: Sociology in and for a Complex World.

    PubMed

    Pyyhtinen, Olli

    2017-08-01

    The article proposes that if sociology is to make sense of a world that is ever more complex and complicated, it is important to reconsider the scale(s) of our relations and actions. Instead of assuming a nested vertical hierarchy of the micro to macro binary, scale should be treated not only as multiple, but also as something produced and sustained in practice. Coming to grips with the complex world, we are living in also necessitates attending to the conduits and connections between various sites, fields, and terrains to which our lives are entangled. The article concludes with a note on the marginalization of sociology from public discussions, and it argues that it is possibly by attending to ambiguity and to the unfinished making of our contemporary world that sociology might have the most to give to discussions about the economy, about the future of humanity, and how to organize society. Cet article suggère que si la sociologie doit nous éclairer sur le sens d'un monde de plus en plus complexe, il est important de revoir l'échelle de nos relations et actions. Au lieu d'assumer une hiérarchie verticale de la dualité micro-macro, cette étendue doit être traitée non seulement comme multiple, mais aussi comme une chose produite et soutenue par la pratique. Pour faire face à la complexité du monde dans lequel nous vivons, il faut aussi de s'occuper des conduits et connections entre des sites divers, des champs, et des terrains dans lesquels nos vies se déroulent. Cet article conclut avec une note sur la marginalisation de la sociologie dans les discussions publiques ; et il défend l'idée que c'est possiblement en appréhendant l'ambiguïté et la construction incomplète de notre monde contemporain que la sociologie peut être la plus fructueuse en termes de discussions portant sur l'économie, le futur de l'humanité, et l'organisation de la société. © 2017 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

  13. Politicizing Sociology through a Bill of Rights Learning Module

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sweet, Stephen

    2009-01-01

    Writers in this journal have presented a number of strategies that sociology teachers can use to facilitate the expression--and serious analysis--of unpopular opinions. This article contributes to this dialog by illustrating the application of a Bill of Rights learning module. In this module, students are expected to create a document that…

  14. The Common Sociology between Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Development.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crow, Nedra; Peterson, Ken

    The purpose of this study was to explore the sociological forces which have been identified in teacher development and to inquire into their role in teacher evaluation. To that end, a series of teacher development intervention programs and teacher interviews were conducted. This report describes the programs and interviews and highlights the most…

  15. Beyond the Core: The Hot Topic(al) Alternative to the Survey-Based Introduction to Sociology Course

    PubMed Central

    Smith, R. Tyson

    2011-01-01

    In the following paper we argue that the conventional “Introduction to Sociology” survey course should be restructured because such courses try to survey an unsurveyable body of knowledge and they do not teach the application of sociological research. The conventional intro course should be replaced with an intro course that surveys the types of social dynamics that sociologists typically research and the methods they use to do so. We propose a semester-long intro course with four case study learning-units that are chosen for their coverage of the underlying sociological dynamics, methods, and core concepts. We contend that case study learning-units which concentrate on topical issues and core sociological concepts are better suited for an introduction course. PMID:21709825

  16. Premenstrual syndrome and dysmenorrhea: urban-rural and multiethnic differences in perception, impacts, and treatment seeking.

    PubMed

    Wong, Li Ping

    2011-10-01

    Attitudes toward menarche and menstruation are largely influenced by sociological, cultural, and family environmental factors. Recognizing the influential effects that these factors might have on shaping adolescents' attitudes is crucial in designing a more effective means of transmitting health information. This study aimed to gather an in-depth understanding of perceptions, impacts, and treatment seeking on menstruation-related issues from an ethnically mixed group of rural and urban girls. In total, 27 focus group discussions (172 participants) were conducted between November 2008 and April 2009. Participants were adolescent girls aged 13-19 years, recruited from 7 public secondary schools in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and 4 public secondary schools from the rural districts of Kelantan, in Malaysia. Many participants revealed that they were not given or had not received detailed information about the mechanism or physiology of menstruation prior to its onset. Thus, many described the onset of menarche as shocking, an event for which they were unprepared, and which has had a tremendous impact on their emotions. More positive acceptance of menarche was reported in the urban than with the rural groups. Despite the high prevalence of premenstrual syndrome and dysmenorrhea, participants across urban-rural and ethnic groups perceived the problems as completely normal, hence they relied on self-care methods and did not want to seek professional treatment. More rural girls compared to urban girls were embarrassed to talk to their mothers or consult their physicians regarding menstruation-related problems. Menstruation-related education would have a positive impact in improving adolescent girls' knowledge and in nurturing a positive attitude toward menstruation-related matters at home, at school, and in the community. Copyright © 2011 North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Teaching the Sociological Imagination: Learning from the Biggest Loser

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Plymire, Darcy C.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to show how to use popular culture as a method of teaching scientific concepts. Specifically, the reality-television program The Biggest Loser is used as an example for teaching the concept of the sociological imagination by illustrating the disconnect between personal solutions for weight loss and the demands of…

  18. Gangs and a global sociological imagination

    PubMed Central

    Fraser, Alistair; Hagedorn, John M

    2016-01-01

    Across the globe, the phenomenon of youth gangs has become an important and sensitive public issue. In this context, an increasing level of research attention has focused on the development of universalized definitions of gangs in a global context. In this article, we argue that this search for similarity has resulted in a failure to recognize and understand difference. Drawing on an alternative methodology we call a ‘global exchange’, this article suggests three concepts—homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity—that seek to re-engage the sociological imagination in the study of gangs and globalization. PMID:29503595

  19. Gangs and a global sociological imagination.

    PubMed

    Fraser, Alistair; Hagedorn, John M

    2018-02-01

    Across the globe, the phenomenon of youth gangs has become an important and sensitive public issue. In this context, an increasing level of research attention has focused on the development of universalized definitions of gangs in a global context. In this article, we argue that this search for similarity has resulted in a failure to recognize and understand difference. Drawing on an alternative methodology we call a 'global exchange', this article suggests three concepts-homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity-that seek to re-engage the sociological imagination in the study of gangs and globalization.

  20. Greens, suits, and bureaucrats: A sociological study of dynamic organizational relationships in energy efficient appliance policy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shwom-Evelich, Rachael Leah

    In this dissertation I develop an approach to understanding dynamic organizational relations and the processes of environmental degradation and reform. To do this, I draw on environmental and organizational sociology to inform an empirical study of interorganizational relationships in defining and promoting energy efficient appliances in the United States (US). The dissertation follows a three paper approach which involves (a) an overall introduction to the substantive issue of appliance energy efficiency in the US; (b) producing three separate and stand alone articles of publishable quality to be submitted to professional journals; and (c) an overall conclusion. The three articles are as follows: (1) a synthetic literature review identifying five lessons that organizational sociology and environmental sociology can learn from each other to advance our sociological understanding of organizations, energy issues, and climate change (2) a qualitative case study of the changing relationships between business, government and environmental and energy advocacy organizations around mandatory appliance efficiency standards supporting the development of a context-dependent theory of ecological modernization and treadmill of production theories in environmental sociology and (3) a network analysis of public government, business and energy efficiency advocate's interorganizational relationships and its influence on subsequent organizational behaviors in the appliance energy efficiency field. The second and third articles are based on extensive archival research on organizational negotiations of public record over defining energy efficient appliances in both regulatory and voluntary settings. Finally I will provide an overall conclusion that brings together the most significant findings of each individual article in anticipation of a synthetic approach to the study of organizations in environmental reform.

  1. Integrating medical and environmental sociology with environmental health: crossing boundaries and building connections through advocacy.

    PubMed

    Brown, Phil

    2013-06-01

    This article reviews the personal and professional processes of developing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex issues of environmental health in their community, political-economic, social science, and scientific contexts. This interdisciplinary approach includes a synthesis of research, policy work, and advocacy. To examine multiple forms of interdisciplinarity, I examine pathways of integrating medical and environmental sociology via three challenges to the boundaries of traditional research: (1) crossing the boundaries of medical and environmental sociology, (2) linking social science and environmental health science, and (3) crossing the boundary of research and advocacy. These boundary crossings are discussed in light of conceptual and theoretical developments of popular epidemiology, contested illnesses, and health social movements. This interdisciplinary work offers a more comprehensive sociological lens for understanding complex problems and a practical ability to join with scientists, activists, and officials to meet public health needs for amelioration and prevention of environmental health threats.

  2. Locating and applying sociological theories of risk-taking to develop public health interventions for adolescents

    PubMed Central

    Pound, Pandora; Campbell, Rona

    2015-01-01

    Sociological theories seldom inform public health interventions at the community level. The reasons for this are unclear but may include difficulties in finding, understanding or operationalising theories. We conducted a study to explore the feasibility of locating sociological theories within a specific field of public health, adolescent risk-taking, and to consider their potential for practical application. We identified a range of sociological theories. These explained risk-taking: (i) as being due to lack of social integration; (ii) as a consequence of isolation from mainstream society; (iii) as a rite of passage; (iv) as a response to social constraints; (v) as resistance; (vi) as an aspect of adolescent development; (vii) by the theory of the ‘habitus’; (viii) by situated rationality and social action theories; and (ix) as social practice. We consider these theories in terms of their potential to inform public health interventions for young people. PMID:25999784

  3. 2017 Hans O. Mauksch Address: Using the Science of Learning to Improve Student Learning in Sociology Classes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Messineo, Melinda

    2018-01-01

    The 2017 Mauksch Address invites readers to consider how the field of sociology might benefit from greater inclusion of the science of learning into its pedagogy. Results from a survey of 92 teaching and learning experts in sociology reveal the degree to which the discipline's understanding of teaching and learning is informed by the science of…

  4. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning--Done by Sociologists: Let's Make that the Sociology of Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hanson, Chad

    2005-01-01

    In May of 2000, the American Sociological Association hosted a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference at James Madison University. The goal was to create a forum where faculty from across the country could reflect on the role of sociology in the burgeoning new scholarship of teaching and learning. In this article, the author explores the…

  5. USSR Report, Political and Sociological Affairs, No. 1443

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-08-10

    300147 JPRS 84083 10 August 1983 USSR Report POLITICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL AFFAIRS No. 1443 Fsnc QUALITY rr^ü^-j) g 19980609 108 FBIS...agency of the Soviet Union. Permission for further reproduction must be obtained from copyright owner. JPRS 84 083 10 Axt gust 1983 USSR REPORT...gorkoms must 10 improve the selection of instructors of the social disciplines and the work of raising their qualifications and strengthen control

  6. Journalistic Observation as a Qualitative Research Method for Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burd, Gene

    A comparison is made between the tools of observation and research used by journalists to study society and the media, and the qualitative and clinical research tools used in the social and psychological sciences. The first part of the paper, a journalistic approach to sociology, traces the notion of the sociologist as a super-reporter using…

  7. Does the Center Hold? Reflections on a Sociological Core

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ballantine, Jeanne; Greenwood, Nancy; Howard, Jay R.; Kain, Edward L.; Pike, Diane; Schwartz, Michael; Smith, R. Tyson; Zipp, John F.

    2016-01-01

    Is there a distinct disciplinary core (or foundation of agreed on knowledge) in sociology? Should we define a core in our broad field to build consensus? If so, what should it look like? We address these questions by presenting three viewpoints that lean for and against identifying a core for department curricula, students, and the public face of…

  8. East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, No. 2219

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-10-24

    takes place in training booths and classrooms. On the way to warrant officer one must take sociology, Russian, basic construction, materials...polemics. I admit that I like this much more than the obligatory hearty kiss on both cheeks along with, of course, the assumption that polemicists have

  9. Explaining drug policy: Towards an historical sociology of policy change.

    PubMed

    Seddon, Toby

    2011-11-01

    The goal of seeking to understand the development over time of drug policies is a specific version of the more general intellectual project of finding ways of explaining social change. The latter has been a preoccupation of some of the greatest thinkers within the social sciences of the last 200 years, from Foucault all the way back to the three nineteenth-century pioneers, Marx, Durkheim and Weber. I describe this body of work as 'historical sociology'. In this paper, I outline how a particular approach to historical sociology can be fruitfully drawn upon to understand the development of drug policy, using by way of illustration the example of the analysis of a recent transformation in British drug policy: the rise of the criminal justice agenda. I conclude by arguing that by looking at developments in drug policy in this way, some new insights are opened up. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. A Collective Effort to Improve Sociology Students' Writing Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burgess-Proctor, Amanda; Cassano, Graham; Condron, Dennis J.; Lyons, Heidi A.; Sanders, George

    2014-01-01

    Nationwide, academic sociologists at all types of higher education institutions face the challenge of working to improve students' writing skills. In this article, we describe a collective effort by a group of faculty members in one undergraduate sociology program to implement several effective writing-improvement strategies. We advocate…

  11. The Future of Sociological Research: Measurement Errors and Their Implications.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Blalock, H. M.

    The report deals with the relationship between measurement and data analysis procedures in sociological research. The author finds that too many measured variables exist in both theory and measurement assumptions. Since these procedures are interrelated, improvements in either or both areas are necessary. Presented are three sections: (1) specific…

  12. A Feminist Critique of Rational-Choice Theories: Implications for Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    England, Paula

    1989-01-01

    Provides a feminist critique of rational-choice theory and the interdisciplinary feminist theories of sociology. Applies the separative model of self to four assumptions of the neoclassical economics version of rational-choice theory. Uses research on marital power to illustrate how removing distorting assumptions can help illuminate sociological…

  13. Simulation and Collaborative Learning in Political Science and Sociology Classrooms.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Peters, Sandra; Saxon, Deborah

    The program described here used cooperative, content-based computer writing projects to teach Japanese students at an intermediate level of English proficiency enrolled in first-year, English-language courses in political science/environmental issues and sociology/environmental issues in an international college program. The approach was taken to…

  14. Making Sociology Relevant: The Assignment and Application of Breaching Experiments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rafalovich, Adam

    2006-01-01

    Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of "unexpected" behavior, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The conscious violation of norms can be highly fruitful for sociology students, providing insights…

  15. Transcending a Patriarchal Past: Teaching the History of Women in Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deegan, Mary Jo

    1988-01-01

    Contends that the ideas of early female sociologists are rarely documented in textbooks, classrooms, or historical accounts of the profession. Provides a guide to reference works, autobiographies, and biographies about 10 early female founders of American sociology. (Author/BSR)

  16. Globalization, Edu-Business and Network Governance: The Policy Sociology of Stephen J. Ball and Rethinking Education Policy Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lingard, Bob; Sellar, Sam

    2013-01-01

    This paper traces developments across Stephen J. Ball's policy sociology in education "oeuvre" and considers their implications for doing research on education policy today. It begins with an account of his policy sociology trilogy from the 1990s, which outlined his conception of the policy cycle consisting of the contexts of influence,…

  17. "I Did Not Miss Any, Only When I Had a Valid Reason": Accounting for Absences from Sociology Classes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    O'Sullivan, Sara; McMahon, Léan; Moore, Gemma; Nititham, Diane Sabenacio; Slevin, Amanda; Kelly, Christina; Wixted, Lisa

    2015-01-01

    In this study we explore how absence from sociology classes is understood by undergraduate students at University College Dublin. The authors use Scott and Lyman's (1968) concept of accounts to explore absence sociologically. Drawing on data generated via focus groups, an open-ended questionnaire, and an online survey with students, we outline the…

  18. [Many faces of deinstitutionalization--sociological interpretation].

    PubMed

    Forster, R

    2000-09-01

    The article summarizes in an international perspective what kind of results psychiatric deinstitutionalization has brought so far: a profound change of size and functions of the psychiatric hospital; better services for people with less severe problems; and the failing of community services to compensate for some of the functions of the former asylums, resulting in trans-institutionalization and/or neglect for many chronic patients. Three different sociological versions to explain the background and typical outcomes of psychiatric deinstitutionalization have been brought forward so far: political economy, professional dominance and post-structuralism. They are confronted with an approach using the concept of medicalisation which offers a more comprehensive understanding of the process.

  19. Sociology and positivism in 19th-century France: the vicissitudes of the Société de sociologie (1872-4).

    PubMed

    Heilbron, Johan

    2009-10-01

    Little is known about the world's first sociological society, Emile Littré's Société de Sociologie (1872-4). This article, based on prosopographic research, offers an interpretation of the foundation, political-intellectual orientation and early demise of the society. As indicated by recruitment and texts by its founding members, the Société de Sociologie was in fact conceived more as a political club than a learned society. Guided in this by Littré's heterodox positivism and the redefinition of sociology he proposed around 1870, the Société de Sociologie was intended first and foremost to accompany intellectually the political changes that Littré considered imperative in the early years of the Third Republic (1870-1940). This expectation found little echo among the members of the society, and it seems possible that Littré himself and his closest associates were the ones to interrupt the society's meetings. Some of its members' general studies on the status of the social sciences and their main divisions were continued in the framework of the journal "La Philosophie positive" (1867-83), but the authors most committed to those studies were on the margins of the Littré network. Neither the dominant positivist republicanism, centered around Littré and Dubost, nor the general sociology of the more peripheral members of the network (Mesmer, Roberty, Vitry) represented an important intellectual contribution to the formation of academic sociology in France. Given that the Société de Sociologie did contribute to diffuse the project of a sociological science and developed forms of sociology coherent enough to be rejected by the pioneers of university sociology, the group constitutes a significant case of failure in the history of the discipline.

  20. Joining Rural Development Theory and Rural Education Practice.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hammer, Patricia Cahape

    Karl N. Stauber proposes three goals for rural development policy: helping the rural middle class survive, reducing concentrated rural poverty, and sustaining and improving the quality of the natural environment. In contrast to other visions, he advises policy that focuses on rural places rather than rural economic sectors such as agriculture,…

  1. Rural Australian women's legal help seeking for intimate partner violence: women intimate partner violence victim survivors' perceptions of criminal justice support services.

    PubMed

    Ragusa, Angela T

    2013-03-01

    Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread, ongoing, and complex global social problem, whose victims continue to be largely women. Women often prefer to rely on friends and family for IPV help, yet when informal support is unavailable they remain hesitant to contact formal services, particularly legal support for many reasons. This study applies a sociological lens by framing the IPV and legal help-seeking experiences of rural Australian women gained from 36 in-depth face-to-face interviews as socially contextualized interactions. Findings reveal police and court responses reflect broader social inequalities and rurality exacerbates concerns such as anonymity and lack of service. Cultural differences and power imbalances between survivors and formal support providers are manifested to inform future research seeking to improve survivors' willingness to engage and satisfaction with formal services. Finally, the important role police and the criminal justice system play in de-stigmatizing IPV and legitimating its unacceptability is argued a crucial, yet unrecognized, key to social change.

  2. Teaching Strategies in Introductory Sociology for College Students with Learning Disabilities.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adams, Murray C.; Crews, W. Bee

    1991-01-01

    Focuses on teaching techniques proven effective in reaching learning-disabled students enrolled in introductory sociology courses. Examines the definition and characteristics of such students. Finds these techniques increase teaching effectiveness and are useful for handicapped and nonhandicapped students. Suggests specific strategies and…

  3. Self-inflicted violence: a sociological concern and a public health problem

    PubMed

    Minayo

    1998-04-01

    This paper has two objectives. The first is to reflect on the meaning of suicide as a sociological issue, commenting on an article by E.D. Nunes (1988) on the famous work by Durkheim. The second is to discuss the same issue within the field of public health, analyzing the contributions by the father of sociology and approaches by the fields of epidemiology, psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, highlighting the work of Brazilian authors. The paper presents information on the Brazilian epidemiological context and concludes by demonstrating that only from an analytical point of view can violent causes as a whole can be studied separately. Thus, they constantly require epistemological and epidemiological surveillance to construct indicators capable of contributing to change. This is all the more true because data on current violence need to be viewed within the context of the social crisis and changes Brazil is undergoing.

  4. Schools and Society: A Sociological Approach to Education, Third Edition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ballantine, Jeanne H., Ed.; Spade, Joan Z., Ed.

    2007-01-01

    This third edition, now published by Pine Forge Press, features original readings and article excerpts by leaders in the area of Sociology of Education. With a wide array of theoretical perspectives, a broad range of respected sources, and inclusion of both classic and contemporary studies, this comprehensive, integrated text addresses key issues…

  5. Musicking in a West Bank Conservatory: Toward a Sociological Framework

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Frierson-Campbell, Carol

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to share the evolution of a sociological framework to investigate the experience of teaching and learning music in relation to the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in the occupied Palestinian territories. The primary foundation of the framework is Christopher Small's (1998) theory of musicking, supported by…

  6. Modern Problems: Sociology Units. An Experimental Program for Grade 12.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carlson, Marshall; Fennig, Lois

    GRADES OR AGES: Grade 12. SUBJECT MATTER: Sociology; modern problems. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide contains two units, one on the problems of minority groups and the other on social pathology. Sub-sections of unit 2 include crime and criminals, criminal investigation, gun control, U.S. criminal law, criminal procedure,…

  7. All Aboard--Destination Unknown: A Sociological Discussion of Online Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldberg, Andra K.; Riemer, Frances Julia

    2006-01-01

    This paper is an attempt to describe the emergence and growing popularity of online distance education over the past 30 years through changing sociological lenses. Examining the re-casting of the electronic classroom through the euphoria of techno-positivism, the power-embedded analysis of Critical Theory of Technology (CTT), and the critique of…

  8. Rural Industry Clustering Towards Transitional Rural-Urban Interface

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nugroho, P.

    2018-05-01

    Rural industrialization seems to be attractive for policymakers looking for counter-urbanization efforts – and nowadays peri-urbanization forces – in line with growing decentralized autonomy of local Indonesian authorities. To promote better rural development, an extended growth pole strategy has been introduced as well as an agropolitan approach and its derivatives. In fact, there is little evidence for their success; rural autonomy remains elusive instead. However, institutional capacity of rural authorities and organizations still fails to deliver rural development initiatives properly. This research was aimed at examining this issue by looking at rural industry clustering in the Greater Solo Region, Indonesia as a response against extended urbanization in peripheral regions. The study focused on batik industry clustering in the rural periphery of Solo City, which provides a transitional rural-urban interface necessary to drive rural independence. Having inherited the batik tradition underpinned by an agriculture-led peasant society, the rural batik industrialization has reinforced the socio-economic transition from a purely agrarian society to a mixed rural-urban society. This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method approach, where a quantitative spatial analysis was used to identify the expansion of urbanized areas in villages, and a qualitative case study analysis to figure out the socio-economic shift in rural livelihoods. The results showed that physical spatial changes in these villages do not conform to the socio-economic change into an urban industrial society in a substantial way. Rather, the local villagers preserve an informal economy to support the existence of a mixed rural-urban livelihood.

  9. The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and "the Social Science".

    PubMed

    Curtis, Bruce

    2016-05-01

    The modest literature on the history of Canadian Sociology takes the appearance of a named academic discipline as its object. Canadian Sociology is held to have had some precursors in the 1880s, but really to appear only in the 1920s. It is described as a foreign import and as an activity first of intellectual speculation and moral reform. Observational and analytic practice are absent before 1880. The activities of state agents and government departments in the social field are not discussed. This article offers a richer account through an examination of the larger field from which Sociology was extracted, "the social science," which was practiced actively in colonial Canada from the early nineteenth century. The social science shaped and was itself shaped by colonial conditions. The article outlines three interrelated moments in social science to carry its claims: inventory-making, the emergence of "population-thinking," and "reflexive government." Attending to the social science underlines the complex and convoluted relations of sociology with state power. Les rares oeuvrages académiques portant sur l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne prend pour objet l'apparition du terme dans le contexte universitaire. Dans cet optique, ils signalent certains précurseurs de la sociologie canadienne dès les années 1880, mais en fait ils affirment que cette discipline n'apparaît que dans les années 1920. Cette discipline est présentée comme une importation académique et, d'abord et avant tout, comme de la spéculation intellectuelle et comme un projet de réforme morale. D'après cette vision, les pratiques d'observation et d'analyse sociales ne semblent pas exister avant 1880, et les acteurs politiques et administratifs sont absents du terrain. Notre article propose un examen plus riche du vaste champ duquel la sociologie académique fut arrachée: activement pratiquée au Canada à l'époque coloniale dès le début du XIXe si

  10. Unification and mechanistic detail as drivers of model construction: models of networks in economics and sociology.

    PubMed

    Kuorikoski, Jaakko; Marchionni, Caterina

    2014-12-01

    We examine the diversity of strategies of modelling networks in (micro) economics and (analytical) sociology. Field-specific conceptions of what explaining (with) networks amounts to or systematic preference for certain kinds of explanatory factors are not sufficient to account for differences in modelling methodologies. We argue that network models in both sociology and economics are abstract models of network mechanisms and that differences in their modelling strategies derive to a large extent from field-specific conceptions of the way in which a good model should be a general one. Whereas the economics models aim at unification, the sociological models aim at a set of mechanism schemas that are extrapolatable to the extent that the underlying psychological mechanisms are general. These conceptions of generality induce specific biases in mechanistic explanation and are related to different views of when knowledge from different fields should be seen as relevant.

  11. Reframing sociologies of ethnicity and migration in encounters with Chinese London.

    PubMed

    Knowles, Caroline

    2017-09-01

    In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an 'immigrant problem' framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focused on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small-scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London, I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalization as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants' thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalization's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.

  12. In search of the kingdom: the social gospel, settlement sociology, and the science of reform in America's progressive era.

    PubMed

    Williams, Joyce E; Maclean, Vicky M

    2012-01-01

    This critical narrative history examines the development of sociology in the United States during what has come to be labeled as the Progressive Era, roughly the years from the 1890s to World War I. Despite the label, this era was defined as much by social problems associated with industrialization, urbanization, and immigration as by the growth of its cities and the wealth of its capitalists. We explore the roots of American sociology in the transition of protestant theology from Calvinism to its reformation in the social gospel, the simultaneous development of settlement houses, and the "creation" of sociology as the science of reform. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  13. Il contributo di G. Braga alla Sociologia del linguaggio (The Contributions of G. Braga to the Sociology of Language).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tessarolo, Marisella

    1989-01-01

    Discusses Braga's contribution to the study of the sociology of language. Braga developed a dynamic interdisciplinary model of verbal communication based on theories of sociology and linguistics and stressed the importance of language in the acculturation of an individual and in the determination of that individual's status in society. (CFM)

  14. A Qualitative Assessment of Efforts to Integrate Data Analysis throughout the Sociology Curriculum: Feedback from Students, Faculty, and Alumni

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilder, Esther Isabelle

    2010-01-01

    Quantitative and computer literacy are increasingly recognized as core components of a liberal education in sociology. This study draws on student, faculty, and alumni questionnaires to identify the kinds of quantitative literacy skills that are perceived to be most critical for students enrolled in sociology courses. Respondents at Lehman College…

  15. Critical issues in the history, philosophy, and sociology of astrobiology.

    PubMed

    Dick, Steven J

    2012-10-01

    Fifty years after serious scientific research began in the field of exobiology, and forty years after serious historical research began on the subject of extraterrestrial life, this paper identifies and examines some of the most important issues in the history, philosophy, and sociology of what is today known as astrobiology. As in the philosophy of science in general, and in the philosophies of particular sciences, critical issues in the philosophy and sociology of astrobiology are both stimulated and illuminated by history. Among those issues are (1) epistemological issues such as the status of astrobiology as a science, the problematic nature of evidence and inference, and the limits of science; (2) metaphysical/scientific issues, including the question of defining the fundamental concepts of life, mind, intelligence, and culture in a universal context; the role of contingency and necessity in the origin of these fundamental phenomena; and whether or not the universe is in some sense fine-tuned for life and perhaps biocentric; (3) societal issues such as the theological, ethical, and worldview impacts of the discovery of microbial or intelligent life; and the question of whether the search for extraterrestrial life should be pursued at all, and with what precautions; and (4) issues related to the sociology of scientific knowledge, including the diverse attitudes and assumptions of different scientific communities and different cultures to the problem of life beyond Earth, the public "will to believe," and the formation of the discipline of astrobiology. All these overlapping issues are framed by the concept of cosmic evolution-the 13.7 billion year Master Narrative of the Universe-which may result in a physical, biological, or postbiological universe and determine the long-term destiny of humanity.

  16. The Sociology of Disability and the Struggle for Inclusive Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Allan, Julie

    2010-01-01

    This article charts the emergence of the sociology of disability and examines the areas of contestation. These have involved a series of erasures and absences--the removal of the body from debates on the social model of disability; the disappearance of the Other from educational policies and practices; and the absence of academics from political…

  17. Imag(in)ing the University: Visual Sociology and Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Metcalfe, Amy Scott

    2012-01-01

    This study examines the potential of visual sociology to expand our knowledge of higher education through the use of visual data sources and methods of analysis. Photographs and archival material form the basis of the study. The images were analyzed as being part of the initiation and fulfillment stages of the social construction of collective…

  18. Sociological Factors in Rural Communities That Impact the Entrance and Upward Mobility of Female Administrators and Administrative Aspirants in Public Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hite, Steven J.; And Others

    Research indicates that female teachers who attempt to enter and advance in administrative positions encounter obstacles ranging from sex-role stereotyping to direct prejudice and discrimination. While these obstacles have been researched for a number of years, there has been little focus on the barriers experienced by women in rural districts.…

  19. Sociology and comparative education: A comparative educationist's perspective

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Holmes, Brian

    1981-12-01

    The thesis examined in this paper is that comparative educationists, far from following intellectual trends, have introduced new dimensions to methods of enquiry developed first by historians, then by social scientists and, finally and perhaps marginally, by conceptual philosophers. In so far as comparisons can be made, it is asserted that, in the twentieth century, paradigms in comparative education reflect revolutions in the natural sciences, and that to the extent that these preceded shifts in social science paradigms after about 1900, comparative educationists debated and rejected positivism before sociologists did, in the Anglo-Saxon world at least. A second assumption which is examined is that comparative educationists have anticipated issues which subsequently became important in the growth of national and parochial research in sociology, and for that matter in political science. A disclaimer is necessary: little attempt has been made to examine the causal influences in either field or between comparative educationists and sociologists. The history of such interaction at a personal and institutional level is very recent, the participants in the interchanges are, in many cases, still alive, and a substantive recent history of comparative education has yet to be written, although to some extent E. Shils' analysis of the history of sociological enquiry provides a schema against which the growth of comparative education can be compared.

  20. Institutional Interpretations of the Relationship between Sport-Related Disciplines and Their Reference Disciplines: The Case of Sociology of Sport

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ciomaga, Bogdan

    2014-01-01

    The sociology of sport literature is now sufficiently broad to allow a general analysis of research patterns in this field. To facilitate the identification of these vectors of expansion, sources referenced in articles published in "Sociology of Sport Journal and Journal of Sport and Social Issues" between 2003 and 2011 are examined in…

  1. How do people transform landscapes? A sociological perspective on suburban sprawl and tropical deforestation.

    PubMed

    Rudel, Thomas K

    2009-07-01

    Humans transformed landscapes at an unprecedented scale and pace during the 20th century, creating sprawling urban areas in affluent countries and large-scale agricultural expanses in tropics. To date, attempts to explain these processes in other disciplines have had a disembodied, a historical quality to them. A sociological account of these changes emphasizes the role of strategic actions by states and coalitions of interested parties in transforming landscapes. It identifies the agents of change and the timing of transformative events. Case studies of suburban sprawl and tropical deforestation illustrate the value of the sociological approach and the wide range of situations to which it applies.

  2. Computer Mediated Communication and Student Learning in Large Introductory Sociology Classes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wright, Eric R.; Lawson, Anthony H.

    2005-01-01

    Over the past several years, scholars of teaching and learning have demonstrated the potential of collaborative learning strategies for improving student learning. This paper examines the use of computer-mediated communication to promote collaborative student learning in large introductory sociology courses. Specifically, we summarize a project we…

  3. From Elites to Everybody: A Changing Agenda for Sport Sociological Study.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Coakley, Jay J.

    1983-01-01

    Sociology of sport research has focused on describing sports and sports participants. Future research should study: (1) structural diversity of sports programs and their implications for behavior; (2) participation of males and females throughout the life cycle; and (3) links between sports and other social institutions. (PP)

  4. Sociology as a Vocation: Reputations and Group Cultures in Graduate School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ferrales, Gabrielle; Fine, Gary Alan

    2005-01-01

    Graduate training in sociology involves more than meeting organizationally imposed demands such as satisfying departmental requirements, taking exams, and completing a dissertation. More central is the development of identity through institutional and interactional forces. We examine the experience of graduate students as tied to the social…

  5. Mountains, Flatlands and Tenuous Meaning: Organizational Sociology in Administrative Sense-Making

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Covrig, Duane M.

    2005-01-01

    Purpose: Contingency and institutional theories of organizational development are used to describe and interpret the 100-year history of a health science university and to then make a case for teaching organizational sociology in administrative preparation programs. Design/methodology/approach: Primary and secondary documents were analyzed to…

  6. Revisiting School Knowledge: Some Sociological Perspectives on New School Curricula

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whitty, Geoff

    2010-01-01

    This article focuses on attempts to understand how the curriculum and pedagogy can help to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between those from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the 1970s, the author was involved with Michael F.D. Young and others in the development of the so-called "new" sociology of…

  7. Is There a Core in Sociology? Results from a Survey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wagenaar, Theodore C.

    2004-01-01

    I report on a study of 301 sociologists to determine which concepts, topics, and skills they deem most important to cover in the introductory course and in the sociology curriculum. Respondents indicated high agreement that the list of skills, topics, and concepts adequately represented the range of possible items. I use both the raw ratings and…

  8. Introductory Geology From the Liberal Arts Approach: A Geology-Sociology Linked Course

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Walsh, E. O.; Davis, E.

    2008-12-01

    Geology can be a hard sell to college students, especially to college students attending small, liberal arts institutions in localities that lack exaggerated topography. At these schools, Geology departments that wish to grow must work diligently to attract students to the major; professors must be able to convince a wider audience of students that geology is relevant to their everyday lives. Toward this end, a Physical Geology course was linked with an introductory Sociology course through the common theme of Consumption. The same students took the two courses in sequence, beginning with the Sociology course and ending with Physical Geology; thus, students began by discussing the role of consumption in society and ended by learning about the geological processes and implications of consumption. Students were able to ascertain the importance of geology in their daily lives by connecting Earth processes to specific products they consume, such as cell phones and bottled water. Students were also able to see the connection between seemingly disparate fields of study, which is a major goal of the liberal arts. As a theme, Consumption worked well to grab the attention of students interested in diverse issues, such as environmental science or social justice. A one-hour lecture illustrating the link between sociology and geology was developed for presentation to incoming freshmen and their parents to advertise the course. Initial response has been positive, showing an increase in awareness of geological processes among students with a wide range of interests.

  9. Statistical Methods Used in "American Educational Research Journal,""Journal of Educational Psychology," and "Sociology of Education" from 1972 through 1987.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Emmons, Nancy J.; And Others

    The use of particular statistical methods over time was studied in a review of publications from the disciplines of education, psychology, and sociology. Publications studied were the: (1) "American Educational Research Journal"; (2) "Journal of Educational Psychology"; and (3) "Sociology of Education". A total of 221…

  10. [Ants and aliens. An episode in the history of entomological and sociological construction of knowledge].

    PubMed

    Werber, Niels

    2011-09-01

    The frequent use of biological metaphors in descriptions of society is well known and has already been investigated. Even the traces of biological theory in sociology have been explored. In this field of science, studies of social insects play an important role, because ants, bees, and termites have been considered to be genuinely political animals and founders of societies. Like men, social insects exist only in collectives; thus, the entomologist's research directs him from the individual insect, its morphology and taxonomy to the analysis of insect societies. Entomologists like Wheeler or Wilson become sociologists and develop methods to deal with a society whose members are dumb, soulless, without reason, rational choice, or motives. Tools invented to describe the evolution of insect societies have been picked up by sociological founders of systems theory like Parsons or Luhmann, who were busy building a theory of a society, which for heuristic reasons is not composed of men (individuals with souls, motives, consciousness and so on) but rather of communications, media, or codes. My paper treats 1.) the genealogy of this discursive mixture of problems, methods, and focuses on 2.) the rhetorical dimension of this entomological-sociological passage. I will sketch certain 'evident' pictures of society, which function as media of a subliminal crossing of entomological and sociological premises, models, and assumptions. Both can be found in novels like Wilson's Anthill, which this paper analyzes with respect to the concepts of society implied by them, that is, concepts whose blueprints are based on models of an ant society.

  11. Object-oriented sociology and organizing in the face of emergency: Bruno Latour, Graham Harman and the material turn.

    PubMed

    Pierides, Dean; Woodman, Dan

    2012-12-01

    This paper explores the material turn in sociology and the tools it provides for understanding organizational problems highlighted by the Royal Commission into the 2009 'Black Saturday' bushfires during which 173 people died in the Australian State of Victoria. Often inspired by Bruno Latour's material-semiotic sociology of associations, organization scholars employing these tools focus on the messy details of organization otherwise overlooked by approaches assuming a macroscopic frame of analysis. In Latour's approach no object is reducible to something else - such as nature, the social, or atoms - it is instead a stabilized set of relations. A Latourian approach allows us to highlight how the Royal Commission and macroscopic models of organizing do unwitting damage to their objects of inquiry by purifying the 'natural' from the 'social'. Performative elements in their schemas are mistaken for descriptive ones. However, a long standing critique of this approach claims that it becomes its own form of reduction, to nothing but relations. Graham Harman, in his object-oriented philosophy develops this critique by showing that a 'relationist' metaphysics cannot properly accommodate the capacity of 'objects' to cause or mediate surprises. Through our case of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, we argue that a purely relational model of objects loosens a productive tension between the structural and ephemeral that drives sociological analysis. By drawing on elements of Harman's ontology of objects we argue that it is necessary for material-semiotic sociology to retain a central place for the emergence of sociological objects. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2012.

  12. Seventh Grade Social Studies. A Program in Sociology and American History.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Clancy, Patricia; And Others

    GRADES OR AGES: Seventh grade. SUBJECT MATTER: Sociology and American history. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide covers five units: "Biological Basis of Human Behavior,""How We Become Human,""The Family and Other Socializing Institutions,""Man's Behavior in Groups and Crowds," and "Minority Group Problems." The presentation of the…

  13. Integrated Sociology Program Assessment: Inclusion of a Senior Portfolio Graduation Requirement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crockett, Jason L.; Fu, Albert S.; Greenwood, Joleen L.; John, Mauricia A.

    2018-01-01

    This article presents information about the planning, implementation, and findings of an assessment-based student portfolio designed by the faculty of a sociology program at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, a midsized public regional liberal arts institution. First, we briefly present the rationale for implementing a portfolio system and the…

  14. An Avenue for Challenging Sexism: Examining the High School Sociology Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stevens, Kaylene Mae; Martell, Christopher C.

    2016-01-01

    In this interpretative qualitative study, the researchers investigated the beliefs and practices of six high school sociology teachers in relation to the teaching of gender. Using a feminist lens, this study employed mixed methods, analyzing teacher interviews, observations, and classroom artifacts. The results showed that the teachers viewed…

  15. Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Matras, Yaron, Ed.

    This collection of essays focuses on historical, structural, lexical, and sociological aspects of Romani and its regional variations. The focus is primarily but not exclusively on oral language. Essays include: "On Typological Changes and Structural Borrowing in the History of European Romani" (Vit Bubenik); "On the Migration and…

  16. Teaching a Global Sociology: Suggestions for Globalizing the U.S. Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sohoni, Deenesh; Petrovic, Misha

    2010-01-01

    Increasingly, educators have called on colleges and universities to prepare their students for a more interdependent world. While sociology has begun to heed the message to globalize the curriculum, efforts to implement relevant teaching practices are hampered by lack of consensus on what "internationalizing" or "globalizing" the classroom…

  17. Toward an understanding of immune cell sociology: real-time monitoring of cytokine secretion at the single-cell level.

    PubMed

    Shirasaki, Yoshitaka; Yamagishi, Mai; Shimura, Nanako; Hijikata, Atsushi; Ohara, Osamu

    2013-01-01

    The immune system is a very complex and dynamic cellular system, and its intricacies are considered akin to those of human society. Disturbance of homeostasis of the immune system results in various types of diseases; therefore, the homeostatic mechanism of the immune system has long been a subject of great interest in biology, and a lot of information has been accumulated at the cellular and the molecular levels. However, the sociological aspects of the immune system remain too abstract to address because of its high complexity, which mainly originates from a large number and variety of cell-cell interactions. As long-range interactions mediated by cytokines play a key role in the homeostasis of the immune system, cytokine secretion analyses, ranging from analyses of the micro level of individual cells to the macro level of a bulk of cell ensembles, provide us with a solid basis of a sociological viewpoint of the immune system. In this review, as the first step toward a comprehensive understanding of immune cell sociology, cytokine secretion of immune cells is surveyed with a special emphasis on the single-cell level, which has been overlooked but should serve as a basis of immune cell sociology. Now that it has become evident that large cell-to-cell variations in cytokine secretion exist at the single-cell level, we face a tricky yet interesting question: How is homeostasis maintained when the system is composed of intrinsically noisy agents? In this context, we discuss how the heterogeneity of cytokine secretion at the single-cell level affects our view of immune cell sociology. While the apparent inconsistency between homeostasis and cell-to-cell heterogeneity is difficult to address by a conventional reductive approach, comparison and integration of single-cell data with macroscopic data will offer us a new direction for the comprehensive understanding of immune cell sociology. Copyright © 2012 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  18. Application of Sociology of Education on Early Childhood Curriculum and Pedagogic Practices in Hong Kong: Insight from David Riesman

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lau, Grace; Ho, Kwok Keung

    2016-01-01

    This paper will present multiple themes that are intermingled with one another, aiming to bring an overview of sociology of education and its application in the Hong Kong situation. One of the themes concerns how sociology of education has intertwined with the socio-political aspect of Hong Kong before and after year 1997 resulting in different…

  19. Some Sociological Contexts for Consideration When Designing a School Puberty/Sexuality Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Collier-Harris, Christine A.; Goldman, Juliette D. G.

    2017-01-01

    Sociological contexts are key factors in education and schooling. Contemporary contexts of world-view, or "Weltanschauungen," such as human rights, public health, demographics, biosocial factors including earlier puberty and a developmentalist approach, and technological connectivity, warrant significant professional consideration by…

  20. The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and Their Impact on China's Rural Development. East Asia: History, Politics, Sociology, Culture. A Garland Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Han, Dongping

    China's official history maintains that the radical egalitarianism of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) led to economic disaster. This book challenges that view. Drawing on local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, Shandong Province, this study contends that the Cultural Revolution's political convulsions democratized village political…

  1. 50 Years of C. Wright Mills and "The Sociological Imagination"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Scanlan, Stephen J.; Grauerholz, Liz

    2009-01-01

    The core ideas and lessons of C. Wright Mills are most likely among the first perspectives to which students are exposed in sociology and are a foundation to the discipline. Although perhaps difficult to recall all of the specific details of the encounter, many of these students are likely to remember the first time that they were introduced to C.…

  2. Doing Public Sociology in the Field--A Strong Sociological Intervention Project in China

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hu, Lina

    2007-01-01

    Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process,…

  3. Bioscience and the Sociology of Education: The Case for Biosocial Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Youdell, Deborah

    2017-01-01

    This article makes a case for biosocial education as a field of research and as a potential framework for education practice. The article engages with sociology of education's contemporary interests in embodiment and affect, the possibilities offered by concept studies, and uses of assemblage and complexity theory for thinking about educational…

  4. Using the Community as a Classroom for Large Introductory Sociology Classes.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corwin, Patricia

    1996-01-01

    Explores how a student service program can be implemented without a large staff and without cost, in large introductory sociology classes as part of an extra-credit project, while augmenting course material as an active learning component. Discusses a class that fits this description at North Dakota State University. (MJP)

  5. Sociology, economics, and gender: can knowledge of the past contribute to a better future?

    PubMed

    Nelson, Julie A

    2010-01-01

    This article explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for current efforts to bring the fields more closely together. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. The recently developed field of economic sociology and other efforts to bridge the disciplinary gap have the potential to heal this disciplinary split, if they are broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis.

  6. Objectives, Strategies, and Ethnics in Teaching Introductory Courses in Sociology of Sport.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McKay, Jim; Pearson, Kent

    1984-01-01

    Strategies that may be useful in helping undergraduates develop a critical view of sport are presented in this article. Several ethical problems that may arise from teaching sociology of sport in a way that contradicts typical assumptions about sport are discussed. (Author/DF)

  7. The denial of death thesis: sociological critique and implications for palliative care.

    PubMed

    Zimmermann, Camilla; Rodin, Gary

    2004-03-01

    It has become commonplace to say that contemporary western society is 'death-denying'. This characterization, which sociologists have termed the 'denial of death thesis', first arose in the social science, psychological and clinical medical literature in the period between 1955 and 1985. During the same time period, the hospice and palliative care movements were developing and in part directed themselves against the perceived cultural denial of death in western society. While the denial of death has been taken for granted by the lay public as well as by clinicians, in the sociological literature it has been increasingly questioned. In this paper we use sociological critiques of the denial of death thesis to raise critical questions about the theory and practice of contemporary palliative care. In particular, we argue that the emphasis of palliative care should not be on extinguishing the denial of death but on the relief of suffering.

  8. Peer support for people with chronic conditions in rural areas: a scoping review.

    PubMed

    Lauckner, Heidi M; Hutchinson, Susan L

    2016-01-01

    Chronic conditions are a growing healthcare concern. People living in rural regions are particularly affected because many barriers exist to accessing services and supports. Peer support for chronic condition self-management, where people living with chronic conditions learn about how to care for themselves and maintain their health from people also living with chronic conditions, is one approach gaining recognition. What remains unknown are the unique challenges and strategies associated with peer support for chronic condition self-management in rural contexts. In order to inform the development of peer supports in the authors' local context in rural eastern Canada, a scoping review was undertaken to discover community-based peer support initiatives for adults in rural settings living with chronic conditions. The authors followed established scoping review methods to answer the research question What is known from the existing literature about the key features and potential formats of community-based peer support initiatives for adults living with chronic conditions in rural settings? Six databases (CINAHL, PubMed, Sociological Abstracts, Embase, Cochrane Libraries and PsycInfo) were searched using the following concepts: chronic conditions, peer support, community-based and rural context. Two researchers reviewed the titles and/or abstracts of the 1978 articles retrieved from the initial search to include articles that were in English, published in 2000 to 2014, and that explicitly discussed rural programs/interventions with peers that were community-based. The initial screen excluded 1907 articles, leaving 71 articles, which were read by two research members in light of the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Thirteen articles representing 10 separate programs were included and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Included programs were from the USA, Australia and Canada. A range of formats (telecommunications only, in-person meetings only, or a combination of

  9. Researching Children's Rights in Education: Sociology of Childhood Encountering Educational Theory

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quennerstedt, Ann; Quennerstedt, Mikael

    2014-01-01

    This paper aims to explore and develop a theoretical approach for children's rights research in education formed through an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey's educational theory. The interest is mainly methodological, in the sense that the primary ambition of the investigation is to suggest a fruitful and useful…

  10. Using Films as a Tool for Active Learning in Teaching Sociology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moskovich, Yaffa; Sharf, Simha

    2012-01-01

    This study aims to examine and demonstrate practices, elements and techniques employed by the action research method. It examines the use of films in sociology instruction in college, and the influence of films on the development of students' understanding of human nature. Based on the professional experience of the authors films utilize and…

  11. Included in Sociology: Learning Climates That Cultivate Racial and Ethnic Diversity.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chin, Jeffrey, Ed.; Berheide, Catherine White, Ed.; Rome, Dennis, Ed.

    This collection of essays is designed for the faculty member and others who care about the retention and success of students of color in gateway courses in Sociology. The book examines assumptions about diversity and teaching and learning and provides strategies for enacting learning environments that are more inclusive and conducive to the…

  12. Methodological Problems of the Present-Day Sociology of Education: A Roundtable

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russian Education and Society, 2011

    2011-01-01

    An all-Russian conference on "Education and Society" was held on 22 October 2009 at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, in the course of which roundtables were conducted with leading representatives of Russian sociological science. The conference was timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Russian…

  13. Sociology. CUNY Panel: Rethinking the Disciplines. Women in the Curriculum Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, Margaret L.; Brewer, Rose M.; Sokoloff, Natalie J.; Wrigley, Julia; Bonilla-Santiago, Gloria

    This collection of five essays examines the ways sociology, as a discipline, currently reflects ongoing scholarship on gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation. In "Scholarship and the Curriculum: The Study of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class," Margaret L. Anderson argues that the study of race, class, and gender has become…

  14. [Sociology of health, social ecology and media democracy].

    PubMed

    Julesz, Máté

    2012-05-27

    The correlation of the sociology of health, social ecology and media democracy is demonstrated in the study. In societies of today, the role of the media is unquestionable in disseminating information relating to health and the environment. According to Paragraph (1) of Article XXI of the Hungarian Constitution of 2011, everyone has the right to a healthy environment. An environmentalist media democracy may forward environmental justice, environmental education, and environmentalist economy, etc. All these are required in order to establish a society where the healthy environment is an objective value.

  15. Rurality and Rural Education: Discourses Underpinning Rurality and Rural Education Research in South African Postgraduate Education Research 1994-2004

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nkambule, T.; Balfour, R. J.; Pillay, G.; Moletsane, R.

    2011-01-01

    Historically, rurality and rural education have been marginalised bodies of knowledge in South Africa. The post-1994 era has seen an emerging government concern to address the continuing interplay between poverty, HIV/AIDS, underdevelopment, and underachievement in schools categorised as rural. To address these concerns, scholars in South African…

  16. Pathways from Poverty Educational Network.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, University Park, PA.

    Pathways from Poverty is a public policy education and research initiative organized by the Rural Sociological Society's Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty and the four regional rural development centers. This publication focuses on project efforts in the Northeast and includes three sections. The first section describes the Pathways from…

  17. Moral education for the elite of democracy: the classe de philosophie between sociology and philosophy.

    PubMed

    Barberis, Daniela S

    2002-01-01

    In this article, I address the issues at stake in the relationship between sociology and philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century by focusing on a debate between two parties: Emile Durkheim, who was attempting to found an independent scientific sociology, and the editors and collaborators of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (RMM), one of the central philosophical journals of the period. This debate focused on the role of philosophy in secondary school education, but at its heart, this was a struggle between two disciplines over which ought to direct the formation of good citizens for Third Republic France. Copyright 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  18. Rural America at a Glance. Rural Development Research Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Economic Research Service (USDA), Washington, DC.

    This report highlights the most recent indicators of social and economic conditions in rural areas for use in developing rural policies and programs. The economic expansion of the 1990s greatly benefited rural economies. Rural areas attracted both urban residents and immigrants. Hispanics accounted for over 25 percent of nonmetropolitan population…

  19. Reconnecting Rural America. Report on Rural Intercity Passenger Transportation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stommes, Eileen S.

    This report summarizes the results of three regional symposia held during 1987-88 to gather grassroots information about rural passenger transportation needs across the country. The first section describes the structural transformation of rural America in the 1980s: (1) the rural economy; (2) rural population trends; (3) impact of information…

  20. Re-counting 'illiteracy': literacy skills in the sociology of social inequality.

    PubMed

    Payne, Geoff

    2006-06-01

    Recent media reports have repeated claims that there are very large numbers of illiterate people in Britain, seven million adults being the most common figure. The moral panic this engendered has helped to justify educational initiatives and greater public spending on basic skills. However, a closer investigation of definitions and measurements of illiteracy in major national studies reveals the peculiarity of this social construction of illiteracy. Not least, it is argued that the numbers actually suffering significant literacy deficits are much lower than reported. Partly because British sociology has given literacy little attention (despite the advent of the 'New Literacy Studies'), official accounts of illiteracy remain unduly 'normative', seriously under-estimating cultural differences like gender, ethnicity and class. A new classification of low literacy skills is proposed, with the intention of demonstrating connections with structural accounts of social inequality and sociological theory. Low levels of literacy skill remain important because they are related to other forms of social inequality, even when the number of people disadvantaged in this way is much smaller than previously claimed.

  1. Power, Meaning, and Identity: Critical Sociology of Education in the United States.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Apple, Michael W.

    1996-01-01

    Provides an overview of the main theories, developments, and literature of critically-oriented sociology. Pays particular attention to the politics of meaning including critical discourse analysis, identity politics, racial formation, and political economy and the labor process. Concludes with a discussion of the tensions between postmodern and…

  2. Revising laboratory work: sociological perspectives on the science classroom

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jobér, Anna

    2017-09-01

    This study uses sociological perspectives to analyse one of the core practices in science education: schoolchildren's and students' laboratory work. Applying an ethnographic approach to the laboratory work done by pupils at a Swedish compulsory school, data were generated through observations, field notes, interviews, and a questionnaire. The pupils, ages 14 and 15, were observed as they took a 5-week physics unit (specifically, mechanics). The analysis shows that the episodes of laboratory work could be filled with curiosity and exciting challenges; however, another picture emerged when sociological concepts and notions were applied to what is a very common way of working in the classroom. Laboratory work is characterised as a social activity that is expected to be organised as a group activity. This entails groups becoming, to some extent, `safe havens' for the pupils. On the other hand, this way of working in groups required pupils to subject to the groups and the peer effect, sometimes undermining their chances to learn and perform better. In addition, the practice of working in groups when doing laboratory work left some pupils and the teacher blaming themselves, even though the outcome of the learning situation was a result of a complex interplay of social processes. This article suggests a stronger emphasis on the contradictions and consequences of the science subjects, which are strongly influenced by their socio-historical legacy.

  3. The Sociology of Education and Digital Technology: Past, Present and Future

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Selwyn, Neil; Facer, Keri

    2014-01-01

    During the past 15 years of his career, John Furlong's research and writing has focused--in part--on digital technologies and people's everyday experiences of education. While hardly a technology expert, his work has shown an acute awareness of the significance of computers, the internet and mobile telephony in making sociological sense…

  4. Training for Agriculture: Annual Review of Selected Developments.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome (Italy).

    The topics covered by review articles are: Training for Rural Development (with special reference to Chile); Field Training--Theory into Practice (for women extension workers in Malaysia); A New Look is Needed for Extension (Latin America); 4-D Rural Youth Clubs in Dahomey; Sociological Aspects of Rural Training; Population Education in the…

  5. Teaching Inequalities: Using Public Transportation and Visual Sociology to Make It Real

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grauerholz, Liz; Settembrino, Marc

    2016-01-01

    In this article, we describe an adaptation of Nichols, Berry, and Kalogrides's "Hop on the Bus" exercise. In addition to riding the bus, we incorporated a visual component similar to that developed by Whitley by having students conduct a sociological, photographic exercise after they disembarked. Qualitative and quantitative assessment…

  6. 20 Suggestions for Improving the Departmental Procedures for Hiring Teachers of Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ewens, Bill

    Twenty suggestions are given to help university sociology departments develop procedures for hiring good teachers in the field. The first five ideas are about publicizing the position and initial screening of applications. Jobs should be announced in professional journals and at graduate departments with good reputations. Standardized forms should…

  7. Dichotomy, Dialectic and Dialogic: How Do Sociology Terms Assist Career Development Theory?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burns, Edgar A. M.

    2012-01-01

    Three concepts from sociology--dichotomy and two extensions, dialectic and dialogic--are considered here as social-psychological tools for career practitioners who analyse and investigate career patterns, career motivations and career pathways, whether at career start or at further points of transition. These terms have macro-social applications…

  8. Copula Models for Sociology: Measures of Dependence and Probabilities for Joint Distributions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vuolo, Mike

    2017-01-01

    Often in sociology, researchers are confronted with nonnormal variables whose joint distribution they wish to explore. Yet, assumptions of common measures of dependence can fail or estimating such dependence is computationally intensive. This article presents the copula method for modeling the joint distribution of two random variables, including…

  9. First Day Sociology: Using Student Introductions to Illustrate the Concept of Norms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Winston, Fletcher

    2007-01-01

    The first day of an introductory sociology course provides a crucial first impression to both students and instructor. The information instructors present on the organization, content, and expectations of the course reduces student anxiety and uncertainty. Instructors use self-introductions to address first day concerns and to provide information…

  10. East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, No. 2220.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-10-25

    SOCIOLOGICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS No.. 2220 CONTENTS ALBANIA Importance of Free Military Schools Stressed (Lili Bullari; ZERI I POPULLIT, 7 Jun 83...17-18 Sep 83) 50 BORBA Reports Education Policy Discussion (E. Bogdanovic; BORBA, 23 Sep 83) 52 - b - ALBANIA IMPORTANCE OF FREE MILITARY...SCHOOLS STRESSED Tirane ZERI I POPULLIT in Albanian 7 Jun 83 p 3 [Article by Lili Bullari: " Free Military Schools: Improtant Centers for Training

  11. Sociology, the public sphere, and modern government: a challenge to the dominance of Habermas.

    PubMed

    Wickham, Gary

    2010-03-01

    There is an unfortunate tendency within some branches of sociology - particularly those usually called 'critical', that is, those associated with 'critical social theory'- to treat with disdain the understanding of the public sphere that many modern governments use daily in making and implementing public policy. The majority of sociologists in those branches seem to prefer, as part and parcel of their normative commitments, Jürgen Habermas's Kantian understanding of the public sphere, which focuses primarily on reason and morality and insists that these two forces are of a higher order than politics and law. This paper offers a set of criticisms of the Habermas-Kant understanding, arguing that its focus on reason and morality, were it to become more widespread, would steer sociology into public policy irrelevance. The paper goes on to describe a very different understanding of the public sphere, a politico-legal or civil-peace understanding which operates as the public policy focus of those governments that have relegated questions of salvation (whether religious or ideological) to the private sphere. This understanding emerged from early modern attempts to carve out a domain of relative freedom and security against the deadly violence of religious disputation sweeping across Europe. The paper readily acknowledges that some 'non-critical' branches of sociology already employ a version of this understanding.

  12. Co-­Teaching Social Research Methods in a Joint Sociology/Anthropology Department

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Manthei, Jennifer; Isler, Jonathan

    2011-01-01

    In the course of developing and co-­teaching Social Research Methods (SRM), an interdisciplinary, upper-­division undergraduate course at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS), the authors discovered that this type of partnership is ripe ground for exploring integration of anthropology and sociology on epistemological and methodological…

  13. Distal and Proximal Vision: A Multi-Perspective Research in Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Giancola, Orazio; Viteritti, Assunta

    2014-01-01

    Drawing inspiration from the research conducted in Italian schools involved in the reform process, the article proposes to investigate two visions in the research on Sociology of Education: one distal and the other proximal. The distal vision is offered by quantitative research nowadays supported by extensive public funding and framed as…

  14. Forensic culture as epistemic culture: the sociology of forensic science.

    PubMed

    Cole, Simon A

    2013-03-01

    This paper explores whether we can interpret the notion of 'forensic culture' as something akin to what Knorr-Cetina called an 'epistemic culture'. Can we speak of a 'forensic culture', and, if so, how is it similar to, or different from, other epistemic cultures that exist in what is conventionally called 'science'? This question has important policy implications given the National Academy Science's (NAS) recent identification of 'culture' as one of the problems at the root of what it identified as 'serious deficiencies' in U.S. forensic science and 'scientific culture' as an antidote to those problems. Finding the NAS's characterisation of 'scientific culture' overly general and naïve, this paper offers a preliminary exploration of what might be called a 'forensic culture'. Specifically, the paper explores the way in which few of the empirical findings accumulated by sociologists of science about research science seem to apply to forensic science. Instead, forensic science seems to have developed a distinct culture for which a sociological analysis will require new explanatory tools. Faithful sociological analysis of 'forensic culture' will be a necessary prerequisite for the kind of culture change prescribed by external reformist bodies like the NAS. Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  15. Introduction: A Sociological Code for the Description of World Society and Its Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heintz, Peter

    1982-01-01

    Examines the dimensions of an emerging awareness of a world society. A sociological framework for describing worldwide societal systems and how they interact is presented. Major traits of the image of a world society, as derived from the framework, are described. (AM)

  16. Agricultural Education in the Zaire: An Essay in the Methodology of Analysis and Evaluation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    de Failly, D.

    The purpose of the research done in 1970-71 in 9 secondary agricultural schools in Zaire was to generate a system for analyzing agricultural education. For this purpose, how the agricultural school relates to the 4 main currents in sociology--the sociology of organization, of education, of occupation, and of "rural animation"--is…

  17. Translations on Eastern Europe, Political, Sociological, and Military Affairs, Number 1444

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1977-09-09

    territories of the respective countries; establish caches of weapons, organize special subversive groups , start fires or explosions using mechanical and...Political Science Sociology Military Organizations 17c. COSATI Field/ Group 5D, 5K, 15 18. Availability Statement Unlimited Availability...Atanasov; GRAZHDANSKA OTBRANA, No 6, 1977).... 15 Use of Water Mains in Shelters Discussed (Bogdan Dimitrov; GRAZHDANSKA OTBRANA, No 6, 1977

  18. Translations on Eastern Europe, Political, Sociological, and Military Affairs, No. 1566

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1978-07-20

    Germany x Hungary x Poland x Romania Yugoslavia 17b. ldcntificr.s/Open-Ended Terms Propaganda Political Science Sociology Military...Energy Supply Problems (Slawomir Popowski; TRYBUNA LUDU, 29 Jun 78) 82 ROMANIA Manescu Addresses CEMA Session in Bucharest (Manea Manescu...the RCP Central Committee, the government of the Socialist Republic of Romania and to you personally, Comrade Manescu, for the warm reception

  19. Rural Matters: The Rural Challenge News, 1997-2000.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rural Matters: The Rural Challenge News, 2000

    2000-01-01

    This document contains the 10 quarterly issues of "Rural Matters: The Rural Challenge News," published from Fall 1997 to Winter 2000 (the final issue). This newsletter focused on projects funded by the Annenberg Rural Challenge, as well as research summaries and opinion pieces on the benefits of small schools, place-based education, and…

  20. Regenerating Rural Social Space? Teacher Education for Rural-Regional Sustainability

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reid, Jo-Anne; Green, Bill; Cooper, Maxine; Hastings, Wendy; Lock, Graeme; White, Simone

    2010-01-01

    The complex interconnection among issues affecting rural-regional sustainability requires an equally complex program of research to ensure the attraction and retention of high-quality teachers for rural children. The educational effects of the construction of the rural within a deficit discourse are highlighted. A concept of rural social space is…

  1. The 'rural pipeline' and retention of rural health professionals in Europe's northern peripheries.

    PubMed

    Carson, Dean B; Schoo, Adrian; Berggren, Peter

    2015-12-01

    The major advance in informing rural workforce policy internationally over the past 25 years has been the recognition of the importance of the 'rural pipeline'. The rural pipeline suggests that people with 'rural origin' (who spent some childhood years in rural areas) and/or 'rural exposure' (who do part of their professional training in rural areas) are more likely to select rural work locations. What is not known is whether the rural pipeline also increases the length of time professionals spend in rural practice throughout their careers. This paper analyses data from a survey of rural health professionals in six countries in the northern periphery of Europe in 2013 to examine the relationship between rural origin and rural exposure and the intention to remain in the current rural job or to preference rural jobs in future. Results are compared between countries, between different types of rural areas (based on accessibility to urban centres), different occupations and workers at different stages of their careers. The research concludes that overall the pipeline does impact on retention, and that both rural origin and rural exposure make a contribution. However, the relationship is not strong in all contexts, and health workforce policy should recognise that retention may in some cases be improved by recruiting beyond the pipeline. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Examining the Professional Status of Full-Time Sociology Faculty in Community Colleges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kapitulik, Brian P.; Rowell, Katherine R.; Smith, Michelle A.; Amaya, Nicole V.

    2016-01-01

    In this article, we utilize national survey data to assess the professional status of full-time sociology faculty in community colleges. Traditionally, sociologists have argued that for a particular type of work to be conceptualized as a profession, it must meet certain criteria, such as: esoteric knowledge and skills, high levels of workplace…

  3. Music and Cultural Analysis in the Classroom: Introducing Sociology through Heavy Metal.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ahlkvist, Jarl A.

    1999-01-01

    Demonstrates that popular music's potential as a tool for teaching interactive introductory sociology courses is enhanced when a cultural analysis of a specific music genre is incorporated into the classroom. Presents a two-part model for integrating a cultural analysis of heavy metal music and its subculture into the introductory course. Includes…

  4. THE EFFECT OF RURALITY ON THE EDUCATION OF RURAL YOUTH.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    CHARLES, EDGAR B.

    THE PHENONMENON OF RURALITY OCCURS ALONG A RURAL-URBAN CONTINUUM, WITH THE DEGREE OF RURALITY DEPENDING UPON ENVIRONMENTAL, OCCUPATIONAL, AND SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS. A HIGH DEGREE OF RURALITY IS LIKELY TO EXIST IN AREAS WHERE POPULATION CENTERS DO NOT EXCEED 2,500 PERSONS, OCCUPATIONS ARE PRIMARILY BASED ON NATURAL RESOURCE AND/OR LAND…

  5. Extending Sociological Theorising on High Ability: The Significance of Values and Lived Experience

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mazzoli Smith, Laura

    2014-01-01

    Sociological work on high ability is framed by social constructionist theorising and/or takes a social justice approach, and hence particular analytical intellectual traditions are foregrounded. Whilst these approaches have contributed the main critique of essentialist psychological understandings of high ability, they can eclipse normative…

  6. Standpoint Theory, Realism and the Search for Objectivity in the Sociology of Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Edwards, Gail

    2014-01-01

    This paper evaluates the contribution of "social realism" in resolving questions of knowledge and curriculum in the sociology of education. Social realists argue that, in the interests of educational equality, all pupils should have access to "powerful" knowledge produced by specialist intellectual communities. Social realism…

  7. Evolution, Biology, and Society: A Conversation for the 21st-Century Sociology Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Machalek, Richard; Martin, Michael W.

    2010-01-01

    Recently, a growing contingent of "evolutionary sociologists" has begun to integrate theoretical ideas and empirical findings derived from evolutionary biology, especially sociobiology, into a variety of sociological inquiries. Without capitulating to a naive version of either biological reductionism or genetic determinism, these researchers and…

  8. Identifying Sociological Factors for the Success of Space Exploration

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lundquist, C. A.; Tarter, D.; Coleman, A.

    Astrosociology factors relevant to success of future space exploration may best be identified through studies of sociological circumstances of past successful explorations, such as the Apollo-Lunar Missions. These studies benefit from access to primary records of the past programs. The Archives and Special Collections Division of the Salmon Library at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) houses large collections of material from the early periods of the space age. The Huntsville campus of the University of Alabama System had its birth in the mid-1950s at the time when the von Braun rocket team was relocated from Texas to Huntsville. The University, the City of Huntsville and the US Government rocket organizations developed in parallel over subsequent years. As a result, the University has a significant space heritage and focus. This is true not only for the engineering and science disciplines, but also for the social sciences. The life of the University spans the period when Huntsville government and industrial organizations were responsible for producing the rocket vehicles to first take mankind to the Moon. That endeavor was surely as significant sociologically as technologically. In the 1980s, Donald E. Tarter, conducted a series of video interviews with some leading members of the original von Braun team. Although the interviews ranged over many engineering subjects, they also recorded personal features of people involved in the Apollo lunar exploration program and the interactions between these people. Such knowledge was of course an objective. These interviews are now in the collections of the UAH Library Archives, along with extensive documentation from the same period. Under sponsorship of the Archives and the NASA-Marshall Retiree Association, the interview series was restarted in 2006 to obtain comparable oral-history interviews with more than fifty US born members of the rocket team from the 1960s. Again these video interviews are rich with

  9. Sociological differences between women and men: implications for autoimmunity.

    PubMed

    Borchers, Andrea T; Gershwin, M Eric

    2012-05-01

    There are an enormous number of incorrect stereotypes that characterize the differences between women and men. Indeed, nearly all of these stereotypes are based on cultural inaccuracies and faulty data without consideration of biology and the distinct sociological differences between genders. Sociological differences are those that relate to the development, structure, interaction and behavior of organized groups of human beings, or societies, and their values and beliefs. Gender is a social construct referring "to the culturally and historically based differences in the roles, attitudes and behaviors of men and women" ([1], p.1) as shaped by norms and stereotypes. Sex, on the other hand, serves to classify living things according to their reproductive organs and functions assigned by chromosomal complement (according to the US Institute of Medicine) and the physical and biological characteristics arising from these organs and functions. The two terms are generally viewed as dichotomous; however, they are closely intertwined in as yet hardly understood ways, and it is frequently difficult to distinguish between them since gendered life experiences can have profound effects on body structure and function [2]. In this review, we will examine to what extent gender roles and stereotypes shape the daily lives of women in their roles as students, employees, wives, and mothers and their health. These data have implications for the etiology of autoimmunity and also for differences in the natural history of disease. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. Education in Rural America: Object or Instrumentality of Rural Development.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hobbs, Daryl

    Rural schools have had a traditional role as major vehicles of rural economic development. During the rapid economic changes of the 20th century rural schools supplied the literate migrants who flocked to the cities to become the human capital for urban based expansion. Rural schools also provided the literate farmers who stayed at home and…

  11. [Pierre Bourdieu and health: a sociological analysis of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales].

    PubMed

    Montagner, Miguel Angelo

    2008-07-01

    This study aimed to highlight, illustrate, describe, and comment on the presence of the health category in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, by underlining the themes traditionally related to the sociology of the body. After a systematic analysis of his work in the sociology of medicine and health, the article also addresses the main vehicle for his line of thought, namely Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, viewed here as the prime channel for most of the research taking Bourdieu's "genetic structuralism" as the main theoretical reference. We analyze the articles published from 1975 to 2001, from the thematic and theoretical/conceptual perspective, by comparing the changes appearing in this journal in opposition to the model previously adopted by the Revue Française de Sociologie.

  12. An Environmental Sociology for the Anthropocene.

    PubMed

    Bowden, Gary

    2017-02-01

    Attention to the relationship between nature and society has been a defining feature of environmental sociology since its inception. Early research, incorporating insights from ecology, argued for the need to (1) theorize the causal connections between nature and society and (2) contextualize those connections in terms of biophysical limits resulting from resource scarcity. Over the past two decades, partly in response to new forms of existential threat such as climate change, the treatment of nature and society as distinct entities has given way to a focus on socio-natural assemblages. Using the Anthropocene as a lens to explore this emerging view, it is argued (1) that current theorizing on the socio-natural assemblage needs to pay more attention to the issues of temporality and complexity, (2) that taking these factors into account reconceptualizes the nature-society relationship as a complex, evolving socio-natural assemblage, (3) that this evolutionary process needs to be understood in the context of cosmic evolution and the tension between entropy and the emergence of local complexity, and (4) that constraints on human development arise from the tension between these two tendencies, not from resource scarcity. An environmental sociology for the Anthropocene, one based on assumptions about the nature of causal dynamics and context consistent with our understanding of current earth system science, is proposed. L'attention portée à la relation entre la nature et la société a été un trait caractéristique de la sociologie de l'environnement depuis sa création. La recherche initiale, intégrant les connaissances de l'écologie, a soutenu la nécessité de (1) théoriser les liens causaux entre la nature et la société et (2) contextualiser ces connexions en termes de limites biophysiques résultant de la pénurie de ressources. Au cours des deux derniéres décennies, en partie en réponse à de nouvelles formes de menace existentielle telles que le

  13. The Rural Bellwether.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Walker, Sherry Freeland, Ed.

    2001-01-01

    This theme issue of "State Education Leader" contains eight articles on rural education. "The Rural Bellwether" (Kathy Christie) discusses declining enrollment in rural schools, rural problems with teacher shortages and special education funding, issues related to school size and school district size, and distance learning…

  14. Rereading "The Jack-Roller:" Hidden Histories in Sociology and Social Work

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shaw, Ian

    2009-01-01

    I revisit one of the iconic Chicago School studies, Clifford Shaw's "The Jack-Roller". A naive reading of Shaw's book leaves the reader with a sense of having been inducted into a melange of what we now know as "sociology" and "social work," but which to Shaw seems a coherent stance. I suggest that this is close to the heart of how things were,…

  15. Translations on Eastern Europe Political, Sociological, and Military Affairs No. 1384.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1977-05-03

    developments; information on general sociological problems and developments in such areas as demography , manpower, public health and welfare, education...as pioneers on the historically new path of socialism/communism, that these peoples have made the greatest sacrifices for proletarian solida- rity...74 average longevity reached 71.3 years. A declining morbidity trend exists for a number of contagious deseases. In the Sixth Five-Year Plan their

  16. Critical Thinking in the Sociology Classroom: Facilitating Movement from Vague Objective to Explicit Achievement.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Browne, M. Neil; Litwin, James L.

    1987-01-01

    Describes a methodology for improving critical thinking skills in sociology classrooms. Includes a discussion of classroom behavior of teachers, student attitudes, curriculum materials, and evaluation techniques. Concludes that critical thinking skills can be enhanced, with remarkable results. (DH)

  17. Assessing Learning in a Sociology Department: What Do Students Say That They Learn?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bandini, Julia; Shostak, Sara; Cunningham, David; Cadge, Wendy

    2016-01-01

    Assessment plays a central role in evaluating and strengthening student learning in higher education, and sociology departments, in particular, have increasingly become interested in engaging in assessment activities to better understand students' learning. This qualitative study builds on previous research on assessment by asking what students in…

  18. Save the World on Your Own Time: Or, What's the Matter with Sociology?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McNall, Scott G.

    2008-01-01

    This essay explores the question of why sociology departments, compared to other university departments, are often viewed negatively by higher-level administrators (deans, provosts, chancellors and presidents). We are asked to consider, as sociologists, how departments are ranked and evaluated by administrators. The characteristics of any good…

  19. Interpretive Excursions in Educational Administration: Reconstructing Weberian Theory as a Comparative Historical Sociology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Samier, Eugenie A.

    1996-01-01

    Examines the presentation of Max Weber's work in educational administration. Shows how the nature and scope of Weber's methodological writings and studies have been misrepresented and how the potential value of Weber's comparative historical sociology has been reduced to administrative studies. Considers Weber's historical principles of…

  20. Trends in Canadian Sociology Master's Theses in Relation to Research Ethics Review, 1995-2004.

    PubMed

    van den Hoonaard, Will C

    2006-12-01

    THIS PAPER EXAMINES TRENDS IN CANADIAN Master's theses in sociology, 1995-2004, in the course the implementation of Canada's national research-ethics guidelines (2001), using data available from ProQuest Dissertations. While there has been no decline in the number of theses completed during this period, nearly 1/4 fewer theses now involve research participants. The proportion of theses using quantitative methods shows decline; theses using qualitative methods, however, have increased significantly over time. A closer inspection qualitative theses shows an impressive increase in the proportion of theses using interviews, while the decrease in theses using field work is even more dramatic, from 40% to 5%. The decrease of theses involving field work is particularly alarming for a significant segment of sociology that must derive its material mainly from field work. Data drawn from a larger study supplement the findings in this article.