More than just a product: Strengthening literature in sociological analysis

Contemporary sociology of literature is predominantly shaped by the research of literary production, which approaches literary works as black boxes and subordinates them to social interactions and institutions. Even sociologists who recognize usefulness of literature for its inner quality often look at literary texts as mere passive objects to be translated into sociological discourse. In proposing a new sociology of literature, I first briefly outline the history of sociological studies of literature; second, I introduce “the state of the art” in the sociology of literature; third, I explore the relationship between sociology and literature in more general terms; and lastly, I discuss approaches and ideas with the potential to become components of a new research program, which would be a powerful alternative to the mainstream paradigms in sociological studies of literature. Such a program would make it clear that sociology can greatly benefit from cooperation with literature when sociologists are sensitive to the subtleties and (especially aesthetic) specificities of literary works.     

A (Pragmatic) Defense of (Some) Science

In this commentary, a response to MacKendrick (2017), I examine the dilemma that recent science activism poses for sociologists of science. How can we maintain their critical integrity while condemning the anti‐science actions of the Trump administration? I propose that sociologists of science engage in two exercises to marshal a qualified defense of science. First, we should unpack what we might mean by the “science” we wish to defend. Then, we should begin to articulate grounds for defending that science commensurate with the urgency of the moment. I draw inspiration from American pragmatist philosophy to develop one such defense.     

THE HYBRID CRITICISM OF PATRIARCHY: Rereading Kate Millett's Sexual Politics

While much might be said about the exclusion of feminist texts from the canon of sociological classics, I instead want to offer a rereading of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics to show how the development of feminist theory has depended on rereading disciplinary canons, thereby re-opening the borders between the disciplines, especially the border between literary criticism and social science. At a time when sociologists are participating in or at least attending to the debates over the relationship of fantasy and reality, fiction and history, polemic and academic discourse, rereading Sexual Politics offers an understanding of how these debates have arisen in relationship to feminist theory's ongoing challenge to the canonical distinction of social science from literary criticism. Thus, rather than press for the canonization of Sexual Politics as a sociological classic, I want to suggest that feminist theorizing needs to sustain itself as a social criticism that includes a transdisciplinary criticism of canonicity.     

A Sociological Overview of Cortisol as a Biomarker of Response to the Social Environment

Cortisol is a stress hormone that is reactive to social stress and thus should be of use to sociologists interested in understanding specific processes related to the broad category of “threats to the social self”. In this paper I use cortisol as a case study to explore the utility of biomarkers for elucidating the relationship between the social environment and human biology. I focus on cortisol because it is a stress hormone that reacts in particular to social stress, and therefore could be of special interest to sociologists. I first discuss the relationship between the social environment and cortisol response. Then I briefly review sociological literature that uses cortisol as a measure. Finally, I provide an overview of how to use cortisol in research projects. This overview addresses some of the basic questions that are typically asked by social scientists who are considering taking cortisol measures in their own work.     

Maintenance work: Interrogating the sociology of art

The following article explores the different ways art sociologists investigate art that is based in the participatory arts. The aim is to shift the empirical focus to the art practice, which speaks for itself, and to place the work of the artist and all who cooperate or collaborate in the making of the artwork at the center of sociological analysis. By allowing the artist to speak fully about their work, art sociologists can uncover new social and cultural phenomena and better understand the different motivations underlying art-making. The following literature highlights the recent tendencies in the sociology of art, explores the “social turn” in art and presents different sociologists who focus on the art practice and the art’s voice. For further development of the field, I suggest the sociology of art needs to catch-up with the recent tendencies in art by placing the empirical focus on participatory art practices that will not only give us a better understanding about the intricate actions taking place in the art making, but it will also illuminate new layers of social life that are hidden. To conclude, I suggest that sociologists engage with participatory-based artists to enhance sociology through a public sociology of art.     

U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

The 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq had profound consequences for the people living in that nation. In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the dramatic changes that transpired in Iraq due to the war. I then move on to highlight the contributions U.S. sociologists have made in studies regarding the conflict, based on a review of articles published from 2003–2016 in ten generalist U.S.‐based journals. My review shows that while U.S. sociology has made significant contributions to further collective knowledge about American aspects of the Iraq War, U.S. sociologists have paid very little attention to the actual impacts of the invasion and occupation on Iraqi social organizations, Iraqi culture, and on the lives of individual Iraqis. I make the case that these historically significant events deserve more scholarly attention than they have been given so far. I further argue that U.S. sociologists have a special responsibility to document, study, and explain the consequences of their government's behavior when it causes extensive harm to people living in another land.     

Berle and Means revisited: The governance and power of large U.S. corporations

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), Berle and Means warned of the concentration of economic power brought on by the rise of the large corporation and the emergence of a powerful class of professional managers, insulated from the pressure not only of stockholders, but of the larger public as well. In the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Berle and Means warned that the ascendance of management control and unchecked corporate power had potentially serious consequences for the democratic character of the United States. Social scientists who drew on Berle and Means in subsequent decades presented a far more benign interpretation of the rise of managerialism, however. For them, the separation of ownership from control actually led to an increased level of democratization in the society as a whole. Beginning in the late 1960s, sociologists and other social scientists rekindled the debate over ownership and control, culminating in a series of rigorous empirical studies on the nature of corporate power in American society. In recent years, however, sociologists have largely abandoned the topic, ceding it to finance economists, legal scholars, and corporate strategy researchers. In this article, I provide a brief history of the sociological and finance/legal/strategy debates over corporate ownership and control. I discuss some of the similarities between the two streams of thought, and I discuss the reasons that the issue was of such significance sociologically. I then argue that by neglecting this topic in recent years, sociologists have failed to contribute to an understanding of some of the key issues in contemporary business behavior. I provide brief reviews of four loosely developed current perspectives and then present an argument of my own about the changing nature of the U.S. corporate elite over the past three decades. I conclude with a call for sociologists to refocus their attention on an issue that, however fruitfully handled by scholars in other fields, cries out for sociological analysis.     

INTERPRETING THE SOCIOLOGICAL CLASSICS: CAN THERE BE A “TRUE” MEANING OF MEAD?

Many sociologists have tried in vain to find the “true” meaning of the classic works in the discipline. An interactionist perspective suggests that this search is not a valid one for sociologists, especially symbolic interactionists. Although there can be no “true” meaning, some authors use conventions of writing that make their work more or less clear. Using Mead's Mind, Self and Society as an example, we discuss the dimensions of clarity. We then argue that the sociological classics should be read to (I) simulate new theories and research (pragmatic analysis), (2) determine how sociologists have used that classic to support or refute particular theories or perspectives (rhetorical analysis), and (3) provide information about the sociological concerns of the author and his/her contemporaries (historical analysis).     

Gangs,identity, and cultural performance

Although the notion of identity has received substantial attention from sociologists and psychologists, it has not been well developed in the gang literature. Identity accounts for a person's sense of self, which is based on meaningful social interactions and group participation, and becomes a source for publicly performing social roles. Gang membership is one such role that merits significant attention, and existing theories about identity and role performance can help explain variations in criminal behavior among members. This article applies multiple perspectives on social, personal, and collective identity to gangs and gang members. It offers principles to explain how gang identities fuel social performances that mimic, induce, or involve criminal behavior.     

Memoirs of Gay Militancy: A Methodological Challenge

Biographical and autobiographical material has long been used by sociologists. What are the specific epistemological and methodological challenges of using memoirs of militancy for social movement sociology? This article analyses four memoirs by militants of the gay movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. To understand the validity of memoirs of militancy as sociological sources, it highlights their constructedness as narrative artefacts: as retrospective discourses on an individual's past, memoirs allow for the self-reflexive deployment of their authors' subjectivity. Their narrativeness is a key to understanding how their narrative voice reflects the very agency that animates mobilizations. Memoirs of militancy are thus an invitation for sociologists to turn to literary and rhetorical scholarship for adequate methodological tools.     

Can there be a sociological concept of interest?

This article raises the question of whether it is possible to have not only an economic concept of interest but also a sociological one, and, if so, what such a concept would be like. By way of an answer, the history of how sociologists have tried to use the concept of interest in their analyses is traced, starting with Gustav Ratzenhofer in the 1890s and ending with Pierre Bourdieu and John Meyer today. This focus on what sociologists have to say about interest represents a novelty as the conventional histories of this concept pass over the contribution by sociologists in total silence. The various attempts by sociologists to use the concept of interest are divided into two main categories: when interest is seen as the driving force in social life, and when interest is seen as a major force in social life, together with other factors. I also discuss the argument by some sociologists that interest is of little or no importance in social life. The different strategies for how to handle the concept of interest in a sociological analysis are discussed in the concluding remarks, where it is argued (following Weber and Bourdieu) that interests can usefully be understood to play an important role in social life, but together with other factors.     

Can sociology be a science?: The issue of gender and sex-dimorphic characteristics

In spite of the fact that much of the work done by sociologists is of high quality, there appears to be a pervasive sense among sociologists that as a field sociology is not developing an accumulating base of knowledge that involves a combination of theory and empirical “facts.” Social constructs are a basic component of most human behavior, and such behaviors cannot be understood without attention to the nature of those social constructs. However, humans are also biological beings, their biological attributes are relatively stable, and variations in these attributes often have a strong effect on behavior. It is also the case that what persons experience and how they behave has an effect on their biological attributes. We suggest that if sociologists were attentive to the interactions of biological attributes and social constructs, sociologists would be in a position to develop a constantly expanding base of scientific social knowledge. As an illustrative example, we have focused on the issue of how gender and sex-dimorphic characteristics are intrinsically interrelated.     

The theoretical costs of ignoring childhood: rethinking independence, insecurity, and inequality

Childhood scholars have found that age inequality can be as profound an axis of meaningful difference as race, gender, or class, and yet the impact of this understanding has not permeated the discipline of sociology as a whole. This is one particularly stark example of the central argument of this article: despite decades of empirical and theoretical work by scholars in “the social studies of childhood,” sociologists in general have not incorporated the central contributions of this subfield: that children are active social agents (not passive), knowing actors strategizing within their constraints (not innocent), with their capacities and challenges shaped by their contexts (not universally the same). I contend that mainstream sociology’s relative imperviousness has led to theoretical costs for both childhood scholars—who must re-assert and re-prove the core insights of the field—and sociologists in general. Using three core theoretical debates in the larger discipline—about independence, insecurity, and inequality—I argue that children’s perspectives can help scholars ask new questions, render the invisible visible, and break through theoretical logjams. Thus would further research utilizing children’s perspectives and the dynamics of age extend the explanatory power of social theory.     

Power Mapping: Enhancing Sociological Knowledge by Developing Generalizable Analytical Public Tools

In this article, I argue for and illustrate ‘power mapping’ as a concrete research approach that can benefit specific publics while enhancing professional sociological knowledge and theory. I present power mapping as an example of a more broad approach to public sociology which seeks to harness sociological theory and knowledge in order to create generalizable analytical tools that social movements, policy makers, concerned citizens, voluntary associations, and community organizations can use to develop their own strategic assessments of the sociological contexts in which they act. One of the ironies of the current discussion of public sociology is that it has been conducted in an abstract, hyper-theoretical discourse which is precisely one of the factors that has disconnected so much sociology from general publics. In this article, I instead turn towards presenting a specific concrete research strategy which could engender mutually beneficial research collaboration and dialogue between sociologists and specific publics.     

Organizational theory in political sociology

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be productively extended in various ways in scholarship on states, political parties, advocacy organizations, and business influences in politics. I highlight the genealogy of the new institutionalism and its variants (World Polity and institutional logics), population ecology (and the growing interest in both categories and audiences, alongside studies of the “ecology of ideology”), and research that follows in the broad tradition of resource dependence theory (and the link to more management-oriented approaches such as “non-market strategy” and stakeholder theories of organizational political activities). I also emphasize how novel theories of social movements and fields have offered innovative insights that incorporate organizational and political processes. I conclude by elaborating an agenda for how political sociologists can go further in maintaining and extending their highly productive and rewarding engagements with organizational theory.     

The sociology of intellectuals in the 20th and 21st century

Sociologists have treated intellectuals and their ideas for a long time as mere products of external social structures. Recently, however, researchers shifted their focus to cultural explanations, appreciating more fully the role cultural structures play in shaping their biographical trajectories and success. At the same time, I argue that these theories do not fully integrate the insight of performance theories and focus usually on textual self‐presentation of intellectuals. Although such an approach is valuable, I propose that sociologists should pay attention also to the processes of meaning‐making that make up intellectual appeal on stage. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the sociology of intellectuals has been for too long obsessed with questions of success and prestige, and I propose that sociologists should shift their attention to the underappreciated and marginalised among intellectuals.     

Aging and the course of desire

The desire to make a difference in the world, to receive the esteem and approval of others, and to be attractive to others for the person one is, is a basic human longing. The fate of such desire over the course of life is a subject that has largely been relegated to studies of changing patterns of sexual activity with advancing age. The broader topic of the human desire to remain actively engaged in the world has yet to be fully developed and incorporated within sociological theories of aging. We know little of the variables that affect the workings of desire and the circumstances under which desire is more or less likely to be manifest. Due to its reluctance to bridge the disciplinary boundaries that separate structural and social psychological approaches to theorizing age, sociologists of aging and the life course have rarely considered the ways in which human desire for recognition, love, and influence affect behavior at various points in the life course. In this paper, I address the problem of the social breakdown syndrome that is thought to bring about an atrophy in the skills and talents of those in old age. With concepts drawn from the dramaturgical literature in sociology, I argue that those who continue to benefit from the emotional energy that derives from satisfying and productive social interactions will age in ways that cannot be explained by existing sociological theories of aging.     

“Can/Should/Does One Size Fit All? Does the Pacific Sociological Association Still Meet the Needs of Faculty Members at PhD-Granting Institutions?”

This article addresses the concern expressed by many within the Pacific Sociological Association in recent years that their regional organization is increasingly seen by Research I University sociologists as no longer meeting their professional needs, thus leading to (a) decreasing rates of membership and participation within, (b) a decline in the amount of high quality professional work associated with, and (c) a diminishment of the professional status of, the PSA. Using data gained from a membership survey of sociologists at the 29 Research I Universities in the Western Region of the United States and Canada, the empirical basis of these claims is examined, and their possible implications explored. The results of this investigation suggest that although PSA membership among faculty members at PhD-granting institutions may have declined somewhat over time, this has occurred for a number of very comprehendible reasons, some associated with but others external to the Pacific Sociological Association as a professional organization. In light of these findings, it is the main recommendation of this paper that the PSA should continue to approach this issue in a careful and reasoned manner, doing what it reasonably can to try to meet the professional needs of Research I University sociologists in the 21st century, but being mindful not to jeopardize what has made the PSA important and attractive to its growing number of other constituencies in recent years.     

Understanding Race and Ethnicity in Rural America1

Abstract Rural sociologists have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the race and ethnic relations literature by focusing on the unique social position of minority communities in rural areas. Reservations, colonias, and rural African-Americans in the South are located in close proximity to the historic institutions established for their exploitation and oppression—slavery, for example. As such, these communities represent a legacy from which much can be learned. The potential impact of this work is readily seen in the context of the past contributions of rural sociologists. This discussion concludes with a review of the work of scholars studying race and ethnicity in rural areas in the early, middle, and later years of the discipline of rural sociology.     

When Robert E. Park was (Re) writing “the city”: Biography,the social survey,and the science of sociology

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's “The City,” the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. “The City” was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence onhis 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in “The City” can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of “The City” in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on the first draft of the paper, Lawrence T. Nichols for his kindly editorial guidence, and Jacques Marquet and Felice Dassetto for their marerial support.