Horace Cayton: Reflections on an unfulfilled sociological career

This article examines the abbreviated sociological career of Horace Cayton, the co-author of Black Metropolis and one of the most talented young black sociologists in the 1930s-1940s. In seeking to explain why Cayton failed to continue his promising sociological career, this article focuses on: his feelings of racial alienation; his inability to locate a theoretical paradigm in mainstream sociology through which he could express his anger about American racism; the narrow range of job opportunities open to blacks in sociology; his desire to become a novelist and, thereby, attain the intellectual freedom not afforded by mainstream sociology to protest American race relations; and, finally, his failure to comprehend the psychological perils of assimilation. He is presently doing research on the role of activist churches in Kenyan politics, attitudes toward skin color among African Americans and Africans, and normative accommodations of deviant survival strategies in Kenyan cities.     

What is the Main Significance of Economic for Sociological Theory?

This paper reconsiders classical and neoclassical economics’ significance for or affinity and convergence with sociological theory. The paper identifies certain types or elements of classical and neoclassical economics that are potentially significant or convergent with sociological theory: pure market economics, the economics of society cum the “rational choice model”, and social or sociological economics. First, it argues that as pure economics economic theory’s significance for or affinity and convergence with sociological theory is low because the first is inconsistent with or divergent from the latter, notably theoretical economic sociology. Second, the paper suggests that as the economics of society economic theory’s significance for or affinity and convergence with sociological theory is non-existent or minimal, because the “rational choice model” is missing or an exception within conventional economics. Third, the paper proposes and demonstrates that classical and neoclassical economics’ main significance for or affinity and convergence with sociological theory lies in social economics as its second ingredient, alongside market economics. The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between economic and sociological theory and economics and sociology overall.     

Diversity in America: A sociohistorical analysis

Multiculturalism, while a fairly new term, is not a new social phenomenon despite prevailing beliefs that the United States was culturally homogeneous at its formation. A new concept, the Dillingham Flaw, can explain many misconceptions about the nation's past. Cultural pluralism in the colonial and early national periods was extensive, in many ways surpassing that of the 1990s. Through conceptualization of mainstream/outgroup population proportions and comparative analysis of immigration rates, foreign-born percentages, and racial composition, the diversity of American society is shown to be less today than in past generations. Future projections suggest greater diversity by the mid-21st century, but the nonwhite population has not yet returned to its dimensions of 200 years ago.     

Racial microaggressions: Bridging psychology and sociology and future research considerations

This article reviews racial microaggressions, specifically psychology and sociology's historical trajectory in informing existing literatures and disciplines, in its connections to meso and macro levels of systemic racism. In doing so, we contend that a sociological understanding of racial microaggressions presents opportunities to better understand the cumulative and deleterious effects of racial violence on racialized groups. Furthermore, we argue that beyond bridging the disciplines of psychology and sociology to allow for more interdisciplinary analyses of racial microaggressions will help to move conversations in ways that more meaningfully capture the monstrosity of white supremacy and its cumulative deleterious effects of daily racial terrorism at all levels of society.     

Cosmopolitanism and the relevance of ‘zombie concepts’: the case of anomic suicide amongst Alevi Kurd youth

Against Beck's claims that conventional sociological concepts and categories are zombie categories, this paper argues that Durkheim's theoretical framework in which suicide is a symptom of an anomic state of society can help us understand the diversity of trajectories that transnational migrants follow and that shape their suicide rates within a cosmopolitan society. Drawing on ethnographic data collected on eight suicides and three attempted suicide cases of second‐generation male Alevi Kurdish migrants living in London, this article explains the impact of segmented assimilation/adaptation trajectories on the incidence of suicide and how their membership of a ‘new rainbow underclass’, as a manifestation of cosmopolitan society, is itself an anomic social position with a lack of integration and regulation.     

Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex,Sexuality, and Gender*

Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.     

Theorizing race and settler colonialism within U.S. sociology

Settler colonialism expands race and racism beyond ideological perspectives and reveals the links between historical and contemporary racialized social relations and practices–the racial structure–of American society. In this article, we define settler colonialism, highlight sociological scholarship that uses settler colonial theoretical frameworks, and explore ways in which this work enriches, intersects with, complicates, and contradicts key assumptions within the sociology of race.     

Sociology and the Second Darwinian Revolution: A Metatheoretical Analysis

Sociologists tend to eschew biological explanations of human social behavior. Accordingly, when evolutionary biologists began to apply neo‐Darwinian theory to the study of human social behavior, the reactions of sociologists typically ranged from indifference to overt hostility. Since the mid‐1960s, however, neo‐Darwinian evolutionary theory has stimulated a "second Darwinian revolution" in traditional social scientific conceptions of human nature and social behavior, even while most sociologists remain largely uninformed about neo‐Darwinian theory and research. This article traces sociology's long‐standing isolation from the life sciences, especially evolutionary biology, to divergence in the metatheoretical assumptions that typify conventional sociological thought versus contemporary evolutionary biology. We conclude with a discussion of the recent emergence of a nascent "evolutionary sociology" that integrates sociobiological reasoning with contemporary sociological thought.     

Between the Living and Undead: How Zombie Cinema Reflects the Social Construction of Risk,the Anxious Self,and Disease Pandemic

The zombie film has become an important component of contemporary popular culture. The sociological nature of the themes addressed by these films reflect prominent social concerns, and lend themselves to sociological analysis as texts themselves. This article examines the zombie film genre, its history, predominant themes, and its illustration of sociological dynamics related to identity, collective behavior, disease, contagion, and the privileges that come from social inequality. Particular attention is placed on what the zombie films, themselves, can tell us about society and how they illustrate sociological principles. First, we examine the origins and history of zombie cinema. Next, we move to a discussion of the central narrative devices around which zombie films are organized. In particular, we focus on two narratives in zombie films: those that emphasize zombie possession; and those that focus on the sociological risks of zombie pandemics. The discussion then moves to an analysis of zombies as selves, and how zombie films express cultural anxieties about selfhood, loss of autonomy, and threats of de‐individualization. We then explore the roles of power and privilege in the social epidemiology of zombification, paying particular attention to how those who succumb to zombiedom illustrate the sociological dynamics of health disparities in the real world. Finally, the sociology of infectious disease is used to address how zombiedom correlates with real disease outbreaks, what we know about the social aspects of infectious disease transmission, and the sociology of pandemics.     

Groups and individuals: conformity and diversity in the performance of gendered identities

The nature and role of social groups is a central tension in sociology. On the one hand, the idea of a group enables sociologists to locate and describe individuals in terms of characteristics that are shared with others. On the other, emphasizing the fluidity of categories such as gender or ethnicity undermines their legitimacy as ways of classifying people and, by extension, the legitimacy of categorization as a goal of sociological research. In this paper, we use a new research method known as the Imitation Game to defend the social group as a sociological concept. We show that, despite the diversity of practices that may be consistent with self‐identified membership of a group, there are also shared normative expectations – typically narrower in nature than the diversity displayed by individual group members – that shape the ways in which category membership can be discussed with, and performed to, others. Two claims follow from this. First, the Imitation Game provides a way of simultaneously revealing both the diversity and ‘groupishness’ of social groups. Second, that the social group, in the quasi‐Durkheimian sense of something that transcends the individual, remains an important concept for sociology.     

Perspectives on ethnicity,gender and race and their empirical referents: a four-sided paradigm and critical review

Based on a sample of general textbooks in sociology, this article proposes a heuristic, four-sided paradigm of the extant literature on ethnicity, gender and race and highlights their empirical referents: (1) order–integrative, which emphasizes the progressive adaptation of ethnic and racial groups to a dominant, Anglo-Saxonic, Eurocentric culture; (2) pluralist–multiculturalist, which emphasizes markers of social differentiation between ethnic and racial groups that are compatible with social diversity; (3) power–conflict–stratification, which frames successive generations of minority ethnics in contentious power relations amongst themselves relative to the perceived or actual mainstream white powerbrokers in society; and (4) gender–feminist, which critically analyses the white, male, heterosexual bias and hegemony built into the structures and practices of social institutions and social discourse. The paper concludes by suggesting further research on cross-national perspectives as developed countries become more diverse and, as a result, more culturally divisive.     

Careers and redundancy

Occupational redundancy is affecting a wide range of workers including those with careers. This challenges assumptions of the inviolability of professional careers and views of careers as steady progress. Individuals’experience of redundancy shows that careers can be very disadvantageous for those who have invested in and become committed to them. Recent changes in society thus call for a revision of the existing sociological concept of career and its use in the analysis of social institutions and processes. These issues are examined by reviewing sociological references to, and analyses of, the concept and by studying the effects of redundancy on a particular group of professionals. It is argued that redundancy compels an approach which treats seriously the capacity of‘careers’to inflict psychological and social harm and to involve career holders in political struggle. The concept should retain its place in the sociology of occupations, but to realise its analytical potential, it must be firmly related to political conditions and consequences. This may justify following the commonsense rather than the sociological view and restricting its use to high-status occupations.     

Weaving Sociology into New Zealand Social Work Education

Social work students and practitioners often struggle to apply sociological theories to practice situations. This is made difficult because the application of sociological theory for social work is still a contested area. To assist students and practitioners articulate and explain sociological theory in their social work practice, this paper introduces a practical teaching model—one that is theoretically rich and simple to use. The authors have used this model to teach sociology for first year New Zealand social work students, with pleasing results. Taught in the foundation year of degree study, we show that there is utility for this model throughout social work education, most notably in policy, research and practicum courses. Teaching sociology is not without its challenges, and these are discussed. We argue that this model offers students and practitioners a straightforward ‘nuts and bolts’ method that can easily be drawn on in class and in practice to guide sociological theorising. Further, societal and personal value tensions can be reflectively teased out. Importantly, the model allows for sets of sociological analyses to be rendered explicit for the practitioner, their colleagues and their clients.     

Unlocking the racialized and gendered educational experiences of South Asian females in Hong Kong: the case study of Pakistani girls

Educating South Asians with different language and cultural backgrounds and integrating them into mainstream society have been a challenge for the educational system of Hong Kong. This study documents the educational experiences of a group of Pakistani girls in the contexts of home, community, and school in Hong Kong. Using ethnographic methods, data collection is based on interviews evoking their life stories. These stories recount how Pakistani girls attempt to negotiate with traditional customs, religion and mainstream stereotypes and to construct racialized and gendered schooling experiences. This study highlights the importance of mainstream engagement in regard to critical learning about cultural and linguistic diversity. It is claimed that minorities have an active role as agents in social transformation and change in achieving racial and gender equality, in this case for the most disadvantaged minority females, within the asymmetrical power relationships between local Chinese and South Asian minorities in Hong Kong.     

Sociology and the environment: An analysis of journal coverage

Many sociologists have suggested that the dominant paradigm in sociology ignores the environment, which accounts for the fact that environmental sociology is poorly represented in sociology’s mainstream journals. The purpose of this article is to test this assumption empirically by examining the coverage of environmental sociology in nine mainstream sociology journals from 1969 through 1994. The nine journals are separated into two tiers, representing higher and lower prestige journals. Each environmental article is categorized by its area (attitudes and behaviors, environmental movement, political economy, risk, and “new human ecology”) and whether it involves “sociology of the environmental issues” (the application of standard sociological perspectives to environmental issues) or “core environmental sociology” (the examination of societal-environmental relationships). We find that less than two percent of all articles published in the sampled journals in the twenty-five-year period of study were environmental, and that the higher tier journals were less likely to publish environmental articles than were the lower tier journals. Environmental articles were more likely to be part of “core environmental sociology” after 1981 than they were “sociology of the environmental issues,” which suggests a greater recognition among both environmental sociologists and journal reviewers that human societies are ecosystem-dependent. The number of environmental articles increased in the 1990s, portending a fruitful period for sociologists specializing on the environment. We argue that the broader field of sociology can benefit by recognizing the linkages environmental sociology has to other sociological specializations and that, ultimately, sociology needs to be able to address environmental variables in order to understand society. Naomi T. Krogman’s primary interest is in stakeholder framing of environmental disputes and natural resource policy change. She is currently a research sociologist at the Center for Socioeconomic Research at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and adjunct faculty in the Department of Sociology, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504-0198. JoAnne DeRouen Darlington is a research sociologist focusing on social change and community sustainability emerging from the disastrous interactions between society and the environment. She is currently employed with the Natural Hazards Research Center, Campus Box 482, Boulder, CO 80309.     

Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has been an extraordinarily influential figure in the sociology of music. For over three decades, his concepts have helped to generate both empirical and theoretical interventions in the field of study. His impact on the sociology of music taste, in particular, has been profound, his ideas directly informing our understandings of how musical preferences reflect and reproduce inequalities between social classes. But, recently his legacy has been under question and newer approaches to the music/society problematic have emerged. These have made important claims about the nature of the sociological enterprise when confronted with the specificity of cultural works, as well as how social change impacts on our relations with musical forms. This paper takes stock of the impact of Bourdieu’s ideas on the sociology of music, the debates sparked in their wake and the attempt at something like a “post‐Bourdieusian” sociology more faithful to music’s material properties. It will ask to what extent Bourdieu’s claims about social stratification and music consumption are still relevant and whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with the specific ways that we interact with musical forms.     

Social Problems Awareness Manifested Through Sociological Research,Newspapers, and Creative Literature*

Content analysis of newspaper items, sociological research and sociology course titles, and reviews of novels associated with Chicago, 1910–1930, was used to test several propositions concerning changes in the structural loci, heterogeneity, and amount of social problems awareness in modern society. Although considerable social problems awareness was found to be manifested by newspapers, sociological research, and creative literature, little similarity was found in the types of social problems focused upon. There was no evidence found concerning a shift in such activity from newspapers and creative literature to sociological research, nor was evidence found that would support the proposition that social problems awareness tends to increase significantly in modern society.     

Analyse visuelle e représentation de la réalité

The author's objective is to establish a relationship between the theoretical structure at the basis of a qualitative sociological analysis and the forms of visual representation of social reality, such as photography and social documentaries. Visual material becomes an object of analysis when it refers to a society that talks about itself and when it reproduces a reality which it records and makes nameable. The theme of observation is characterized by a complex activity in which perception, imagination, and representation are different functions from the sociological point of view, yet strongly connected because they make it possible for the researcher to interact visually with social reality. Observation procedures ask sociologists to have an eye capable of recognizing and perceiving in a representative way the experiences they have lived and the social facts they have observed and described. These must be portrayed not only as suggestive visual metaphors, but also as a consequence of ‘sensitive hearing’ which is essential in all research phases, from anthropology to ethnography and sociology.     

On the Contributions of Cognitive Sociology to the Sociological Study of Race

In this article, we argue for cognitive sociology as a framework for studying the sociology of race. Cognitive sociology concerns itself with classification, identity construction, meaning and collective memory and is thus centrally concerned with generic issues that apply well to racial category construction and maintenance. We, first, outline the cognitive sociology framework. We then elaborate on traditions in the sociology of race and racism that have implicit affinities to cognitive sociology. We argue that cognitive sociology provides a useful generic framework with which to look at specific issues in racial classification, the social construction of race, and to racist cognitions, while critical race theory and other sociology of race frameworks can compliment cognitive sociology by addressing issues of power and domination in cognitive frameworks.