Feminism and Imperialism, 1890–1920: Our Anti‐Imperialist Sisters—Missing in Action from American Feminist Sociology*

This article retrieves part of our historical past to address two omissions in American feminist sociology on the subject of global imperialism. The first section addresses the inadequate attention feminist sociologists have paid to how major leaders of the women's movement responded to U.S. overseas expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It documents how these early feminists had both progressive and reactionary responses to the anti‐imperialist struggles of their era. Particular emphasis is given to how issues of race, class, and gender were interwoven in their discourses on imperialism. The second section focuses on how the writings of the most famous woman theorist and critic of imperialism during this era—Rosa Luxemburg—are virtually ignored in U.S. portrayals of feminist sociology and women founders of sociology. To address this omission, Luxemburg's theory of imperialism is examined, as well as how it has influenced contemporary global feminist works. A critical analysis of these Luxemburg‐inspired works considers their implications for understanding global imperialism today. In this way, the past is used to clarify the present.     

Editorial

This introductory article provides an overview and theoretical anchor for the following contributions in this special issue. The article discusses, first, the necessity for introducing a new research paradigm – ‘visual competence’ – in the social sciences (anthropology, communication science, media and social psychology, political science, sociology), arguing that the actual transformations of reality triggered by processes of globalisation and digitisation require a closer scrutiny of the visual. In a second step, the new paradigm ‘visual competence’ is introduced, focusing on four dimensions: visual production, perception, interpretation and reception competencies. A new model, the visual competence cycle, is suggested. The article concludes with a specific application example for studying visual interpretation competence in a case study of the humanising and de‐humanising effects of portraiture.     

Contemporary NGO–Journalist Relations: Reviewing and Evaluating an Emergent Area of Research

Long recognized as key players in international politics, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly assume important roles in the provision of news. By hiring photographers, staffing online departments and funding reporting trips, NGOs act in ways that overlap with the actions of professional journalists. This article reviews and evaluates an emerging area of research – the study of NGO–journalist relations – that analyzes these developments. It proceeds in four parts: First, it overviews changes in the NGO and journalism sectors that drive growing scholarly interest in the topic. Second, it summarizes the findings of the available research. Third, it suggests some of the ways in which this research connects with concerns in the sociology of media and communication. Fourth, it evaluates the findings in light of various normative frameworks of public discourse. It concludes by suggesting that NGO–journalism scholarship can benefit from further attention by sociologists working in the areas of media and communication.     

Interface methods: renegotiating relations between digital social research,STS and sociology

This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that (a) highlights the dynamism and relative under‐determinacy of digital methods, and (b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research – thinking methods as ‘interface methods’ – and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways. First, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or ‘digital analytics’ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific ‘interface method’, namely co‐occurrence analysis. In this digital pilot study we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualize ‘issue dynamics’ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the modification of methods through experimental implementation and interfacing of various methodological traditions. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of ‘interface methods’: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to some of the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its maladjustment to the research methods that are prevalent in the medium.     

Immigrants,Immigration, and Sociology: Reflecting on the State of the Discipline*

The growth of the field of immigration in multiple directions and across disciplines and areas presents an opportune juncture to pause and reflect on the central role sociology has played in the study of immigrants and immigration, as well as to assess the contributions that immigration research has made to sociology. This essay discusses three subfields in sociology in which the sociological study of immigrants has contributed to bring new light to long‐standing questions: family, religion, and ethnic and racial studies. At the same time, it brings up areas – culture and arts, social movements and civic engagement, and citizenship, belonging and the state – in which immigration scholars in sociology could establish a more vibrant intellectual dialog with those subfields. Far from exhausting the discussion, these comments are intended to offer potential avenues for further research and discussion.     

How Not to Establish a Subfield: Media Sociology in the United States

US-American sociology has largely failed to examine the transformation of mediated communication of the past 20 years. If sociology is to be conceived as a general social science concerned with analyzing and critically scrutinizing past, present, and future conditions of collective human existence, this failure, and the ignorance it engenders, is detrimental. This ignorance, we argue, may be traced back to the weak self-identity, institutionalization and position of media sociology in the discipline. Our argument here is threefold: 1) There was an opportunity structure for specialization, that is, a venerable research tradition in media sociology since the first half of the twentieth century. This tradition links back to classics in sociology and peaked at a time (1970s and 1980s) when the discipline differentiated institutionally and many new sections emerged in the American Sociological Association. 2) Despite this tradition, media sociology has not become established in sociology in the United States until recently. 3) Lastly, we locate reasons for non-establishment on three distinct but interconnected levels: the history of ideas in media sociology, institutional/disciplinary history, and disciplinary politics.     

Nativist Cosmopolitans: Institutional Reflexivity and the Decline of "Double-Consciousness" in American Nationalist Thought

Debate in the field of historical sociology on the subject of American citizenship and nationality tends to support one of two theories. The exceptionalist argument holds that American nationalist discourse has historically been based on the universal ideals of liberty enshrined in the Constitution, and has been inclusive in character. Critics contend that this was not the case – arguing that the narrative of American national identity has typically been grounded on exclusive ethno‐cultural criteria like race, religion or language. This essay attempts to demonstrate that the truth encompasses, yet transcends, both positions. This is not because there were conflicting parties in the nineteenth century nationality debate – indeed, there was a great deal of elite consensus as to the meaning of American nationhood prior to the twentieth century which simultaneously affirmed both the universalist and particularist dimension of Americanism. How to explain this apparent contradiction, which Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “double‐consciousness?” This paper suggests that the nineteenth century popularity of dualistic statements of American nationhood, and the eclipse of such conceptions in the twentieth, is a complex sociological phenomenon that can only fully be explained by taking into account the development of institutional reflexivity in the United States.     

Family Processes and Problem Behaviors in Middle‐Class African American Adolescents

This study examined the joint association between mothers’ and adolescents’ ratings of parental behavioral control and adolescents’ and observers’ ratings of mother – adolescent communication with adolescent problem behaviors in a sample of 86 middle‐class African American early adolescent boys and girls (age: M= 13.08 years, SD= 1.32) and their mothers. Consistent with hypotheses, greater adolescent‐rated parental behavioral control and better observer‐rated mother – adolescent communication were associated with lower levels of adolescent problem behavior, as examined using structural equation modeling. Furthermore, interrelationships between age and adolescent problem behavior were partially mediated by adolescents’ reports of parental behavioral control and observers’ ratings of positive mother – adolescent communication, which both decreased with adolescents’ age. Although the sample was primarily middle class, higher socioeconomic status was associated with more positive mother – adolescent communication, as rated by observers. Problem behavior was greater among boys than girls, but the hypothesized indirect effect of gender on problem behavior through associations with parenting was not observed. The findings demonstrate the utility of conceptually distinguishing between parenting and parent – adolescent relationships, and suggest that both have unique influences on middle‐class African American adolescents’ problem behavior.     

Raymond Williams and sociology

The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant – at least in the USA – neo‐Durkeimian school of ‘cultural sociology’. In the second section, his cultural‐materialist programme is proposed as a powerful analytical framework for the study of culture and society today. In the final section, a key concept of Williams's cultural materialism, mobile privatization, is selected illustratively and proposed as a powerful analytical tool for studying the production and technological mediation of typical modes of communicative sociality in the early twenty‐first century.     

Extension and the disposal of the world: Double‐crossing systems,culture, self and language

Long indexed by sociological ideas of structure, the notion of extension is yet disparate and poorly disseminated – as evidenced by popular motifs such as ‘the world is at our disposal’ eschewing notions of emplacement and embeddedness and instead championing choice and individualised agency. On the assumption that this lacunae relates in part to paradigm debates over incommensurability, the proposal in this inaugural lecture is to explore double‐crossing as a methodological device by which to draw insights on extension from major ‘gatherings’ of Euro‐American thought, while respecting the orderings, institutional arrangements, situations and networks each approach imposes. In retracing the ‘disposal’ of the world through four theoretical perspectives germane to sociology – namely systems, culture, self and language – the objective is to illustrate the methodology of double crossing. Drawing on both my work on social and cultural theory and my field studies in market leaders, I first show how moving back and forth between the older and newer ground within each perspective helps to elicit what gets unsighted from either view. Secondly, inasmuch as the usual way of ‘making a clearing’ is argued as caught ‘in reaction’ from extant theory (ending up say talking of parts instead of wholes or consumption in place of production), I advance the methodology of double‐crossing by excavating the recessive arrangements and ordering implicit in each perspective and so illuminate the different ways extension is affected by how world is imagined and experienced.     

Techno‐social Life: The Internet,Digital Technology,and Social Connectedness

This essay explores what it means to be socially connected in a techno‐social world. It describes how a “triple revolution” in social connectedness has been catalyzed by the ever‐increasing use of the Internet, mobile communication, and social media networking (Rainie and Wellman 2012). It argues for the usefulness of the concepts of the community and the network in understanding how social connectedness is created and experienced in the use of digital (computerized) communication technology. It examines some of the consequences – both benefits and hazards – of being near‐continuously available to one another via the Internet, mobile phones, and social media. And it describes how digital (online) and face‐to‐face (offline) spaces become fully integrated and experienced as a single, enmeshed reality. The article concludes that people's use of digital communication technology tends to strengthen social connectedness and prompt, not deter, face‐to‐face interaction and local community ties.     

Community Media Studies: An Overview

This essay provides an overview of the field of community media studies. Like the study of “alternative media,” “citizens' media,” “independent,” and “radical” media – to mention but a few of the terms applied to participatory communication projects – academic inquiry into the structures, forms, and practices of community media has surged in recent years. While scholars often use these labels interchangeably, this essay focuses on academic and practitioner perspectives that explicitly and purposefully employ the term “community media.” The overview identifies and briefly considers three prominent conceptual frameworks – media democratization, civil society, and the symbolic construction of community – which shape and inform this vibrant field of study. This overview concludes with some thoughts on the limits and possibilities of community media theory, and practice, in the new millennium.     

Race for Cures: Rethinking the Racial Logics of ‘Trust’ in Biomedicine

This article examines the normative underpinnings of ‘trust talk’, asking how biomedical discourse constructs racial group boundaries and what implications this has for our understanding of the politics of medicine more broadly. Drawing upon a 2‐year multi‐method study of the world's largest stem cell research initiative and extending key insights from the sociology of race–ethnicity and social studies of science and medicine, this paper identifies three ways in which discourse in the stem cell field constructs racial group boundaries – through diversity outreach, clinical gatekeeping, and charismatic collaborations. In so doing, the paper also explicates counter‐narratives – medical racial profiling, subversive whiteness, and biopolitical minstrelsy – as forms of discursive resistance that challenge the normative underpinnings of recruitment discourse.     

Shame and the city – ‘looting’, emotions and social structure

The sociology of violence is an emerging field but one in which there remains a tension between structural explanations and phenomenological‐situational ones that focus on the micro conditions of violence. This article proposes an analytical framework for connecting these levels through a critical appropriation of Scheff's theory of the shame‐rage cycle. It argues that while shame is a significant condition for violent action, Scheff does not have a theory of violence in itself but treats the connections between shame‐rage and violence as largely self‐evident. While emotions such as shame have agental properties, as Scheff and others argue, these need to be situated within structural and cultural conditions that are likely to evoke shame. Moreover, to develop Scheff's approach further, violence needs to be understood as being communicative and invoking normative justifications, which mediate the effects of shame‐rage. This analysis is developed with reference to recent instances of collective disorder, especially the English riots in August 2011, which is based on published research and media accounts from participants. The acquisition of consumer goods through ‘looting’ was public performance in spaces where a ‘moral holiday’ permitted a brief revaluation of the social order. Through this example the article shows how an underlying configuration of inequality, exclusion and shame coalesced into events in which the violence was a form of performative communication. This articulated ‘ugly feelings’ that invoked normative justification for participation, at least at the time of the disturbances. The discussion provides an integrated account of structural‐emotional conditions for violence combined with the dynamics of situated actions within particular spaces. It aims to do two things – to provide a framework for analysing the structural and affective bases for violence and to offer a nuanced understanding of ‘violence’ with reference to public disorder.     

Class and the Service Encounter: New Approaches to Inequality in the Service Work‐place

In recent decades, scholars of service work have generated many new insights about the organization of work, but in the process one of the traditional concerns of industrial sociology – class – became relatively marginal. However, recent studies of interactive service work have begun to reconceptualize the service encounter as an important site where class‐based entitlements and interactive expectations are created. These analyses attempt to make linkages between the “status” encounters in service interactions and the larger, socio‐economic inequalities associated with class. The renewed interest in class in the (service) workplace may be attributable in part to the growing influence of Bourdieu in North American sociology as well as a burgeoning literature on consumers and consumption, allowing for new approaches that consider service worker‐customer interactions as integral to the construction of classed cultures of consumption and entitlement.     

The last 20 years of visual anthropology – a critical review

This article is a critical review of the last 20 years of the development of visual anthropology in the United States and United Kingdom. It is argued that there are three approaches to the field – visual anthropology as ethnographic film, as the cultural study of pictorial media and as an inclusive anthropology of visual communication. The development and expansion of scholarly journals, training programmes and increasing general acceptance of this branch of cultural anthropology bodes well for the future. The anthropologist as image‐maker and scholar of the visible and pictorial world is becoming increasingly commonplace.     

Women’s sociological research and writing in the AJS in the pre-World War II era

Recent revisionist scholarship on the history of sociology suggests that women scholars in the pre-World War II era made distinctive contributions to the development of the field of sociology. Most research, however, has focused on women prominent in their era, whose works might or might not be typical of all women who published during the same periods. Furthermore, few studies have made explicit comparisons between works by women and by men writing in this same era, so it has been difficult to sort out gender effects from historical era effects. This study explores writings by women and men in the first volumes of the American Journal of Sociology, from 1895 through 1940. As the oldest continuously published sociology journal in the U.S., AJS played a central role in the development of American sociology. We find that women authors were present in AJS from the earliest days, though their share of authorships never was large, and fluctuated year by year. Women’s work was distinctively different from that of men, with more women than men writing empirical, evidence-based articles, focusing on women, children, immigrants, the poor, and other have-not groups, and advocating for social reform. Writings of rank-and-file and prominent women sociologists were similar in methods, content, and form, and their distinctive contributions to sociology paralleled many of the concerns of feminist sociologists today.     

Beyond Denialism: Think Tank Approaches to Climate Change

Sociologists have done important research documenting the key role that think tanks play in the climate change denialism movement in the United States, which has sought to mislead the American public about the realities of global warming. Sociologists have not, however, assessed the full range of ways that think tanks are responding to – or planning for – global environmental change. This article proposes a typology of elite responses to global warming, which goes beyond denialism to include (i) limited climate mitigation, (ii) climate adaptation/privileged accommodation, and (iii) climate opportunism. Ultimately, this article provides insights on ways to build upon previous research in both environmental and political sociology to study the interface between elite‐driven policy, climate change, and capitalism.     

Studying the Sociology of Journalists: The Journalistic Field and the News World

This article makes a case for a socially situated and theoretically sophisticated approach to the sociological study of journalists. This is urgently needed for us to understand the increasingly complex news production environment and the rapidly evolving nature of journalistic practice. Two theoretical approaches to studying the sociology of journalists are outlined and discussed. The first is a development of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory; the second – the ‘news world’ approach – emerges from the social worlds approach commonly associated with Howard S. Becker. Each approach on its own shows considerable promise for the analysis of the increasingly complex news media environment. The article concludes that the journalistic field and the news world approaches could be combined to create a new framework for the sociological study of journalism that would provide a way forward for the important empirical research on journalists that is now needed.     

On the Centrality of Action: Social Science,Historical Logics,and Max Weber's Legacy

This article draws attention to the fundamental centrality of “action” – i.e. symbolically constituted behavior – for the historical and social sciences. The work of Max Weber and contemporary American historian and theorist William H. Sewell, Jr. are examined, so as to shed light on the debate concerning social science's central subject matter as well as on the implications of this work for sociological and historical theory. The examination of Sewell's view leverages the importance of the concept of action underlying Weber's concept of “social action.” Weber's position on action and social action is of great interest not only to general theory but also to the field of cultural sociology, which has neglected to develop systematically upon the theoretical purchase Weber offers to it.