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

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.     

Whose game is it anyway? The cultural analysis of sport and media consumption

This article presents work towards a critical sociology and a cultural analysis of sport, developing as the fullest example an interpretation of shifting patterns of power in English professional football, in the context of wider patterns of sports development and participation. The impact of selected work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (at the University of Birmingham, England) is reviewed, and located with regard to some of its major formative influences and more recent critical responses to the work of the Centre. The application of a critical cultural analysis to a phenomenon such as the Olympic Games is outlined, and the methodological strengths of a critical sociology of consumption as a variant of cultural analysis are used to illuminate recent changes in sports and professional football in England     

Sociological social work: a cartoon

I trace an account of social work—and sociology—that I believe holds a promise for re-forming the relationship between the two. I develop the argument in two ways. First, taking 1920s Chicago as a case study, I will attempt ‘a history of the present’ to suggest how the relationship between sociology and social work came to be as it is. I will suggest that the practice of some (both familiar and forgotten) people in 1920s and 1930s sociology and social work is best explained as a form of ‘sociological social work’. Second, after tracking this genealogy, I suggest an agenda for sociological social work that consists of straining to enact certain kinds of inter-disciplinary relationships, developing methodological social work practice, hearing occasional sociological frontier conversations and shared theorising. I illustrate how these arguments challenge both sociology and social work and both theory and practice.     

Remembering reuel denney: Sociology as cultural studies

Selected writings from Reuel Denney’s work as a social analyst are reviewed in order to establish and highlight his often-overlooked contributions to sociology. Denney’s cultural studies of Americans at play, with specific reference to his writings on the subcultures of football and hot-rodding, and on television and the electronic media, advertising and architecture, are reviewed in examining some major themes emphasized in his sociology. These writings are discussed against the backdrop of Denney’s early life experiences drawn from his autobiography to better enable readers to gain an appreciation of his sociological thinking. The beginnings of a Denney postmodern are sketched as a conclusion to this paper’s major contention that Denney anticipated much of today’s sociology as cultural studies. As one of Reuel’s students, nearly forty years ago, I hope that this article serves not only to highlight Denney’s contributions and place within the discipline of sociology, but also that my personal recollections will serve to reveal the strong attachments we students felt toward him as our teacher, mentor, and friend. nt|mis|His teaching and research combine his interests in higher education and the professions, bureaucracy, social thought, mass media, and popular culture. His most recent book, Schooling As Entertainment: Corporate Education Meets Popular Culture, is available from Cedarreek Press.     

MOB SOCIOLOGY AND ESCALATED FORCE: Sociology's Contribution to Repressive Police Tactics

Mob sociology is a theory of crowd behavior that is found in U.S. police literature and that has been used to design and justify demonstration management practices. Mob sociology is derived from sociological theories about crowd behavior but ignores their originators'assertions that crowds occur within a larger social context. Mob sociology was diffused throughout the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s through a national civil disorder training program and a variety of police manuals and magazines. It is highly compatible with the escalated force style of protest policing and has lost much of its influence since the introduction of negotiated management practices. However, it is still present in police literature and training programs and should be replaced by contemporary social science research and theory.     

The prominence of formal theory in sociology

In sociology, work in formal theory is more extensive and intensive today than at any time in the past, but remains invisible to some, including S. Zhao [(1996) “The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning: The Theory Construction Movement Revisited,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 305–318]. I trace the growth of formal theory in sociology focusing on theoretical research programs and show that, whereas formal theory came after the books on theory construction, it was not based on them. Elementary Theory's research program provides an example of that discontinuity. Some misunderstandings concerning formal theory can be traced to the Maryland Theory Conference of 1990 and a critique of selected ideas of that Conference is offered.     

Between Mechanism Talk And Mechanism Cult: New Emphases in Explanatory Sociology And Empirical Research

The study of mechanisms has received increased attention in recent years and contributed to the formation of so-called ‘analytical sociology’ that has put the idea of social mechanisms at its core. We discuss the crucial characteristics of mechanism-based explanations and their relation to the longstanding tradition of explanatory sociology. Looking at the widespread and growing number of references to ‘mechanisms’ in the current research literature, we identify typical deviations from the ideal of a mechanism-based explanation. Many references come down to mechanism talk insofar as it is not explicated in detail how and why particular inputs tend to result in particular outputs. To this end, researchers have to give a detailed verbal account of how exactly a mechanism is thought to unfold under specified conditions, or to specify a formal generative model which can be analysed analytically or by simulation. This agenda has been at the core of methodological individualism, sociological rational choice theory, and explanatory sociology for some time, but has received a new coat of whitewash by analytical sociology. This more recent theoretical movement offers a fresh problem-centred agenda based on the well-known macro-micro-macro model and could inspire a new generation of research that places greater weight on analysing social dynamics than on developing theories of action. However, we submit that, rather than constituting a competing approach, these impulses should be located within the longstanding and multifaceted explanatory agenda in sociology. Avoiding any form of mechanism cult and choosing from the full toolbox of explanatory/analytical sociology will be crucial to answer key questions in established areas of sociological research.     

Reading European football,critiquing China: Chinese urban middle class fans as reflexive audience

ABSTRACT

This essay explores European football’s cross-cultural appeals in China by focusing on Chinese fans’ active readings of this globalized cultural text. Using analytical tools from both sport sociology and transnational reception studies, I understand Chinese urban middle-class supporters as a reflexive audience whose meaning-making of European football is contextualized in their local urban experience. The in-depth interviewing reveals that these fans’ interpretations of their favourite European football teams as symbols of ‘collective cooperation’ and ‘beautiful football’ produce critical reflections on the discourses of ‘competitive individualism’ and ‘utilitarian commercialism’ which are part of the rising ideology during China’s neoliberal reform. Through the comparison among European football, Chinese football, and popular ‘national’ sports in China, the participants further contest the prevalence of these discourses in China’s broader economic and social arrangements over which they are engaged in constant material struggles. I further discuss how the transnational consumption of European football offers the Chinese urban middle-class a symbolic space to project their reflexivity on the reforming process.     

NARRATIVE'S MOMENT AND SOCIOLOGY'S PHENOMENA: Toward a Narrative Sociology

In its urgency to establish itself as a science, sociology missed the opportunity to nurture its narrative character that the Thomas and Znaniecki research represented. Another moment now exists in an array of contradictions inherent in conventional sociological practices and the increasing acceptance and sophistication of narrative work in the human sciences. These conditions contain the potential for developing a narrative sociology in which sociology's phenomena are seen as significantly constituted by stories and in which sociological work is seen as narrative work. This article examines those conditions for purposes of opening spaces that a narrative sociology might fill.     

Ambivalent Interactionist: Anselm Strauss and the “schools” of Chicago sociology

This article takes up the discussion recently stimulated through the volume, A Second Chicago School? That book’s connecting postwar Chicago sociology with the “Chicago approach” of mainly the 1910s to 1930s is extended, going back as far as the turn of the twentieth century and also forward to the 1990s, with a view endorsing Simmelian interactionism as opposed to Spencerian utilitarianism. Albion Small, first Chairman of the Chicago Department, introduced a Simmelian sociology to the U.S., and the question arises to what extent this legacy is being realized until today. Using Anselm Strauss as a case in point, the article has two main parts. Part One recapitulates various attempts at understanding the phases and realms of Chicago sociology. The focus is not only on the various “Chicago Schools” that may be separated, but also the differences in the work of three scholars who often are grouped together under the label of Chicago, namely Herbert Blumer, Robert Park, and Everett Hughes. Part Two recollects Strauss’s intellectual biography, as life of a scholar determined to make a contribution to modern sociology, in the name of “Chicago interactionism.” Strauss’s work, however, came to endorse Spencerian-type utilitarianism more than Simmelian-type interactionism from the middle 1960s onwards—thereby joining in with anti-structural functionalism tendencies in American sociology.     

A Sociology of the Periphery Versus a Peripheral Sociology: Rural Sociology and the Dimension of Space1

Abstract Rural sociology is intrinsically concerned with the spatial dimensions of social life. However, this underlying research tradition, particularly the use of space as a research strategy, has been insufficiently addressed and its contributions to general sociology are little recognized. I outline how concern with space, uneven development, and the social relationships of peripheral settings have provided substantive boundary and conceptual meaning to rural sociology, propelled its evolution, and left it with a legacy of strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. A willingness to tackle the dimension of space and the thorny problems it raises often sets rural sociologists apart from other sociologists. This research tradition contrasted with general sociology's concern with developing generalization, aspatial covering laws, and proto-typical relationships of modern or Fordist development settings. Conceptual openings have left sociologists questioning their past agenda. Coupled with the “creative marginality” inherent in the questions and contexts addressed by rural sociologists, this makes the subfield central to contemporary sociology.     

A view from above: The evolving sociological landscape

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology’s position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks.     

A Feminist Trade Union Agenda? The Continued Significance of Class,Gender and Race

During the 1990s attempts to identify a feminist trade union agenda have focused on both the content and process of such a potential agenda. In a period in which trade unions have changed significantly, the general national agenda appears to be changing, acknowledging issues of importance to women. UNISON, Britain's largest trade union, has enshrined proportionality and fair representation in its constitution, developing national initiatives aimed at improving opportunities in work and in the union for women, black workers, manual workers, disabled workers, etc. who traditionally have been less well represented. Many issues affecting women generally have moved to centre stage, yet issues affecting women ancillary workers seem as excluded as ever. Through a study of cleaners in the National Health Service this article argues that workplace interests reflect wider social divisions, but in a variety of patterns depending on the social organization of work. Despite thewidening trade union agenda, particular interests — more specifically the workplace interests of working‐class women and black women — continue to be neglected.     

Crowd Control at English Football Matches

Abstract

This study examines the crowd control techniques of English police at football (soccer) matches. Data were gathered using participant observation procedures at football matches in the Midlands of England. The study concluded that English police are effective in nonlethal crowd control because they have subtle techniques which allows effective and quick responses to the changing dynamics of football crowds.     

Reflections on Public Sociology: Public Relations, Disciplinary Identity, and the Strong Program in Professional Sociology

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a "sociology for publics" instead of a "sociology of publics" imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas' attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology.     

New Donor Strategies: Implications for NGOs in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the changes that have taken place since the mid-2000s in the donor agenda in Kyrgyzstan, and what implications these changes have had for Kyrgyzstani NGOs. It uses two-stage longitudinal research. The findings reveal that donors changed their priorities after the mid-2000s by closing the civil society building programmes and grants they initiated in the 1990s. Donors now prioritize promoting NGOs in advocacy roles for policy reform. Interviewed NGOs reported that donor grants had decreased, aggravating the existing competition for donor funding among NGOs. This article suggests that as a result of these changes NGOs that are organizationally and professionally stronger are in a better position to obtain funding and, thus, continue their work. The research findings also indicate that some NGOs expanded their funding sources between 2008 and 2016.     

Envisioning a feminist urban ethnography: Structure,culture, and new directions in poverty studies

A “risk” discourse, characterized by the focus on behaviors of the economically marginalized especially as it relates to drugs, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood, has traditionally dominated poverty research in the United States. More recently, this hegemonic risk discourse has become contoured by the so‐called new cultural turn in urban poverty studies, which has been marked as a departure from the earlier “blame the victim” perspectives. In this article, we review the role of urban ethnographers in shaping the structure versus culture debate in the sociology of poverty sub‐discipline. We then point to a scant, but growing, body of work that is encouraging urban ethnographers engaged in poverty research to expand their vision. To conclude, we contend that this new direction can be conceptualized as a feminist urban ethnography frame that advocates for transformation of the poverty research agenda.     

Science and neoliberal globalization: a political sociological approach

The political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. In this article, we examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science. To do so, we develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology and that draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence amid several countervailing processes. Specifically, we explore three fundamental changes since the 1970s: the advent of the knowledge economy and the increasing interchange between academic and industrial research and development signified by academic capitalism and asymmetric convergence; the increasing prominence of science-based regulation of technology in global trade liberalization, marked by the heightened role of international organizations and the convergence of scientism and neoliberalism; and the epistemic modernization of the relationship between scientists and publics, represented by the proliferation of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization.     

Sociological Conceptualisations of ‘Career’: A Review and Reorientation

In the last decades, the use and meaning of the concept of career has profoundly changed, shaped by a ‘new career’ literature rhetoric and a move away from mainstream sociological debate. Our aim in this article is to provide a critical assessment of the concept, and to make a productive contribution to the current debate on careers, and work more generally. Specifically, we seek to: (i) critique the lack of elaboration of the concept within the discipline of sociology in recent years; (ii) reposition the concept of careers as a key sociological category; and (iii) assess and reorient the current meanings of career. After tracing the history of career from linear to boundaryless, we situate the concept in a broader sociological understanding of gender and habitus and structure and agency, and through a methodological discussion of narrative approaches for studying careers. These concepts and approaches are especially effective for understanding careers. Having showed the added value of the concept of career for sociology, we conclude with a research agenda which attempts to overcome the voluntaristic pitfall of its use in recent years and opens up a more thoughtful and articulated understanding of careers for both teaching and research.     

The sexual in Chinese sociology: homosexuality studies in contemporary China

Through a meta‐literature review, this paper examines the changing contours of Chinese sociology of homosexuality in contemporary China. It unfolds the different theoretical orientations and methodologies that construct the modern male homosexual subject under major socio‐economic and political changes. Chinese sociology of homosexuality started in the reform era and has been dominated by Western knowledge production and the political ideology of the communist party‐state. Fused with the bio‐medical model and the state's modernization project in the 1980s–1990s, the sociological study adopted a functionalist and positivistic approach with survey‐based methodology in the main which focused on the etiology of homosexuality. A new transnational knowledge production of sociology of homosexuality has formed since the 2000s which has shifted towards a constructivist/ post‐structuralist approach and reflexive qualitative methodology. The new sociological study examines the rise of male (as well as female) homosexual identity in China, questions the hetero/homosexual binary and discusses how an individual makes sense of homosexual identity to form same‐sex intimate relationships. By tracing the epistemology of homosexuality in contemporary China, this paper rethinks the dominance of the Western construction and the role of the state in shaping the knowledge of homosexuality and proposes alternative spaces for theorizing Chinese sexual identities, desires and practices.