Using humanist sociology in the classroom

This essay examines the nature, organization, and activities of humanist sociology from an interventionist perspective as I used it within my sociology and criminology classes. While sociological humanism stresses the role of human agency (Ballard 1987; Zald 1991), identity (Stone 1988), reflexivity (Friedrichs 1987; Homan 1986), and social structure in determining and defining a social activity such as teaching, standard discussions of sociological humanism neglect to discuss how social agency can be taught in the classroom and beyond (McClung Lee 1976, 1988). My argument is that sociological humanism should be understood as more than individual appreciation of identity or liberal reformist political perspectives. The future of sociological humanism must become part of a critical interventionism to attack social forms of domination and oppression both inside and outside of the classroom. I demonstrate how some of this can be accomplished while examining my own teaching practices. Assistant professor of sociology at the University of Dayton and also an affiliate of their Criminal Justice Studies Program.     

Historical approach to environmental sociology

Focusing on the problem of the so‐called exploitative or pillage economy (Raubwirtschaft in German), the article explores the potential and the limitations of sociology as a method of environmental research. The term ‘exploitative economy’ designates the over‐exploitation of nature and natural resources by industrial societies, in disregard of the interests of future life and future needs. Traditional sociology has responded inadequately to environmental problems, and attempts to develop a new, environmental sociology have remained sporadic and marginal. The present article has addressed the problem of exploitative economy in the context of the tradition of historical sociology and suggested that this tradition would gain from environmental sociology, environmental history, and institutional environmental economics, with their new views of economic and industrial development.     

The family and family sociology in Japan

The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the history and current status of family sociology in Japan. A brief history of the Japanese family, which was institutionalized by the Meiji government in the latter half of the nineteenth century, will be offered. The institutional family is referred to as ie in Japanese. Before the end of the Second World War, Japanese scholars were unable to discuss the ie institution freely as a sociological issue. Objective analysis of the family as a social group began in earnest after the war, when the ie institution was abolished as part of the process of amending the civil law. In the postwar period, a time of great economic activity, the family developed from the traditional patrilineal stem-family system into the conjugal or nuclear family system. Today, however, influenced by the feminist movement and other changes in the goals and expectations of the younger generation, family sociology is beginning to concern itself with the family not simply as a group, but as a lifestyle in which the aspirations of the various family members can be effectively realized.     

Japanese urban sociology: Development and current trends

This article focuses on current trends in Japanese urban sociology as they developed historically. They can be understood in the distinctive context of Japanese sociology, as the products of an interaction between Western sociological theories and their adaptation to Japan’s own materials. The article begins with the historical context of urban development and provides an overview of the development of urban studies in Japan, including issues in the theory of urbanization, the distinctive character of the neighborhood association, Cbonaikai, and the formation of new local communities in suburban areas. The current trends since the 1980s involve the macro approach to urban restructuring, studies on urban ethnicity, and social network analysis. Overall, it is suggested that the influence of American sociology makes Japanese urban analysis comparative. I thank Claude S. Fischer and Tazuko Hanzawa for their help with editing this paper. Remain-ing deficiencies are mine.     

Castells' Catalan routes: nationalism and the sociology of identity

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

Theorizing transnational labour markets: a research heuristic based on the new economic sociology

In this article, I suggest that transnational labour markets are characterized by their multi‐layered embeddedness, not only in national but also in transnational institutional settings. Hence, the national institutional factors formerly at the centre of sociological labour market theories insufficiently explain the newly emerging transnational labour markets. To account for the full complexity and institutional context of the latter, I propose an inductive theoretical approach to transnational labour markets and develop a research heuristic to instruct empirical studies about particular transnational labour markets and inductive theory building. This heuristic draws on analytical categories as developed by the new economic sociology of markets. The empirical example of the transnational labour market that matches eastern European workers to jobs in the German meat industry serves to illustrate how one can use this heuristic, which reveals some preliminary features of transnational labour markets compared with national ones, as well as some research gaps to be addressed by future studies.     

Victor Branford and the building of British sociology

Victor Branford was a central figure in the institutional development of British sociology in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. He is, however, a neglected figure and little is known about his life and his work in sociology. This article presents a biographical account of Victor Branford and outlines his sociological ideas. Particular attention is given to the part played by Branford and his second wife, Sybella Gurney, in the establishment of the Sociological Society and The Sociological Review. Writing between 1903 and 1930, he set out a distinctive view of the nature of sociology and an account of modernity, which he saw as underpinning a conception of a third way in politics that goes beyond capitalism and socialism. He tied this view, set out in the years after the First World War, to a conception of the public role of sociology in which the sociologist was to be a leading element in the building of social citizenship through social reconstruction.     

Must sociology be qualitative?

This article addresses the question of whether sociology can in principle become a quantitative science. I distinguish several senses in which a contrast between quantitative and qualitative science might be understood. I focus on the central — and traditional — sense: can sociology become a nomological science, in the way physics is? I argue that it cannot, on the ontological ground that the determinants of human actions cannot be analyzed in purely causal terms. In the article I try to characterize this difference.     

Abandoned not: media sociology as a networked transfield

ABSTRACT

The relationship between the disciplines of communication and sociology has been primarily described as being abandoned by sociologists. This article historicizes the alleged sociological abandonment of communication and media research and centers on media sociology as the key manifestation of an ongoing vibrant relationship between the two disciplines. It has two goals. First, I examine the contours of the abandonment notion since Berelson vs. Schramm, Riesman, and Bauer in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1959. I demonstrate the diversity and the depth of media sociology and argue that an US-centric positivist understanding of media sociology has led to the exaggerated and misleading notion of abandonment, which homogenizes theoretical discourse and discounts scholarly contributions from outside of the US. Personal and collective memories have also documented institutional and organizational growth of media sociology. Second, I propose to conceptualize media sociology as a networked transfield driven by questions transcending disciplinary little boxes. Rather than returning to the Lazarsfeldian media effect paradigm, media sociology as a networked transfield driven by questions will allows scholars take advantage of structural holes for synthesis and innovation.     

Economic sociology as disequilibrium economics: a contribution to the critique of the new economic sociology

This paper analyses the problem of the asocial view of the market at the theoretical core of contemporary economic sociology. Despite much emphasis on the apparent interpenetration of society and the economy, contemporary economic sociology is rooted in an analytical distinction between the two spheres. The implicit reliance on the neoclassical economic conception of the market helps to explain why the ‘new economic sociology’ often collapses into disequilibrium economics, where disequilibrium becomes the central but unstated prediction of a good deal of the work in the paradigm. Using a sample of contributions from the field, I demonstrate that a strong tendency running through much of the new economic sociology tends to understand society as a fundamentally distortionary force. To resolve this problem, I argue that an independent field of economic sociology necessitates a distinction between social relationships and social relations.     

Theorizing theory: Invitation to a broader conversation about ‘theory’ in sociology

‘Theory’ is a seminal term in sociology. Sociologists tend to ask that articles, chapters and monographs are ‘theoretical’, ‘develop theory’ or ‘make a theoretical contribution’. Yet, as demonstrated in Gabriel Abend’s 2008 article ‘The Meaning of ‘Theory’, it is generally unclear what sociologists mean when they talk about theory. Abend distinguishes seven different meanings sociologists tend to impute to ‘theory’ and argues that no single definition can usefully capture these substantively different meanings. Counter to Abend, we propose and defend a minimal and versatile theory of theory, which does capture the important common denominators in sociologists' various uses of the term theory. The major strengths of our proposal are that it enables informed and synthetic discussion and fosters reflexivity about differences and similarities between different types of theory. Our minimal theory of theory thus serves as an invitation to a broader conversation about theory in sociology.     

The idea of philosophical sociology

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

Intervention sociology: history and foundations

Our intention is to state the main characteristics of intervention sociology, from its origins, the beginnings of which can be situated in Frédéric Le Play's monographic work carried out 150 years ago, to its present forms. Rather seldom mentioned in sociological literature or if so in the course of a paragraph or in methodological appendixes, intervention sociology, although widely practised outside the academic field, today still lacks legibility and institutional recognition. By proposing a thorough reading of the main theories and conceptions developed during the past two centuries, our article aims at explaining, through the sociological prism, the fundamental concepts of intervention sociology.     

Towards an immature sociology

Sociological theory displays a tendency to depict the social world in terms of completed ‘beings’. The social, thus depicted, is a world of powers to ‘finish’(such as the power granted to convention to provide for social order), and finished products (such as agents and ethical points-of-view). As sociologists of childhood have attempted to bring children into sociological focus in their own right, the disciplinary concern with the ‘complete’ has required that children be attributed the properties assumed more normally to belong to adults. The sociology of childhood has thus preserved the privilege of the complete and the mature over the incomplete and the immature. In this paper the key sociological issues of convention, agency and ethics are given a theoretical interpretation that makes them fit for understanding childhood. The ability of convention to complete social order is questioned. Agency is portrayed as the emergent property of networks of dependency rather than the possession of individuals. An alternative to the ethics of ‘positions’ is offered in the form of an ethics of ‘motion’. Where extant sociologies of childhood have brought children into the ‘finished’ world of sociological theory, this paper uses childhood's ontological ambiguity to open the door onto an unfinished social world.     

The sociology of Catholicism: A review of research and scholarship

This article seeks to review recent research and scholarship in the sociology of Catholicism, as well as focusing on areas needing greater attention. In taking stock of this literature, I identify institutional change, church-society interactions, institutional resources and influence, and the church as international actor as four key topics that have engaged scholarship. I review existing research under each, as well as highlighting gaps and blind spots that invite further inquiry of this specific religious group.     

Towards a more pragmatic sociology of markets

A satisfactory sociology of markets requires that both order and disorder in markets be addressed, yet sociologists have seemed more concerned with theorizing market stability and order. Change, however, is too fundamental a part of markets to receive so little sociological attention. One perspective that provides a fertile ground for moving ahead with developing an agenda for studying both stability and change in markets is American pragmatist social theory. This article therefore examines the influence of a pragmatist viewpoint on two broad modern theoretical approaches that have implications for the sociology of markets, one focused on stabilization processes, the other on institutional designs for promoting change. Most particularly, it draws on work carried out from a pragmatist viewpoint and illustrates a pragmatic approach to change in markets using the case of the EU’s Forest, Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan and initiative.     

Reflexivity,recursion and social life: elements for a postmodern sociology

The paper examines, and seeks to develop, the sociological concept of reflexivity. It identifies two senses of reflexivity, one associated with ethnomethodological accounts of members’practical reasoning, the other with a more philosophical sense of conscious self-referencing, and analyses their relationship. The paper argues that the development of this form of analysis leads to a form of propositional undecidability which makes it typically ‘postmodern’. The development is linked to ideas of recursion, as these are expounded in computer science and mathematics, and to Derrida's interpretation of ‘textual fold’— this also being used to ground the association of reflexivity with postmodernism. The analysis ‘returns to the social’by considering aspects of Niklas Luhmann's explication of social reflexivity. It concludes by examining the understanding that a postmodern sociology might have of a postmodern society in which the grounds for social order have become undecidable.     

For a postcolonial sociology

Postcolonial theory has enjoyed wide influence in the humanities but it has left sociology comparatively unscathed. Does this mean that postcolonial theory is not relevant to sociology? Focusing upon social theory and historical sociology in particular, this article considers if and how postcolonial theory in the humanities might be imported into North American sociology. It argues that postcolonial theory offers a substantial critique of sociology because it alerts us to sociology’s tendency to analytically bifurcate social relations. The article also suggests that a postcolonial sociology can overcome these problems by incorporating relational social theories to give new accounts of modernity. Rather than simply studying non-Western postcolonial societies or only examining colonialism, this approach insists upon the interactional constitution of social units, processes, and practices across space. To illustrate, the article draws upon relational theories (actor-network theory and field theory) to offer postcolonial accounts of two conventional research areas in historical sociology: the industrial revolution in England and the French Revolution.     

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.