Recent trends in faculty employment in sociology

Using 1996-2000 data from the American Sociological Association Employment Bulletin, we examined trends in the availability of full-time, tenure-track faculty positions in sociology. In doing so, we found evidence that

Evolutionary theory in sociology: An examination of current thinking

After long neglect, evolutionary thinking is receiving new emphasis in the social sciences. Although evolutionary theories in biology are complex, changing, and often controversial, the basic concepts of variation, selection, and transmission potentially have powerful applications in sociology. In such uses, a crucial distinction must be made between developmental processes and evolutionary processes. Two main approaches characterize current evolutionary thinking in sociology: sociobiological explanations, and coevolutionary accounts of the interaction of genes and culture. Evolution through natural selection can occur with genes, cultural elements, and any other self-replicating codes. Although social learning is the cultural analogue of genetic transmission, cultural evolution does not necessarily maximize genetic fitness. Newly emerging sociological theories of evolution hold promise of integrating micro- and macroprocesses, providing explanations of complexity and diversity in social change, reconciling ideas of agency and structure, and linking sociology to biology without misleading reductionism.     

Revitalizing sociology: urban life and mental illness between history and the present

This paper proposes a re‐thinking of the relationship between sociology and the biological sciences. Tracing lines of connection between the history of sociology and the contemporary landscape of biology, the paper argues for a reconfiguration of this relationship beyond popular rhetorics of ‘biologization' or ‘medicalization'. At the heart of the paper is a claim that, today, there are some potent new frames for re‐imagining the traffic between sociological and biological research – even for ‘revitalizing’ the sociological enterprise as such. The paper threads this argument through one empirical case: the relationship between urban life and mental illness. In its first section, it shows how this relationship enlivened both early psychiatric epidemiology, and some forms of the new discipline of sociology; it then traces the historical division of these sciences, as the sociological investment in psychiatric questions waned, and ‘the social' become marginalized within an increasingly ‘biological' psychiatry. In its third section, however, the paper shows how this relationship has lately been revivified, but now by a nuanced epigenetic and neurobiological attention to the links between mental health and urban life. What role can sociology play here? In its final section, the paper shows how this older sociology, with its lively interest in the psychiatric and neurobiological vicissitudes of urban social life, can be our guide in helping to identify intersections between sociological and biological attention. With a new century now underway, the paper concludes by suggesting that the relationship between urban life and mental illness may prove a core testing‐ground for a ‘revitalized' sociology.     

New frontiers facing urban sociology at the Millennium

The article examines some of the major challenges facing urban sociology at century's end given its traditions and lineages. These challenges arise out of the intersection of major macrosocial trends and their particular spatial patterns. The city and the metropolitan region emerge as one of the strategic sites where these macrosocial trends materialize and hence can be constituted as an object of study. Among these trends are globalization and the rise of the new information technologies, the intensifying of transnational and translocal dynamics, and the strengthening presence and voice of specific types of socio‐cultural diversity. Each one of these trends has its own specific conditionalities, contents and consequences for cities, and for theory and research. Cities are also sites where each of these trends interacts with the others in distinct, often complex manners, in a way they do not in just about any other setting. The city emerges once again as a strategic lens for the study of major macrosocial transformations as it was in the origins of sociology. Can urban sociology address these challenges and in so doing once again produce some of the analytic tools for understanding the broader transformation?     

The sociology of education in seven European countries: Theoretical trends and Social contexts

The present paper aims to describe the main trends in sociological studies of education in the last two decades in six European countries, namely, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Topics addressed include (1) the main thematic trends in the area of educational studies and especially the sociology of education; (2) the interrelations between the social context—and, especially, the educational context—and social theories; (3) the interrelations between the various professional communities involved in educational research and (4) the interaction between international and national approaches in the study of education‐related themes.     

The distinctive South and the invisible North: Why urban ethnography needs regional sociology

This article is a review of urban ethnography's Northern bias and regional sociology's Southern bias. I begin by arguing that these two subfields have reified the South's reputation for regional distinctiveness and rendered the North's regional characteristics invisible. To illustrate why urban ethnography needs regional sociology, I explain how the reluctance to view Northern cities through a regional lens has resulted in canonical conceptualizations of “the street” that lack precision and clarity. I conclude with a discussion of how efforts to revive regional sociology by conducting ethnographic research in Southern cities will need to expand beyond the study of the South to achieve lasting impact in urban ethnography more broadly.     

Producing sociology: Time trends in authorship of journal articles, 1975–1986

Authorship of articles in three major journals is used as an indicator of productivity of individuals and institutions over a twelve-year period. Authorship is dispersed among more than 1000 persons, with few consistent publishers. Productivity is highly concentrated among institutions. But while relative rankings of institutions on productivity by alumni are extremely stable, there have been important changes in rankings on authorship by current staff during this period. Finally, productivity is strongly associated with reputation for faculty quality, but change in productivity is hardly correlated with reputation for improvement. His recent book,Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (coauthored with Harvey Molotch) was published by the University of California Press in 1987.     

New trends in urban social science

The paper looks critically at the lines of development of international urban social science research, and specifically at the role and significance of international networks and defines a research agenda for the present through a closer look at the UNESCO MOST programme on the ‘Management of Social Transformation’ which places an emphasis on urban research.     

Marxist sociology and humanist sociology: Diversity, intersections, and convergence

Marxist sociology is at the intersection of Marxism and sociology; while humanist sociology is at the intersection of humanist thought and sociology. Both see sociological theory as a living, evolving activity, and both take a critical stance toward the workings of capitalism. The main difference between them is that Marxist sociology is a body of thought tied to a movement, whereas humanist sociology is a movement tied to a body of thought. Professor of Sociology, Purdue University Calumet. He is past chair of the Section on Marxist Sociology, has been a member of the AHS for twenty years, and is co-author of Crisis and Change: Basic Questions of Marxist Sociology.     

Finding the city in sociology: Broadening and deepening the geographic scope of the urban and inequality literatures

Cities have long been the object of fascination within sociology. Key portions of sociological literatures on inequality and globalization, for instance, have focused on urban spaces as essential sites for the production and reproduction of social life, and urban sociology itself is one of the oldest fields in the discipline. For all of this prominence, however, locating the city itself in these literatures can be difficult. Much of our understanding of urban life and urban social problems is derived from a relatively small number of American cities. Moreover, cities are often relegated to a supporting role as a research site rather than an institution worthy of interrogation. This article reviews the path that has brought a specific set of cities to the fore of American sociological analyses. In response, broadening literatures to cities in the literal and figurative American South and producing deeper literatures of specific cities can give sociology the opportunity to produce more representative and contextually rich analyses of inequalities, urban social life, and urban form. The literature on St. Louis, Missouri is presented as an example of what such a broader and deeper literature could encompass.     

从日本城市建设得到的启示

笔者一直对城市综合社区的开发感兴趣,一直在思考和研究高品质、综合性社区的开发模式及管理经验.近日,笔者赴日本,重点对福冈、大阪和东京的城市综合社区、游乐场项目进行考察,以期对我们所研究的课题有所启发、有所借鉴.     

Habitus: beyond sociology

This paper presents a contribution of a set of interrelated innovative thinking to revitalize the sociological understanding of the notion of the habitus. It discusses contributions by sociologists exploring the sources of Bourdieu's inspiration from psychology and psychoanalysis to the development of the concept, and brings in new thinking inspired by authors and frameworks that branch out of sociology to bring into sociology fresher thinking. Three areas of concern about habitus are focused on: firstly, the objectivism and subjectivism dichotomy; secondly, the plasticity or rigidity of the concept; and thirdly, the implications of intangibles attached to the notion. The paper introduces a Special Section including five articles on theoretical and empirical explorations bringing exciting perspectives to creative and critical sociology.     

Ethnomethodology and sociology: an introduction

Arising as a powerful challenge to programmatic views of sociology that sought to determine stable laws underpinning social order, ethnomethodology set out an alternative programme to reveal social order as a dynamic, contingent ‘ongoing accomplishment’. This programme was neither micro nor macro, but was concerned with different contexts of accountability in which both individuals and institutions are given identity and reproduced. Recognising everyday life as an achievement, collective sense making, and the central importance of talk as a social process, ethnomethodology had an impact on all those arenas of sociology where ordinary interaction is an element. This introduction to the special section discusses the contributions of each of the papers – which cover mundane reasoning, social learning, the early acquisition of social competence, and the application of membership categorization analysis to gender – in relation to the continuing relevance of Garfinkel's legacy to contemporary sociological theory and practice.     

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.