Sociology,Psychoanalysis, and Marginalization: Unconscious Defenses and Disciplinary Interests

American sociology as a field tends to marginalize psychoanalytic perspectives despite scholars Cavalletto and Silver showing that this was not the case during Talcott Parson's intellectual heyday in the 1940s. From the 1970s on, though, constructionists emphasized the conservative rather than liberatory side of the Freudian tradition and symbolic interactionism took the place of psychoanalysis as the legitimized framework for understanding individuals. Marginalization has occurred for at least three reasons: (1) the legacies of positivism created a bias toward empirically observable rather than relatively unmeasurable concepts like the Freudian unconscious; (2) psychoanalysis uses internal data whereas sociologists look externally rather than inward; (3) because psychoanalysis focuses on individuals and sociology on groups, it is argued that the two are incommensurate. Nevertheless, even in the face of marginalization, some scholars have combined psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives in myriad ways conceiving of multi dimensional rather than rationalistic individuals within social and cultural settings; exploring interactional dynamics that are at once psychic‐and‐social; and, as in the work of Wilfred Bion, studying the psychoanalytic mechanisms of groups themselves. I posit that the ongoing marginalization of psychoanalysis deprives the discipline of an innovative tool of analysis, an especially salient one at times when the emotional and psychological dimensions of social life are glaringly evident.     

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.     

Social explanation and socialization: on Bourdieu and the structure, disposition, practice scheme

The standard narrative of the sociology of education accounts for the perpetuation of relative differentials in class access to education by a structure‐disposition‐practice scheme in which the central explanatory weight is carried by properties of socialized agents. The dominant scheme of this kind is now that inspired by Bourdieu. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to interrogate the competence of socialization in sociological explanations of social events and processes. The argument adopts a position of scientific and critical realism, and it is suggested that a realist sociology might find in Bourdieu's approach, notwithstanding specific theoretical and conceptual weaknesses, a framework strong enough to sustain the multilevel explanations of inequality/difference necessary in the sociology of education.     

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.     

Research on physical disability in sociological social psychology: The state of the field and future directions

We discuss the state of the research literature on physical disability in sociology, focusing particularly on social psychology. We first trace the history of treatments of disability in the field, noting a movement from a medical model that located disability in the individual to a social model that recognizes physical disability as an important social characteristic that is both produced by and has important consequences for social interactions. We then summarize contemporary research, identifying areas in which sociological research tends to be located, particularly in critical approaches, health‐related outcomes, and stigma. Finally, we discuss areas in which more research on physical disability would be fruitful. We believe that research on group processes, intersectionality, and identity would each especially benefit from greater attention to physical disability.     

Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic‐political activism in Hong Kong,Taiwan and mainland China

The sociology of homosexuality lacks engagement with queer theory and postcolonialism and focuses primarily on the global metropoles, thus failing to provide a plausible account of non‐Western non‐normative sexual identities. This research adopts the author’s newly proposed transnational queer sociology to address these deficiencies. First, it critiques the Western model of sexual identity predominantly employed to elucidate non‐Western, non‐normative sexualities. It does so by examining not only the queer flows between West and non‐West but also those among and within non‐Western contexts to produce translocally shared and mutually referenced experiences. Second, the proposed approach combines sociology with queer theory by emphasizing the significant role of material, as well as discursive, analyses in shaping queer identities, desires and practices. This article employs the approach to examine young gay male identities, as revealed in 90 in‐depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong (n = 30), Taiwan (Taipei, n = 30) and mainland China (Shanghai, n = 30) between 2017 and 2019. More specifically, it highlights the interplay between the state and identity by investigating the intersection and intertwining effects of these young men’s sexual and cultural/national identities, revealing three different forms of civic‐political activism. The article both demonstrates the way in which sexuality and the state are mutually constituted and provides nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of contemporary homosexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. In applying a new sociological approach to understanding sexuality, this research joins the growing body of scholarship within sociology that is decentring the Western formation of universal knowledge.     

Sociology and the European Court of Human Rights

This article offers a sociological analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Adopting a sociological jurisprudence approach, the article aims to demonstrate the unique and valuable contribution that sociology can make to understanding key aspects of international human rights law. Whilst the article seeks to develop an agenda for critical sociological research on human rights law, it also aims to persuade those charged with the supervision of human rights of the value of sociological analysis. To achieve this, the article focuses on three separate but inter‐related aspects of ECtHR jurisprudence: first, it considers the ECtHR's approach to consensus in its adjudication of human rights complaints; second, it examines the social control implications of the ECtHR's decisions and judgments; and third, it assesses how conceptualizations of social identity are often foundational to the ECtHR's reasoning.     

Continuity and Change in Place Stratification: Spatial Inequality and Middle‐Range Territorial Units*

Abstract Sociologists have produced large, well‐known literatures on inequality across geographic territory at two ends of the spatial scale continuum, within the city and across nation‐states. In this paper, I discuss a different scale of focus, subnational stratification processes across middle‐range spatial units, those between the city and nation‐state. While characterizing much contemporary rural sociological research, this approach to spatial inequality does not tend to be seen as a coherent tradition that cross‐cuts substantive areas. First, I discuss why attention to subnational inequality, rural regions, and middle‐range spatial units are important to social science understanding of stratification processes. Second, I provide an overview of contemporary research traditions in rural sociology which, taken together, form a distinct and innovative approach to spatial inequality. Third, I draw from my own work to explain how factors affecting socioeconomic inequalities across middle‐range territorial units may be conceptualized and provide two sets of empirical examples. Finally, I discuss what should be done in terms of furthering rural sociology's regional approach to spatial inequality.     

Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox

Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature of the desire for self‐creation. Locating life coaching in the larger identity‐fashioning market, this article illustrates how the artificial nature of outsourced social relations reconciles two apparently contradictory desires: the “need for help” and “wanting to find it on my own.” Three mechanisms are involved: creating an independent social space where identities can be crafted away from significant others; deliberately deemphasizing the coach and intentionally underwriting personal authorship; and encouraging clients to root identities in the social world while promoting an instrumental view of sociality. The article discusses the blurring of boundaries between intimate social relations and utilitarian market logic, and the implications of the ongoing outsourcing of identity support that reinforces the privileged ideal of self‐made identities.     

The 'negotiated night': an embodied conceptual framework for the sociological study of sleep

Sleep is essential for our health and well‐being but it has, historically, been the subject of little sociological study. Yet sleep is not, as common sense would have us believe, ‘asocial inaction’. Like our waking lives, it is a time of interaction. The sociology of sleep presently exists in a state similar to the early stages of development of the sociology of the body, waiting for something like Frank's (1991 ) typology of body action, which served as a heuristic guide through which action and its multifaceted components could be understood. This paper argues that one productive analytical framework is to adapt Watson's (2000 ) ‘male body schema’ for the sociological investigation of sleep. This revolves around four interrelated forms of embodiment: normative (opinions and perceptions about healthy sleep behaviour); pragmatic (‘normal’ as related to social role); experiential (feelings related to sleep); and visceral (the biological body and sleep). The possibilities this model provides for the sociology of sleep is illustrated in the paper through the analysis of a case study of sleep negotiation between a couple.     

Symbolic interactionism and the concept of power

Symbolic interactionism is often represented as a perspective which is limited by its restriction to 'micro' aspects of social organization. As such, it is allegedly unable to adequately conceptualize 'macro' phenomena such as social structure, patterns of inequality, and power. Such a view is routinely presented in undergraduate textbooks. This paper contests such a view through a consideration of the concept of power. We argue that the interactionist research tradition does show a fundamental concern with power phenomena, and that a reconsideration of the concept is timely in light of theoretical developments in sociology more generally. An increasing concern with the analysis of culture, the continuing influence of Foucault, the development of feminist perspectives, and the emerging consensus around neo-Weberian thought have all contributed to a renewal of interest in themes long ago explored by interactionists. As examples we suggest that interactionist studies in the fields of deviance and education have been concerned above all with the authoritative imposition of consequential identities, i.e., with the social processes through which power is enacted and institutionalized in real situations. Such developments have led some to argue that interactionism has now been incorporated into the mainstream of sociology. We conclude, however, by arguing that such a view runs the risk of granting to orthodox sociological thought a legitimacy which is analytically unwarranted, and which fails to recognize the alternative theoretical and philosophical foundations of symbolic interactionist thought.     

The ambivalences of Angel's 'arrangement': a psychosocial lens on the contemporary condition of personal life

The aim of this article is to explore the potential of a psychoanalytically informed psychosocial approach to extend understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life. It argues for the theorization of the intertwining of the social and the psychic, in order to take seriously the realm of the intra‐psychic and the dynamic unconscious, without engaging in either psychological or sociological reductionism. The article offers a detailed case study of an interview with one individual (‘Angel’), highlighting three themes in his narrative which resonate with wider findings about changing patterns of intimacy and sociability: the experience of relationship break‐up and psychological distress, the centrality of friendship, and de‐centring and re‐imagining the sexual relationship. Particular attention is paid to the story Angel tells of his unconventional partnership, and to the analysis of his self‐presentation, in the light of the thematic analysis. The psychosocial approach attends both to sociological themes and unconscious psychodynamics, and presents an analysis of the particular character of the disappointments, loss, psychic conflicts and ambivalences which are part of the experience of contemporary personal life. The paper concludes with some critical reflections on conducting psychoanalytic psychosocial readings of interview data.     

Sociological Understandings of Conduct for a Noncanonical Activity Theory: Exploring Intersections and Complementarities

Following a discussion of activity theory as an approach to human development originally rooted in transformational change, we review the historical context and diverse conceptualizations of social conduct from the field of sociology. The discussion of social conduct is broken into theories of social action, theories of enactment, and contemporary sociological attempts at critical integration of the two across local and extralocal social processes. We conclude with an assessment of these sociological contributions in relation to what we term the threefold dialectic of material production, local and extralocal dimensions of intersubjective exchanges, and subjectivity that is fundamental to noncanonical understandings of activity theory.     

Reconciling Nation and Class in Imperial Borderlands: the Making of Bolshevik Internationalists Karl Radek and Feliks Dzierżyński in East Central Europe1

Abstract This article interprets the biographies of Polish Bolshevik revolutionaries, Feliks Dzier?yński and Karl Radek, in an attempt to concretize socialism's “nationalities problem” in two exceptional, but emblematic, identities of the fin‐de‐siècle socialist movement. It situates their internationalism against the sociology of nationalism in multiethnic imperial borderlands. It argues that the appeal of socialist internationalism was contingent on the strength of nationalism: where nationalism was more politically articulate it undermined universalist ideologies. Therefore as socialism succeeded in transcending ethnonational boundaries only in the Tsarist Russian “fourth time zone”, Radek and Dzier?yński traveled eastwards from Polish nationalism to Bolshevik internationalism.     

Spencer is dead, long live Spencer: individualism, holism, and the problem of norms

The debate between the advocates of sociological individualism and those of holism has been pervasive in the development of social theory. This debate is often situated in the false problems of sociology, since it is seen as a particular form of the perennial and irresolvable dilemma between social nominalism and realism, as well as between freedom and determinism. Nevertheless, the debate is far from over within contemporary sociology and other social science, as indicated by the resurgence of individualism in rational action theory and its repudiation by holistic social theories. The aim of this paper is to identify some modern variations on this theme as well as to discern certain common tendencies of two seemingly opposite theoretical perspectives, viz. the convergence upon a normative solution to the problem of social order. This convergence is therefore denoted normative convergence between sociological individualism and holistic sociology.     

Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn

In this paper we outline a critique of ‘decorative sociology’ as a trend in contemporary sociology where ‘culture’ has eclipsed the ‘social’ and where literary interpretation has marginalized sociological methods. By the term ‘decorative sociology’ we mean a branch of modernist aesthetics which is devoted to a politicized, textual reading of society and culture. Although we acknowledge slippage between the textual and material levels of cultural analysis, notably in the output of the Birmingham School, we propose that the intellectual roots of cultural studies inevitably mean that the textual level is pre‐eminent. In emphasizing the aesthetic dimension we seek to challenge the political self‐image of decorative sociology as a contribution to political intervention. We argue that while the cultural turn has contributed to revising approaches to the relationships between identity and power, race and class, ideology and representation, it has done so chiefly at an aesthetic level. Following Davies (1993), we submit that the greatest achievement of the cultural turn has been to teach students to ‘read politically’. The effect of this upon concrete political action is an empirical question. Without wishing to minimize the political importance of cultural studies, our hypothesis is that, what might be called the ‘aestheticization of life’ has not translated fully into the politicization of culture. We argue that an adequate cultural sociology would have to be driven by an empirical research agenda, embrace an historical and comparative framework, and have a genuinely sociological focus, that is, a focus on the changing balance of power in Western capitalism. We reject the attempt to submerge the social in the cultural and outline the development of an alternative, integrated perspective on body, self and society. We conclude by briefly commenting on three sociological contributions to the comparative and historical study of cultural institutions which approximate this research agenda: Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Sennett.     

Did Growing Rural Poverty and a Disruptive Climate Spur an Expansion in Rural Sociology? A Comparative Historical Analysis

Rural sociology first gained wide recognition during the 1930s when the intersection of economic depression and environmental crisis underlined the suffering of rural peoples. The historical conjuncture of growing rural poverty and environmental crisis has reappeared in the twenty‐first century. What does this recurring combination of circumstances portend for rural sociology? Does it imply a revival of the policy‐oriented sociological analyses of the 1930s? A comparative historical analysis of rural sociology during the New Deal, the post−World War II period, and the contemporary era suggests a qualified answer to this question. The contemporary era resembles the 1930s in providing compelling rationales for engaged scholarship, but the cross‐class coalitions between government social scientists and the rural poor that characterized the 1930s have not materialized in the twenty‐first century. Despite this difference, some common themes, such as a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary research, a primary concern with rural poverty, and an increased interest in the distinguishing features of resilient communities, have characterized scholarship during both periods. These similarities suggest that the practice of applied and engaged scholarship, so prevalent in the rural sociology of the 1930s, has found new traction in dealing with the social and ecological problems of twenty‐first‐century rural communities.     

The quality of manhood: masculinity and embodiment in the sociological tradition

This paper argues for the need to revisit classical sociological texts with a view to excavating the masculinity that inheres in these texts and saturates the concept of the social. Primarily through an examination of Durkheim and Simmel, it explores the strategies whereby masculine individuals could be released from corporeality and granted the sort of embodiment that allowed them to transcend their particularity and become social agents. It is argued that male embodiment is deeply sedimented in the sociological imaginary as the very condition of social action and the constituent of social agency. Thinking through the conceptual lenses of corporeality, embodiment and agency exposes some of the ways in which the analytical scaffolding of ‘the social’ rests on a deeply gendered ontological foundation. While the sociological tradition may indeed have continued salience for contemporary sociologies of the body, a relatively unreflexive recuperation of these texts is problematic. This paper challenges those who seek to rehabilitate the classics in the service of an embodied sociology to produce a much fuller accounting of the truncated corporeal terrain upon which classical sociology developed, and one which explicitly recognizes its gender.