The Flexibility of Scientific Rhetoric: A Case Study of UFO Researchers

The case of ufology demonstrates that cultural packaging—a sort of once-removed indication of scientific authority—can be key in creating knowledge accepted as scientific. This adds a new dimension to the argument that scientific legitimacy is constructed, not just from scientific methodologies and institutional location, but also of language, culture, rhetoric, and symbols. Fringe researchers can make their cases for legitimacy using a variety of strategies—few of which involve actual research. Outside of the scientific community, scientific-sounding explanations and proclamations of expert statuses hold sway. Ambiguities about what constitutes science can be capitalized upon by groups like the UFO research community that assembles shards of legitimacy using science as a cultural template.     

A cultural approach to culture

Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display takes a global approach to how museums make sense of increased globalization and migration. Museums construct narratives that link their locality to the nation and to the world. Peggy Levitt’s major book explains how museums imagine themselves and how they work towards composing a kind of visitor experience. It is about museum visions, missions, and exhibitions as told through the eyes of those who create and are responsible for them, namely, top administrators, curators, politicians, and more. Her analysis explains why museums only a few hundred miles apart can have such different conceptions of how to create the proper citizen. As such, the book illuminates the power of a cultural sociological approach.     

Imagining mobility: the prospective cognition question in migration research

Most migration research is focused on migrant experiences after mobility and settlement. We argue that empirical researchers would benefit from studying how cognitive migration, the narrative imagining of oneself inhabiting a foreign destination prior to the actual physical move, influences migration behaviour. This article notes a gap in our current understanding of the process by which individuals decide to cross international borders and offers an agenda for remedying this. The interdisciplinarity of migration research has not fully extended to social psychology or cognitive social sciences, where a dynamic research agenda has examined human decision-making processes, including prospection and the connections between culture and cognition. The study of socio-cognitive processes in migration decision-making has been largely overlooked because of the after-the-fact nature of data collection and analysis rather than an aversion to these approaches per se. We highlight a number of strategic findings from this diverse field, provide examples of migration scholarship that has benefited from these insights, and raise questions about the sides of migration process that have received insufficient attention. A more nuanced understanding of prospective thinking—imagining potential futures—can shed light on the classic puzzle of why some people move while others in comparable situations do not.     

从人类生态学视角看大众传媒的共生与竞争

本文通过回顾人类生态学研究城市过程的视角与方法,分析处于城市生态体系中的大众传媒的共生与竞争的矛盾关系,及由此引发的异化现象。论述了大众传媒在城市环境中的发展动因以及与其他各个层面的生态组织之间的关系,得出大众传媒应以社会功能角色的回归作为在整个城市体系中寻求良性发展途径的结论。     

提高《社会学概论》课堂教学质量的思考和实践

社会学概论是社会学专业入门课程,对学生专业兴趣的引导和培养有重要作用。本文总结了在教学内容、教学方法和成绩考核方面的一些尝试和体会。     

Global Human Rights and State Sovereignty: State Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties, 1965–20011

This research seeks to understand the factors that lead nation‐states to ratify international human rights treaties in the contemporary world, despite their potential cost for state sovereignty. We argue that normative pressure from international society, along with historical contingencies during the Cold War, encouraged many states to ratify these treaties. We present an event‐history analysis of ratification of seven key international human rights treaties in 164 countries in the period between 1965 and 2001. The results lend support to the world society argument as well as to our historical argument and also specify that normative pressure and imitation have been important factors shaping states’ decisions to ratify international human rights treaties.     

社会学视野下法律的现代性与地方性

形式主义的法学家们认同的现代性的法律是一个普适的价值体系,并不内涵有什么特殊的文化和价值体系,是法律发展的必然方向。法人类学家们则从文化相对主义的视角出发,认为法律是一种地方性知识。既然是一种地方性知识,那就不具有普适的品质和推广的价值。这是法律现代性的悖论。根据法律价值体系的来源,可以将法律体系划分为三种类型:内生型、植入型和混合型。当代中国的法律体系是混合型的,外来法律、本土法律文化和社会现实构成了我国法律现代性与地方性互动的关系框架。     

社会互构论的提出——对社会学学术传统的审视和快速转型期经验现实的反思

本文对旧式现代性的危机和新型现代性的崛起,及其对社会学理论的影响进行了探讨,并对社会学的分裂传统和当代建构主义社会学的重建努力做了清理和评述。在对当代中国社会快速转型期的社会与自然、个人与社会的关系正在经历的重大变化的研究基础上,本文正式提出了社会互构论———一种关于当代中国社会转型期的个人与社会的关系的社会学基本理论,并对这一理论做了概括性的介绍。     

Current Directions in Risk Research: New Developments in Psychology and Sociology

This article reviews the main approaches to risk in psychology and sociology and considers recent developments. It shows that research continues from a wide range of perspectives. Some developments in psychological thinking have recently acknowledged the importance of the cultural framing of risk perceptions and responses and the positive power of emotions to manage uncertainties, while some streams of work in sociology have moved toward more individualist approaches. These converging processes open opportunities for cross-fertilization and for using insights from both disciplines in the development of research.     

明清工程腐败的惊天玄机(上)

越轨社会学长期\