The Role of Lumber Networks in Forest Devastation: Economic Sociology of Rural Forest Household Business in Japan

In this article, I utilize the perspectives of economic sociology to examine the structural background of forest devastation in Japan. First, I explore the factors behind cited problems for the forestry industry and demonstrate that expanded imports of inexpensively priced foreign-sourced logs do not sufficiently explain those issues. On that basis, I then demonstrate that the concepts and analytical tools offered by economic sociology are essential to a full understanding of relevant problems. Next, to understand how the current crisis differs from that experienced by forestry households in the 1980s, I turn my focus to changes in the social networks that supported the trade in wood products. The crisis witnessed a transformation that involved disembedding sawmills from the traditional wood trading networks that had relied on cooperative ties with forestry households. Eventually, social relationships between forestry households and sawmills were severed and these households became unable to address their economic difficulties through their existing practices. Given that context, I then examine the contrasting economic behavior of sawmills and forestry households and demonstrate that exposure to global price competition forced forestry households into uncontrolled over-cutting. Finally, I assert that economic sociology is better able to provide a more precise understanding of the true nature of the problems facing forestry in modern-day Japan than conventional economics with its adherence to the useful but insufficient principles of market competition and economic efficiency.     

The Subpoena of Ethnographic Data

This essay outlines the author's experience of having his ethnographic data subpoenaed. It outlines the challenges of subpoena's to research, and suggests four solutions: (1) Apply for and utilize the National Institutes of Health certificate of confidentiality by asking health‐related questions over the course of one's research; (2) Establish a task force that articulates clear ethical guidelines for ethnographic research, with attention to the conditions wherein ethnographers can break confidentiality (and might also comply with subpoenas). These ethical guidelines should then be made clear to research subjects as a part of informed consent processes; (3) Demand that institutions (institutional review boards) that require confidentiality as a condition of research be required to defend that confidentiality through the office of the general counsel; (4) Socialize the cost of subpoenas, wherein scholars can be part of an insurance pool that will defend them in the event of a subpoena and thereby defend the general enterprise of ethnographic research.     

农业社会学:经典命题及其延续

作为一门新兴学科,农业社会学近年来在中国呈现出良好的发展势头。一门学科的发展,需要通过不断的知识积累和经验研究进行一砖一瓦的建设,其中理论建设尤其重要。同其他社会科学一样,经典文本在农业社会学的理论建设中具有核心位置。 本专题选取了三个(对)农业社会学中的经典命题:农业的生产时间与劳动时间、农业技术变迁中的占取主义与替代主义,以及技术采用中的“农业跑步机理论冶。按照时代背景、原典阐释、学术延续以及启发意义的思路撰写,尝试为农业社会学的入门者提供一种理论梳理的路径。     

The sociological landscape of youth confinement

This article examines key sociological questions that are raised by the confinement of children and young people. Globally, there are approximately one million children held in confinement, and there is an emerging body of qualitative sociological research in this area. This article examines the role that social constructions of childhood innocence and evil play in shaping the processes of protection and removal, and how these constructions play a role in mediating state strategies of punishment and rehabilitation. The article also draws from an emerging body of qualitative sociological research to examine the role of youth confinement institutions in socializing vulnerable young people.     

A figurational approach to understanding school climate and peer harassment: Possibilities from Norbert Elias’s work

Although psychological approaches have been the mainstay of scholarly research on school climate, offering state-of-the-art measurements and methodologies, sociological perspectives remain essential perspectives because violence is essentially a social phenomenon. This paper offers a theoretical consideration of contributions to this field, focusing specifically on those that provide a critical historical lens. I suggest that while Foucault's approach to the disciplining of docile bodies and self-restraint offers crucial conceptual tools, Norbert Elias's work—which is scarce in scholarly research on school climate—provides a complementary but necessary framework for understanding emotional and relational aspects of peer harassment.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

How biology became social,and what it means for social theory

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life‐sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo‐Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social‐science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty‐first social theory.     

Sensory Work of Diagnosis: A Crisis of Legitimacy

Sensory judgments have always been a part of medical practice, as sensory studies scholars have emphasized. However, in current regulatory, management and technological contexts, there is a push toward rational decision-making procedures and test-based evidence over clinical diagnosis. Sociological scholarship highlights that in focusing on explicit medical knowledge and disembodied data we take for granted aspects of healthcare work, including the ways in which health and illness is sensed. Research in sociologies of diagnosis and social studies of science and technology has captured that while the senses continue to play a role in medical work, the status and practice of this sensory work is not straightforward as evidenced by dual use of the senses and tests and the delegation of sensory work. Based on semi-structured interviews with expert doctors in diverse specialties, this article examines the sensory work of medical decision-making, with attention to its legitimacy. It examines applications of the senses from auscultation to ongoing sensing of patients’ bodies unmediated and via technological outputs. While critical to clinical judgments, there is discomfort with this sensory work in light of medico-legal pressures. I argue that the sensory work of diagnosis is vital, to the extent that gaps in sensory information imply gaps in understanding.     

“There Aren't Any Gays Here”: Encountering Heteroprofessionalism in an International Development Workplace

Western-oriented workplaces use professionalism as a normative value to sustain and promote a cohesive work environment. Yet, through this qualitative study, the author points out some implications of using professionalism to manage staff relationships and behaviors. Using post-conflict Kosovo as the context, the author examined (a) the work experiences of 8 gay male aid workers and (b) the attitudes toward homosexuality of foreign staff members in 2 international aid agencies. The author introduces and suggests heteroprofessionalism as a root to homophobic and heterosexist behaviors present in the study. Heteroprofessionalism is defined as a professional value that screens out homosexuality.