Toward a sociology of global comparative placemaking

I call for a globally informed sociology of comparative placemaking that integrates historical and contemporary processes and includes the ephemeral, institutional, and personal. By placemaking, I am referring to the explicit or tacit cooperation among people to create, maintain, and give meaning to places in space through bodily occupation given differential resources and constraints. I review select place, space, and community-based literature about urban, Black, migrant, LGBTQ, and international populations to think about how we can build upon and integrate multiple theoretical, methodological, and epistemological insights to form an explicit placemaking research agenda. A US focus on neighborhoods contrasts with a comparative examination of global urban networks, social polarization, and transformation of the built environment in the interdisciplinary field of global urban studies (Ren, 2018). I argue for a placemaking research agenda that bridges insight from US Urban Sociology with Global Urban Studies to consider how various structures and actors constrain and facilitate place projects. With a globally reaching and comparatively informed sociology of placemaking, we can illuminate our multi-structured story of place and agency in context. We can answer questions about how and why we co-create and are simultaneously disciplined by the process of creation.     

Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

The landscape of political humor and satire is changing rapidly, and it is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of our culture. Although scholars have been actively trying to capture this change, majority of the existing frameworks for understanding humor and satire in politics still reduce these phenomena to mere genres or rhetoric tools. In addition, they provide insufficient accounts concerning the reception of humor and satire, and neglect to interpret and explain what they communicate. In the article, a general understanding of humor and satire outside of a political context, followed by an overview of studies discussing humor and satire in politics through their applications in social movements, as leadership tools, and through their manifestations in mass media has been presented. Lastly, a cultural sociological perspective to the field has been introduced. It has been argued that approaching humor and satire in politics through a structural hermeneutic method of the Strong Program will enable us to recognize and treat political humor and satire as autonomous and complex cultural systems which carry an internal power to move people.     

20世纪30年代初胡秋原的庸俗社会学批判

庸俗社会学的木质，在于无视艺术规律，取消中间环节，把文艺这一精神现象与人类社会的基础性结构直接关联，从而对文艺的性质、功能作出简单性规定和强制性要求。胡秋原是中国文论界从学理的层面．对庸俗社会学作出深入剖析的第一人。其理论资源，来自于普列汉诺夫的“中介论”。他对弗里契《艺术社会学》“图式化”弊端之批评，亦发时人所未见。其地球“自转”与“公转”之喻，表明了他对文学“自律”与“他律”关系的洞见与把握，并给后人以启发。＋     

张生煮海所反映的海洋精神

元杂剧《张生煮海》是一出神话剧,反映潮州举子张羽与小龙女私定终身而遭到东海龙王阻挠,于是敢与命运抗争并最终获得胜利的故事,从中折射出元人对海洋的观念变化,反映了我国先民藐视神权、敢于跟强大的恶势力斗争的精神,也折射出人定胜天的海洋精神。     

Social identities and political cleavages: the role of political context

Summary. Using a novel method, the paper investigates the influence of social group identities on attitudes and on voting in a variety of political contexts. Examining the major regions of Britain, Canada and the USA, we find considerable national and regional diversity in the nature of social cleavages. For example, social class and race had widely different effects across societies, but within societies their effects on attitudes and on voting were very similar. However, despite that, age and religion had a similar effect on attitudes across societies; the effects on voting varied considerably. The significant within-country differences underline the importance of using region, rather than country, as the unit of analysis. More importantly, these results highlight the role of political context, especially competing cleavages and the structure of party competition, in the establishment of politically relevant social cleavages.     

环境问题的社会学探索

环境社会学是二十世纪六、七十年代以来出现的社会学的一门分支学科。社会学在对环境问题的理论探索过程中争论的一个主要焦点是,环境问题是属于自然界的问题,还是属于社会的问题。本文通过对环境社会学理论历程的梳理,试图展现环境问题本身是一个具有复杂性的问题。     

海上救助公约的发展及其主要影响

1989年通过的国际救助公约对传统的“无效果无报酬”原则所作的例外规定,引起了海运界和贸易界的极大关注,从而导致某些国际规则和国内法的修订。本文运用比较的方法对海上救助公约的发展及其对英国劳氏标准救助契约、国际共同海损理算规则和我国海商法的影响作了论述,并且提出了我国当前海商法应作修改补充的几点建议。     

现代性的反叛与理论社会学的前景

现代性又一次显示了自己的永新特征:它不断脱出既有的形貌,日益变得轻盈、灵巧、液化、流变,它的经验结果也更为不确定和难以预料。这造成了现代叙事和想像的“衰败”,也使社会学的批判和反思走向亢奋。然而,在西方社会学“新三圣”的现代性理论中,激进具象下隐匿的深沉困惑和焦虑表明,这无以挽回旧式现代性的总体颓落之势。与此同时,现代性在中国正面对着一种新生。“社会互构”理论指出了新型现代性的大趋势,即以人为本而不是以资本为本的实践选择,正在促使资本从目的性意义向手段性位置回归。这一理论还阐释了,通过多元社会主体的“互构谐变”,推进社会沟通、对话、协商以及论坛和听证的制度化,实现我们对于和谐社会的共同期待。正是这一来自实践的理路,使理论社会学拥有了一个赢得未来的起点。     

文艺社会学批评理论的新向度--"传播论"批评

2 0世纪 90年代 ,曾有论者提出文艺社会学批评理论要走出古典形态 ,开拓现代形态 ,建立“中介论”的文艺社会学批评理论。但从文艺学理论构架出发 ,结合当代艺术文化状态进行反思 ,“中介论”的文艺社会学批评理论存在局限性 ,而建构“传播论”向度的文艺社会学批评理论 ,即可在本体论结构上实现批评理论向度的新拓展。     

论高等教育社会学研究方法的取向及其本土化建构

一门学科发展的重要意义在于其研究成果与其他相关学科的研究成果往往具有较强的关联性和互补性。对于高等教育社会学而言 ,这一旨趣能否有效实现 ,首先取决于研究者在研究视角与方法的选择方面所体现出来的社会学素养及其自觉性。高等教育社会学的研究方法既要遵行社会学研究的一般策略和原则 ,又要从高等教育的实在特性出发 ,将其研究的目的、策略和方法真正纳入到社会学的研究视域之中 ,从而实现研究方法体系同研究主体、客体和具体环境的高度协同 ,这是实施高等教育社会学本土化建构的基础。