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The dramaturgy of listening Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-09-23 Artur Tomas Grygierczyk
The literature on listening and daily discourse often describes an overly romanticized conception of listening, meaning what it should be in its ideal form. However, at most, this ideal is realized through the ‘masks’ that listeners ‘carry’ during their performance of listening. The ideal version that is being projected through the performance of listening is not cognruent with what actually happens
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Theorizing sex work: a sectoral approach Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Ronald Weitzer
Apart from polarized feminist theorizing, which is abundant in the literature, much of the scholarship on sex work is atheoretical and based on single-case studies. This paper argues that theorization can be advanced by systematic comparison of multiple settings and types of prostitution at the structural, interactional, and experiential levels. I show that certain structural and interactional characteristics
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Understanding diversification of strategies and tactics in Swedish mining resistance: the fanning-out effect of goals and contextual opportunities Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Daniel Fjellborg
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Cognitive microfoundations and social interaction dynamics. The implications of complexity for institutional theory Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-29 Olle Jonas Frödin
This paper investigates the intersection of cognitive sciences and social network theory and its counterpart, the complexity sciences, aiming to shed light on the compatibility and potential integration of these frameworks into institutional theory. Institutional scholars have for long selectively adopted notions linked with the cognitive sciences and complexity sciences, such as the notion of path
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First impressions and the built environment: exploring zero acquaintance judgments in socio-spatial contexts Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-29 Jack Tooley
The well-researched sociological concept known as Zero Acquaintance Judgment frames first impression scenarios and highlights their prevalence and importance to our everyday lives, yet sociology so far overlooks how these might be affected by the built environment where first impressions are typically situated. Broadly, spatial discriminatory discourse investigates how spaces can affect social judgments
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Theorizing democratic conflicts beyond agonism Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-16 Vincent August, Manon Westphal
While democratic societies experience intense conflicts about topics such as migration and climate action, there is no sound theory of democratic conflict. Agonistic theories emphasize the importance of conflict for democracy, but disregard conflict dynamics. Conflict sociology has focused on international or violent conflicts and neglects democratic conflicts. This article shows how this lacuna can
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Decoupling social movements from modernity: a critical reappraisal of Charles Tilly’s theory on the origins of social movements Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Mathis Ebbinghaus
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Bringing aggression back into the study of sexual violence Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 Richard B. Felson
Sexual violence is explained using a social psychological theory of aggression that emphasizes bounded rationality. The approach challenges feminist approaches that examine violence against women in isolation and attribute it to sexism. It suggests that sex differences in sexuality lead men to attempt to influence women to have sex using various means. Sex differences in physical strength create opportunities
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When all you have is a hammer: how social justice distorts what we know about racial disparities Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-07-15 John Iceland, Eric Silver
The sociological literature on race operates under the progressive ideological assumption that systemic racism is the predominant cause of racial disparities. This assumption has become “paradigmatic,” shaping the selection of research questions and the interpretation of research results. Consequently, the literature offers a rather narrow “Overton window” concerning what we, as sociologists, know
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Understanding solidarity in the European Union: an analytical framework Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-07-16 Daniele Saracino
Solidarity is a key concept in the European Union. However, the concept of solidarity lacks systematic theoretical examination to enable a sufficient understanding of its contextual meaning and to provide an operationalisable benchmark for analysis. To address this research gap, I propose an analytical framework for solidarity in the European Union that features four necessary conditions: particularity
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Correction to: Establishing an inverted U-shaped pattern of violence and war from prehistory to modernity: towards an interdisciplinary synthesis Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Tibor Rutar
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Parallel trajectories and theorizations of religion and family in modernity: Toward an institutional logics perspective Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Greg J. Wurm
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What makes randomized controlled trials so successful—for now? Or, on the consonances, compromises, and contradictions of a global interstitial field Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-20 Malte Neuwinger
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Scientificity before Scientism: The Invention of Cultural Research in German Studies of Antiquity 1800–1850 Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-03 Monika Krause
This paper examines how scholars of Greek and Roman antiquity in the German-speaking territories in the first half of the nineteenth century define scientificity (Wissenschaftlichkeit). I will argue that antiquity studies in this period of its foundation as a discipline is an instructive case to examine with regard to questions as to how scientific knowledge is established as different from other forms
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Civil society elites: managers of civic capital Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-06-03 Anders Sevelsted, Håkan Johansson
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A consilient, multi-level model of corporal punishment Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-28 Joseph H Michalski
The article develops an explanation of corporal punishment (CP) as an expression of family violence by developing a multi-level, conciliatory model of human behavior. The synthesis builds upon a review of the relevant analytic approaches and empirical evidence spanning multiple levels of human behavior to include five interrelated frameworks: (1) behavioral investment; (2) socialization; (3) cultural
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Symbols and reasons in democratization: cultural sociology meets deliberative democracy Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-23 Jensen Sass, John S Dryzek
We develop an account of societal democratization that synthesizes cultural sociology and deliberative democracy. Cultural sociologists emphasize the symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups into the civil sphere. Deliberative democrats stress growth in the deliberative capacity of society. We argue that democratization entails the co-evolution of culture and reason. The basis of co-evolution is the
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Supervision, presence and knowledge: clarifying ‘parental monitoring’ concepts within a model of goal-directed parental action Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Beth Hardie
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Credit rating agencies and the state: an inter-field regulated relationship Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Romário Rocha do Nascimento, Mário Sacomano Neto
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Algorithmic Management and the Social Order of Digital Markets Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Georg Rilinger
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The tempest within: the origins and outcomes of intense national emotions in times of national division Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-10 Yuval Feinstein
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Establishing an inverted U-shaped pattern of violence and war from prehistory to modernity: towards an interdisciplinary synthesis Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-05-07 Tibor Rutar
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Time, ties, transactions: temporality and relational work in economic exchange Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-26 Adam S. Hayes
This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer’s relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time’s dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape
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Class signature in schools: Field, habitus, and cultural capital intertwined to understand the reproduction of inequality at the organizational level Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-16 Janice Goldman, Maureen Scully
Schools are interesting as complex organizations in and of themselves but even more so for how they refract the societal dynamics by which inequality is reproduced, an enduringly vexing question (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:3). Educational attainment is core to socioeconomic status and connected to outcomes in housing, health, and employment. Unequal schools in fields characterized by stratification are
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Probabilistic justice against status defense: inequality, uncertainty, and the future of the welfare state Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Rachel Z. Friedman, Torben Iversen
The postwar welfare state provides social insurance against economic, health, and related risks in an uncertain world. Because everyone can envision themselves to be among the unfortunate, social insurance fuses self-interest and solidarism in a normative principle Friedman (2020) calls probabilistic justice. But there is a competing principle of status defense, where the aim is to erect boundaries
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Does identity change matter? Everyday agency, moral authority and generational cascades in the transformation of groupness after conflict Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Jennifer Todd
Everyday identity change is common after conflict, as people attempt to move away from oppositional group relations and closed group boundaries. This article asks how it scales up and out to impact these group relations and boundaries, and what stops this? Theoretically, the article focusses on complex oppositional configurations of groupness, where relationality and feedback mechanisms (rather than
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Patterns of tolerance: how interaction culture and community relations explain political tolerance (and intolerance) in the American libertarian movement Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Oded Marom
Existing explanations of political intolerance and partisanship highlight how individuals’ ideological commitments and the homogeneity of their political environments foster intolerance toward other political groups. This article argues that cultural, interactional conditions play a crucial role in how personal and environmental factors work – or do not work – in local groups. Based on a four-year
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Blinded by the facts: Unintended consequences of racial knowledge production in the Dillingham commission (1907–1911) Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Sunmin Kim
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‘Trauma work’ as hindrance to political praxis during democratisation movements Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Zeina Al Azmeh, Patrick Baert
This paper examines the impact of a shift in focus from political praxis to trauma work in the context of a failed democratisation movement. It investigates the various phenomena which emerge when intellectuals, under the traumatic impact of violence and atrocities, place trauma narration at the core of their interventions. Drawing on document analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews
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Self-negation Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Mustafa Emirbayer
This paper presents a new approach to theorizing and empirically investigating a phenomenon variously described by sociologists as internalized oppression or symbolic violence. Located at the intersection of internal worlds and external reality, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal and social, this object of inquiry—here termed self-negation—is crucial to many forms of societal domination. The paper
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Dating in captivity: creativity, digital affordance, and the organization of interaction in online dating during quarantine Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Kaiting Zhou
Unprecedented times compel new ways to explore relationships. Using interviews with dating app users quarantined in American cities at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I show the impacts of digital mediation on the highly scripted interactional patterns in dating. Drawing from the literature on creative action, temporality, digital affordance, and the materiality of cultural objects, I examine
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What counts as investment? Productive and unproductive expenditures Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-18 Fred Block
There have been significant changes in what economists include in the category of investment over the last six decades. The US government agency that compiles national income date, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, has tried to keep up with these changes, but it has not succeeded. The resulting tension between economic theory and official data can be overcome by adopting a different theoretical lens
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The gates to the profession are open: the alternative institutionalization of data science Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Netta Avnoon
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Defiant conformists: gender and resistance against genocide Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Kiran Stallone, Robert Braun
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Creating and maintaining an alternative public sphere: The struggles of social justice feminism, 1899–1925 Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-04 John Thomas McGuire
One of the most successful and influential contributions to examining the intersection between society and its effect on public action is Jurgen Habermas's landmark The structural transformation of the public space (1962). But as subsequent scholars pointed out, the Habermasian definition of “public sphere” needed to be expanded beyond its original historical context. This article contributes to that
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The domestic violence victim as COVID crisis figure Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Paige L. Sweet, Maya C. Glenn, Jacob Caponi
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Reimagining modern politics in the European mountains: confronting the traditional commons with the neo-rural conception of the common good Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Ismael Vaccaro, Oriol Beltran, Camila Del Mármol
Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to
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The policy-planning capacity of the American corporate community: corporations, policy-oriented nonprofits, and the inner circle in 1935–1936 and 2010–2011 Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Tom Mills, G. William Domhoff
Using a combination of network analysis and descriptive statistics, this study examines the extent to which six important and longstanding policy-oriented nonprofit organizations — foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups — were connected via their directors with the 250 largest corporations in the United States in 1935–1936 and 2010–2011. The results demonstrate that the six nonprofit
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Democratization, development, and inequality: the limits of redistributive models of democracy Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Hannes Lacher, Dillon Wamsley
This article seeks to provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of the redistributive models of democracy advanced by Carles Boix, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, their reception within the democratization literature, and the subsequent trajectories of their authors. Contrary to the existing literature, which commonly envisions RMDs as a unified framework, this article argues that Boix and Acemoglu
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Nationalizing accounts: everyday nationalism, Japanese scientists, and global policy Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-08 Nahoko Kameo
The article delineates how actors invoke nationalizing accounts—accounts that turn local conditions, actions, and actors into national ones—in everyday talk. Taking the case of Japanese university scientists depicting their commercialization trajectories after the adoption of a set of policies that originated from the U.S., the article delineates how scientists stipulate what they do is Japanese. I
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Does ‘social infrastructure’ curb drug addiction? The role of local institutional norms Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Joseph Wallerstein
Research suggests that reducing rates of drug addiction requires a range of physical spaces where drug users and counselors can meet, build community, and work together. The efficacy of this ‘social infrastructure,’ however, depends not just on how its shared spaces facilitate access to social networks, but on how institutional rules and norms govern the social interaction that takes place in those
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What makes a difference? Symmetry as a sociological concept Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Jean-Sébastien Guy, Steffen Roth
This article discusses symmetry as an analytical tool for sociological analysis. Symmetry is presented as a property of social formations and a way to generate information about them through their mutual comparisons. The concept thus displaces the old dichotomy between individual and society. The latter forces to think in terms of wholes and parts, unduly limiting the possibilities at hand by keeping
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Distinguishing but not defining: How ambivalence affects contemporary identity disclosures Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Amin Ghaziani, Andy Holmes
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Prerequisites and pathways: How social categorization helps administrators determine moral worth Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Isaac Dalke, Joss Greene
Scholars have revealed how moral evaluation is woven into formal administrative processes. While research examining these dynamics tends to assume that a person’s naturalized identity (such as race and gender) precedes administrative processing, we argue that social categorization by administrators is the tacit precondition upon which further processing takes place. We make this argument by looking
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Why did Trump call prayers politically correct? The coevolution of the PC notion, the authenticity ethic, and the role of the sacred in public life Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-06-03 Ori Schwarz
Trump’s crusade against PC played a key role in his political rhetoric and resonated well among his supporters, yet his notion of PC differed greatly in meaning from earlier uses of the term and was used to denounce a much wider range of socio-political behaviors. Based on a systematic analysis of Trump’s use of this notion, I identified five main normative propositions organizing Trump’s anti-PC rhetoric
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Trump divide among American conservative professors Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-05-27 David L. Swartz
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Planning as social practice: the formation and blockage of competitive futures in tournament chess, homebuying, and political organizing Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Max Besbris, Gary Alan Fine
Drawing on models of the interaction order, we describe how planning is an inherently social activity. We argue that planning as a practice involves five core elements: mirroring, identifying, coordinating, timing, and surmounting. Specifically, planning depends on (1) a realization of likely responses of others, (2) a recognition of communal understandings, grounded in local cultures, (3) a commitment
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From secularization to religious resurgence: an endogenous account Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Zeynep Ozgen
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Nuclear denial in Japan: the network power of an energy industrial complex Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Michael C. Dreiling, Tomoyasu Nakamura, Yvonne A. Braun
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Rethinking the “crisis of expertise”: a relational approach Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Lisa Stampnitzky
Concerns about a “crisis of expertise” have been raised recently in both scholarship and public debate. This article asks why there is such a widespread perception that expertise is in crisis, and why this “crisis” has posed such a difficult puzzle for sociology to explain. It argues that what has been interpreted as a crisis is better understood as a transformation: the dissolution of a regime of
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Resignation without relief: democratic governance and the relinquishing of parental rights Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Gillian Slee, Matthew Desmond
Sociologists have long studied the ways people resist oppression but have devoted far less empirical attention to the ways people resign to it. As a result, researchers have neglected the mechanisms of resignation and how people narrate their lived experiences. Drawing on 81 interviews with parents with past child protective services cases, this article provides an empirical account of resignation
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Social media, meet old politics: preservation and innovation in Colombian presidential elections, 2010–2018 Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Nicolás Torres-Echeverry
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Pricing the priceless child 2.0: children as human capital investment Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-08 Nina Bandelj, Michelle Spiegel
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Ambivalences of smallness: population statistics and narratives of scale among American Jewry Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-04 Michal Kravel-Tovi
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A theory of intersubjectivity: experience, interaction and the anchoring of meaning Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-17 Iddo Tavory
Based on the work of Alfred Schutz, this article develops a theory of intersubjectivity—one of the basic building blocks of social experience—and shows how such a theory can be empirically leveraged in sociological work. Complementing the interactionist and ethnomethodological emphasis on the situated production of intersubjectivity, this paper revisits the basic theoretical assumptions undergirding
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The survival game: Impression management and strategies of survival under extreme conditions in a Soviet Gulag prison camp Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen, Urs Steiner Brandt, Gert Tinggaard Svendsen
How do people survive under extreme conditions? Will selfish, non-cooperating free-rider types – the solo players – have the best chances of surviving? Or would cooperating, hard-working types – the team players – have higher chances? All morale put aside, it is interesting to know whether non-cooperation or cooperation pays off in a game characterized by scarcity and hard competition for survival
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“Black people don’t love nature”: white environmentalist imaginations of cause, calling, and capacity Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-09 Matthew W. Hughey
I examine how white British members of a London-area environmental group conceptualize race in relation to ecological disasters. Based on a five-year (2018–2022) ethnographic study, members employed racialized narratives and symbolic boundaries to construct who was the cause of disasters, who had the moral responsibility or calling to remediate disasters, and who possessed the adequate resources and
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Encounters, separations, and incursions: Theorizing the Black Panther Party’s challenge to the War on Poverty Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Andrew Anastasi
This article analyzes a series of encounters between the Black Panther Party and the U.S. government’s War on Poverty, beginning with the Party’s foundation in a North Oakland anti-poverty office in 1966, and culminating with the resignation of six Party members from elected positions on a West Oakland anti-poverty board in 1973. The essay theorizes these encounters as moments in an antagonistic process
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Value change and the pragmatist theory of morality: A response Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Stefan Bargheer
What is the contribution of pragmatism to the sociology of morality? I answer to the points raised by the essays in this symposium on Moral Entanglements: Conserving Birds in Britain and Germany by outlining what the work of John Dewey adds to recent discussions on the question how values change over time and how individuals develop moral commitments.
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The culture of official statistics. Symbolic domination and “bourgeois” assimilation in quantitative measurements of immigrant integration in Germany Theory and Society (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Martin Petzke