CURRENT SOCIOLOGY

Justifying contentious social and political claims using mundane language: An analysis of Canadian right-wing extremism
Preston K
There has been a lack of research examining how right-wing extremist groups justify their key claims online to reach a broader audience. This question is even more worrisome when considering a Canadian context, given Canada's state policies on multiculturalism and intolerance of hateful rhetoric. My research draws on the gaps within the literature of right-wing extremism, online spaces, and justification of discourse by conducting a content analysis of 300 Facebook and Twitter posts from the accounts of three Canadian right-wing extremist groups, ID Canada, Soldiers of Odin BC, and Yellow Vests Canada. This article proposes the use of French theorist Boltanski and Thévenot's sociology of critical capacity common worlds to help explain how right-wing extremist groups make arguments that are quite extreme to a broad audience of people on social media. Such claims include advocating for a homogenized Canadian identity and Canadian values, promoting a belief in social decay, and supporting authoritarianism. However, these claims are not overt; rather right-wing extremist groups discuss apolitical topics to mask controversial views.
Social media and social impact assessment: Evolving methods in a shifting context
Sherren K, Chen Y, Mohammadi M, Zhao Q, Gone KP, Rahman HT and Smit M
Among many by-products of Web 2.0 come the wide range of potential image and text datasets within social media and content sharing platforms that speak of how people live, what they do, and what they care about. These datasets are imperfect and biased in many ways, but those flaws make them complementary to data derived from conventional social science methods and thus potentially useful for triangulation in complex decision-making contexts. Yet the online environment is highly mutable, and so the datasets are less reliable than censuses or other standard data types leveraged in social impact assessment. Over the past decade, we have innovated numerous methods for deploying Instagram datasets in investigating management or development alternatives. This article synthesizes work from three Canadian decision contexts - hydroelectric dam construction or removal; dyke realignment or wetland restoration; and integrating renewable energy into vineyard landscapes - to illustrate some of the methods we have applied to social impact assessment questions using Instagram that may be transferrable to other social media platforms and contexts: thematic (manual coding, machine vision, natural language processing/sentiment analysis, statistical analysis), spatial (hotspot mapping, cultural ecosystem modeling), and visual (word clouds, saliency mapping, collage). We conclude with a set of cautions and next steps for the domain.
Including animals in sociology
Koop-Monteiro Y
How do we include animals in sociology? Although sociology's initial avoidance of the nonhuman world may have been necessary to the field's development, recent scholarship - within mainstream sociology, environmental sociology and animal-centred research - is helping expand the field's horizons. With a focus on variety, this article reviews four key paths that researchers are taking to include animals in their research: (1) studying interspecies relations, (2) theorizing animals as an oppressed group, (3) investigating the social and ecological impacts of animal agriculture and (4) analysing social-ecological networks. This review shows how applying - and innovating - existing social theories and research methods allows researchers to include animals in their analyses and will be relevant to a variety of scholars, including mainstream and environmental sociologists, animal-focused researchers and social network analysts, to name a few.
'I can do things that others can't': Civic policing as weaponized volunteering in eThekwini, South Africa
Diphoorn T and Cooper-Knock SJ
In this article, we analyse civic policing in post-apartheid South Africa as a form of 'weaponized volunteering'. We use 'weaponized volunteerism' as a conceptual lens to refer to practices that rest on the potentiality and/or willingness to use physical violence or to harness the physical violence of others under the guise of 'volunteer work'. By drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted by both authors in eThekwini, South Africa, we show that by framing civic policing as weaponized volunteerism, we are able to analyse the violence at the core of policing and underline the varied ways that violence work is harnessed and expanded through civic policing, in the interest of civic and state actors. This, in turn, allows us to explore the continuum between state and civic violence, which is often directed towards similar groups and individuals.
Conclusions: Towards a sociology of pandemics and beyond
Zinn JO
This conclusion revisits the COVID-19 pandemic from the broader perspective of a changing global world. It raises questions regarding the opportunities for global learning under conditions of global divisions and competition and includes learning from the Other, governing within a changing public sphere, and challenging national cultural practices. Moreover, it exemplifies how the society-nature-technology nexus has become crucial for understanding and reconstructing the dynamics of the coronavirus crisis such as the assemblages of geographical conditions, technological means and the governing of ignorance, the occurrence of hotspots as well as living under lockdown conditions. It finishes with some preliminary suggestions how reoccurring pandemics might contribute to long-term changes in human attitudes and behaviour towards the environment and a technologically shaped lifeworld.
"I Wish I Were a Plumber!": Transnational Class Re-Constructions Across Migrant Experiences Among Hong Kong's Professionals and Managers
Lui L and Curran SR
This study examines processes of class construction within a transnational community of professionals and managers who are emigrants, returnees, and non-migrants. Building on Bourdieu's class analysis and literature on transnational migration, we examine how class statuses are supported by moral claims based on varying transnational mobility strategies. We draw our results from qualitative interviews with 45 Hong Kong respondents in Hong Kong and Canada. We find that despite Hong Kong emigrants' loss of economic capital due to de-professionalization, their cultural and symbolic claims frame an alternative set of norms about their life successes. Returnees claim to have the best of both worlds having amassed economic capital, while making social distinctions from stayers in terms of their globalized cosmopolitan imaginaries. Stayers appear envious of emigrants' and returnees' flexibility and seek to accumulate economic capital for future retirement migration or to send their children abroad. Respondents' moralizing discourses reveal a social field defining within class distinctions apart from hyper concerns of upward mobility through material gains. Nuanced class distinctions articulate values around freedom of space, time, and expression not readily accessible to residents remaining in Hong Kong.
'Making time': Long-distance marriages and the temporalities of the transnational family
Acedera KA and Yeoh BS
By focusing on the relations of intimacy between migrant wives working in Singapore and their left-behind husbands living in the Philippines, this article investigates how transnational couples negotiate the liminalities and temporariness embedded in the experience of labour migration. Using the timescales of migration as a conceptual frame, the article analyses the mutual, if uneven, shaping of marital relationships at the micro-timescale of transnational family time and the meso-timescale of Singapore's labour migration regime. It focuses on how 'doing family' across distance is centrally facilitated through the affordances of communication technologies to create rhythms and manage ruptures. These technologies are crucial in (re)making domestic family time in the transnational household. The way the micro-temporalities of transnational family life are reorganised works in tension with how couples negotiate liminal conditions imposed by Singapore's work permit and pass system. The article argues that temporariness and precarity, which deter the imagination of a stable future, are constantly negotiated in the lives of the transnational family through different temporal strategies. By bracketing off intense emotions and downplaying ruptures in relationships, the transnational family is able to focus on their future aspirations of achieving their projects through migration. As migration timelines are indefinitely extended and family separation is prolonged, the transnational family strives to endure through these strategies of (re)making their temporalities.
'Rooted mobilities' in young people's narratives of the future: A peripheral case
Cuzzocrea V
Youth research recognises that the struggles typical of the transition to adulthood can no longer be assumed to occur 'at home'. However, few investigations have focused on how the imagination of mobility shapes that which is not home but which may later become so. To address this lacuna, this article engages with how the imagination of the future of young people is entrenched with 'motility', namely, the possibility for a type of movement that arises out of a specific relationship with one's current context. Focusing on Sardinian youth, the article problematises the strong mobility orientation which can occur through the unfolding of an imagined continuous 'lived' relationship with Sardinia. The author calls this 'rooted mobility'. The article discusses the limits that accompany such mobility, and the potential for social action that emerges, framing narratives of the future within the conditions of peripherality in which young Sardinians live. The article draws on 341 essays on the topic of the future collected from students in their penultimate year of school.
From 'the effect of repression' toward 'the response to repression'
Honari A
Scholars have long been interested in explaining the effect of state repression on political participation. Recent reviews of research on state repression highlighted contradictory findings about this effect, yet the core question is still debated: what accounts for the variation in the effects of repression? This article posits that, to make sense of the variation in repression's effect on political participation, theorization needs to move toward predictions about individuals' responses to repression. The article, thus, attempts to lay the foundations for such theorization by reviewing the scholarship on the relationship between repression and political participation through the lens of the strategic choices individuals can make. Seeing individuals as having agency and shifting focus to their responses to repression (1) offers a broader picture of the activities available to discontented people under repression and (2) provides a better account of the contentious politics occurring under repression. A number of strategies in response to repression are identified. The notion of 'choice points' is applied to formulate hypotheses about why or under what conditions people choose a particular strategy in response to repression. In doing so, this article outlines new avenues for empirical research on repression.
Unexpected agency on the threshold: Asylum seekers narrating from an asylum seeker centre
Ghorashi H, de Boer M and Ten Holder F
Several studies have described the condition of asylum seekers as being or . Victor Turner's concept of and Agamben's have been used extensively to analyse this condition, mostly to show the negative implications of the ambiguous legal (non-) status. This article argues that the condition of liminality provides an intensified doubleness of impossibility and possibility for action, which casts a different light on conceptualizing agency. Without disregarding the downside of this liminal, in-between condition, the article shows that the lack of 'normalized' connectedness to the new structure combined with physical distance from the past structure, enables reflection and feeds the power of imagination. This can lead to alternative (yet conditional) forms of agency, such as delayed agency and agency from marginal positions. Through the narratives of asylum seekers living in Dutch asylum seeker centres, the article shows the potential of transforming , such as asylum seeker centres, into those in which existential meanings can emerge (even if partial). Considering these sources of agency has great implications for the short-term well-being of asylum seekers and the long-term inclusion of refugees in their countries of residence.
The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles
Hesselmann F, Graf V, Schmidt M and Reinhart M
Retractions of scientific articles are becoming the most relevant institution for making sense of scientific misconduct. An increasing number of retracted articles, mainly attributed to misconduct, is currently providing a new empirical basis for research about scientific misconduct. This article reviews the relevant research literature from an interdisciplinary context. Furthermore, the results from these studies are contextualized sociologically by asking how scientific misconduct is made visible through retractions. This study treats retractions as an emerging institution that renders scientific misconduct visible, thus, following up on the sociology of deviance and its focus on visibility. The article shows that retractions, by highlighting individual cases of misconduct and general policies for preventing misconduct while obscuring the actors and processes through which retractions are effected, produce highly fragmented patterns of visibility. These patterns resemble the bifurcation in current justice systems.
Causes and consequences of the rise of populist radical right parties and movements in Europe
Muis J and Immerzeel T
This article reviews three strands in the scholarship on the populist radical right (PRR). It covers both political parties and extra-parliamentary mobilization in contemporary European democracies. After definitional issues and case selection, the authors first discuss demand-side approaches to the fortunes of the PRR. Subsequently, supply-side approaches are assessed, namely political opportunity explanations and internal supply-side factors, referring to leadership, organization and ideological positioning. Third, research on the consequences of the emergence and rise of these parties and movements is examined: do they constitute a corrective or a threat to democracy? The authors discuss the growing literature on the impact on established parties' policies, the policies themselves, and citizens' behaviour. The review concludes with future directions for theorizing and research.
Beyond a state-centric approach to urban informality: Interactions between Delhi's middle class and the informal service sector
Schindler S
This article presents original research on relations between middle-class residents and informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. It shows how middle-class associations used their consumption preferences as well as relationships with local authorities to legitimize the work of street hawkers and waste workers. These findings suggest that the toleration of informality can be traced to governance regimes comprised of both state and non-state powerbrokers.
The 'empty choice': A sociological examination of choosing medical research participation in resource-limited Sub-Saharan Africa
Kingori P
This article explores the views of frontline research staff in different Sub-Saharan African contexts on the notion of choice in biomedical research. It argues that the current emphasis on individual choice, in the conduct of biomedical research, ignores significant structural and contextual factors in resource-limited settings. These factors severely constrain individual options and often make biomedical research enrolment the most amenable route to healthcare for the world's poorest. From the position of frontline research staff, local contextual factors and structural issues narrowly frame the parameters within which many prospective participants are asked to choose, to such an extent that individuals are effectively presented with an 'empty choice'. The article draws on ethnographic and interview data and insights gained through graphic elucidation techniques. It demonstrates that for frontline research staff, macro-level structural factors and their bearing on everyday realities shape what choice in biomedical research participation means in practice.
Towards a global environmental sociology? Legacies, trends and future directions
Lidskog R, Mol AP and Oosterveer P
A current debate on environmental sociology involves how the subdiscipline should conceptualise and investigate the environment and whether it should be prescriptive and deliver policy recommendations. Taking this debate as a point of departure this article discusses the current and future role of sociology in a globalised world. It discusses how environmental sociology in the US and Europe differ in their understandings of sociology's contribution to the study of the environment. Particular stress is placed on how these two regions differ with respect to their use of the tradition of sociological thought, views on what constitutes the environment and ways of institutionalising environmental sociology as a sociological field. In conclusion, the question is raised of whether current versions of environmental sociology are appropriate for analysing a globalised world environment; or whether environmental sociology's strong roots in European and US cultures make it less relevant when facing an increasingly globalised world. Finally, the article proposes some new rules for a global environmental sociology and describes some of their possible implications for the sociological study of climate change.
A sociological dilemma: Race, segregation and US sociology
Bhambra GK
US sociology has been historically segregated in that, at least until the 1960s, there were two distinct institutionally organized traditions of sociological thought - one black and one white. For the most part, however, dominant historiographies have been silent on that segregation and, at best, reproduce it when addressing the US sociological tradition. This is evident in the rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other 'African American Pioneers of Sociology', as Saint-Arnaud calls them, are presented as core sociological voices within histories of the discipline. This article addresses the absence of African American sociologists from the US sociological canon and, further, discusses the implications of this absence for our understanding of core sociological concepts. With regard to the latter, the article focuses in particular on the debates around equality and emancipation and discusses the ways in which our understanding of these concepts could be extended by taking into account the work of African American sociologists and their different interpretations of core themes.
The social life of the brain: Neuroscience in society
Pickersgill M
Neuroscience is viewed by a range of actors and institutions as a powerful means of creating new knowledge about our selves and societies. This article documents the shifts in expertise and identities potentially being propelled by neuroscientific research. It details the framing and effects of neuroscience within several social domains, including education and mental health, discussing some of the intellectual and professional projects it has animated therein (such as neuroethics). The analysis attends to the cultural logics by which the brain is sometimes made salient in society; simultaneously, it points towards some of parameters of the territory within which the social life of the brain plays out. Instances of societal resistance and agnosticism are discussed, which may render problematic sociological research on neuroscience in society that assumes the universal import of neuroscientific knowledge (as either an object of celebration or critique). This article concludes with reflections on how sociotechnical novelty is produced and ascribed, and the implications of this.
The moral organization of the professions: Bioethics in the United States and France
De Vries R, Dingwall R and Orfali K
Bioethics is a relatively new endeavor, emerging as a discourse distinct from considerations of moral responsibility occurring within the professions of medicine and science. We use the 'de-centered comparative method' to examine how the emergence and development of bioethics varies across different social and cultural settings. In particular, we look at bioethical work in the United States and France, exploring these different manifestations of the movement toward external oversight of those working in medicine and the life sciences. The study of these varied processes of occupational development allows us to address two important issues. One is the way in which pathways of professionalisation are shaped by contingent cultural and historical factors. The other is the degree to which the increasing prominence of the bioethical occupation is the result of the professional desires of bioethicists and/or a concern for the public good.
Intergenerational Exchanges in Mexico: Types and Intensity of Support
Gomes C
This article analyses exchanges of support between the elderly and adult generations and by gender, based on data from the United Nations household survey in Mexico City (SABE, 2000), and the National Study of Ageing and Health (ENASEM, 2001). Results indicate that in Mexico both generations - elderly parents and adult children - provide support, such as money, services, care or gifts for grandchildren, according to gender roles and the generation's resources. Men provide monetary support and reproduce their role as family providers, but this role depends on having an income from work and, in later years, a pension, a more common situation among men than among women. Women develop their female domestic role as caregivers. They do not have a formal income, but receive informal economic support and offer services and care to their relatives, reproducing their invisible and unpaid work during their life course. Both types of support are widely exchanged between elderly parents and adult children and children-in-law.
Palestinians: exiles at home and abroad
Abu-lughod JL
Sociological theories of international migration: the case of refugees
Richmond AH