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Secularization theory allows for transitory religious revivals under certain conditions, such as extreme societal crises or state weakness. The country of Georgia has witnessed the largest religious revival of Orthodox countries and one of the most striking religious resurgences worldwide. This paper gives both a statistical and historical description of this revival and asks whether it is a counterexample to secularization theory. We show that the main thrust of the religious revival in Georgia lasted 25 years and seized the entire society in what was mainly a period effect. The most significant cause for the revival was a major societal and economic crisis starting in 1985 combined with a very weak state, creating massive individual insecurity. In these circumstances, the Georgian Orthodox Church was able to provide identity for individuals and legitimacy for governments. Other possible causes of the revival-state funding, too rapid modernization, or emigration-can be excluded as primary drivers of the process. The Georgian case shows a situation in which secularization theory expects transitory revivals and is thus not a counterexample., (© 2023 The Authors. The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

This paper applauds the vision and originality of Piketty's Capital and Ideology. We draw attention to the distinctive methodological perspective which he adopts, which we liken to call "social science engineering." This allows a problem oriented perspective on long-term global social change which sidesteps siloed disciplinary debates in social science and history about the meaning of modernity, the rise of capitalism, the formation of social groups, and the primacy of nations. We bring out how his theory of property permits him to take forward his overarching insight that economic growth leads to wealth accumulation. This, therefore, challenges long standing sociological perspectives by insisting that modernity is a conservative, rather than a revolutionary and transformative process. We build on this essential contribution by noting some areas where his work can push forward even further, notably that his focus on shifting relativities obscures qualitative historical changes, and more particularly means his analysis of the 20th century is not as provocative as that of the 19th century., (© 2021 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

The question of the social dimension of European integration has so far remained unsettled. While on the European level, the civil and political dimension of citizenship has been strengthened, the evolution of economic and social rights are unclear, contradictory-and still under-investigated. Our contribution applies citizenship as a central category of modernization theory to inquire into European integration. In particular, our focus is set on the analysis of Economic Citizenship as a specific category of civil rights in the case of Germany. We discuss these dynamics by drawing on the example of three policy fields which illustrate various levels of Economic Citizenship. In this article we are pursuing two goals: Firstly, we revise Marshall's modernization theory against the background of European integration. Secondly, we draw attention to the concept of Industrial Citizenship, which has so far been neglected as a source of further development. We argue that in the process of European integration, industrial rights develop through a double movement, meaning an individual extension of market-based rights complemented through national de-collectivization and-connected to this-a re-stratification of market correcting rights., (© 2020 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

This article contributes to denationalizing Bourdieu's field theory by analysing the relationship between a regional news media field, the state and transnational influences. The article seeks to answer the question of how a state can impose limits on the autonomy of the news media field during political transition. Field theory is applied to changes that have taken place in Crimean news media since Russia's annexation of the peninsula in 2014. Drawing on narrative interviews with journalists who worked in Crimea in 2012-17, expert interviews, and secondary sources, I demonstrate how Crimea's news media field went from being dominated by varied Ukrainian private news media owners to becoming dominated by the Russian state. I show that states can employ direct measures such as anti-press violence and ownership appropriation of news media outlets in order to increase concentration of state media ownership. In addition, states can reallocate capital in the news media field, disenfranchising some journalists and outlets while favouring others. The adaptive strategies of individual journalists, who, upon losing capital, can sometimes relocate or leave their jobs, also changes the composition of news media fields. Departing from a common view of social spaces as bounded within nation-states, I examine how the news media field of Crimea has been shaped by both transnational influences, and by the direct imposition of Russian state power through a reconstitution of national borders., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2018.)

This paper examines change in school‐age children's (8–16 years) time use in the United Kingdom between 1975 and 2015. Over this period, concerns for children's safety, technological change, and increased emphasis on success in school are widely argued to have altered children's daily lives, leading for example to less time outdoors, more time in screen‐based activities, and more time focused on education. Using data from three national time use surveys collected in 1974–5, 2000–01 and 2014–15, this paper explores the extent to which these arguments reflect actual change in how children spend their time throughout the day. The results show that between 1975 and 2015 children increased their time at home, and spent more time in screen‐based activities and doing homework. Decreases in time in out‐of‐home activities were concentrated in time in unstructured play, partially offset by increased time in sport. A decomposition of trends revealed that, despite a narrowing of the gender gap in time in housework, gender remains a significant factor determining many aspects of children's time use. In contrast, the significance of age declined in most leisure activities, with the exception of screen‐based activities where significant age differences emerged in 2000 and widened further in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings collected in 2016–2017 from a multi‐method ethnographic study of Shirebrook, Derbyshire in the English East Midlands, examining the narratives used by the local authority (LA) and local residents that construct immigration as a social problem. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on race and migration by extending analysis beyond metropolitan localities with long histories of multi‐ethnic settlement, to consider a relatively small, peripheral former colliery town. The paper demonstrates how migration is framed as a social problem by central government funding streams with consequences for localities, and the influence this has on local narratives of social change. The construction of immigration as a social problem is rooted in the constraints of austerity and longer‐term processes of deindustrialization and economic restructuring, with representations and understandings of place being constitutive of anti‐immigrant sentiment. This article deepens our understanding of responses to immigration in the UK, and has broader implications for understanding the relationship between place, state polices and local narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity is an important sociological lens through which to examine the means by which people engage in actions that contribute to social reproduction or social elaboration. Reflexivity theorists have largely overlooked the central place of emotions in reflexive processing, however, thus missing opportunities to enhance our understanding of reflexivity by capitalizing on recent scholarship on emotions emanating from other fields of inquiry. This paper explores the role of emotion in reflexivity, with a qualitative analysis of social responses to hydraulic fracturing in Alberta, Canada, utilizing narrative analysis of long‐form interviews with rural landowners who have experienced direct impacts from hydraulic fracturing, and have attempted to voice their concerns in the public sphere. Based on interviews with a selection of two interview participants, the paper highlights the means by which emotions shape reflexivity in consequential ways, beginning with personal and highly individualized emotional responses to contingent situations, which then factor into the social interactions engaged in the pursuit of personal projects. The shared emotional context that emerges then plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes and their implications for social stasis or change. This study exemplifies the extent to which reflexive processing in response to breaches in the social order can be emotionally tumultuous affairs, constituting a significant personal toll that many may be unwilling to pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the group identity is constructed in the process of individualization by reconstructing the public life of square‐dancing groups. The study finds that, on the one hand, groups whose members retired from the work‐unit and whose family structure is waning obtain institutional identities and group membership through external forces. On the other hand, groups play different roles, relying on three types of capital including power, ability, and relationships, and they ultimately reshape the collective identity of the groups with the internally made identity consensus and the externally assimilated identity mechanism. With the social changes in China, the groups have achieved identity construction during the interaction between the state and the individuals. The mutual influence of the reflexive actions of individuals and the support of the state system is also addressed in this paper. Thus, in the interaction between the state and the individual, the basic question of whether free individuals can achieve a universal connection that allows them to maintain public life is answered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an analysis of qualitative interview data from a study of formalized same‐sex relationships (civil partnerships) this paper examines the enduring significance of marriage and family as social institutions. In doing so, it intervenes in current debates in the sociology of family and personal life about how such institutions are undermined by reflexivity or bolstered by convention. Against the backdrop of dominating sociological frames for understanding the links between the changing nature of marriage and family and same‐sex relationship recognition, the paper analyses the diverse and overlapping ways (including the simple, relational, strategic, ambivalent and critical ways) in which same‐sex partners reflexively constructed and engaged with marriage and family conventions. My analysis suggests that instead of viewing reflexivity and convention as mutually undermining, as some sociologists of family and personal life do, it is insightful to explore how diverse forms of reflexivity and convention interact in everyday life to reconfigure the social institutions of marriage and family, but do not undermine them as such. I argue the case for recognizing the ways in which 'reflexive convention', or reflexive investment in convention, contributes to the continuing significance of marriage and family as social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to develop and apply a framework to explore how moralities of consumption are constituted in and through markets. Using the case of ready-made foods, this paper argues moral economies are comprised through interactions between micro-, meso- and macro-level processes in the form of instituted systems of provision, state regulation, collective food customs promoted though media, NGOs and lifestyle practitioners, and the everyday reflections of consumers. Building on a theoretical framework developed to understand the moral economy of work and employment (Bolton and Laaser 2013), this paper explores how markets for ready-made food are incessantly negotiated in the context of moral ideas about cooking, femininity and individual responsibility. It focuses on 'new' market innovations of fresh ready-to-cook meal solutions and explores how these products are both a response to moralizing discourses about cooking 'properly', as well as an intervention into the market that offers opportunities for new moral identities to be performed. Using data gathered from interviews with food manufacturers and consumers, I advocate for a multi-layered perspective that captures the dynamic interplay between consumers, markets and moralities of consumption., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

Nostalgia had a prominent place in the Brexit Referendum campaign, epitomized by Nigel Farage carrying around with him an old‐fashioned blue British passport on the campaign trail. In this paper, we seek to examine British attitudes towards the past through a new survey instrument administered online in July and August 2018 (N = 3,000). We empirically establish two dimensions of nostalgia that are differentially associated with political preferences. We conclude that it is the substance of the nostalgia that matters, not the looking towards the past per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critique of Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, this paper explores the theoretical contribution of a Bourdieusian sociology of the subject for understanding social change. Archer's theory of reflexivity holds that conscious 'internal conversations' are the motor of society, central both to human subjectivity and to the 'reflexive imperative' of late modernity. This is established through critiques of Bourdieu, who is held to erase creativity and meaningful personal investments from subjectivity, and late modernity is depicted as a time when a 'situational logic of opportunity' renders embodied dispositions and the reproduction of symbolic advantages obsolete. Maintaining Archer's focus on'ultimate concerns' in a context of social change, this paper argues that her theory of reflexivity is established through a narrow misreading and rejection of Bourdieu's work, which ultimately creates problems for her own approach. Archer's rejection of any pre-reflexive dimensions to subjectivity and social action leaves her unable to sociologically explain the genesis of 'ultimate concerns',and creates an empirically dubious narrative of the consequences of social change.Through a focus on Archer's concept of 'fractured reflexivity', the paper explores the theoretical necessity of habitus and illusio for understanding the social changes that Archer is grappling with.In late modernity, reflexivity is valorized just as the conditions for its successful operation are increasingly foreclosed, creating 'fractured reflexivity' emblematic of the complex contemporary interaction between habitus, illusio, and accelerating social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to present a world regional approach to the analysis of modernity and in doing so it also aims to make a contribution to comparative sociology and social theory. It is argued that world regions are the most suitable entry-point for comparing different socio-political constellations of our time, preferable to continents, civilizations and nation-states. However, a world regional foundation on its own is insufficient, due to the internal plurality and historically changing forms of world regions, and therefore needs to be accompanied by a concept that provides some degree of coherence within world regions and a tool for comparison with other world regions. The notion of modernity offers this level of generality while at the same time allowing for variety in its historical forms. Six main formations of modernity are identified, of which the European model was the first one and often a cultural reference for many other parts of the world. The thesis is that in the present day the most important developments are in the Asian and Latin American varieties, which unlike Europe are witnessing major historical transformation. Decisive in all of this is the question of democratization in the shaping of social imaginaries. Beginning with the problem of how to define the specificity of Europe, the paper provides an exploratory analysis of some of the salient considerations around a number of world regions, their formations of modernity, and the extent of major historical transformations in their present constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most literature on racial prejudice deals with the racial attitudes of the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities separately. This paper breaks this tradition. We examine the social distance attitudes of white and non-white British residents to test if these attitudes follow the same trends over time, whether they are driven by the same social processes and whether they are inter-related. We have three main findings. Firstly, social distance from other ethnic groups has declined over time for both white and ethnic minority Britons. For the white majority there are both period and cohort elements to this decline. Secondly, we see some evidence that social distance between the majority and minority groups is reciprocal. Specifically, minorities who experience rejection by the white British feel a greater sense of distance from them. Thirdly, we find that all groups share the perception of the same ethnic hierarchy. We see evidence of particularly widespread hostility towards Muslim Britons from all ethnic groups suggesting that Muslims are singled out for negative attention from many British residents of all other backgrounds, including a large number who do not express hostility to other groups., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre-existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic-relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in-depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000-2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post-2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an 'immigrant problem' framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focused on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small-scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London, I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalization as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants' thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalization's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

In recent years, there has been a growing argument that the end product of secularization may not be a disappearance of all things religious, but rather a polarization between a larger secular group in society and smaller religiously fervent and active communities. Yet, there has been little empirical testing of this theory in contexts of advanced secularization. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by studying individual belief and religiosity trends over the past four decades in Great Britain, searching specifically for evidence of the population splitting more and more between religious 'nones' removed from all forms of religion, and actively religious individuals characterized by strong beliefs and favourable to the public involvement of religion. Analysing descriptive statistics from the 1983-2012 BSAs as well as more detailed models from the 1991, 1998 and 2008 BSAs, we find growing differences in levels of beliefs and attitudes towards public religion between the increasing proportions of unaffiliated and, in recent years and among younger cohorts, more stable proportions of religiously committed individuals. The remaining religiously committed generally have stronger beliefs and more favourable views towards religious leaders influencing politics in 2008 compared with 1991, and the unaffiliated, less favourable views towards public religion., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.)

This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de-institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de-institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.)

This paper contributes to the study of social change by considering boundary work as a dimension of cultural change. Drawing on the computer-assisted qualitative analysis of 73 formal speeches made by Donald Trump during the 2016 electoral campaign, we argue that his political rhetoric, which led to his presidential victory, addressed the white working class's concern with their declining position in the national pecking order. He addressed this group's concern by raising their moral status, that is, by (1) emphatically describing them as hard-working Americans who are victims of globalization; (2) voicing their concerns about 'people above' (professionals, the rich, and politicians); (3) drawing strong moral boundaries toward undocumented immigrants, refugees, and Muslims; (4) presenting African Americans and (legal) Hispanic Americans as workers who also deserve jobs; (5) stressing the role of working-class men as protectors of women and LGBTQ people. This particular case study of the role of boundary work in political rhetoric provides a novel, distinctively sociological approach for capturing dynamics of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the empirical, conceptual and theoretical gains that can be made using cosmopolitan social theory to think through the urban transformations that scholars have in recent years termed planetary urbanization. Recognizing the global spread of urbanization makes the need for a cosmopolitan urban sociology more pressing than ever. Here, it is suggested that critical urban sociology can be invigorated by focusing upon the disconnect that Henri Lefebvre posits between the planetarization of the urban - which he views as economically and technologically driven - and his dis-alienated notion of a global urban society. The first aim of this paper is to highlight the benefits of using 'cosmopolitan' social theory to understand Lefebvre's urban problematic (and to establish why this is also a cosmopolitan problematic); the second is to identify the core cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization, tensions that are both actually existing and reproduced in scholarly accounts. The article begins by examining the challenges presented to urban sociology by planetary urbanization, before considering how cosmopolitan sociological theory helps provide an analytical 'grip' on the deep lying social realities of contemporary urbanization, especially in relation to questions about difference, culture and history. These insights are used to identify three cosmopolitan contradictions that exist within urbanized (and urbanizing) space; tensions that provide a basis for a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan investigation of planetary urbanization., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.)

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world-risk-society theory (WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine 'cosmopolitan politics', how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on 'cosmological politics', how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2015.)

This paper argues that Piketty's book should not simply be seen as that of an economist, but that it contains significant resources for sociologists to draw upon. These are firstly, this approach to social science and his use of visualizations which chime closely with recent claims about the power of description. Secondly I consider his conceptualization of time and history - which in rebutting epochal arguments about the speed of contemporary change allows for a much better appreciation of the 'long durée'; and finally his conceptualization of social classes and privilege through his elaboration of a sociology of accumulation and inheritance. In all these ways, Piketty's work assists in developing an account of elites and wealth which should be highly productive for future sociology., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)