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Though the COVID-19 epidemic is a social disaster as much as a medical one, and though some sociological ideas circulate in public discussions, disciplinary sociology has had little influence. Internal discussions have mostly been conventional, and familiar sociological theory and methodology seem inadequate to this situation. Taking the viewpoint of the virus helps to shift perspective on a historical moment where a deadly threat is enabled by megacities, mass air travel, callous and corrupt regimes, and the undermining of public services. In this conjuncture sociology, with other social sciences, is under threat. But we can contribute to responses that mobilize community resources to deal with a social/biological crisis, and prepare for the others that will certainly come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a series of critical reflections on the development of sociological studies in relation to popular music and the development of a cultural sociology of popular music. The piece begins by mapping the origins of popular music as a focus for academic study and the indebtedness of this body of work to Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies-style cultural studies analyses of popular music audiences and their reception of popular music texts. This is followed by a review of sociological work on popular music and the emergence of what could be termed a proto-cultural sociological approach. The final section of the article considers the cultural turn, its impact on cultural approaches to sociology and the significance of this for the development of a cultural sociology of popular music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the application of the psy-sciences to the conduct of juvenile justice in Victoria in the period 1940-80, in order to reassess assumptions in contemporary sociology of law concerning psy-knowledge and judicial administration, welfare and justice, and their relations to liberal or conservative political mandates. It seeks to understand the implications of shifts in the production of knowledge of the child in the justice system, by reporting on analysis of both clinical and administrative files of the Children's Court Clinic in this period. The article documents how particular kinds of offenders became known in order to be properly managed, and questions the extent of separation between science and juvenile justice administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews three recent books - one Australian, one European and one American - in order to reflect on the current state of play in economic sociology. Economic sociology is a fast-growing field of research in the US, and to a lesser extent in Europe, but it has barely registered in Australia. This is partly a reflection of the fact that economic sociology draws some of its inspiration from `new economy' industries that are weak in Australia. It also reflects the influence of the Marxist tradition in Australia, focusing mainly on the state as a countervailing force to markets. The upshot is that the market is both a constant point of reference in sociological research, but also a `black box' beyond social inquiry. The new economic sociology, in contrast, focuses upon the constitutive role of social institutions in relation to markets. It suggests promising new lines of inquiry in the Australian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article commences with a personal reflection on reflexive sociology's methodological emergence from the critique of scientific positivism that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These 'paradigm wars' reached some- thing of a zenith around the time of the final opus of a key proponent, Alvin Gouldner, in 1979. An uneasy truce was then reached under new conditions of growing economic rationalism. While mainstream academic sociology plunged into the 'coming crisis' foretold by Gouldner, a number of its graduates continued to develop reflexive sociology, particularly in non-academic workplaces. Initially called - after Kuhn - the 'new paradigm' or `critical interpretivism', it is now known by many names. Most common descriptors would be participatory or action research, action learning or socio systems-thinking. The approach has gradually achieved surprising critical mass in enormously diverse organizational, workplace and community settings worldwide. The article concludes by noting that many `new paradigm' assumptions have begun to enter mainstream social research, which may be beginning to reengage with the action research field - originally the offspring of sociological thinking three decades earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No longer hidden in the home as a private problem, care and the human services are increasingly important public concerns in advanced societies. Care is also emerging as a significant field of social theory and enquiry with considerable importance for the field of sociology. However, it remains a specialist topic rather than a central concern of the discipline. This article considers these developments and discusses the significance that recognizing the central place of care in social life might have for sociology. To understand what contemporary sociology might offer the study of care, in turn, I draw on the work of a number of leading contemporary theorists to identify four themes that have particular significance for the study of care: the body; individualization; risk; and the new organizational logics. The potential application of these four themes to the study of care is identified and a number of contemporary developments and future options considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), a survey on the Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) was conducted. In this article we discuss the MIBAS process, its findings, and provide some reflections on the top 10 most influential books. We also situate the MIBAS survey among other attempts to compile lists of the most influential books in the discipline of sociology, and discuss the benefits and limits of such endeavours. We argue that the MIBAS exercise was useful not only as a commemorative device, but as an opportunity to reflect on the breadth and influence of Australian sociological scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vote by TASA members on the `Most Influential Book in Australian Sociology' (MIBAS) provides an opportunity to compare quantitative indicators based on citations with the peer review represented by the MIBAS votes. While it is generally agreed that citations are only a partial indicator of such a complex phenomenon as quality, citations are regarded as a reflection of a publication's, author's or research group's `impact' or influence. This assumption is explored by applying several interpretations and operationalizations of the concept of `influence', by discussing their validity, and by comparing the respective citation rankings to the MIBAS poll; The major lessons of the comparison are that citation-based indicators should not be applied in diachronic comparisons, for evaluating publications on nationally specific topics, or in fields in which books are an important part of the research output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For those who are able-bodied, gratitude may well comprise a comfortable and unproblematic response to kindness, but for disabled people it can signify an unbearable state of perpetual obligation. A recent study which took a grounded theory approach to the exploration of the feelings of loss experienced by people living in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom in response to becoming `disabled' demonstrated that the prime distinguishing feature between those who were ultimately able to reconcile their need for support and those who continued to feel diminished by it was signified by the presence or absence of formal care arrangements. People who had access to paid personal assistants, whether through community-based services or the market pace, tended to feel more comfortable and in control of their lives, while those who relied on the goodwill of others commonly experienced a great deal of shame and frustration in relation to their ongoing needs, It is argued here that those whose identities suffered from the experience of unrelenting reliance on informal care have effectively been disabled by their lack of access to the kinds of services which have the potential to remove the tendency to feel, and be constrained by, shame and irrevocable gratitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of bibliometric data is a means of comparing research productivity and scholarly impact for individuals, work groups, ipstitytions and nations within and between disciplines. Central to this debate is the notion that disciplines differ in the ways in which they exchange ideas and disseminate information and therefore have diverse publishing and citation patterns. In this article we use two different approaches to compiling bibliometric data to compare publishing patterns of five different disciplines that encompass Molecular Biology, Administration/Political Science, Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology/Anthropology. We find that the social sciences differ from each other as well as from the physical sciences in their publication and citation: pat- terns. Further, while the different ways of organizing the data produce sorties what different results, the substantive findings for the general patterning of publications and citations of disciplines are consistent for both data sets Sociology/Anthropology, when compared with the other disciplines, shows substantial differences across universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far there have usually been only two answers to the question of what to do with dichotomies in sociology, either embrace them or attempt to synthesize them. However, this has produced merely an endless vacillation between the two positions, and a paradoxical constant reproduction of dichotomous thinking, rather than its transformation. This paper works towards a 'third answer' to the question, first, by outlining how the concept of the 'Hobbesian problem of order', as proposed by Talcott Parsons, underpins all sociological dichotomies, and why it is important to re-read Hobbes and revisit the so-called 'problem of order'. Second, it explains how Bruno Latour's model of the 'Constitution' of modern thought helps us to understand the dynamics of oppositions like nature/society or agency/structure, and how the problems with dichotomies derive from only perceiving part of the Constitution, rather than all of it. The paper concludes with a discussion of one example of a type of sociology that does operate across all of Latour's Constitution because it is based on a different conception of what is problematic about social order, Norbert Elias' 'figurational sociology', as well as some observations about what we might do with sociology's Constitution from this point onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the implications of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack for sociology. The destruction of the twin towers in September 2001 confronts sociologists with the reality that they are living in a new context. After September 11, the language of politics was essentially the language that was widely used to attempt to make sense of what happened in United States. According to the author, the September 11 attacks underline just how urgent is the task confronting the discipline of sociology, concerning its capacity to engage with the contemporary social world.

The article discusses the difference between secular and militant religious opposition to globalization. It focuses on Islamism and its roots on Muslim experience in the contemporary world. Islamism is different from Islam, in the sense that, Islamism is an ideology to mobilize Muslims in militant activity against western societies and their interests as well as against Muslim government that are perceived as pro-western traitors to Islam. The author also uncovers the challenges affecting sociology as the discipline attempts to develop eurocentric theoretical paradigms which are required if the present condition in global power are to be fully understand.

This paper explores the migration experience of two cohorts of Croatian migrants in Australia focusing on the fact that they are non-English speaking background (NESB) migrants. Central attention is given to the intersection of class and 'living in another language' (being NESB in Australia). The first cohort migrated in the 1960s and is predominantly working class; the second migrated in the late 1980s and is predominantly professional. It is argued that living in an English speaking environment affects Croatian migrants in practical, cultural, identity and status terms. It determines their life chances, employment prospects and the feeling of belonging to the Australian community. However, the two groups of migrants, being from different socioeconomic backgrounds, are affected in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the arguments used by members of two convict-descendant societies in embracing their convict ancestry. The data are taken from interviews that I conducted in 1999. In the main, respondents were involved in genealogy prior to discovering their or their spouses' convict ancestry. Respondents effectively countered ancestral stigma by making two kinds of argument. In the first, they recast ancestral convicts as: objects of quasi-professional interest; nation-builders; a minority within a multicultural society; collectibles; and embodying 'interesting stories'. The second type of argument forwarded more particularized treatments of convict ancestors by: minimizing the gravity of their offences; temporally distancing descendants from them; empathizing with them; and claiming their redemption. I offer some concluding thoughts on the sociology of memory and the place of genealogical memory workers within the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides the author's comments on the idea of new contractualism and individualized personhood. She stated that her contemporaries, who works within the intellectual tradition of social democracy and sociology must think again when they were trying to explain the communitarian rhetoric of condemnation of individualization, fragmentation and individualism. She also discussed the factors that surround the principles of liberalism, ethics, politics of individualized personhood and human rights conception.

This article reviews the development of the focus group method in French sociology as compared with the sociological intervention method proposed by Alain Touraine. It further purports to describe and discuss matters such as representativeness, objectivity, status of data and so forth. Lastly, it looks at the development of the epistemology of reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social science the 'national' has been studied extensively, but comparatively little attention has been given to the 'un-national'. The article takes up this challenge in an Australian context. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, investigation is centred around the keyword 'UnAustralian'. Participants in focus groups were asked to nominate and account for what they thought of as 'UnAustralian' people, places, values, activities, groups and organizations. Analysis of the data revealed that two factors underpinned an attribution: incivility and foreign influence. Contemporary uses revolve around outcomes from globalization and can be contrasted with the centrality of class politics to deployments of the concept in the first part of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the symposium that was held during the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association on December 2001. The primary objective of the symposium, which was held three months after the September 11, 2001 attack was only to explore the implications of emerging conflicts around globalization for the field of sociology, but the scope was expanded to include the implications of the September 11 attack for the sociological discipline. The symposium centered on the ability of sociology to grapple with implications of globalization and the place of non-western experiences, particularly Islamic experiences within the field of sociology.

The article comments on Anna Yeatman's concept of new contractualism and social protection. Comments on Yeatman's solidaristic conception of individuality, social protection and the principles governing how it can be achieved under the principle of new contractualism are presented. Several conceptions involving the role of social protection in the status of an individual as well as other factors affecting the individual's status under traditional citizenship and human rights discourse are also discussed.

The article presents notices to contributors of the publication "Journal of Sociology." Steps on how to prepare the manuscripts for submission are listed. These include instructions in making the manuscripts considering the number of words, the accompanied tables, notes and references, style, pagination and the quality of figures included in the manuscript. The steps to be considered in making references to books, articles and other sources such as the year of publication used in the author's account are also listed.