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When writing a research paper, the author has to select information to include in the paper to support various arguments. The information has to be organized and synthesized into a coherent whole through relationships and information structures. There is hardly any research on the information structure of research papers, and how information structure supports rhetorical and argument structures. Thus, this study is focused on information organization in the Abstract and Introduction sections of sociology research papers, analyzing the information structure of research objective, question, hypothesis, and result statements. The study is limited to research papers reporting research that investigated cause–effect relations between two concepts. Two semantic frames were developed to specify the types of information associated with cause–effect and comparison relations, and used as coding schemes to annotate the text for different information types. Six link patterns between the two frames were identified—showing how comparisons are used to support the claim that the cause‐effect relation is valid. This study demonstrated how semantic frames can be incorporated in discourse analysis to identify deep structures underlying the argument structure. The results carry implications for the knowledge representation of academic research in knowledge graphs, for semantic relation extraction, and teaching of academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When writing a research paper, the author has to select information to include in the paper to support various arguments. The information has to be organized and synthesized into a coherent whole through relationships and information structures. There is hardly any research on the information structure of research papers, and how information structure supports rhetorical and argument structures. Thus, this study is focused on information organization in the Abstract and Introduction sections of sociology research papers, analyzing the information structure of research objective, question, hypothesis, and result statements. The study is limited to research papers reporting research that investigated cause–effect relations between two concepts. Two semantic frames were developed to specify the types of information associated with cause–effect and comparison relations, and used as coding schemes to annotate the text for different information types. Six link patterns between the two frames were identified—showing how comparisons are used to support the claim that the cause‐effect relation is valid. This study demonstrated how semantic frames can be incorporated in discourse analysis to identify deep structures underlying the argument structure. The results carry implications for the knowledge representation of academic research in knowledge graphs, for semantic relation extraction, and teaching of academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the citation counts of papers published in the first 25 years of the Sociology of Health and Illness. According to this measure only a small number of papers have made a major impact on the discipline of sociology of health and illness and an analysis of these select papers identifies some common themes. In particular, ‘successful’ papers have provided important theoretical constructs for the field while exploration of aspects of identity has been a recurrent focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the practices of natural science researchers and the recognition authors receive in multi-authored papers at Japanese universities. The ' Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication' by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which sets global standards for authorship ethics in many natural science fields, notes problems in two areas in particular: with 'gift authors' (people who are indicated as authors, but who do not actually contribute to the work) and with 'ghost authors' (people, often students or researchers in lower positions, who are not properly represented in the paper even though they make essential contributions to it). We also note the recent complaints by junior researchers about these violations, which are claimed to be harassment or bullying using power differences. Our survey of researchers in natural sciences at 15 top Japanese universities shows that, despite the different specialized fields, few researchers actually meet the gold standard of authorship criteria of proper authorship and about half think that their violation might be condoned. The data are analyzed taking into consideration a particular local context. Through the exploratory research above, we speculate that most natural science researchers in Japan may be either confused about or struggle with the situation where the strict global criteria conflict with specific local cultures that often condone gift and ghost authorships. Those who are already socialized in such local cultures take unethical authorships for granted, while others view it as an intersection of harassment and misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary on the papers of the special issue identifies and discusses four themes: 1) strategies to bridge the gap between science and practice, 2) sources of community science questions of interest, 3) choice and quality of methods, and 4) epistemology and useful language for community science. The commentary identifies some limitations in the models proposed by the special issue authors, and proposes renewed attention to ecology, context and process in community change initiatives, calling for a common set of community level measures as one strategy to advance a community centered science agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production and reception of scientific papers in the academic-industrial complex have been neglected in sociology. In this article the social processes which influence the nature of the scientific paper in that complex are explored in depth by taking a number of controversial medical papers as case studies. The empirical evidence is collected and discussed in the light of sociological theories of normative ethos, paradigm development, reward-induced conformity and social interests in science. It is concluded that within the medical-industrial complex conformity to industrial interests can be a major criterion in defining the kind of reception given to a scientific paper and the professional autonomy of the authors in the paper's production, rather than an ethos of scientific scepticism or commitment to paradigmatic conventions. This is seen to have implications for the production of scientific knowledge -- implications that might be in conflict with the public interest. Consequently, the desirability of current British Government proposals to intensify its policy of making science more responsive to the needs of industry may have significant drawbacks, hitherto unacknowledged in official circles, and in need of more extensive sociological investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the beginning of the intellectual companionship between the founder of ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel, and Edward Rose, who is most often associated with his program of "ethno‐inquiries." I present results from archival research focusing on the contacts and collaborations between Rose and Garfinkel in the years 1955–1965. First, I describe the review process for Rose and Felton's paper, submitted to the American Sociological Review in 1955, which Garfinkel reviewed and after Rose's rebuttal recommended for publication. The paper induced Garfinkel to write an extensive commentary that has remained unpublished. Second, I discuss the 1958 New Mexico conference sponsored by the Air Force, which was an opportunity for Rose and Garfinkel to work together on topics related to common‐sense knowledge and scientific knowledge. Third, I give an overview of the ethnomethodological conferences in 1962 and 1963, supported by an Air Force grant written collaboratively by Rose and Garfinkel. Here I focus primarily on Rose's research on "small languages," which stimulated many discussions among the early ethnomethodologists. Rose's work and exchanges with Garfinkel demonstrate the former's affinity for miniaturization as a research approach and search for ways to empiricize topics of sociological theory in locally observable settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides insights on the urgent need for transformative responses in health and social care services due to challenges such as aging populations, chronic illnesses, infrastructure underinvestment, and workforce shortages. It presents papers that examine different aspects of these transformations, including the adoption of single-handed care.

Bandura's self-efficacy (SE) theory claims that if people believe that they can control the outcome of their behaviour, then they can. SE theory positions the self as the centre and originator of change, beginning with control over belief systems, which determine levels of performance. This conception depoliticizes social mechanisms of control, internalizing them within individual cognitive processes. We argue that SE theory emanates from culturally-positioned and ideologically informed functional trends in US psychology, which perpetuates a blaming-the-victim approach to social problems. Through an examination of the way gender and disability are manipulated in SE research, we show that efficacy is socially construed, and is actually about control over and access to power and the ideological, institutional, and social resources that provide the foundation for taking certain actions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of books and films received by this publication, including "Social Anthropology and Human Origins," by Alan Barnard, "On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation,: by Luc Boltanski and "Culture and Cognition: Evolutionary Perspectives," by Bradley Franks.

These comments focus on some issues raised in the papers by Dimand, Peart and Levy, Cot, and Leonard. These papers are fascinating, but not without weaknesses. It is argued that Dimand's presentation of what he calls the “general principle” of classical economics is misconceived. There is a confusion in this paper between the classical view of equal capacity and the much newer concept of equally rational actual performance. Peart and Levy discuss the idea of unequal capacity for pleasure in Edgeworth, but do not draw a link back to the idea in J. S. Mill of different qualities of pleasure. Cot and Leonard provide informative accounts of the American eugenic movement and its links to progressivism, but with an insufficient degree of distinction between the various positions and agendas that were concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of sociology have long recognized the Protestant ambience within which the discipline emerged in the United States. Autobiographies elicited by L. L. Bernard in the 1920s and 1930s provide insight into the impact of this background on early American sociologists. In addition to confirming the importance of mainstream Protestantism, the autobiographies reveal a multitude of identity strategies adopted by those who came to call themselves sociologists. In negotiating the relation of religious and secular spheres, some abandoned religion en route to a sociological career. Others became sociologists of religion, separated value-laden (religious) aspects of their lives from value-neutral (sociological) endeavors, created a sociologically informed mode of Protestantism, or molded a Protestant sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamics of Bazoorns, a "restaurant" in which powers gender, and sexuality come together to color relations between the three major "players" involved: waitresses, managers, and customers- Job-based power relations and inequities, gender roles, implicit and explicit sexual roles, and sexual harassment are all "at work" in such a workplace. But definitions of power, gender roles, sexual identities, and harassment are in constant flux with each interaction among the players inside the Bazooms world. The women who work at Bazooms-the "Bazooms girls"-are disadvantaged iii these interactions, but they are not helpless. Dynamics within the restaurant are constantly being negotiated and altered (within constraints) as these women exercise agency in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses information about the 27th Sociology of Health and Illness Monograph. Topics covered include the emergence of the construct of overdiagnosis, the impact of diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment uncertainty on the lay-professional interface, and organisational and health system level responses to uncertainty.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including relationships between power, space and dominant discourses; importance of structural dimensions of power between professionals and patients; and role of environment in healthcare services.

Power dynamics influence every aspect of scientific collaboration. Team power dynamics can be measured by team power level and team power hierarchy. Team power level is conceptualized as the average level of the possession of resources, expertise, or decision‐making authorities of a team. Team power hierarchy represents the vertical differences of the possessions of resources in a team. In Science of Science, few studies have looked at scientific collaboration from the perspective of team power dynamics. This research examines how team power dynamics affect team impact to fill the research gap. In this research, all coauthors of one publication are treated as one team. Team power level and team power hierarchy of one team are measured by the mean and Gini index of career age of coauthors in this team. Team impact is quantified by citations of a paper authored by this team. By analyzing over 7.7 million teams from Science (e.g., Computer Science, Physics), Social Sciences (e.g., Sociology, Library & Information Science), and Arts & Humanities (e.g., Art), we find that flat team structure is associated with higher team impact, especially when teams have high team power level. These findings have been repeated in all five disciplines except Art, and are consistent in various types of teams from Computer Science including teams from industry or academia, teams with different gender groups, teams with geographical contrast, and teams with distinct size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a bibliographies of books on anthropology, sociology and history.

Excerpted from my book Generally Speaking, this paper introduces "concept‐driven sociology," a special way of theorizing designed to reveal abstract social patterns. As such, it examines the methodological process by which we can "distill" generic patterns from the culturally, historically, and situationally specific contexts in which we encounter them. It thus champions a "generic sociology" that is pronouncedly transcontextual (transcultural, transhistorical, transsituational, and translevel) in its scope. In order to uncover generic, transcontextual social patterns, we need to collect our data in a wide range of social contexts. Such contextual diversity is manifested multi‐culturally, multihistorically, multisituationally, as well as at multiple levels of social aggregation. True to its message, the book illustrates generic social patterns by drawing on numerous examples from diverse cultural contexts and historical periods and a wide range of diverse social domains, as well as by disregarding scale. Emphasizing cross‐contextual commonality, concept‐driven sociology tries to reveal formal "parallels" across seemingly disparate contexts. The paper features the four main types of cross‐contextual analogies concept‐driven sociologists tend to use—cross‐cultural, cross‐historical, cross‐domain, as well as cross‐level—disregarding conventionally noted substantive differences in order to note conventionally disregarded formal equivalences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The lack of ethnic diversity in health research participation is a multi‐dimensional problem. Racism and intersectional disadvantage compel us to use racial and ethnic categories to explore health, but race theorists warn that these can be essentialising and pathologising. Yet, the alternative, the pursuit of colour‐blindness, can render the impact of race and ethnicity on health invisible. This paper describes the attempt to recruit an ethnically diverse sample to inform the development of an intervention for stroke patients. The study revealed deep uncertainties and tensions, which we use to re‐examine our own positionalities and perspectives. We focus on the experiences of researchers and participants to show how 'usual' research practices are unwittingly exclusionary and promote 'methodological whiteness' (The British Journal of Sociology, 2017, 68, S214). Calls for greater diversity in research are frequently made, yet health research remains tainted by the use of problematic epistemological starting points, rendering participation by minoritised people uneasy. Medical sociologists, especially those engaged in clinical trials, have a vital role to play in recalibrating health research to attend to ethnicity and race. This requires us to reflect on our practices, to recognise where we are complicit in replicating social inequalities and to actively engage with communities to produce more inclusive research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial introduction, we explore how digital health is being explored at the intersection of sociology of health and science and technology studies (STS). We suggest that socio‐material approaches and practice theories provide a shared space within which productive tensions between sociology of health and STS can continue. These tensions emerge around the long‐standing challenges of avoiding technological determinism while maintaining a clear focus on the materiality and agency of technologies and recognising enduring sets of relations that emerge in new digital health practices while avoiding social determinism. The papers in this Special Issue explore diverse fields of healthcare (e.g. reproductive health, primary care, diabetes management, mental health) within which heterogenous technologies (e.g. health apps, mobile platforms, smart textiles, time‐lapse imaging) are becoming increasingly embedded. By synthesising the main arguments and contributions in each paper, we elaborate on four key dimensions within which digital technologies create ambivalence and (re)configure health practices. First, promissory digital health highlights contradictory virtues within discourses that configure digital health. Second, (re)configuring knowledge outlines ambivalences of navigating new information environments and handling quantified data. Third, (re)configuring connectivity explores the relationships that evolve through digital networks. Fourth, (re)configuring control explores how new forms of power are inscribed and handled within algorithmic decision‐making in health. We argue that these dimensions offer fruitful perspectives along which digital health can be explored across a range of technologies and health practices. We conclude by highlighting applications, methods and dimensions of digital health that require further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A moderate but consistent positive correlation was found between the number of citations in a paper and the number of times it is cited. This result refers to a collection of papers published in the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology in 1972 and 1973. The following variables were controlled: journal, year of publications, subject category of paper, number of authors, and seniority of author. Several explanations of this finding are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Christian Morgner provides a critical reading of Niklas Luhmann's thinking as ignoring human beings or even as antihumanist. Here, he presents an alternative view that centers on Luhmann's idea of the child or human being as a medium. To explain Luhmann's use of these ideas to conceptualize the child and the consequences for research, Morgner refers to the translation of Luhmann's paper "The Child as the Medium of Education" and to as yet unpublished material from his famous card‐box reference system. Drawing on these materials, Morgner can more clearly illuminate Luhmann's novel perspective and how it could inform further theoretical development, supported by new analysis of existing research in other fields, including developmental psychology, education, philosophy, and sociology. He concludes that, far from neglecting the human, Luhmann's theory takes human being very seriously and acknowledges its key role as a form‐giving medium in addressing the challenges faced by contemporary society. This renewed perspective should be of particular interest to educational theorists, enabling them to more freely apply his ideas in various settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines the development of food charity in schools in England. Growing numbers of schools, often in partnership with charities and businesses, are directly providing food to parents who are struggling to feed their families. This paper analyses how and why this is happening and its broader significance. The growth of food charity in schools is explained through a mixture of a retreating welfare state, an ongoing cost of living crisis, the continued diffusion of charitable food aid as a socially accepted response to poverty and hunger in the United Kingdom, and schools having to adopt increasing responsibility for making sure that children's basic needs are being met. Drawing on semi‐structured interview data gathered from school staff, this paper highlights how schools are becoming a new frontier for charitable food aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents information on 'Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology' as of March 2004. The journal publishes empirical and conceptual papers which aim to increase understanding of people and organizations at work. Its domain is broad, covering industrial, organizational, engineering, vocational and personnel psychology, as well as behavioural and cognitive aspects of industrial relations, ergonomics, human factors and industrial sociology. The editorial team reminds readers that research based on student samples is not usually acceptable, unless students are the most relevant population with which to test the research question/s. However, a little further comment and qualification concerning the nature of the data is needed in order to clarify the team's stance, and also to draw attention to some exceptions. One particular concern here is to discourage studies where causal hypotheses in well-researched areas are tested using entirely self-report survey data from a sample numbering perhaps in the low hundreds, the composition of which is characterized more by availability than special relevance to the research question/s. So, if a study used only cross-sectional self-report data but included some kind of experimental manipulation, other things being equal it could be publishable. A more general, and very important issue concerns the distinction between quantitative and qualitative data. The journal explicitly encourages papers based on the latter, and has done so for quite some time.

In his critique of Luhmann's sociology, Habermas (1987) argued that individuation and socialization are possible on the basis of linguistic structures. This critique touches the blind spot of sociological systems theory as a meta-biology. Whereas the paradigm shift from action theory towards communication theory was fully reflected in Luhmann's sociology, the difference between the self-organization of social systems and the autopoiesis of biological systems remained underspecified. Social systems allow for communication about observations from within the system and/or from another perspective. Observers are able to participate both in the variation and in the selection; Giddens (1976) introduced in this context the metaphor of a ‘double hermeneutics’. Through language the distinction between uncertainty and meaningful information is communicated reflexively, and the consequent codification may be changed without becoming confused. The implied communicative competences can be specified from the perspective of communication theory. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how a small rural town Kauhava, Finland, is reconfigured in the wake of a reception centre being established. Drawing on the conceptual toolbox of the sociology of associations, we find that regardless of attitudes towards asylum seekers, people springing into action and enroling others leads to the problematisation and intensification of place. This involves turning public and private spaces into contested places. Competing definitions of community and identity emerge. While new identities are configured, new associations and ways of linking actors and places together also take form. The paper examines how the micropolitics of place and belonging are carried out in practice, and what types of mechanisms bring about or prevent new conjunctions and transformations in places. The data consist of interviews in Kauhava with town officials, reception centre volunteers, opponents of the centre and refugees who have stayed in the town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this collection we revisit the enduring phenomenon of uncertainty in health care, and demonstrate how it still offers coherence and significance as an analytic concept. Through empirical studies of contemporary examples of health care related uncertainties and their management, our collection explores the different ways in which uncertainty may be articulated, enacted and experienced. The papers address a diverse range of healthcare contexts ‐ Alzheimer's disease, neonatal surgery, cardiovascular disease prevention, cancer, addiction (use of alcohol and other drugs during pregnancy), mental health/disorders and medical education – and many tackle issues of contemporary relevance, such as an ageing population, and novel medical interventions and their sequelae. These empirical papers are complemented by a further theoretical contribution, which considers the role of 'implicit normativity' in masking and containing potential ethical uncertainty. By mapping themes across the collection, in this introduction we present a number of core analytical strands: (1) conceptualising uncertainty; (2) intersections of uncertainty with aspects of care; (3) managing uncertainty; and (4) structural constraints, economic austerity and uncertainty work. We reflect on the methodological and theoretical stances used to think sociologically about uncertainty in health care, and the strengths, silences and gaps we observe in the collection. We conclude by considering the implications of the insights gained for 'synthesising certainty' in practice and for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is written in response to Helen Morgan's paper 'Whiteness: A problem for our times'. A distinctive feature of her writing and thinking in this essay, and her new book, is how she moves easily and freely between psychoanalytic, sociological, political and psychological frameworks of understanding. In doing so her work exemplifies something that the psychoanalytic community has mostly been poor at achieving – a recognition of both its distinctive and unique potential to illuminate social and political processes, and a parallel acknowledgement of its need to enter into equilateral dialogue with other intellectual paradigms. Social and political life is historical, specific, local and complex, and not amenable to reductionist or universalizing modes of analysis and engagement. Through some examples I aim to add to Helen's very thoughtful and well researched paper, to show how psychoanalysis needs to respect other languages and methodologies for engaging with the world, render its own more accessible to non‐specialists, and relinquish its tendency to assume the status of a 'master discourse'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a critical look at the role of chronobiology in society today, with particular reference to its entanglements with health and medicine and whether or not this amounts to the (bio)medicalisation of our bodily rhythms. What we have here, we show, is a complex unfolding storyline, within and beyond medicine. On the one hand, the promises and problems of these circadian, infradian and ultradian rhythms for our health and well‐being are now increasingly emphasised. On the other hand, a variety of new rhythmic interventions and forms of governance are now emerging within and beyond medicine, from chronotherapies and chronopharmacology to biocompatible school and work schedules, and from chronodiets to the optimisation of all we do according to our 'chronotypes'. Conceptualising these developments, we suggest challenges us to think within and beyond medicalisation to wider processes of biomedicalisation and the biopolitics of our body clocks: a vital new strand of chronopolitics today indeed which implicates us all in sickness and in health as the very embodiment of these rhythms of life itself. The paper concludes with a call for further research on these complex unfolding relations between chronobiology, health and society in these desynchronised times of ours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue, including adherence to medicine of people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the antiretroviral treatment access to older South Africans with HIV, and parenting of gay men with HIV.

This paper explores the potential of the perspective of epistemic injustice to reconcile medical sociology's attention to the micro level of experience and interpersonal exchange, and disability studies' focus on the macro level of oppressive structures. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the concept of epistemic injustice and its key instances—testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory injustice. We also consider previous applications of the concept in the fields of health care and disability, and we contextualise our investigation by discussing key features of postsocialism from the perspective of epistemic injustice. In the second part, we explore specific epistemic injustices experienced by people who use disability support by drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted with parents of disabled children in present‐day Bulgaria. In our conclusion, we revisit our methodological and theoretical points about the potential of epistemic injustice to facilitate mutually beneficial exchanges between medical sociology and disability studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Thinking Against Empire: Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory, Julian Go continues his vital work on rethinking and redirecting the discipline of sociology. Go's piece relates to his wider oeuvre of postcolonial sociology – found in works such as his Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016) as well as multiple journal articles on epistemic exclusion (Go 2020), Southern theory (Go 2016), metrocentrism (Go 2014), and the history of sociology (Go 2009). In this response article, my aim is to think alongside some of the central themes outlined in Go's paper rather than offering a rebuttal of any sorts. In particular, I want to think through how the recent work on 'decoloniality' may play more of a central role in Go's vision of sociology and social theory than he acknowledges. In doing so, I hope to engage in Go's prodigious scholarship through centering discussions of the geopolitics of knowledge, double translation, and border thinking. Before proceeding to this discussion, I will offer a brief review of my reading of Go's paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the problem of category has traditionally been addressed by various scholars since Aristotle, Luhmann's epistemology has kept this matter in a suspended state, occasionally prioritizing some concepts (presumably categories) over others. However, for the sake of a consistent analysis of the semantics and societal self‐descriptions, it is better to have categorical constructs as focal points of systemic analysis manifested. Drawing upon resources of Luhmann's systems theory and Durkheim's sociology, this paper aims at elaborating the concept of category as an essential element of autopoietic analytical optics. It is shown that categories possess the following attributes: the highest degree of generalization and condensation, necessity, universality despite semantic variability, historicity and evolutionary characteristics. Amid a range of distinctions, system/environment, dis‐/similar, un‐/equal and distinction itself are considered to be categorical. These serve to carry out a primordial marking of 'unmarked space' and prepare the essential foundation for connectivity and other distinction generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores modes of expectation among care‐experienced young people when navigating educational success. Luhmann's theoretical framework is used to conceptualise experiences of educational success and the role of uncertainty. We identify three modes of expectation: trust, risk and danger. To illustrate these modes, we draw on selected examples from an interview study with 28 care‐experienced young people focusing on their experiences of support and aftercare while transitioning out of care. The trust mode of expectation is based in a confidence that the future entails a positive outcome—in the case of this study, regarding educational success. This expectation is characterised by the young person's feelings of belonging, underpinned by a safety net of unconditionally supportive caregivers. The risk mode of expectation is characterised by the young person's feeling of being overwhelmed and burdened by the complexity of the educational system in combination with unknown future circumstances when leaving care. The battle against child welfare services to keep supportive measures increases levels of uncertainty. The danger mode of expectation emerges when educational success is disrupted by the interference of child welfare services. The system is seen as unpredictable and powerful, making the young person withdraw from formal support. We conclude that educational success for care‐experienced young people is closely linked to their mode of expectation with regard to managing the uncertainty of the future and that their mode is highly dependent on their social, institutional and biographical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of diagnosis has shown that diagnosis not only serves to label the underlying cause of disease but also to provide access to services and resources. Elaborating on this double‐affordance of diagnosis, this article examines how precision medicine reconfigures diagnosis as a label and as a process in regulatory and clinical settings. Reporting from an ethnographic case study of the introduction of immunotherapy for lung cancer, the paper unfolds the uncertainties involved in dissecting diagnosis into layers and examines the efforts and negotiations it takes to enable these layers to work both as clinical entities and regulative entities with the purpose of delineating access to treatment. I suggest that the work of subdividing diseases into molecularly defined categories for the purpose of delineating treatment‐eligible populations can be labelled 'diagnostic sub‐stratification' and argue that it is pertinent to understand the political capacity of this strategy. Diagnostic sub‐stratification involves a push of diagnosis from the clinic 'up' into the regulatory system and 'out' into the laboratories, obscuring who is accountable for the diagnostic categories employed to define patients' treatment access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future‐oriented – collectively experienced events that are "not yet" – and co‐constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co‐create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future‐related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty – the socio‐psychological social representations theory (SRT) – has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations – two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on social change and representations of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this paper, we develop a critique of Mead's notion of the self as constituted through social interactions. Our focus will be on Mead's categorial distinction between the socially constructed self and subjective experience, as well as on the tendency of post‐Meadian sociologists to push Mead's position in ever more radical directions. Drawing inspiration from a multifaceted understanding of selfhood that can be found in Husserlian phenomenology, we then propose that the most basic level of selfhood is anchored in irreducible subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on journal Higher Education Quarterly as a scholarly journal offering a critique on policy, organisation, leadership, and the professions in higher education. Topics include providing critical perspectives on contemporary issues in higher education as well as bridge debates in disciplines such as Sociology and Political Science; and revealing uncertainty about the benefits of interaction, academic hierarchy, and time constraints.

The article presents information on the annual meeting of the society of scientific study of religion at Vista International Hotel Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This year's theme of religious marginality encourages participants to go beyond core beliefs and practices of members of mainline churches to the expressions of interest or disinterest in religion that are less common religious experience, mixed intermarriage, unclear interpreting "don't know" responses to questions on belief, nonestablishment (religion among street people), or rejections of religion atheism and apostasy. List of topics related to this year's theme would include, denominational switching and conversion, sources of membership change in the mainline churches, apostates and returnees, new nones (apostates) vs. stable nones with no prior ties, inter-religious marriage and religion of children, divorce, religious socialization of children, religiosity and the life cycle, Inter-racial marriage and religion and the Black Church.

This paper explores some aspects of the editorial decision process and its outcomes as they are involved in the production of scientific knowledge. Based on 337 manuscripts reviewed for Rural Sociology from the Spring of 1978 to the Spring of 1981, ten characteristics associated with successful and unsuccessful manuscripts were examined. Five of these constituted a discriminant function model: number of rounds of review, author membership in the Rural Sociological Society, referee agreement regarding recommendations to the editor, referees who are authors, and difference in referee degree dates. The other five variables did not contribute significantly to the model: referee membership in the RSS, gender of the authors, number of authors, referee agreement regarding the contribution of the manuscript, and referee agreement regarding the presentation of the manuscript. The model achieved 85 percent accuracy in classifying the total set of manuscripts, but it was much more successful in classifying the rejected papers (95 percent) than the published papers (63 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the contributions to the World Congress special issue on 'Agricultural Change: Class, State, Technology, and International Food Regimes in the Late 1980s'. The papers are placed in the context of recent trends in the literature in the sociology and political economy of agriculture. Trends highlighted are the decreased dominance of deductive theories and the increased attention given to commodity systems and rural social structures, to international food and agricultural regimes and international commodity complexes, to the sociology of agricultural science and technological change, to the dynamics of agricultural crisis, and to understanding the relations between production and circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discipline is at a crossroads. Will sociology answer ASA past president Aldon Morris' call for an emancipatory sociology? Or will sociology, as Morris puts it, "continue pretending to be an aloof, objective, detached science"? Recently, Hirschman and Garbes issued a call for an economic sociology of race, wherein they contend that race and racism are not central to economic sociology and that economic sociologists don't engage with contemporary race scholarship. In this paper, I assess and build upon their call. I argue that while the article importantly calls for understanding race and racism in economic sociology, in practice, it—used here as an example of a broader pattern within economic sociology—re‐centers whiteness and men, reifies elitism, and erases marginalized scholars and their contributions. I set forth an alternative perspective. To rise to the Du Boisian challenge, scholars need to critique racialized modernity as Itzigsohn and Brown importantly argue. We must also root our sociological consciousness, citation practices, and conversations in existing, yet marginalized, research. Failure to do so means future research risks reproducing inequities in the discipline and continuing to marginalize the very people, theories, and research that an emancipatory sociology is meant to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Accompanying the ageing of contemporary ageing societies is an increase in age associated morbidity, with dementia having an important impact. Mental frailty in later life is a source of fear for many and a major policy concern to all those concerned with health and welfare services. This introduction to the special issue on 'Ageing, dementia and the social mind' situates the selected papers within the context of debates about dementia and its social relations. In particular it draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary of the fourth age and what this means for the issue of personhood, care, social representations of dementia and its social contextualisation. The papers illuminating these themes draw on a variety of disciplines and approaches; from the social sciences to the humanities and from the theoretical to the empirical in order to help orientate future researchers to the complexities of dementia and the social and cultural matrix in which it exists. This paper provides an introduction to the potential for a more extended sociology of dementia; one which could combine the insights from medical sociology with the concerns of social gerontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]