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The pervasiveness of digital media renders people constantly connected. Digital inequality theory tends to focus on how socio-digital factors link to technology access, skills, uses, and opportunities derived from such use. It is not clear, however, whether this theoretical lens applies to a time of heightened connection when privilege may also explain intended disconnection. Drawing on data from 1,551 U.S. adults surveyed during the pandemic, we find that younger age, higher education, frequent Internet use, less dependable access, and better skills are related to partaking in voluntary nonuse (e.g. having technology-free moments, switching off the Internet). As digital disconnection emerges from a place of socio-digital privilege as well as disadvantage, in a society of technology abundance, new inequalities arise around who has the freedom to use it in moderation rather than use it at all. Our study extends theoretical notions from digital inequality to the realm of voluntary digital nonuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short essay considers racial passing narratives in relation to the "postcritical turn," highlighting the proliferating reappraisals of the practices of "suspicious" or "symptomatic" reading in literary studies and the extent to which passing narratives offer an opportunity to test some of the claims of this body of scholarship. The utility of the passing narrative for this critical project lies in its persistent, self-conscious foregrounding of reading practices. Revisiting passing narratives in light of postcritique reveals that symptomatic reading is not a monolithic practice; rather, there are multiple ways of reading suspiciously. Moreover, and more importantly, passing narratives disclose that what has now become an orthodoxy in postcritique—that attitudes such as "paranoia," "suspicion," and "vigilance" profoundly limit "the thickness and richness of our aesthetic attachments"—ignores contexts, like that of a passer in a white supremacist society, in which such strategies are not a choice but are essential for survival (Felski 17). The key question posed herein is: What forms of privilege enable a reader to relinquish her attachment to paranoia, suspicion, and vigilance; to opt for openness rather than guardedness, submission rather than aggression (21)? Narratives of racial passing provide one answer to that question. The key question posed herein is: What forms of privilege enable a reader to relinquish her attachment to paranoia, suspicion, and vigilance; to opt, as Rita Felski advocates, for openness rather than guardedness, submission rather than aggression? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my book on public slaves in the Roman empire I have argued, as several others have before and after me, for the relatively higher social position of public slaves.[1] The important word here of course is "relatively", which is to say that compared to private slaves, on average public slaves ranked higher, not that each and every public slave had a higher standing than every individual private slave. THREE EXAMPLES OF "ELITE" PUBLIC SLAVES After these general and more theoretical thoughts, we now come to some examples which show that public slaves in the cities throughout the empire could indeed move into the higher circles of their local society, a possibility which was I only i unthinkable for public slaves in Rome. But even this he qualifies, at least for the public slaves in Rome, by pointing to the fact that our sources provide only very little evidence for heirs of public slaves,[20] implying that in practice public slaves did not have much to pass on to their heirs, which again would not distinguish them from private slaves. [Extracted from the article]

The article argues that academics navigate and occupy various localities, spaces, and identities, which allows them to be self-reflexive in understanding the inherent challenges in diversifying the discipline. Using personal narratives as a methodological and theoretical tool, this article situates plural experiences and contexts of a woman of color, working in precarity in academia. The intersection of multiple identities reveals various sites of privilege and oppression, and inclusion and exclusion. Unsettling and dismantling binaries and identities reveal complex entanglements and connections that provide more nuanced understandings of IR. This article further discusses ways the discipline of IR has excluded diverse theoretical and empirical knowledges and regions, including critical approaches and the Global South. This disciplinary exclusion and erasure is reproduced in everyday academic practice and can serve as an entry point to understand why diverse communities are underrepresented in IR. Further, academia is not immune from the functions of power and social and economic hierarchies in society, and those hierarchies are manifested in various forms of asymmetry observable in academia, especially toward diverse communities and academics working in precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author considers the impact of the international Black Lives Matter social movement, started in reaction to the 2020 murder of African American George Floyd by a police officer, on the art world, specifically public monuments. The author discusses the removal of the Bristol, England 1895 statue of slaver Edward Colston by sculptor John Cassidy was removed from its plinth and thrown into the harbor by activists. It explores topics such as acts of civil disobedience, decolonization, privilege, and government policy regarding art, politics and art, and social activism.

When studying the persistent underrepresentation of a women in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) fields across different countries, some evidence shows a paradox of affluence: gender differences in STEM aspirations and outcomes are found to be more pronounced in more developed, postindustrial countries and among students from more affluent families. The argument of "indulging gendered selves" provides an explanation: students in more affluent settings are less compelled to pursue lucrative STEM careers and more encouraged to indulge gendered passions as a form of self-expression. Extending this argument, this paper uses nationally representative data from China to examine the effect of family privileges on adolescents' STEM aspirations. Two distinct mechanisms are identified: instrumentalism, which considers the instrumental calculation of material security and economic returns in developing career aspirations, and (de) stereotyping, which considers whether family privileges cultivate or alleviate gender stereotypes. Findings show that less privileged girls such as ethnic minorities and those having rural hukou tend to have higher instrumental motivation to learn math, indicating an instrumentalism mechanism; on the other hand, girls with privileges such as higher parental education and more books at home enjoy more gender-egalitarian values, indicating a de-stereotyping mechanism. Moreover, Internet access at home as a privilege can foster gender stereotypes and decrease students' motivation to learn math, and the latter association is stronger for girls than boys. Results suggest the importance of distinguishing the instrumentalism and (de) stereotyping mechanisms and the need for educational programs to refute gender stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated within feminist Christian Realism, this article looks at what political theology is and its relevance to International Relations. Hope is a central theme to political theology, underpinning the necessity to be witness to and to work against oppressive structures. Simply put, hope is the desire to make life better. For Christians, this hope stems from a belief in resurrection of Christ and the faith that such redemption is offered to all of humanity. Hope, however, is not limited to Christianity and, therefore, Christian theology. Thus, taking an intersectional approach, the article looks for similarities in how hope is articulated in three personal narratives: theologian Jürgen Moltmann, UK Muslim advocate Asim Qureshi, and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors. Across all three personal narratives, the need for hope begins in a place of despair, signalling a need to recognize that hope and privilege are in tension with one another. Feminist Christian Realism acknowledges and embraces this tension, recognizing that hope cannot function if the pain, oppression and harm caused by privilege are erased or minimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this theoretical essay, we conceptualize what constitutes dominant group theory. We review existing literature on two essential aspects of dominant group theory: (1) power, privilege, and communication, and (2) co-cultural theory. Drawing from data from two recent studies, we then use the conceptual framework of co-cultural theory to generate an extension that explores the communicative strategies of majority group members. More particularly, we describe five premises, six factors of dominant group communication, nine communication orientations, and twenty-one specific dominant group strategies, all of which represent the key building blocks of dominant group theorizing. Finally, we conclude by offering strengths, limitations, and heuristic implications of this new line of theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her comment on Shirin Rai's article "The Good Life and the Bad: Dialectics of Solidarity", Ina Kerner addresses the complexities of acts of solidarity that aim at transgressing difference lines of privilege without dethematizing the power relations such difference lines mostly come with. She focuses on three aspects: the context of a good life, the relation of solidarity and charity, and the problems of what Rai calls a "hands-off approach" in the realm of global feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author expands upon his remarks expressed at a town hall meeting focusing on the state of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and sociology held by the ASA in Seattle, Washington, in 2016. Several interrelated biases are being discussed including ASA's leadership, internal arrogance, and value neutrality. Racial bias and elitism are mentioned and the marginalization of minority sociologists such as W. E. B. Du Bois is also noted.

Optimistic assessments of life chances can positively influence life outcomes, but conflicting theories suggest these assessments either reflect structural privilege or develop as a result of childhood hardship. In addition, competing hypotheses suggest that these assessments may matter differently depending on who holds them. We examine whether family socioeconomic status shapes adolescents' expectations about how successful their lives will turn out. We distinguish generalized life expectations (GLE), capturing anticipated success in life across multiple domains, from intergenerational comparative expectations (ICE), which register expectations about improvement relative to observed success within the respondent's family lineage. We find that adolescents from higher socioeconomic status families are simultaneously more optimistic about their likely success in life (GLE) but less likely to anticipate relative improvement in life success across generations (ICE). Holding high GLE in combination with low ICE predicted doing better in adulthood across a range of health, attainment, and well-being outcomes, though in most cases high GLE, regardless of ICE, was the key. These beneficial patterns are, for the most part, at least as beneficial for socioeconomically disadvantaged youth as they are for advantaged youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmopolitan education aims to transmit cosmopolitan forms of life in order to participate morally in the world community. The primary characteristics of this cosmopolitan education are its acceptance of the shared humanity of all persons as a fact of human existence and as a motivating guide for human interaction, and the requirement of democratic inclusion in deliberations of the governance of those interactions, including morality. Such an education in cosmopolitan morality requires means that befit its core components. This paper contrasts the concepts of strict and moderate cosmopolitanism, empirical and deliberative morality, and structural and dispositional cosmopolitanism to show that the moderate, inclusive and deliberative processes of deliberative dispositional cosmopolitanism are more suited to cosmopolitan education in morality than strong, empirical-focused structural cosmopolitan efforts. Though strong, structural and empirically based forms may be more likely to guarantee preferred outcomes in the learning of specific morals or the implementation of institutional norms, they are also more likely to run afoul of the core components of cosmopolitanism because they will privilege outcomes over processes, and are thus more likely to be less inclusive and more coercive. In contrast, and even though they are less certain to guarantee preferred moral outcomes or actions, moderate, deliberative dispositional forms of cosmopolitan education embody the morality they seek to inform, and are more likely to find sustained internalised support over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class confers a bundle of capabilities, practices, and beliefs that are conventionally assumed to be hierarchical, rigid, and self-perpetuating. However, this framework often belies the fact that these qualities needn't be necessarily or exhaustively advantageous. In particular, social change may render obsolete class-linked characteristics that were advantageous in previous periods. Drawing on interviews with homeowners at risk of foreclosure and a yearlong ethnography of a housing counseling organization, I find that although the housing crisis of the “Great Recession” affected both working- and middle-class homeowners alike, the practices of working-class borrowers better positioned them to exploit a number of informational advantages in the rapidly changing mortgage modification setting. My findings are a departure from existing research that treats middle-class capabilities and practices as intrinsically advantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While sociologists have shown how employers contribute to occupational segregation along lines of race, gender, and nativity, little attention has been paid to unpacking why employers engage in those practices. We take on this gap through a case study of hired labor relations on Wisconsin dairy farms, which have become segregated along lines of nativity and race in recent years. We ask how these workplaces have become segregated, what employers' roles in this process have been, and why, in particular, employers have engaged in practices that contribute to workplace inequalities. We find that employers engage in practices that leave immigrant workers clustered in the low-end jobs for a complex array of reasons: to maintain profits within a changing industry context, meet their own middle-class aspirations, comply with their peers' middle-class lifestyle expectations, manage their own concerns about immigration policing, assert their own class identity, justify the privileges that they and their U.S.-born employees enjoy on the farm, and maintain the advantages they have gained. We argue that sociologists seeking to explain employers' roles in occupational segregation must examine not only the stories employers tell about different worker groups but also the stories they tell about themselves and the contexts that shape their aspirations and identities. Doing so provides more complete explanations for why occupational segregation occurs and does the important work of bringing whiteness into the spotlight and showing how privilege is quietly constructed and defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks a series of very direct, if not simple, questions. How, and why, is it that we assume that modern knowledge is universal, despite its European genealogy and its historically recent provenance? What warrant do we have for considering this knowledge superior to the premodern knowledges of the West and the autochthonous knowledges of the non-West? Are we, in short, right to assume that modern Western knowledge transcends the circumstances of its historical and geographical emergence and thus that the social sciences are 'true' for everyone-even though to do so is to privilege the modern and the Western over the premodern and the non- Western? In addressing these questions, this essay highlights the exclusions-of gods and spirits, and of nature-that have gone into the constitution of the concept of 'the social,' a taken-for-granted object which provides the ground and the subject matter for the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which provides a political economic analysis of Normandy, France during the 1790s. The social conditions of what are referred to as haute justices, which were territories within France in which feudal lords held authority in criminal and civil matters, are discussed. The role that social privilege played in economic development and industrialization is discussed. French attitudes towards the role of machinery in industrial production are discussed.

This is a feature in which individuals are invited to express their personal, and sometimes controversial, views on professional issues. These views are not necessarily those of the Editor, the Editorial Panel, or the Publisher. Reaction to Comment features is welcome in the form of a letter to the Editor or a Readers Respond article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1955, the professor's privilege had allowed Danish professors to retain intellectual property rights (IPRs) over the results of their research. This changed in 2000, when Denmark, the first of several countries to do so, abolished the professor's privilege and granted IPRs over research results to universities. In this paper we show that in the first years following the abolition, a considerable amount of patenting activity has moved out of professors' hands into those of their universities. We also show that the bulk of academic patenting consists of inventions owned by business companies, and this holds true both before and after the abolition of the privilege. In this respect, the Danish case confirms the European pattern as described in the recent literature and provides useful suggestions on the likely effects of re-distribution of IPRs between universities and their faculties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for externalism about justification on the basis of thought experiments. I present cases in which two individuals are intrinsically and introspectively indistinguishable and in which intuitively, one is justified in believing that p while the other is not. I also examine an argument for internalism based on the ideas that we have privileged access to whether or not our own beliefs are justified and that only internalism is compatible with this privilege. I isolate what I take to be the most plausible form of privileged access to justification and show that it is compatible with externalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses privileging and credentialing processes for pharmacists in the U.S. Difference between privileging and credentialing; Overview of privileging of other health professions; Importance of privileging and credentialing to pharmacists; Reasons why health care organizations and pharmacists participate in privileging; Additional sources of information about privileging.

Privilege refers to the unearned advantages enjoyed by a particular group simply because of membership in that group. Privileges accrue to those who (consciously or not) oppress others and are generally invisible to those who enjoy them. In seeing reality from the standpoint of other groups, one acquires the vantage point necessary to see privilege and its effects. Africentric theory describes the ethos and values of Africans and African Americans and provides a standpoint from which social workers can more effectively identify and build on the strengths of African Americans. Building on the concept "loss of terms," Africentric theory provides a framework within which social workers can challenge the invisible hegemony of privilege. This article challenges social workers to understand the nature of privilege as it relates to oppression and to develop a profound multicultural literacy that is carefully translated into practice imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price paid for the absence of a critical consciousness about gender in discussion of communications and technology is the reproduction of old patterns of power and privilege in the social distribution of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the limitations and opportunities of social research on bureaucracy. The research methods and procedures must be re-evaluated to understand the workings of large-scale bureaucracies including the examination of the controls of the collected data and studied structures. To facilitate the best study of bureaucracies for sociologists, the examination of the typical research design for investigating the hierarchy of bureaucracy becomes necessary. Hierarchy and control are the two elements present in the nominative order of bureaucracy. These elements impose some constrains on the path of the researcher. Re-evaluation on the assumptions about human nature and social reality is indispensable for the bureaucracy to proceed the research and the recognition of various rules of evidence is necessary. Furthermore, socialists should come forward to cross-examine and understand the major social problems, by studying both the underprivileged and the privileged. So the structure of institutional bases for both these sections of people must be initiated.

The article presents a social worker's reflections on power, privilege and oppression. His interests in issues of oppression, power, and privilege began with his own experiences as a person of color who has experienced racism. As a person of color, he is often placed in a position in which he must process the disrespect he perceives or the assumptions that others make of him. He discusses his privileges as an educated person, a heterosexual man, an able-bodied individual, and as a person who was raised as Christian.

The author presents the comment in the article that privilege is the main problem in the society. According to him, it is troubling but essential to observe that the central issue in the development of a liberal society is not racism but privilege. But he warns that no one should denigrate racism as a living force, but it is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to maintain privilege. Understanding that privilege is the main enemy is important for two reasons. First, it must be clear now that the fight against racism can seem to gain ground without altering the underprivileged status of blacks and other minorities. Second, in the end the fight against racism enlists the power of each minority for itself, while the fight against privilege unites the underprivileged in the U.S. society. The power of each minority is consequential but rarely consequential enough, but the power of the underprivileged, when it is assembled, moves capitols and peoples. The author points out that as long as a fifth of the nation is to have a twentieth of national income, men who are black, brown, yellow, red and white will live miserably.

Editorial. Looks into the use of privileging as a performance-based competency assessment for pharmacists in the U.S. Difference between licensing and privileging; Payment for medication management services to Medicare patients under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003; Implications of privileging on pharmacy.