Search

This article explores the sociology of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on interactions between social actors and technological processes. The aim is to locate social actors in the key elements of Bell’s framework for understanding AI, featuring big data, algorithms, machine learning, sensors and rationale/logic. We dispute notions of human autonomy and machine autonomy, seeking alternatives to both anthropocentric and technological determinist accounts of AI. While human actors and technological devices are co-producers of the assemblages around AI, we challenge the argument that their respective contributions are symmetrical. The theoretical problem is to establish quite how human actors are positioned asymmetrically within AI processes. This challenge has strong resonances for issues of inequality, democracy, governance and public policy.The theoretical questions raised do not support the argument that sociology should respond to the rise of big data by becoming a primarily empirical discipline. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

How far do recent innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence herald an unprecedented economic and social transformation? This article provides a critical evaluation of this question, challenging the relentless technological determinism of much debate, and reframing the issues involved within apolitical-economic and sociological approach. This focuses on the economic, political and historical dynamics of technological innovation, and its consequences for employment and economic restructuring,mediated through sovereign and discursive power. A range of epistemological and empirical problems with the transformationist position are identified, and an alternative perspective proposed emphasizing complexity and uncertainty around contemporary and future trends. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In one sense, the Brown University conversations see Parsons reflecting in a fairly predictable way on the major preoccupations of his intellectual life. The consistent drive to map the social through general theory building is well represented here, as are the polemical foils of utilitarianism and economistic theories of rational self-interest. Parsons's cybernetic and evolutionary emphases of the 1960s and 1970s are also prominent. While some of this may seem dated, there is nonetheless an engaging reflexivity and gentle irony in his presentation, together with a rehearsal of the reasoning that persuaded Parsons of the coherence and robustness of his theoretical schema. This is perhaps most evident when he is questioned on his controversial discussion of the place of power in social life. The immediacy, accessibility, and even modesty of Parsons's manner of exposition is a striking feature of these conversations. This is worthy of note because it contrasts so markedly with the superficial way in which the Parsons's theoretical legacy has been formalized by sociological textbooks into the arid dogmas of structural-functionalism. It is hard to recognize these textbook caricatures in the intellectual milieux in Europe and the United States that Parsons evokes in these conversations and within which he defines the trajectories of his thought. What he portrays here as exploratory theoretical lines of argument, subject to constant refinement and elaboration, as reflected in work on the generalized media of exchange, somehow became hypostasized by critics into a theoretical edifice of axiomatic certainty and dogmatic aspiration. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology has therefore done scholarship a significant service in publishing this transcription. It helps shed light on a legacy that still has the capacity to enrich debate rather than become consigned to the museum of lost sociological causes. Parsons was, of course, a formalist in the way he conducted general theory building, as the four-function AGIL paradigm and its subdivision into 16 (4 x 4) and even 64 (4 x 4 x 4) conceptual boxes indicates. This mode of proceeding, together with the particularly dense abstraction of The Social System (1951), may have made it easier for formalistic textbook caricatures to become plausible. Parsons's negative reputation nonetheless also draws on widespread intellectual and political skepticism as to his capacity to recognize and analyze power, inequality, and conflict in the social world, leading to his reputation as a conservative apologist for social order and Western modernity. The Brown conversations, however, help to make clear a view recognized in specialist literature (e.g., Holton and Turner 1986) that Parsons was politically engaged with world crises of his epoch. He was also well able to position himself and his work, in a reflexive manner, within the narratives of social change in which he was implicated and within which he took a self-confessedly optimistic liberal-democratic position. What implications does all this have for the ways in which he approached the analysis of power? Aspects of Parsons's comparative political sociology of power, inequality, and stratification are rehearsed at a number of points in this transcription. They engage with formative world events in his lifetime such as the two world wars, the Russian revolution, and the rise of Hitler. In response to the widespread failure of proletarian revolution, he is particularly scathing about the analytical capacities of Marxist traditions--old or new--to analyze world trends and social change. Themes in this critique include the failure of Marxist economics to come to terms with marginalism, and excessive reliance on ideas of power domination, including recourse to "the powerful repressive capacities of bourgeois-dominated government." What Parsons does not explain here is how a knowledge of marginalism might assist the analysis of capitalism. …

This article is envisaged as a contribution to the historical sociology of globalization. In it I investigate the idea that from the 1870s peoples beyond Europe were increasingly included into international society. The discussion explores theoretical issues around intercultural engagement, arguing against those who see inclusion in terms of simple co-option into Western modernity, and in favour of a more subtle co-production of modern processes and forms of difference. Attention then moves on to examine historical evidence drawn from some knowledge networks involving Africa and India. Inclusion is seen in terms of a very complex and shifting set of engagements, conflicts and modes of cooperation, circumscribed by both racial and elite forms of discourse under the shadow of the growing political instability of empire. The methodology of interpersonal network analysis is also commended as a way of opening up debates about the long-term history of the dynamics and limits to the emergence of global public spheres.

Books reviewed in this article: R. Appelbaum, W. L. Felstiner, and V. Gessner (eds), Rules and networks: the legal culture of global business transactions D. Barney, The network society A. Barry, Political machines: governing a technological society G. Thompson, Between hierarchies and markets: the logic of network forms of organization

An area of long-standing interest in sociological studies of nationality and ethnicity has been the implications of widespread cross-border movements of peoples for cultural identity. One important stream of research has been concerned with peoples who have moved to a new country that is culturally different from their “homeland”. Yet, far less attention has typically been given to those who shift to a country that is culturally alike. The study examines how peoples who have relocated from Great Britain to Australia feel about various ideas at the heart of contemporary debates about Australian national identity. Drawing on data from a 2001 survey of Australian national identity, analysis indicated that (i) British-born residents differ from the Australian-born in how their attitudes to key ideas about Australian national identity are “packaged” together, and (ii) among the British-born, views about Australian national identity vary across subgroups with different configurations of national pride.

Recent discussions of cosmopolitanism have moved beyond the moral philosophy of Western liberal-democratic universalism towards a newer sociology emphasizing plurality and embracing the world beyond Europe. The new cosmopolitanisms have also come to be seen in terms of a dialectic between general orientations toward humanity and the particular temporal and spatial contexts within which they emerge. After disentangling various meanings of the term cosmopolitanism, the article examines their relationship with notions of universalism and globalization. The idea of multiple rooted cosmopolitanisms is then explored empirically using data on the Universal Races Congress of 1911. This is seen as an example of multiple cosmopolitanisms, challenging both the Euro-centricity of older unitary ideas of Western cosmopolitanism, and the over-emphasis of theories of imperial dominance on mechanisms of discursive incorporation. The main difficulty with the new cosmopolitanism thesis is the difficulty of distinguishing between varieties of transnational identity, which vary in their openness and inclusivity.

Globalization has been associated with a range of cultural consequences. These can be analyzed in terms of three major theses, namely, homogenization, polarization, and hybridization. The homogenization thesis proclaims that global culture is becoming standardized around a Western or American pattern. While some evidence supports this view, the presence of cultural alternatives and resistance to Western norms suggests that polarization provides a more convincing picture of global cultural development. Global interconnection and interdependence do not necessarily mean cultural conformity. Culture, it seems, is harder to standardize than economic organization and technology. Yet the idea of polarization has its limits, too. The hybridization thesis argues that cultures borrow and incorporate elements from each other, creating hybrid, or syncretic, forms. Evidence to support this view comes mainly from popular music and religious life. The cultural consequences of globalization are therefore diverse and complex.

The theme of globalization has in the last three decades become the key topic of the social sciences. Political globalization has also been addressed by some influential studies of the consequences of globalization for democracy and civil society. Political globalization involves the study of the institutionalization of international political structures, and the evolution of the European interstate system has given rise to ‘both an increasingly consensual international normative order and a set of international political structures that regulate all sorts of interactions’. The foundations of a specifically sociological approach to globalization had been established by a series of influential articles by Roland Robertson, but these were finally published as a collection until 1992. Optimistic visions of hyper-globalization talked about mobility across borders, the porous nature of societies and the decline of the nation state as key features of the global world. The contemporary security crisis, by contrast, produced a renewed interest in state activities in controlling migration and patrolling borders.

James Coleman attempted to reconcile rational choice theory with the classical sociological concerns: the relationship between the individual and society, and the historical and normative status of rationality. He identifies limits to the rational choice model, and suggests some promising but ultimately unconvincing ways around them. His project does, however, offer an important critique of Weber's theory of bureaucracy, which is of value in analyzing relationships between corporate actors and particular persons.

This chapter takes a critical look at the conventional identification of cosmopolitanism with Europe. Seen both as a symbolic entity with a long, continuous history, and as a set of cross-border institutions, Europe may be linked with conventional cosmopolitan ideals of world peace, intercultural tolerance and the global legal regulation of social life. Thus the draft European Constitution under discussion in the early twenty-first century spoke of ‘the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which developed universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law’ (cited in Delanty, 2005: 406). Similar emphases are also very prominent in the scholarly literature, including recent work by the influential social theorist Ulrich Beck and his associates (see especially Beck, 2006; Beck and Grande, 2006). Here cosmopolitanism is not simply a major tradition in European social thought, but also the essential key to unlocking a new vision and set of principles for the renewal of the European political project.

A propos de la difficulte theorique inherente a une construction des categories de classes sociales en dehors de toute agregation avec les professions ou tout autre characteristique d'emploi. D'un cote les classes sociales sont sur-identifiees par une mesure en terme de profession qui se fait au depend de dimensions plus larges du pouvoir economique et de l'action sociale et a pour effet de reduire la classe sociale a un agregat statistique. Mais d'un autre cote une analyse fondee sur une version weberienne (gesellschaftlich) de la theorie des classes (une analyse des chances individuelles sur le marche du travail comme outil d'analyse des modeles d'inegalites economiques) demeure pertinente

The social dynamics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have confounded social scientists and political actors alike. Conventional certainties and widely held predictions about the future have been undermined. This is partly the result of specific events like 9/11, which destroyed any sense that powerful Western countries were secure against global terrorism, or the global financial crisis, which has revealed that self-regulating financial markets are no protection against market risks and severe economic instability.

It is sometimes said that the nation state is fast becoming outmoded by economic globalization. Integrated global finance markets shift billions of dollars around the world daily in a manner that influences national economies through its impact on foreign exchanges, interest rates, the stock market, employment levels and government tax revenues. Meanwhile, powerful multinational enterprises are able to transfer investment across political boundaries, control the terms of technology transfer, and negotiate favourable tax and subsidy deals with governments. Global business strategies are themselves enhanced by radical changes in information technology and telecommunications. These flows of investment, technology, communications and profit across national boundaries are often seen as the most striking symptom of global challenge to the nation state.

Those who analyze globalization in terms of the capitalist world-system and the activities of powerful multinational companies generally assume that economic globalization creates a dominant version of cultural globalization in its own image. In contrast, for those who emphasize the resilience of national identity or who see nationalism and ethnicity (in part at least) as resistance to globalization, contemporary culture is far from dominated by the logic of the dominant economic system.

The nation state is very far from finished, and clearly represents a major focus for political organization. This is not because ideals of absolute national sovereignty are a viable alternative to globalization. Nor is it because nation states are the predominant political institution, of far greater importance than either global or regional institutions. What has changed is that global politics is increasingly a multi-actor rather than a wholly state-centred set of processes and institutions. Rather nation states are an irreducible part of a more complex political world. Other parties and interests in this world include international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, multinational enterprises and a diffuse set of non-government organizations (NGOs), networks and forums of public debate.

‘Man Buys the World.’ This headline appeared in Business Weekmagazine on the occasion of the acquisition by the international entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch of the full assets of Hong Kong-based Star TV (Guardian, 24 July 1995). Murdoch, whose business career started when he inherited the Murdoch family newspaper empire in Australia, is, at the time of writing, head of News Corporation, a diversified global media conglomerate spanning film, television, cable vision and print media as well as satellite broadcasting and information technology industries across four continents. Familiar names such as The Timesnewspaper of London, Twentieth Century Fox Films and Television, HarperCollins, the world’s largest English-language publisher, as well as Star TV — broadcasting by satellite and cable to 53 Asian countries — are all part of this empire. Since the first edition of this book, Newscorp has purchased the Wall Street Journaland expanded further into Latin America, through Sky satellite TV and Fox cable TV available in 17 countries, and into India through regional extensions of Star India TV. In 1985, Murdoch renounced Australian nationality for American citizenship in order to pursue media acquisition in the USA, thereby surmounting legal restrictions on foreign media ownership. The Corporation itself left its original Australian domicile in 2004 for incorporation in the USA.

Globalization has come to be regarded, over the past two decades, as a major feature of contemporary life. From global environmental sustainability to the global financial crisis, the internet to global celebrities, global epidemics to global cultural events like the World Cup, and from global terrorism to questions of human rights, headlines and conversations are full of globe-talk. In the period since the first edition of this book appeared in 1998, global issues, institutions and events have continued to dominate discussion on the direction of social change, the prospects for economic development, human welfare and social justice, the fate of the planet, and the values on which social life should be based. The purpose of this new edition is not simply to recognize these continuities, but also to identify what has changed since 1998, and to explain why understandings of globalization remain so controversial and contested.

When did globalization begin? Is it a very recent development centred on cross-border flows of capital, labour and commodities, and on new communications technology like the internet? Or is the history of globalization far longer and, if so, how far back do its origins lie and what does study of its past tell us about the present and likely futures? Is this history one of an ever onward and upward progression, and is it marked by distinct phases? Or does history indicate reversals and disabling weaknesses in global institutions and relationships?

First published in 1989, this re-issue concerns itself with the relevance of Max Weber's sociology for the understanding of modern times. The book outlines key tenets of Weber's sociology and points to the valuable legacy of Weber's thought in contemporary intellectual debate, particularly with regard to secularization and rationalization of global cultures, the crisis of Marxism, the rise of the New Right and the emergence of post-modernism. This book offers an authoritative and insightful study which brings to light, not only the contemporary relevance of Weber's social theory, but also offering a broad perspective for the analysis of social questions.