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The contributors to the Superdiversity book symposium welcome the myriad ways that scholars from a variety of research fields and social scientific disciplines have adopted the concept across varying scales, sites and social phenomena. Each writer nevertheless stresses the need to place any application of the term, descriptively or analytically, within specific social, political and historical contexts. Superdiversity appears very different depending upon an array of conditions – hence we observe a variety of context-dependent superdiversities. This point holds too for categories – especially ones drawn from colonial histories – that comprise differing configurations of superdiversity. These are also highly contextual. It is suggested that the superdiversity concept helps us to "unsee" purportedly fixed, uni-dimensional categories like ethnicity and to place more emphasis on multiple, intersectional combinations of categories. The re-thinking of categories and their contexts might also help us imagine possible superdiversity futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on research ethics in social sciences by focusing on the concept of vulnerability. We unpack the current conceptualisations of vulnerability and their limitations and argue for the need to reconceptualise vulnerability as multidimensional, consisting of both universal and contextual dimensions, as well as their dynamic interplay. Multidimensional vulnerability is inspired by and relevant to social science research during the pandemic but can also be useful in other contexts such as climate change or conflict. The paper puts forwards several considerations about how this revised concept of vulnerability may be useful when evaluating ethical dimensions of social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio recording interviews, focus groups, and naturally occurring interactions have been utilised by social researchers for decades. Yet, the use of audio recordings as a tool to elicit participant responses has received less attention in social science research. This is despite heightened interest in non-traditional techniques such as the use of visual methodologies, and arts-based methods. In this article, I describe how I advanced a known method, vignettes, into an audio narrative to explore perceptions of sex work. This article reports on the methodological rationale for the novel use of audio vignettes, and the capacity they have for memory retrieval, eliciting reflections on lived experiences, and for providing richer attitudinal data. By drawing on 'accessibility theory', this article argues that audio vignettes are a powerful elicitor of attitudes. Furthermore, I claim that audio methods as I define them, can enhance the social scientists' toolkit and that, what I term 'audio sociology' needs further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a debate on why Bourdieusian scholars have never fully embraced the "Introduction/Literature review/Data & methods/Results/Discussion" (ILDRD) article format which is mainstream in North American Sociological publications. This paper attempts to argue that Pierre Bourdieu, Jean‐Claude Chamboredon, and Jean‐Claude Passeron developed a different writing format – inspired by Gaston Bachelard's "applied rationalism" ‐‐ and which became more influential among French scholars. The Bourdieu inspired different writing patterns and reasoning, I argue, can be traced in the flagship journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. This paper invites further debate on the differences in approaching article formats in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do parenthood and publishing contribute to gender gaps in academic career advancement? While extensive research examines the causes of gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, we know much less about the factors that constrain women's advancement in the social sciences. Combining detailed career‐ and administrative register data on 976 Danish social scientists in Business and Management, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology (5703 person‐years) that obtained a PhD degree between 2000 and 2015, we estimate gender differences in attainment of senior research positions and parse out how publication outputs, parenthood and parental leave contribute to these differences. Our approach is advantageous over previous longitudinal studies in that we track the careers and publication outputs of graduates from the outset of their PhD education and match this data with time‐sensitive information on each individual's publication activities and family situation. In discrete time‐event history models, we observe a ∼24 per cent female disadvantage in advancement likelihoods within the first 7 years after PhD graduation, with gender differences increasing over the observation period. A decomposition indicates that variations in publishing, parenthood and parental leave account for ∼ 40 per cent of the gender gap in career advancement, suggesting that other factors, including recruitment disparities, asymmetries in social capital and experiences of unequal treatment at work, may also constrain women's careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can a critical analysis of imperialist political economy offer the decolonial turn in the contemporary social sciences? How might revisiting "classic" anti-imperialist thought and politics from the global South push scholars and activists to envision a more revolutionary decolonization? And how, in our discipline's history, have anthropologists variously opposed or been complicit with the workings of imperialist power? In this article, and in the special issue of Dialectical Anthropology that this article introduces, we engage these questions with a call to bring imperialism "back in" to anthropological research and analysis. Our proposal, however, is not simply for an anthropology of empire, but for an anthropology against empire—a project, that is, not solely of interpreting imperialism, but of aiding its abolition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution analyses the scientific and political meaning of the concept of 'population' within Thomas Robert Malthus' thought. It is here argued that by encapsulating 'population' in a scientific principle, the author not only aimed at contrasting radical and revolutionary theories of his time; he was also looking for a renovation of the role principles hold in scientific reasoning. He considered this crucial for delineating a plausible science for such an elusive political object as society. Through an examination of key passages of Malthus' theoretical production – his critique of previous definitions of 'population', his reassessment of the natural history of society, and the use of selected metaphors to explain his political thought – it is possible to observe how the author attempted to naturalize society and the inequalities arising from its historical laws. As shown in the conclusions, Malthus' scientific and political effort was directed towards questioning possibilities to reduce the history of social relations to a path of rational progress, which is consistent with the way he re-conceptualized 'population' as regarding the fate of the people and their chances to transform the future in the plausible outcome of their political action in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current scientific and political discourse surrounding the transformation of the scientific publication system, significant attention is focused on Diamond Open Access (OA). Diamond OA is characterized by no charges for readers or authors and relies on monetary allowances and voluntary work. This article explores the potential and challenges of Diamond OA journals, using Germany as a case study. Two key questions are addressed: first, the current role of such journals in the scientific publication system is determined through bibliometric analysis across various disciplines. Second, an investigation is conducted to assess the sustainability of Diamond OA journals and identify associated structural problems or potential breaking points. This investigation includes an in-depth expert interview study involving 20 editors of Diamond OA journals. The empirical results are presented using a landscape map that considers two dimensions: 'monetized and gift-based completion of tasks' and 'journal team size.' The bibliometric analysis reveals a substantial number of Diamond OA journals in the social sciences and humanities, but limited adoption in other fields. The model proves effective for small to mid-sized journals, but not for larger ones. Additionally, it was found that 23 Diamond OA journals have recently discontinued their operations. The expert interviews demonstrate the diversity within the landscape and the usefulness of the two dimensions in understanding key differences. Journals in two of the four quadrants of the map exemplify sustainable conditions, while the other two quadrants raise concerns about long-term stability. These concerns include limited funding leading to a lack of division of labor and an excessive burden on highly committed members. Gift-like contributions, while appealing, also present challenges as potential donors not only decide whether to contribute but also how to contribute, potentially creating friction between the gift and the journal's requirements. Furthermore, journals in the lower right quadrant often rely on third-party funding, necessitating a transformation once the funding expires. Common pathways for sustaining operations include lobbying for funding at the journal's home institution or increasing reliance on gift-based completion of tasks. These findings underscore the need for the development of more sustainable funding models to ensure the success of Diamond OA journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of world aging is not foreign to indigenous communities. In the last few years, research about these communities around the world has increased, but aging in indigenous towns still has not been studied widely. The purpose of this research is to interpret the meaning of old age in two indigenous communities from the Colombian Andean–Amazon region (the Inga and Kamëntsa) to reinforce the relevance of the local sociocultural context within the configuration of the meaning of old age and to emphasize the importance of considering particular regional characteristics for the design of policies and interventions aiming to recognize and integrate indigenous populations. This is a qualitative study with an interactionism–symbolism approach. In total, six indigenous people older than 60 years from two ancestral communities from the Colombian Andean–Amazon region participated in the in-depth interviews. Data analysis was carried out in three moments: discovery, coding, and relativization of the information. The results show that old age means wisdom, "I am wise," which is supported in the cosmology and the trajectory of life, reinforces the identity and autonomy, and allows them to be agents in the dynamics of their communities from the "I do," in other words, their roles as builders of the family–society and as guards of ancestral knowledge. The loss of this knowledge and the elements that it is composed of uproot them and put them at risk of disappearing as individuals and as a collective. In conclusion, the meaning of old age in these communities is not centered on a determinate age; you are not old, you are wise, and as such, they play a central role in their communities. Moreover, wisdom is built in parallel with their cosmology and assigns them the task of safekeeping ancestral knowledge. In order to do this, they use oral tradition as a tool, words that are born in their territories, travel in a nonlinear timeline, and get strengthened by the community while also protecting it and building it. Knowing what aging means for Indigenous communities can facilitate to the development of policies and initiatives and to provide culturally appropriate and effective programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial number of social science studies have shown a lack of conceptual clarity, inadequate understanding of the nature of the empirical research approaches, and undue preference for deduction, which have caused much confusion, created paradigmatic incommensurability, and impeded scientific advancement. This study, through conceptual review and analysis of canonical discussions of concepts and the reasoning approaches of deduction and induction and their applications in social science theorization by philosophers and social scientists, is purported to unveil the logical nature of empirical research and examine the legitimacy of the preference of deduction among social scientists. The findings note that conceptual clarity as the foundation of social science research, exchange, and replication can be achieved through interdisciplinary stress of conceptual analyses to establish universal measurements and that the primacy of deduction in social sciences needs to concede to or be balanced with induction for new knowledge, more discoveries, and scientific advancement. The study recommends that institutions and researchers of social sciences invest more in conceptual analysis and inductive research through collaboration and separate efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the dynamic journey of women as they become academics in non‐elite Chinese public universities. It focuses on their aspirations and the evolving subjectivity that accompanies this process. Ten participants from the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) fields, aged 28–57, were interviewed; the transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Adopting a Butlerian perspective, our findings identify two distinct subjectivities that shape Chinese women's decision to become academics: autonomous subjectivity driven by intrinsic desire and strategic subjectivity driven by instrumental desire. We argue that becoming an academic is a complex process influenced by regulatory power, including market forces, institutional and societal constraints, and gender norms, which shape the context in which the desire is pursued. It is essential to view this decision not only from the individual's perspective but also from the larger context within which it is made. This study contributes to the literature on gender equality in academia by interrogating the complexities of the decision‐making processes for Chinese women pursuing academic careers in non‐elite Chinese universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giving a precise definition of what an institution is raises epistemological dilemmas concerning its supposed universal applicability and the coexistence of different institutional regimes (e.g. state and customary). Scholars who have dabbled with this question often identify rules, behaviours, values, or social roles as the essence of institutions. In fact, these constitutive features do not necessarily occupy a leading position in all societies. In this article, I argue that, among East African pastoral populations such as the Samburu of northern Kenya, institutions of age class systems are the product of the changing identities of the person's maturation process. These institutionalized life cycles regulate the distribution of powers, rights, and duties within the community. Moreover, if institutions can be different 'things', similarly, the objects through which they materialize can vary profoundly from one social system to another. In the case of the Samburu, customary age institutions can be perceived, performed, and manipulated in the form of songs, dances, and ornaments that represent their tangible, aural, visible, and actionable substance. Just as age manifests itself through the body, institutions founded on age take shape through sonic and kinetic bodily expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an early age, children become attuned to processes of social power in their environment. Findings from cognitive sciences suggest that the ability to discern hierarchical relationships, as well as coercive and non‐coercive processes that give rise to them, rests on evolved cognitive capacities. Yet reasoning about social relations is always already a cultural process. Anthropological theory routinely deploys terms such as 'power' and 'hierarchy' to analyse diverse features of social organization, but little is known about the culturally grounded psychological processes that give rise to hierarchies at the interpersonal level. A comparison of children in London and Nanjing brings together ethnographic and experimental approaches to cut across the cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions of child development, and reveals how central moral frameworks mediating hierarchy and conflict – respect in London and yielding in Nanjing – lead to particular expectations about the behaviour of high‐status individuals. This article highlights the benefits of mixed methodology in providing insights into how children develop psychologically and culturally rooted understandings of social status and provides directions for anthropology to contribute to the multidisciplinary study of the social cognition of human hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Islamic Counselling training model discussed in this article first emerged in 1990s multicultural Britain within the newly expanding field of cross‐cultural counselling and psychotherapy. It is informed by classical Sufi notions of the self, the development of an Islamic psychology, and decolonial scholarship. Based on ethnographic research on the current training in Islamic Counselling, this article explores the ways in which this model trains students to engage with relational differences through non‐secular notions of reality, the self, and its relation to multiple others. Differences are made sense of through notions of 'worldview' and 'journey' that go beyond categories of culture, religion, and race, and while these differences are similarly 'acknowledged', there is also the possibility of surpassing them through an experiential process of 'witnessing'. Islamic Counselling's therapeutic goal, therefore, is not the forging of a pious self, but transcendence: the establishing of a deeply felt understanding of Oneness or Truth. Through this process, Islamic Counselling holds difference and connection in view simultaneously, while challenging a relativist notion of cultural difference inherent in ethno‐psychiatry and cross‐cultural counselling. It offers a radically new mode of relating with differences within and beyond the counselling setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is generally associated with the creation of something new and with economic growth, and is often understood in relation to modernity and its prime social site, 'the city'. Accordingly, the coupling of innovation and rural areas may seem incongruent. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israel's high‐tech scene, we analyse innovation centres located primarily in kibbutzim in the northern and southern regions of the country. This allows us to juxtapose the ultra‐modernist and individualist ethos of the creative actor against a more communal understanding of social life. In these sites, we observe not just the imitation of 'urban' innovation, but also the strong influence of the community and the contribution of local knowledge in the design of technologically innovative products and services. Examining what is taking place outside urban centres thus enables a more complete and nuanced understanding of the interplay between innovation and society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores hospitality as a key rhetorical framework for refugee management in Turkey by focusing on how host‐guest relations are mobilized to represent, interpret, and problematize the current state of affairs regarding Syrian refugees, as well as to formulate policies. It analyses the transformation of hospitality rhetoric, the notion of 'compulsory guesthood', and the most recent social cohesion initiatives. I argue that host‐guest metaphors are used to assert power and leverage both domestically and internationally by exerting sovereign control over a post‐imperial nation‐space, performing neo‐imperial guardianship over the downtrodden, and claiming an ethno‐religious, civilizational morality that exceeds the legalistic logic of human rights and entitlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, radical nationalist and quasi‐fascist movements defining themselves in opposition to the Russian government dominated the country's paramilitary scene. This trend was almost completely reversed in the 2010s, with the relative decline of grassroots Slavic ethno‐nationalism and the emergence of a statist military‐patriotic culture centred on 'traditional values' and Orthodox faith. Drawing on field research with members of a Moscow‐based military‐patriotic club, this article shows how Orthodoxy emerged as an attractive ideological framework to give meaning to individual and communal practices of moral and physical self‐cultivation among patriotically oriented young middle‐class men. I argue that rather than a process of militarization of a religious public, the establishment of the Orthodox military‐patriotic milieu in the late 2000s is better understood as the Orthodoxization of the Russian paramilitary sphere, driven by young militaristically minded men's search for a sense of purpose and belonging. This post‐Soviet Orthodox paramilitary scene that combines militant masculinities with promotion of law abidance and civic values effectively works to curtail more extreme forms of ethno‐nationalism and thus invites us to rethink conventional wisdom on the relationship between religion, militarism, and violent radicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary sharing economy comprises a variety of technology‐mediated user‐to‐user transactions and reveals both the extremes of the late‐capitalist regime of accumulation and possible paths to supersede it. To critically explore the idea of the sharing economy, this article examines how it has been mobilized by a non‐profit startup in neoliberalized South Korea. Open Closet cheaply rents donated suits to precarious job‐seekers for interviews, while requesting that donors and renters write each other letters with their 'suit stories'. The article tracks how sharing at Open Closet is realized via circulations of suits, letters, and 'warm hearts', and how its meanings and obligations are interpreted via the historical relations of mutual responsibility within local collectivities of belonging. The article thus illuminates new imaginaries for livelihoods, subjecthoods, and solidarities that emerge when the contemporary sharing economy ambiguates capitalist and non‐capitalist relations, becoming a site for experimentation with affectivity and mutuality among strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an ethnographically embedded analysis of a UK‐based Jewish‐Muslim inter‐community network to contribute to anthropological research into the ethical efforts that groups seen as polarized invest in negotiating boundaries of difference. The article makes two sets of arguments. First, it suggests that sometimes such groups have to negotiate not one but several 'borders across difference' and follow diverse ethical routes to navigate them depending upon how they conceptualize these borders. Second, it shows that in negotiating different sets of boundaries, network members often use techniques that at first glance appear to be artificial or even superficial in that they build on formal rules and/or contain no promise of achieving a consensus on issues important for the participants. However, I argue that these seemingly superficial efforts could still be seen as ethical endeavours underpinned by a strong commitment to inter‐group solidarity and that they could be best understood as what Ruth Sheldon has described in her recent intervention in the ethics of Jewish ethnography as the movement between surface and depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The face of the government is the interface through which citizens come into contact with and perceive the government via representation and face‐to‐face encounters. This article focuses on Colombian government officials in charge of delivering 'peace pedagogy' to explain to society the peace negotiations with the FARC guerrillas, before and after a polarizing referendum which narrowly rejected the 2016 peace agreement that sought to end fifty years of war. It builds on their idiom of 'giving face' (dar la cara), denoting the work of representing the government to society in face‐to‐face encounters and assuming responsibility as the government, and explores its resonance with academic and popular discourses about the state having many 'faces'. It brings this idiom, and theories of the face, into the anthropology of the state, calling for the study of governments as discrete entities within states, and examining the way that a government's overarching character or 'face' is interactively co‐produced in the public gaze through embodied acts of representation by officials with their audiences, and intertwined with people's macro‐political opinions. It offers a framework for analysing government‐society relations, giving insight into how all governments 'face' society, and highlights presence and responsibility as key dimensions of this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practising Orthodox Christians in central Serbia live their liturgical lives within the idiom of Serbian peoplehood. This article probes the 'people' (narod) – perceived locally as an historically and geographically rooted ethno‐moral collectivity – as a core concept of belonging which is key for understanding post‐Yugoslav Orthodox life. The 'people' functions as a this‐worldly collective identity within which my interlocutors situate themselves as Orthodox persons, and through which they approach the Divine. Threats to Serb identity serve to foreground peoplehood as the supposedly prime site for Orthodox flourishing. Moving beyond state‐oriented analyses of 'religious nationalism', the article demonstrates not how 'nationalism' can be understood through 'religion', but how, to use Orthodox Serbs' own terminology, faith can be understood through the prism of peoplehood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bureaucracy and audit are an increasingly pervasive fact of scientific and academic life. In this article, I examine this bureaucracy through the perspectives of non‐faculty staff at a Chinese research institute: the Institute for Farms and Forests (IFF). I build upon the lament of a staff member called Tao that inflexible bureaucracy is the consequence of civil servants' determination to evade vulnerability. Bringing Tao and her colleagues' analyses into conversation with the anthropology of gift exchange, I show how a literature that has long informed anthropological analyses of informal bureaucratic back doors provides an equally rich set of resources for understanding bureaucracy's formal, document‐mediated front door. Most especially, I draw upon the anthropology of gifts to illuminate the anxieties and vulnerabilities that shape and are shaped by bureaucratic practice. This approach can help us to understand Chinese bureaucracy in an era of increasing wariness towards informal social connections (guanxi). It can also help us to explore what might be at stake for the non‐faculty colleagues who – despite their indispensable roles – we seldom consider in conversations about academic audit cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the latent potential in the anthropological concept of survival, especially through Tylor's usage of the term. Once a core concept of anthropological theory in the late nineteenth century, the idea was critiqued and abandoned in the wake of the structural and functional anthropology of the early twentieth century. However, the concept implies many different things, and in clearing away some of the more problematic meanings, this article focuses on the core of the idea: namely the persistence of the past in the present. The intention is to examine the concept in terms of what it tells us about the relation between the past and the present and, by implication, the historical process itself. By drawing on the distinctions between survival and related terms of relics, persistent practices, and revivals, this article suggests a reappraisal of the concept and its relevance to contemporary anthropology and archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the future of criminal justice education based on insights from a leadership survey conducted by Drs. Denise Paquette Boots and Bitna Kim. Topics include the significant growth in Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ) programs, student enrollments, and faculty hires in the United States over the past two decades, reflecting a strong interest in the field and the belief that it offers career advancement opportunities.

The article offers information on the current state of justice-related education and the assessment of justice-related degree programs (JRDP). Topics include the significant variability and lack of consensus in degree requirements within the Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ) discipline, which presents challenges for the field.

Background: This systematic review contributes to the understanding of the characteristics of built food environments that may be associated with choices of alternative protein foods (APF). Using the built food environment typology proposed by Downs et al., we investigated various environmental structures (e.g., supermarkets, other retailers, farmers' markets, restaurants, schools, and online vendors) and the characteristics that may facilitate or hinder consumers' choices. For example, facilitators and barriers may refer to the physical characteristics of environmental structures, food presentation practices, the organizational strategies or policies operating in the setting, or the actions that retailers or consumers engage in while selling, serving, choosing, trying, or purchasing APF in these environmental structures. Methods: A systematic review (PROSPERO database preregistration; no. CRD42023388700) was conducted by searching 13 databases for peer-reviewed journals focusing on the fields of economics and business, agriculture, medical sciences, and social sciences. Data searches, coding, and quality evaluations were conducted by at least 2 researchers. A total of 31 papers (36 original studies) were included. The risk of bias was evaluated with the Joanna Briggs Institute quality evaluation tool, with 24 publications presenting low risk of bias. Results: The findings indicate that perceived and actual availability facilitate consumers' APF choices across a built food environment. Several barriers/facilitators were associated with APF choices in specific types of built food environments: the way food is presented in produce sections (supermarkets), consumer habits in terms of green and specialty shopping (grocery stores), and mismatches among retailer actions in regard to making APF available in one type of food environment structure (e-commerce) and consumers' preferences for APF being available in other food environment structures (supermarkets, grocery stores). The effect of a barrier/facilitator may depend on the APF type; for example, social norms regarding masculinity were a barrier affecting plant-based APF choices in restaurants, but these norms were not a barrier affecting the choice of insect-based APF in restaurants. Conclusions: Addressing barriers/facilitators identified in this review will help in developing environment-matching interventions that aim to make alternative proteins mainstream. Trial registration: PROSPERO database registration: #CRD42023388700. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue addresses a range of educational issues linked to main themes from our 2019 book The Emergence of Complexity: Rethinking Education as a Social Science. This book elaborated two major theses that raise fundamental questions for philosophy of education. First, that learning by groups is typically a distinctive kind of learning that is not reducible to learning by individuals. Second, that a degree of holism, as against a focus on individuals, is essential for achieving a convincing understanding of this distinctive type of group learning. These two theses are of direct interest to philosophy of education since they challenges the resources of received theories of learning. Yet this kind of group learning characterises the vast bulk of human learning situations that occur outside of formal education systems. In this Special Issue introductory article we, firstly, introduce some basic principles of complexity theory, and demonstrate that, together with the concept of a 'co-present group' (between 2 and about 12 individuals), these ideas offer develop novel understandings of the distinctive learning that occurs within such groups. Secondly, we outline and illustrate with further examples the main features of co-present groups. Thirdly, we consolidate our conceptual work by showing five ways in which our account of group learning serves to refurbish the concept of 'learning'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der für japanische und auch einige koreanische Studierende, Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden sowie Universitätsprofessoren und -professorinnen unterschiedlicher kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Disziplinen geschriebene Text wurde am 16. Oktober 2019 in Tokyo in englischer Sprache vorgetragen. Es ging um eine Einführung in zentrale Elemente des Denkens deutscher liberalprotestantischer Theologie seit der „Sattelzeit" (Reinhart Kosselleck) um 1800 und um die Frage, inwieweit sich theologisch liberale Leitideen [normative ideas] im japanischen theologischen Diskurs rezipieren lassen. Die These: Darüber können nur japanische Theologen selbst entscheiden The text, written for Japanese and some Korean students, doctoral students and university professors from various cultural and social science disciplines, was read in English on October 16, 2019 in Tokyo. It was about an introduction to central elements of the thinking of German liberal Protestant theology since the „Sattelzeit" (Reinhart Kosselleck) around 1800 and the question of the extent to which theologically liberal guiding ideas [normative ideas] can be received in Japanese theological discourse. The thesis: Only Japanese theologians can decide this for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between crisis and experience, concentrating on 'excentric positionality' in relation to the shared world, as presented in the work of Helmuth Plessner. A by-product of the 1920s Weimar Germany, Plessner's philosophical anthropology, it is argued, presents us with a forgotten blueprint for transitive and compositional approaches to the social world. Instead of the familiar 'crisis of experience' used to diagnose 'what has gone wrong', it allows us to re-learn how to work with 'the experience of crisis' itself. The latter holds the key to a different type of approach based on 'xeno-communication'. This type of communication utilizes the productive potential of crisis in its uncertainty and hesitation before a decision, showing a way to extend and enlarge experience itself. Cultivation of these 'excentric' dynamics in turn suggests new 'excentric methodologies' based on a more flexible fit between concepts and the worlds they are meant to describe. 'Excentric methodologies' constitute a type of experience-based, analytical response to the shared world. They work with phenomena across spaces and problems, analytically utilizing their joint emergence from the fundamental imbalance and discontinuity characteristic of the human environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows that Habermas's modernism and Lyotard's postmodernism are not as antithetical as they are often taken to be. First, we argue that Habermas is not a strong foundationalist concerned with identifying universal rules for language, as postmodern critiques have often interpreted him. Instead, he develops a social pragmatics in which the communicative use of language is the fundamental presupposition of any meaningful interaction. Second, we argue that Lyotard is not a relativist who denies any universal linguistic structure. Instead, he claims that language involves a universal element of dissensus that cannot be subordinated to consensus. Third, we show that neither does Habermas defend a new version of the kind of philosophy of history characteristic of the Enlightenment, nor is Lyotard a historical relativist, but instead they both seek alternatives to these positions. The conclusion calls for more nuance in the interpretation of both perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the place of the child in the metaphysics and imaginary of Western colonization, racialization, and decolonization. In the last chapter of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, children appear not only as victims but also as a problem for which Fanon struggles to account as a theorist of decolonization as much as a psychiatric practitioner. Through a reading of one of the cases, this article interrogates the ways in which colonization attempts to infantilize colonized populations while erasing childhood, and the ways in which decolonization meets colonization by regarding childhood in the end as a misfortune. The work of decolonization, to proceed, thus would demand us to rethink childhood, and in doing so break free of Western metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Stuart Hall's reading of Louis Althusser's main theoretical works. Since the early 1970s, Hall has undertaken a critical confrontation with Althusser's 'structural Marxism', rescuing those useful concepts to think cultural difference and identity, without failing to criticize his 'superstructuralist' interpretation of Marx. However, what Hall will retain as Althusser's most important contribution is, above all, his theory of ideology. In this context, I follow an idea formulated by Hall that could be read as summarizing the theoretical and political scope of Althusser's contribution to Cultural Studies: 'he enabled me to live in and with difference'. By complicating classical interpretations schemes in the Marxist tradition, Hall's Althusser may be read as a 'thinker of difference' who opens up a whole research program to reconsider class conflicts as traversed (or 'overdetermined') by gender, racial or colonial conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud completed his last book, on Moses and Monotheism, in 1939, while in his London exile. Its publication was deemed untimely, as its two main theses could be construed as a form of Jewish self-hatred. The first claim questions Moses' Jewish origins and contends that the founder of the Jews was in fact an Egyptian; the second suggests that the Jews killed Moses and then created his myth as a coping mechanism for concealing their terrible deed. In this article, I contend that Moses and Monotheism can be read as Freud's intervention in debates on the 'Jewish Question'. After revisiting Freud's original argument (I), I assess its reception among leading Jewish intellectuals of the 20th century (II). I then use Freud's arguments to look at the two key themes of the Jewish Question: understanding the defining features of Jewish identity (III) and the pervasiveness of antisemitism in Western culture (IV). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Achille Mbembe's theorization of necropolitics and surplus life in dialogue with three comparable theorizations: Agamben's 'bare life', Marxist scholarship on 'relative surplus populations', and Afropessimist theorizations of 'social death'. I argue that Mbembe's work allows us to develop a critique of sacrifice that at the same time (contra Agamben) recognizes how it plays a structural role within necropolitics. Examining the influence of Georges Bataille's writings on sacrifice allows me to clarify this argument. The second part of the article examines the 'surplus life' of necropolitics in comparative analysis, tracing some of the limits of Mbembe's reading through a dialogue with Marxist and Afropessimist readings. I characterize Mbembe's work in terms of a poetics and politics of surplus: 'reserves of life' are affirmed against the excess of violence characterizing the present. However, this critique of violence relies upon abrupt leaps from politics to abstract ethical appeals in ways that obscure the implications of Mbembe's own analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. Representing classical critical sociology, the Bourdieusian paradigm illustrated domination, but its negative foundation removed actors' power, privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying (social) transcendental categories of thought. Latour's constructivism challenged this privilege, giving actors the political power of aggregating collectives around their common concerns at the cost of emphasizing domination and critique. We propose a critical approach that evades a transcendental perspective reliant on pure negation, producing a more positive critical sociology founded on processualist phenomenological and pragmatic perspectives, principally Merleau-Ponty and Dewey. Actors and researchers can collectively ruminate on their perspectives and concerns to challenge power structures and transform their worlds. At the center of this is the social-mien, a creative reimagination of habitus. A brief discussion of the protests and scholarship surrounding the Notre-Dame-des-Landes activists' practice of democracy highlights the utility of the approach and serves as a model for future application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spirit of America's Shakespeare, August Wilson (1997), I have written this article as a testimony to the conditions under which I, and too many others, engage in scholarly discourse. I hope to make clear from the beginning that although the ideas presented here are not entirely my own-as they have been inherited from the minority of scholars who dared and managed to bring the most necessary, unpalatable, and unsettling truths about our discipline to the broader scientific community-I do not write for anyone but myself and those scholars who have felt similarly marginalized, oppressed, and silenced. And I write as a race scholar, meaning simply that I believe that race-and racism-affects the sociopolitical conditions in which humans, and scholars, develop their thoughts, feelings, and actions. I believe that it is important for all scholars to have a basic understanding of these conditions, as well as the landmines and pitfalls that define them, as they shape how research is conducted, reviewed, and disseminated. I also believe that to evolve one's discipline into one that is truly robust and objective, it must first become diverse and self-aware. Any effort to suggest otherwise, no matter how scholarly it might present itself, is intellectually unsound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative researchers delve into the lives of their study's participants and embark on profound explorations to attain in-depth information and rich contextual data. For those who research trauma and victimization, they share a close, empathetic relationship with their study participants who communicate intimate, non-abstract information regarding traumatic events. These researchers give voice to and archive the traumas of everyday life as experienced by victimized and traumatized individuals. However, qualitative researchers are at risk of vicarious trauma as a result of listening to the narratives of survivors of trauma and violent crime. In Trinidad and Tobago, this is an under-researched topic. As a result, twelve qualitative Social Sciences researchers at Institutes of Higher Education (IHE) in Trinidad and Tobago were interviewed to elicit their lived experiences of being immersed in qualitative research, the existence of vicarious trauma, and coping strategies employed. The study adopted a phenomenological approach, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results indicated the presence of vicarious trauma among the study's participants as well as a host of coping mechanisms employed to manage its effects, which raises policy implications for IHE which employs qualitative researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the teaching of writing at postgraduate level values written feedback (WF) in this process. In order to understand this practice, we conducted a state of the art study to identify conceptualisations, categorisations, perceptions and textual and scriptural changes based on WF in communications in the field of Social and Human Sciences. Among the results, WF is conceived as an interactive practice, developed in diverse pedagogical-didactic contexts and conditioned by different factors. In addition, classifications of WF are identified, oriented towards different aspects involved in research writing. In terms of perceptions, the participants emphasise the formative nature of the practice. Finally, we found little research aimed at documenting the textual and scriptural changes resulting from WF. We conclude that research into this practice can contribute to the design of devices aimed at improving the teaching of writing at postgraduate level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass public shootings have drawn considerable attention from the public, policymakers, and researchers, yet despite what is known about these events, assessments to date have failed to consider their timing as a function of the locations where they occur. Using data on 401 U.S. mass public shootings occurring between 1966 and 2020, we examine these events' temporal patterns. The findings suggest that the occurrence of mass public shootings may not be as random as once assumed but instead mirror the routine activities of the perpetrators, their victims, and the shootings' locations. Considerations for prevention and response policies also are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from an empirical study in which we investigated Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) students' linguistic resources in the L2 (English) to convey different Cognitive Discourse Functions (Dalton-Puffer 2013; 2016)—Describe, Compare (Categorize), Report, Evaluate and Explore—in two different contexts. The participants were primary school students (grade 6) participating in CLIL programs in Finland and Spain. To allow comparison, two sets of data were obtained by asking the students to write in response to a similar prompt in the area of social science (History in the Spanish context and Geography in the Finnish context). We compared the frequency of the Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) produced, and the fluency and complexity of students' realizations of CDFs, using tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The results reveal similarities across contexts in the frequency and extension of some of the CDFs produced, and differences in terms of CDF complexity, measured in students' use of clause complexes, Appraisal resources and complex nominal groups to express different CDFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral history as a method of understanding the lived experience spans multiple disciplines including education, women and gender studies, history, and disability studies. Oral histories can be a vehicle for people on the periphery to tell their stories, a method well suited to pursuits related to social justice and social work. The purpose of this manuscript is to report on a scoping review that was conducted to better understand how oral history methods have been used in social work. To answer our review question, we use an established scoping review framework. Based on eligibility criteria, 23 manuscripts were identified – all published in peer-reviewed English language journals between 2005 and 2023 and written by social work-credentialed authors. The authors identified three themes that reflect the uses of oral history studies in social work: oral history used as a teaching tool in social work education, oral history used to document the experiences and knowledge of social service trailblazers, and commentaries about using oral history and other biographical methods in social work. This review highlights how oral history, as a method, has contributed to social work research and scholarship. Recommendations are made as to the usefulness of oral history to address social problems and practice issues important to the field of social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics is the primary discipline used to understand supply chain design, scale-up, and management. For example, antibiotics can be compared to other forms of “tragedy of the commons,” whereby a common good (effective treatment of infections) is jeopardized by individual consumption and lack of community oversight and stewardship. While economic analysis can explain innovation decline in terms of market failure, one pitfall of an early-stage focus on research and development is a failure to challenge the discovery narrative. Ethics also has a distinct place in helping us envision alternatives to what markets can produce. This article advances a more contextualized view of how science and technology policy has shaped antibiotic supply chains over many years, emphasizing how shifting the story we tell about past successes is central to securing a reliable antibiotic supply chain in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, satellite data from the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments are analyzed to determine how the global absorbed sunlight and global entropy production rates have changed from 2002 to 2023. The data is used to test hypotheses derived from the Maximum Power Principle (MPP) and Maximum Entropy Production Principle (MEP) about the evolution of Earth's surface and atmosphere. The results indicate that both the rate of absorbed sunlight and global entropy production have increased over the last 20 years, which is consistent with the predictions of both hypotheses. Given the acceptance of the MPP or MEP, some peripheral extensions and nuances are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Vulnerability" is now a widely used term in different settings—from politics and academia to everyday life. In response, a growing body of research has emerged critiquing and challenging the use of the concept in the social sciences. In this paper, we explore the use of the term vulnerability in research on children in out-of-home care and discuss the possible negative consequences of this—for the people involved and for the knowledge produced. Showing some of the problems involved in classifying these children as "particularly vulnerable", we argue that there is a need for more nuanced understandings of children growing up in out-of-home care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptualization of mental disorders varies among professionals, impacting diagnosis, treatment, and research. This cross-disciplinary study aimed to understand how various professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, medical students, philosophers, and social sciences experts, perceive mental disorders, their attitudes towards the disease status of certain mental states, and their emphasis on biological versus social explanatory attributions. A survey of 371 participants assessed their agreement on a variety of conceptual statements and the relative influence of biological or social explanatory attribution for different mental states. Our findings revealed a consensus on the need for multiple explanatory perspectives in understanding psychiatric conditions and the influence of social, cultural, moral, and political values on diagnosis and classification. Psychiatrists demonstrated balanced bio-social explanatory attributions for various mental conditions, indicating a potential shift from the biological attribution predominantly observed among medical students and residents in psychiatry. Further research into factors influencing these differing perspectives is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three works of fiction by Ernest J. Gaines, each from a different phase of his career, can be classified as significant exercises in using genre norms and styles of emplotment to achieve effects that remain obscured by the very relationship to genre that the novels embody. Of Love and Dust (1967) and A Gathering of Old Men (1983) often appear to simultaneously embrace and hide the elements of genre fiction that determine their narrative moves and plot dynamics. A particular narrative tactic in the third example, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971 ), shows how Gaines deploys what one might call "genre identity" in his fiction as a means to complicate a conventional pattern. The realist mode of the novel, building up a perspective on Louisiana history that encompasses both the subjective and the broader collective frameworks of African American memory, is suspended briefly to give space to a subordinate narrative in a Southern Gothic mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on outlining key priorities for the journal Analyses for the next four years, emphasizing its unique identity within the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Topics discussed include expanding epistemologies/methods, diversifying experiences/perspectives, and reaching broader audiences through effective communication and advocacy strategies.

This is an autoethnographic note on conducting fieldwork with the purpose of documenting; first, outside academia––doing documentary photography; and second doing ethnography and autoethnography within academia. It explores different ways to conduct fieldwork (alone or in groups, ethnographically or autoethnographically) and different traditional and innovative ideas about how the "field" was interpreted commonsensically in the past and could be interpreted now, using the analytical dimension of the hybrid field. It is written both autoethnographically and creatively and includes a short methodological "novel." The research note concludes with a reflection on a particular field-work experience, tackling its limitation and imagining different ways to perform it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies in design research and science and technology studies (STS) have investigated how speculative thinking might be applied in empirical contexts. A unifying feature of speculative approaches has been an interest in futures as mediated, shaped and conditioned by science and technology. Yet concrete methodological conditions of speculative research events remain under-explored. There is a need for a more nuanced understanding of speculation 'as it works'. While speculation does not constitute a unified method or analytical grid with a defined set of elements, speculative research is not innocently playful or free of methodological constraints. Speculation denotes here philosophically driven knowledge production conducted with research participants on science, technology and futures. Based on experiences of two social science and two design research cases in cellular reprogramming and genomic engineering, we illustrate and theorize our methodological observations on what takes place in speculative practices with participants. Drawing on Whitehead's and Stengers' conceptual work on experiential practices of knowing, we develop the concept of 'the gap' to describe the mode of speculative engagement that shapes concrete relations and positioning in research events. Contingent and situated, the gap of speculative action builds on openness, uncertainty and hesitation. Achieving the gap is the aim of speculative engagement and also a methodologically elusive, risky part of the study process. The concept of the gap helps illustrate what researchers ask from participants in the name of speculative openness, and how participants position themselves in these encounters. It allows us to highlight how participants, in turn, invite researchers to reposition themselves and demand experiential involvement that may reconfigure the course of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]