In 2001, John Levi Martin published a critique of authoritarianism scholarship, arguing that it was marred by fundamental biases of tautology, selective interpretation, and overtheorization of some research subjects but neglect of others. Drawing from this critique, I argue that Christian nationalism scholarship in sociology operates as a variant of authoritarianism research, exhibiting similar claims, strengths, and shortcomings. In a short span of time, the Christian nationalism research agenda has come to dominate the sociological study of religion and enjoyed a high profile in public discourse, presumably due to its relevance to matters of acute political concern. However, this literature interprets empirical results based on unverified assumptions of essentially authoritarian goals and motivations while ignoring plausible alternative explanations. It further neglects respondents who are low on Christian nationalism measures, despite evidence that these respondents play a role in religiopolitical conflict. The result is an essentialist account of Christian nationalism that is politically resonant but theoretically problematic. I propose that these issues can be addressed by a shift away from essentialist and toward social models of belief systems, which offer important advantages: greater consistency with current theories of political polarization, a stronger sociological element, and less susceptibility to researcher bias.
2001 年，约翰-列维-马丁（John Levi Martin）发表了一篇对威权主义学术研究的批判文章，认为威权主义学术研究存在着同义反复、选择性阐释、过度理论化某些研究对象而忽视其他研究对象等基本偏见。借鉴这一批判，我认为社会学中的基督教民族主义学术研究是威权主义研究的变体，表现出类似的主张、优势和不足。在很短的时间内，基督教民族主义研究议程就主导了宗教社会学研究，并在公共讨论中享有很高的知名度，这大概是因为它与尖锐的政治问题相关。然而，这些文献对实证结果的解释是基于未经证实的假设，即基本上是独裁的目标和动机，而忽略了似是而非的其他解释。尽管有证据表明基督教民族主义程度较低的受访者在宗教政治冲突中扮演了一定的角色，但这些文献却进一步忽视了这些受访者。其结果是对基督教民族主义的本质主义解释在政治上引起共鸣，但在理论上却存在问题。我建议，这些问题可以通过从本质主义转向信仰体系的社会模型来解决，后者具有重要的优势：与当前的政治极化理论更加一致、社会学元素更强、不易受研究者偏见的影响。
{"title":"Old wine in new wineskins: Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, and the problem of essentialism in explanations of religiopolitical conflict","authors":"Jesse Smith","doi":"10.1111/socf.13014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13014","url":null,"abstract":"In 2001, John Levi Martin published a critique of authoritarianism scholarship, arguing that it was marred by fundamental biases of tautology, selective interpretation, and overtheorization of some research subjects but neglect of others. Drawing from this critique, I argue that Christian nationalism scholarship in sociology operates as a variant of authoritarianism research, exhibiting similar claims, strengths, and shortcomings. In a short span of time, the Christian nationalism research agenda has come to dominate the sociological study of religion and enjoyed a high profile in public discourse, presumably due to its relevance to matters of acute political concern. However, this literature interprets empirical results based on unverified assumptions of essentially authoritarian goals and motivations while ignoring plausible alternative explanations. It further neglects respondents who are low on Christian nationalism measures, despite evidence that these respondents play a role in religiopolitical conflict. The result is an essentialist account of Christian nationalism that is politically resonant but theoretically problematic. I propose that these issues can be addressed by a shift away from essentialist and toward social models of belief systems, which offer important advantages: greater consistency with current theories of political polarization, a stronger sociological element, and less susceptibility to researcher bias.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141929771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sociologists should encourage dissenting voices about public issues.
社会学家应鼓励对公共问题发表不同意见。
{"title":"I read banned books","authors":"Joel Best","doi":"10.1111/socf.13010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13010","url":null,"abstract":"Sociologists should encourage dissenting voices about public issues.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141585317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The trajectory of the academic discipline of sociology is an attestation to the quest for civility and sociability. We believe that the promise of public sociology will rejuvenate scholars to commit to better engagement with one another and with the public. We situate and draw from the scholarly contributions of Michael Burawoy to reflect on sociology's longstanding critical imagination, hoping that the world could be different. We place ourselves on the continuum of what is and what ought to be for better lived experiences and a sustainable planet. We draw from the work of sociologists in India, which continues to guide us to amplify the voices of the unheard and the issues of public concern. To be inclusive, sustainable, democratic, and humane, we need to move beyond structurally ingrained processes within academia and make bridges that are open to all. The deliberation furthered in this paper will encourage young scholars to be more concerned for engaging multiple publics and, thereby, help the discipline of sociology itself.
{"title":"The promise of public sociology in India: Looking at Burawoy and beyond","authors":"Anushka Sinha, Aditya Raj","doi":"10.1111/socf.13011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13011","url":null,"abstract":"The trajectory of the academic discipline of sociology is an attestation to the quest for civility and sociability. We believe that the promise of public sociology will rejuvenate scholars to commit to better engagement with one another and with the public. We situate and draw from the scholarly contributions of Michael Burawoy to reflect on sociology's longstanding critical imagination, hoping that the world could be different. We place ourselves on the continuum of what is and what ought to be for better lived experiences and a sustainable planet. We draw from the work of sociologists in India, which continues to guide us to amplify the voices of the unheard and the issues of public concern. To be inclusive, sustainable, democratic, and humane, we need to move beyond structurally ingrained processes within academia and make bridges that are open to all. The deliberation furthered in this paper will encourage young scholars to be more concerned for engaging multiple publics and, thereby, help the discipline of sociology itself.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141567683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the atheist population grows globally, understanding how governments treat the growing population is vital. Two theories, group threat theory (GTT) and world society theory (WST), offer differing predictions. GTT suggests increasing atheists may face unfavorable treatment because religious groups perceive them as a threat. Conversely, WST proposes that a more interconnected world culture advances secularism, which promotes positive treatment for atheists. This study explores the interplay between these theories and sheds light on how governments treat atheists across countries. Utilizing a comprehensive panel dataset spanning nearly 200 years, we investigate governmental treatment toward atheists, analyzing data from diverse countries and tracking changes over time. Our results reveal that as the proportion of atheists increases, their treatment by governments becomes more favorable, challenging the tenets of GTT. We also find that embeddedness in political or economic networks is related to more favorable treatment of atheists.
{"title":"Cross‐national governmental treatment toward atheists since 1816","authors":"Justin Huft, Ben Fields","doi":"10.1111/socf.13009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13009","url":null,"abstract":"As the atheist population grows globally, understanding how governments treat the growing population is vital. Two theories, group threat theory (GTT) and world society theory (WST), offer differing predictions. GTT suggests increasing atheists may face unfavorable treatment because religious groups perceive them as a threat. Conversely, WST proposes that a more interconnected world culture advances secularism, which promotes positive treatment for atheists. This study explores the interplay between these theories and sheds light on how governments treat atheists across countries. Utilizing a comprehensive panel dataset spanning nearly 200 years, we investigate governmental treatment toward atheists, analyzing data from diverse countries and tracking changes over time. Our results reveal that as the proportion of atheists increases, their treatment by governments becomes more favorable, challenging the tenets of GTT. We also find that embeddedness in political or economic networks is related to more favorable treatment of atheists.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"2015 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141567684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The traditional character of higher education in the US is under assault. The broad, intellectual focus on the liberal arts and its concomitant values of academic freedom and academic governance are giving way to an over‐managed vocational institution that prioritizes ambience over integrity and credentialism over citizenship. In this milieu, sociologists should use the classroom as an opportunity to model the explanatory power of the discipline by structuring our syllabi to make a point. I refer to this approach as syllabus‐as‐argument, which I contrast with the traditional organizational logic of syllabus‐as‐survey—configuring a syllabus to provide an overview of a given topic, theme or field. Where the chief criterion of success for the syllabus as survey is comprehensiveness, the syllabus as argument strives for convincingness. I draw from two courses to exemplify this approach. The first is a senior seminar in environmental sociology, which I have reworked into a course explaining the intractability of the climate crisis. The second is a general education course in community sociology that I remade to explain the links between growing inequality and deteriorating democracy in the US.
{"title":"Syllabus as argument in an era of politicized pedagogy","authors":"Michael L. Dougherty","doi":"10.1111/socf.13008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13008","url":null,"abstract":"The traditional character of higher education in the US is under assault. The broad, intellectual focus on the liberal arts and its concomitant values of academic freedom and academic governance are giving way to an over‐managed vocational institution that prioritizes ambience over integrity and credentialism over citizenship. In this milieu, sociologists should use the classroom as an opportunity to model the explanatory power of the discipline by structuring our syllabi to make a point. I refer to this approach as <jats:italic>syllabus‐as‐argument</jats:italic>, which I contrast with the traditional organizational logic of <jats:italic>syllabus‐as‐survey</jats:italic>—configuring a syllabus to provide an overview of a given topic, theme or field. Where the chief criterion of success for the syllabus as survey is comprehensiveness, the syllabus as argument strives for convincingness. I draw from two courses to exemplify this approach. The first is a senior seminar in environmental sociology, which I have reworked into a course explaining the intractability of the climate crisis. The second is a general education course in community sociology that I remade to explain the links between growing inequality and deteriorating democracy in the US.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141524169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What determines the quality of coverage received by social movement organizations when they appear extensively in the news? Research on the news coverage of social movement organizations is dominated by case studies supporting the “protest paradigm,” which argues that journalists portray movement activists trivially and negatively when covering protest. However, movement organizations often make long‐running news for many different reasons, mainly not protest. We argue that some of this extensive news will lead to worse coverage—in terms of substance and sentiment—notably when the main action covered involves violence. Extensive coverage centered on other actions, however, notably politically assertive action, will tend to produce “good news” in these dimensions. We analyze the news of the twentieth century's 100 most‐covered U.S. movement organizations in their biggest news year in four national newspapers. Topic models indicate that these organizations were mainly covered for actions other than nonviolent protest, including politically assertive action, strikes, civic action, investigations, trials, and violence. Natural language processing analyses and hand‐coding show that their news also varied widely in sentiment and substance. Employing qualitative comparative analyses, we find that the main action behind news strongly influences its quality, and there may be several news paradigms for movement organizations.
{"title":"Beyond the protest paradigm: Four types of news coverage and America's most prominent social movement organizations","authors":"Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren, Weijun Yuan","doi":"10.1111/socf.13006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13006","url":null,"abstract":"What determines the quality of coverage received by social movement organizations when they appear extensively in the news? Research on the news coverage of social movement organizations is dominated by case studies supporting the “protest paradigm,” which argues that journalists portray movement activists trivially and negatively when covering protest. However, movement organizations often make long‐running news for many different reasons, mainly not protest. We argue that some of this extensive news will lead to worse coverage—in terms of substance and sentiment—notably when the main action covered involves violence. Extensive coverage centered on other actions, however, notably politically assertive action, will tend to produce “good news” in these dimensions. We analyze the news of the twentieth century's 100 most‐covered U.S. movement organizations in their biggest news year in four national newspapers. Topic models indicate that these organizations were mainly covered for actions other than nonviolent protest, including politically assertive action, strikes, civic action, investigations, trials, and violence. Natural language processing analyses and hand‐coding show that their news also varied widely in sentiment and substance. Employing qualitative comparative analyses, we find that the main action behind news strongly influences its quality, and there may be several news paradigms for movement organizations.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141190257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The social life of climate projects","authors":"Malcolm Araos, Ankit Bhardwaj, Eric Klinenberg","doi":"10.1111/socf.12995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12995","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140883370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sociology and the climate crisis: A momentum surge and the roots run deep","authors":"Andrew Jorgenson","doi":"10.1111/socf.12994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12994","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140799653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sayyid Qutb: An intellectual biography By GiedreŠabasevičiūtė, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. 2021. pp. 274","authors":"James L. Nolan","doi":"10.1111/socf.12993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12993","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140566434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editors' introduction","authors":"Tammy L. Anderson, Ann V. Bell, Asia Friedman","doi":"10.1111/socf.12990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12990","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140154401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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