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}
Authoritarian regimes are known to repress the political activity of their diasporas transnationally by threatening harsh sanctions. But is this their only mode of transnational repression? This article builds on scholarship on social control to explore whether migrants bring internalized forms of political repression from their authoritarian home country to their democratic country of settlement—and if so, how it shapes their transnational political activity. In‐depth life‐history interviews with 29 U.S.‐citizen and permanent‐resident Syrian immigrants living in Los Angeles, California and Louisville, Kentucky reveal that for many U.S.‐based Syrians, demobilizing emotions, interpretive frames, and habits learned in Syria depressed their transnational political activity during the Arab Spring. Four internalized mechanisms of transnational political repression are conceptualized: learned helplessness, chronic fear of politics and the State, political trauma, and disciplined aversion to political expression. Leveraging comparisons between activists, demobilized activists, and non‐activists, this article demonstrates the connections between specific political socialization experiences, internalized political repression, and transnational political (in)activity. This article contributes to the growing literature on constraints and barriers to transnational mobilization, and to the debate over the role of pre‐migration political experience on immigrants' political participation.
{"title":"Internalized political repression: Legacies of authoritarianism in the U.S.‐based Syrian diaspora during the Arab Spring","authors":"Nadia Almasalkhi","doi":"10.1111/socf.12980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12980","url":null,"abstract":"Authoritarian regimes are known to repress the political activity of their diasporas transnationally by threatening harsh sanctions. But is this their only mode of transnational repression? This article builds on scholarship on social control to explore whether migrants bring internalized forms of political repression from their authoritarian home country to their democratic country of settlement—and if so, how it shapes their transnational political activity. In‐depth life‐history interviews with 29 U.S.‐citizen and permanent‐resident Syrian immigrants living in Los Angeles, California and Louisville, Kentucky reveal that for many U.S.‐based Syrians, demobilizing emotions, interpretive frames, and habits learned in Syria depressed their transnational political activity during the Arab Spring. Four internalized mechanisms of transnational political repression are conceptualized: learned helplessness, chronic fear of politics and the State, political trauma, and disciplined aversion to political expression. Leveraging comparisons between activists, demobilized activists, and non‐activists, this article demonstrates the connections between specific political socialization experiences, internalized political repression, and transnational political (in)activity. This article contributes to the growing literature on constraints and barriers to transnational mobilization, and to the debate over the role of pre‐migration political experience on immigrants' political participation.","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140105730","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 “Jewish turn” in contemporary Poland: Philosemitism, civic nationalism, and the construction of a symbolic other","authors":"Jonathan Zisook","doi":"10.1111/socf.12985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12985","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21904,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140035346","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}