Pub Date : 2022-03-29DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2051982
Pietro Saitta
ABSTRACT The present article analyzes the role that shopkeepers play in the life of cities in terms of space production, cultures, and policies on the use of public space. Shopkeepers are seen as the co-promotors of a revanchist culture that affects liberties in contemporary cities. In the light of such premises, the present theoretical study inquires into the intertwinements between this group and the dominant populist political offer. The combination of power of influence, sense of loss, and exposition to political offers that promise to give back stability, by recreating known worlds made of traditional hierarchies, roles. and sentiments, all of them situated in the locality, appears as the recipe for the re-proposition of historical authoritarian alliances that participated to the making of the contemporary exclusionary city.
{"title":"Fatal encounters: shopkeepers, neo-populism, and the exclusionary city","authors":"Pietro Saitta","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2051982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2051982","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The present article analyzes the role that shopkeepers play in the life of cities in terms of space production, cultures, and policies on the use of public space. Shopkeepers are seen as the co-promotors of a revanchist culture that affects liberties in contemporary cities. In the light of such premises, the present theoretical study inquires into the intertwinements between this group and the dominant populist political offer. The combination of power of influence, sense of loss, and exposition to political offers that promise to give back stability, by recreating known worlds made of traditional hierarchies, roles. and sentiments, all of them situated in the locality, appears as the recipe for the re-proposition of historical authoritarian alliances that participated to the making of the contemporary exclusionary city.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"1 1","pages":"369 - 389"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84799952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-04DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2045141
T. Johansson
{"title":"In defence of multiculturalism – theoretical challenges","authors":"T. Johansson","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2045141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2045141","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89627840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-24DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2042770
P. Donati
ABSTRACT In the panorama of gesture theories, the contribution of relational sociology based on critical realism is underdeveloped. This contribution seeks to fill the deficit by considering Giovanni Maddalena's theory on the ‘complete gesture’. On the one hand, this theory is appreciated as a significant step forward from classical pragmatism. On the other hand, since theories based essentially on phenomenology and semiotics are at risk of nominalism, if we want to understand the gesture from a critical realistic perspective, we need to complement the theory of gesture with a relational social ontology. This means that the theory of the gesture as action (unit act) must be placed within an ontological and epistemological framework, in which Peirce’s triangle is related to the latent value of the real as indicated by the sign. A relational alternative to Peirce's semiotic triangle is presented here with the aim of connecting the sign of the gesture to the underlying reality.
{"title":"A critical realist view of gesture","authors":"P. Donati","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2042770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2042770","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the panorama of gesture theories, the contribution of relational sociology based on critical realism is underdeveloped. This contribution seeks to fill the deficit by considering Giovanni Maddalena's theory on the ‘complete gesture’. On the one hand, this theory is appreciated as a significant step forward from classical pragmatism. On the other hand, since theories based essentially on phenomenology and semiotics are at risk of nominalism, if we want to understand the gesture from a critical realistic perspective, we need to complement the theory of gesture with a relational social ontology. This means that the theory of the gesture as action (unit act) must be placed within an ontological and epistemological framework, in which Peirce’s triangle is related to the latent value of the real as indicated by the sign. A relational alternative to Peirce's semiotic triangle is presented here with the aim of connecting the sign of the gesture to the underlying reality.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"4 1","pages":"217 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82278970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-22DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2035909
Peeter Selg, Benjamin Klasche, Joonatan Nõgisto
{"title":"Wicked problems and sociology: building a missing bridge through processual relationalism","authors":"Peeter Selg, Benjamin Klasche, Joonatan Nõgisto","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2035909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2035909","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84969095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-11DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2038845
Gedion Onyango
ABSTRACT The discreetness of street-level corruption resides in somewhat coded languages, techniques, networks and trust (solidarity) by key players. The newcomers become indoctrinated as the oldtimers, found at different levels of the police hierarchy, acting as the gatekeepers. Therefore, bribery occurs within a syndicate requiring privileged knowledge, coping strategies, and a network that would descriptively qualify as the art of bribery. Dissidence comes with a greater cost. This paper shows how Kenyan police corruption and behaviour at checkpoints occurs within a syndicate underpinned by policing culture and loosely regulated institutional environments. Traffic policing features a well-established and expansive network of institutionalised corruption regulated by the rules-of-the game where each party play their parts. Motorists pay bribes to circumvent traffic regulations or be on the right terms with corrupt officers while the police maximise illicit incomes for personal and institutional gains. The unstructured public transport and overlapping regulations exacerbate corruption at the roadblocks, creating a corruption complex and spiral effects between the police and motorists. This discussion also indicates the incompetence of police personnel and citizen agency deficits in anti-corruption reforms in Africa. Most importantly, the paper shows that tighter traffic regulations unexpectedly produces and legitimises corruption in weaker regulatory systems.
{"title":"The art of bribery! Analysis of police corruption at traffic checkpoints and roadblocks in Kenya","authors":"Gedion Onyango","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2038845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2038845","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The discreetness of street-level corruption resides in somewhat coded languages, techniques, networks and trust (solidarity) by key players. The newcomers become indoctrinated as the oldtimers, found at different levels of the police hierarchy, acting as the gatekeepers. Therefore, bribery occurs within a syndicate requiring privileged knowledge, coping strategies, and a network that would descriptively qualify as the art of bribery. Dissidence comes with a greater cost. This paper shows how Kenyan police corruption and behaviour at checkpoints occurs within a syndicate underpinned by policing culture and loosely regulated institutional environments. Traffic policing features a well-established and expansive network of institutionalised corruption regulated by the rules-of-the game where each party play their parts. Motorists pay bribes to circumvent traffic regulations or be on the right terms with corrupt officers while the police maximise illicit incomes for personal and institutional gains. The unstructured public transport and overlapping regulations exacerbate corruption at the roadblocks, creating a corruption complex and spiral effects between the police and motorists. This discussion also indicates the incompetence of police personnel and citizen agency deficits in anti-corruption reforms in Africa. Most importantly, the paper shows that tighter traffic regulations unexpectedly produces and legitimises corruption in weaker regulatory systems.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"13 1","pages":"311 - 331"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74376847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2031081
Enrico Caniglia, Andrea Spreafico
ABSTRACT In recent years, the study of populism has attracted considerable attention in the social sciences. However, this has highlighted certain inherent contradictions in the academic study of politics, which struggles between neutrality and value judgments. Shifting attention away from the representational content toward the actual usage of the term ‘populist’, the essay shows how part of the abundant academic literature on populism fails to address the problem of value judgment effectively. Despite its purported refusal to pathologize, academic analysis employs the term more often than not as a way to label new political parties or movements in terms of deviancy. It thus supports the political aim of incumbents who would like to dismiss such parties/movements as defective political actors. Taking the Italian literature on populism as a case study, we show not only how the moral connotation implicit in ‘populism’ is not neutralized in academic study but also how it constitutes a strategic aspect of the analysis. Our essay shows how ‘populism’ as a moral category allows, on the one hand, the collection in a single category of all the diverse actors emerging in contemporary politics and, on the other hand, the provision of an overall interpretation of these actors.
{"title":"Against the ‘science of populism’: grammatical analysis of studies on populism in Italy","authors":"Enrico Caniglia, Andrea Spreafico","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2031081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2031081","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In recent years, the study of populism has attracted considerable attention in the social sciences. However, this has highlighted certain inherent contradictions in the academic study of politics, which struggles between neutrality and value judgments. Shifting attention away from the representational content toward the actual usage of the term ‘populist’, the essay shows how part of the abundant academic literature on populism fails to address the problem of value judgment effectively. Despite its purported refusal to pathologize, academic analysis employs the term more often than not as a way to label new political parties or movements in terms of deviancy. It thus supports the political aim of incumbents who would like to dismiss such parties/movements as defective political actors. Taking the Italian literature on populism as a case study, we show not only how the moral connotation implicit in ‘populism’ is not neutralized in academic study but also how it constitutes a strategic aspect of the analysis. Our essay shows how ‘populism’ as a moral category allows, on the one hand, the collection in a single category of all the diverse actors emerging in contemporary politics and, on the other hand, the provision of an overall interpretation of these actors.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"58 3 1","pages":"200 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83107173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2051981
A. B. Belayeth Hussain
ABSTRACT Countries that implement strict policy measures to combat coronavirus contagion increase their probability of achieving successful social distancing practice when compared to the countries without such strict policies. I used Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) as a quasi-experimental evaluation option to perform regression models and show differences in social distancing efforts. I utilized 3,997 observations for 132 countries, drawn from the Oxford CGRT Stringency Index and Google Community Mobility data. The results show that people’s community mobility to various locations has flattened significantly as policy measures become stricter. In this paper, I considered current underlying health situation to be symptomatic of a risk society and argued that policy interventions’ effectiveness in response to COVID-19 depends on political leaders, public health authorities, and institutions’ credibility. Political rhetoric, politically motivated scientific solutions, and political downplaying of the underlying health implications weaken the responsible organizations and institutions, particularly when leaders undermine inclusive stringent policies and their implementation.
{"title":"Social distancing in risk society: a cross-national analysis of policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"A. B. Belayeth Hussain","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2051981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2051981","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Countries that implement strict policy measures to combat coronavirus contagion increase their probability of achieving successful social distancing practice when compared to the countries without such strict policies. I used Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) as a quasi-experimental evaluation option to perform regression models and show differences in social distancing efforts. I utilized 3,997 observations for 132 countries, drawn from the Oxford CGRT Stringency Index and Google Community Mobility data. The results show that people’s community mobility to various locations has flattened significantly as policy measures become stricter. In this paper, I considered current underlying health situation to be symptomatic of a risk society and argued that policy interventions’ effectiveness in response to COVID-19 depends on political leaders, public health authorities, and institutions’ credibility. Political rhetoric, politically motivated scientific solutions, and political downplaying of the underlying health implications weaken the responsible organizations and institutions, particularly when leaders undermine inclusive stringent policies and their implementation.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"14 1","pages":"40 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74985018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2028404
J. Domingues
ABSTRACT This paper discusses power in world history and then in the political dimension of modernity, contrasting it with how power was exercised in other civilisations. It mobilises key texts on large-scale historical sociology and evolutionary theories. In order to articulate a discussion on systems of rule, hierarchy, network and market, the analytical categories of justification and legitimation are introduced. To organise and frame the historical record, avoiding the pitfalls of unilinear theories of evolution, it also resorts to the concepts of homology and homoplasy, divergence and convergence, which are common occurrences in history. This has to do with limited possibilities for social evolution. Yet modernity surged as a stunning historic-evolutionary divergence, in which a specific process of differentiation took place, including that of a particular, and hitherto unheard of, political dimension. Authoritarian collectivism tried to supersede it but failed, entailing a backtracking of social evolution.
{"title":"Power and rule, civilisations and the modern political dimension: parallelism, convergence and divergence in social evolution","authors":"J. Domingues","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2028404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2028404","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper discusses power in world history and then in the political dimension of modernity, contrasting it with how power was exercised in other civilisations. It mobilises key texts on large-scale historical sociology and evolutionary theories. In order to articulate a discussion on systems of rule, hierarchy, network and market, the analytical categories of justification and legitimation are introduced. To organise and frame the historical record, avoiding the pitfalls of unilinear theories of evolution, it also resorts to the concepts of homology and homoplasy, divergence and convergence, which are common occurrences in history. This has to do with limited possibilities for social evolution. Yet modernity surged as a stunning historic-evolutionary divergence, in which a specific process of differentiation took place, including that of a particular, and hitherto unheard of, political dimension. Authoritarian collectivism tried to supersede it but failed, entailing a backtracking of social evolution.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"37 1","pages":"174 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80814751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2028403
Webster Chakawata
ABSTRACT At the risk of oversimplification, virtually all research that scrutinizes COVID-19 is propelled by identical points of departures which chief in their assessment, portray how the pandemic accentuates the likelihood of illiberal or autocratic regimes tightening restrictions upon civil liberties. This paper is no different as it is predicated along this initial starting point but is also carrying an ambition to bring to light how the pandemic context, perhaps counterintuitively has also provided authoritarian governments with the platform to uptake provisions that bring about a veneer of civil rights and the potential which this vacillation between increasingly authoritarian and considerably liberal approaches in handling the virus generates. This paper is offset by Foucault’s theorizing on Governmentality and illuminates on how African governments have responded to the virus in the textbook manner Foucault envisages. In so doing, it challenges the generally advanced idea that Governmentality is only applicable in Western liberal contexts by looking at African countries response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has enlisted classic Governmentality techniques such as disciplinary power, surveillance and power/knowledge monopoly by African states.
{"title":"Africa’s response to COVID-19: a governmentality in disguise masterclass?","authors":"Webster Chakawata","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2028403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2028403","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At the risk of oversimplification, virtually all research that scrutinizes COVID-19 is propelled by identical points of departures which chief in their assessment, portray how the pandemic accentuates the likelihood of illiberal or autocratic regimes tightening restrictions upon civil liberties. This paper is no different as it is predicated along this initial starting point but is also carrying an ambition to bring to light how the pandemic context, perhaps counterintuitively has also provided authoritarian governments with the platform to uptake provisions that bring about a veneer of civil rights and the potential which this vacillation between increasingly authoritarian and considerably liberal approaches in handling the virus generates. This paper is offset by Foucault’s theorizing on Governmentality and illuminates on how African governments have responded to the virus in the textbook manner Foucault envisages. In so doing, it challenges the generally advanced idea that Governmentality is only applicable in Western liberal contexts by looking at African countries response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has enlisted classic Governmentality techniques such as disciplinary power, surveillance and power/knowledge monopoly by African states.","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"71 1","pages":"147 - 173"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84141448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2022.2064695
M. Corsi, J. Michael Ryan
In memory of Giovanbattista Sgritta When the first instances of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were reported in late 2019 and early 2020, there were few people who would have imagined the magnitude of the pandemic that we have experienced up to now. News of the virus seemed contained mostly to the epidemiological community and very few social scientists, especially those outside of health research, were raising much of an eyebrow. It was at that time that IRS editorial board decided to launch a Call for papers to stimulate a debate about the COVID-19 pandemic – the socially constructed classification of the epidemiological spread of the virus – with the aim to develop analyses within a pluralistic research community in social sciences. The call was open to empirical, analytical, and theoretical papers on the economic, political, and social issues of the pandemic. The articles published in this Themed issue are those selected among the many which have been submitted along those lines, in the past two years. We are grateful to all authors for their patience and perseverance. Before describing the content of the papers, it is important to distinguish between the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other impacts the spread of the virus has had. There is a clear overlap, but also important distinctions. One way of distinguishing between medical issues and social issues is to differentiate between issues of contagion and underlying systemic issues. Contagion refers to how a virus spreads, how easily it spreads, and how quickly it spreads. The concern of epidemiologists is largely focused onmedical and social issues of contagion. A systemic issue, on the other hand, is one that is a broad underlying factor in how societies operate and includes issues like discrimination and inequalities. Social scientists have a history of focusing on more systemic issues. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has blurred those distinctions (to the extent that they existed). For example, we know that underlying issues of inequality – i.e. access to healthcare, healthy living conditions, types of employment, access to information – are directly linked to contagion. We now have clear evidence of strong associations between race/ethnicity, sexual identity, social class, and geographic location and the likelihood of contracting, or at least being exposed to, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with the unfortunately predictable outcome that those in disadvantaged positions are far more likely to be exposed, contract, and die from the virus (Germain & Yong, 2020;
{"title":"What does the Covid-19 crisis reveal about interdisciplinarity in social sciences?","authors":"M. Corsi, J. Michael Ryan","doi":"10.1080/03906701.2022.2064695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2022.2064695","url":null,"abstract":"In memory of Giovanbattista Sgritta When the first instances of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were reported in late 2019 and early 2020, there were few people who would have imagined the magnitude of the pandemic that we have experienced up to now. News of the virus seemed contained mostly to the epidemiological community and very few social scientists, especially those outside of health research, were raising much of an eyebrow. It was at that time that IRS editorial board decided to launch a Call for papers to stimulate a debate about the COVID-19 pandemic – the socially constructed classification of the epidemiological spread of the virus – with the aim to develop analyses within a pluralistic research community in social sciences. The call was open to empirical, analytical, and theoretical papers on the economic, political, and social issues of the pandemic. The articles published in this Themed issue are those selected among the many which have been submitted along those lines, in the past two years. We are grateful to all authors for their patience and perseverance. Before describing the content of the papers, it is important to distinguish between the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other impacts the spread of the virus has had. There is a clear overlap, but also important distinctions. One way of distinguishing between medical issues and social issues is to differentiate between issues of contagion and underlying systemic issues. Contagion refers to how a virus spreads, how easily it spreads, and how quickly it spreads. The concern of epidemiologists is largely focused onmedical and social issues of contagion. A systemic issue, on the other hand, is one that is a broad underlying factor in how societies operate and includes issues like discrimination and inequalities. Social scientists have a history of focusing on more systemic issues. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has blurred those distinctions (to the extent that they existed). For example, we know that underlying issues of inequality – i.e. access to healthcare, healthy living conditions, types of employment, access to information – are directly linked to contagion. We now have clear evidence of strong associations between race/ethnicity, sexual identity, social class, and geographic location and the likelihood of contracting, or at least being exposed to, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with the unfortunately predictable outcome that those in disadvantaged positions are far more likely to be exposed, contract, and die from the virus (Germain & Yong, 2020;","PeriodicalId":46079,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie","volume":"23 1","pages":"1 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85568587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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