Relational Sociology

[Catalogue blurb:] More-than-Human Sociology is a call for a bolder, more creative sociology. In the book, Olli Pyyhtinen argues that to make sociology responsive to life in the 21st century we need a new sociological imagination, one that addresses connectivity, understands the world in which we live as both a human and non-human world, and is sensitive to the multiple scales on which things exist. A fresh and innovative take on the promise of sociology, this book will appeal to scholars and students both within sociology and the social sciences more broadly.

The purpose of this book is to propose a new way of looking at the family and family policy in the context of a society that is in the process of globalization. It aims above all at challenging the prevailing way in which family public policy is understood and practiced worldwide today, that is what Donati calls the lib-lab configuration. Empirical research has shown that family policies today are involved in a number of vicious cycles that generate more problems than they solve and in some cases lead to total policy failure. The book presents alternatives to the ways in which the family is considered and treated today. It seeks to review the relations between families and public policies from the viewpoint of relational sociology. This viewpoint is 'differential’, that is it highlights what makes a difference in building family relations in one way or another. The originality of this volume rests in its analysis of the present situation, its challenge to current public policies and the proposals of new directions towards a relational configuration that Donati calls societal, plural and subsidiary family policies. Approaching the topic from the family’s point of view, the book operates through employing relational distinctions, highlighting the differences, that are hidden in the field observed, often unexpressed in the face of a colonizing assumption that the family is a mere product of society.

Social Morphogenesis is the first volume in a series of books, edited by Margaret Archer, that seeks to develop an explanatory framework that can account for how the rate of social change has 'speeded up' in the last three decades. The first volume is dedicated to an analysis of what the 'generative mechanism' is that produces such rapid change and discusses how this differs from Late Modernity. The first volume can be seen as an elaboration of Archer's Morphogenetic Project, which over the last thirty years has focused on theorising social stability and change in a way that is applicable to three levels of social analysismicro, meso and macro-and across all three elements of social transformation -structure, culture and agency. The challenge of the Morphogenetic Project has been to specify their interplay with Archer's offering a sociological interpretation of Morphostasis and Morphogenesis to help make sense of the processes that tend to either preserve or change a social system's given form or structure. The term 'social morphogenesis', then, elaborates on these previous developments and refers to the generative mechanism that Archer and 10 other contributors are interested in holding to account for the increasing rapidity of social change.

A swathe of feminist literature underscores the importance of collective forms of agency in transforming the structures leading to gender injustice. But, specifically, what kind of agency is conducive to such transformation? Drawing on primary research on a gender movement in rural West Bengal, this paper shows that the movement manifests itself through relational agency. That is, the agency of the movement and its members is concomitantly built through interpersonal relationships. First, relationships amongst its members enable them to develop their capacity for critical reflection on gender injustice, holding dialogue with stakeholders, and navigating challenging circumstances. Second, the members’ relationships with villagers suffering from gender injustice lead them to have compassion for the victims, which instils their passion for its eradication. These emotional commitments are also strengthened through relationships amongst the members, enabling them to continue their activism despite facing harassment and death threats. Third, their agency significantly develops by transforming repressive relationships with others outside the movement into enabling ones through dialogue. Thus, this paper concludes that relational agency is conducive to transforming the gendered structures and more attention to relationships is necessary in deepening our understanding of movements for gender justice.

This study presents a sociolinguistics of academic publishing in historical as well as in contemporary times. From the perspective of Swedish academia, it unites a wide range of scholarly knowledge, including perspectives from the sociology of science, history of science and ideas, and research policy. The study focuses on publishing practices in the empirical realities of two disciplinary fields, history and psychology. Drawing on facts and figures from publishing practices as well as interviews, the study argues that English is currently making inroads into the field of history, in line with and aided by the field-external power of new regimes of research evaluation and performance-based funding impinging on the university field at large. In the field of history, unlike in psychology, the English language is thus currently a weapon since it provides access to international publishing markets where new forms of scientific authority can be obtained. This option seems to be most compelling for junior scholars seeking to enter the field. Following Bourdieu, publishing in English is here interpreted as pertaining to a social strategy, enacted in pursuit of investing differently, so as to subvert the order of the historical field.

In social science discourse, the dichotomy between agency and structure tends to dominate debates pertaining to identity construction. When complex social facts are viewed through a simplistic prism of either individual activities or dominant structural impacts is likely to lead to a conclusion, - particularly when the subjects of research are members of communities at risk of vulnerability which are merely two-dimensional; omitting essential elements and interplays of circumstances, agency and structures which can rapidly shift dependent on both personal and external contexts and stressors. In this article, we discuss ways of utilising Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical model to explore the potential for creating a more nuanced theory of identity construction in the context of case studies focused on Gypsy/Roma(ni) people, whose identities depend both on internal identifications and those of the (dominant) groups with whom they live. We also aim to consider how in two widely contrasting international contexts – that of Roma people in Turkey and Gypsy/Traveller communities in the UK – use of Bourdieuian analysis provides appropriate tools that enable an analysis of daily living and the associated sense of active agency of these populations without minimising or excluding the structural effects which impact them. This approach enables a nuanced relational approach to understanding Gypsy/Roma(ni) groups’ identity construction in its entirety, whilst taking account of the specific geographical context  in which the populations reside.

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed profound changes in the sociocultural valuation of dogs, variously described as humanization, sentimentalization, or sacralization. A broad look at this “sacralization” of dogs in the United States reveals that this changing valuation has altered dogs’ place within economic processes. In particular, these changes parallel Viviana Zelizer’s work on the changing valuation of children a century ago. In this article, we further specify Zelizer’s insights by arguing that these accompanying economic transformations are best understood as shifting of a dogs’ place within budgetary units: from objects for human consumption to fellow actors humans consume with and around.

The shared life philosophy of the Vā or socio-spatial relations has been presented as social,. The Vā, simply defined as relational spaces or space-between, is theorized as a philosophy underpinning identity formation. It enables the reinforcement and strengthening of relationships with self, within community and the wider world. Traditionally, the multiple complexities of the various aspects of the Vā played out solely as abstract spaces within real-time and place. This chapter explores the notion of the digital Vā within cyber places and spaces using Facebook as an example of the use of social media by Pacific communities. It presents the core question, are we digitizing the Vā? A family intergenerational case-study is used as an exploratory entry point to demonstrate shifting boundaries of acceptability of the kinds of conversations that take place in social media. Drawing from the theoretical lens of values theory, these reflections pose key questions for Pacific youth for whom eCulture and cyber-identity form a critical component of their identity formation which plays out in real-place and time.

Il libro presenta la sociologia come scienza della società che cambia. Oggi più che mai, i rapidi cambiamenti sociali e culturali portati dalla globalizzazione segnano una transizione, unica nella storia, che richiede nuovi strumenti analitici e interpretativi per essere compresa a fondo. La chiave originale del volume sta nel trattare l’argomento dal punto di vista della teoria relazionale, che individua nella crisi radicale della modernità il punto di svolta verso una società dopo-moderna, ovvero trans-moderna. Vengono esposti i principali concetti e schemi esplicativi dei mutamenti in corso. Lo scenario che viene presentato è quello di una «morfogenesi societaria» dalla quale, pur tra molteplici tensioni e conflitti, emerge una «società relazionale». Di questa società emergente vengono delineati, alla luce delle sociologie classiche e contemporanee, i nuovi contorni, i soggetti e le dinamiche socioculturali che cercano di andare oltre i dilemmi di una modernizzazione che ha creato un mondo incerto, rischioso e disorientato.

681] 2 La originalidad de la tendencia en investigación antropológica denominada estructuralismo, puede decirse que descansa, paradójicamente, en el hecho que ha contribuido en gran medida a hacer desaparecer la originalidad ficticia asignada al conocimiento antropológico por la teoría espontánea del conocimiento. El riesgo de subestimar o sobreestimar (las dos alternativas no son mutuamente excluyentes) la originalidad de esta tendencia, que razonablemente merece menos el nombre de estructuralismo que las matemáticas o la físicas modernas, se debe al hecho de que sus principios, que ha despertado nuevamente o constituido expresamente su forma específicamente antropológica, son diametralmente opuestos a la teoría espontánea del conocimiento del hombre y de la sociedad. Por consiguiente, cuando la antropología se comprometió a encontrar en sí misma los principios que en última instancia son los de cualquier teoría del conocimiento científico, tuvo que superar obstáculos epistemológicos que no son comparables con los que se enfrentan las ciencias naturales. Para evaluar adecuadamente la contribución teórica del estructuralismo, debemos introducir, en oposición a las formas usuales de pensamiento, una clara distinción entre la teoría del conocimiento sociológico y la teoría del sistema social. La teoría del conocimiento sociológico, como el sistema de principios y reglas que gobiernan la producción de todas las proposiciones sociológicas científicamente fundadas, y de ellas solas, es el principio generador de todas las teorías parciales de lo social y, por lo tanto, el principio unificador del discurso propiamente sociológico, que no debe confundirse con una teoría unitaria de lo social. En otras palabras, un discurso sociológico, [682] por ejemplo una teoría de las transacciones matrimoniales o de la difusión cultural, es científico únicamente en la medida en que hace uso de principios epistemológicos y lógicos de la teoría del conocimiento social, esto es, de una meta-ciencia sociológica, de acuerdo a un sistema de relaciones y de

This chapter focuses on Pacific island ways of negotiating knowledge. It begins from the premise that the researcher as learner, seeking knowledge (data), needs to learn how to negotiate access to a particular knowledge base in various indigenous contexts. Numerous Pacific island scholars assert that a decolonisation of research is needed to cater for the fact that Pacific indigenous peoples view and engage in the world differently.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

This scholarly series stands at the intersection of globalization and development studies, examining the social, political, and economic effects of these processes on the African continent. For advocates and critics alike, globalization and development are inescapable "facts of life" that define the parameters of social action not just in Africa but throughout the world. Yet while academic debates and policy discussions careen between praise and criticism, too little attention is given to how these processes actually operate in African settings. Rather than simply reacting to the mainstream scholarly literature, books in this series seek to creatively engage with contemporary debates as a way of developing new perspectives that establish and analyze the linkages between globalization and development.

The New International Economic Order (NIEO) was a political campaign brought to the United Nations by the Group of 77 (G77) – the state elites from 120 countries of the Global South. The G77 sought to transcend what they saw as ongoing colonial features of the post-World War II world order, defined as the rules and institutions designed to manage the world capitalist system. The NIEO project aimed to overturn Northern protectionism; increase the stability and diversity of Southern economies through the creation of new institutions; and increase the power of the South in global institutions. With few exceptions, International Relations (IR) theory, both Orthodox and Critical, has either ignored the NIEO, or constructed it as an authoritarian attack on global liberalism that had little to no chance of succeeding. With new archival research and a relational historical materialist approach, this thesis traces the rise and decline of the NIEO as a political project and challenges these assumptions. First, it argues that the systemic reforms advocated by the G77 were not based on a rejection of liberalism, but on the premise that the post-war order was not “liberal” enough. Second, it shows that experiments in a NIEO came very close to being launched and offers an explanation of how G77 state elites might have succeeded. This history of the NIEO contains important insights into the role that non-Western agency and power have played in the post-war order. Not only did G77 state elites, in relying on the wider ‘Third World Project’, offer a powerful critique of the post-war order, they created a viable strategy for its reformation. This is significant for several reasons. First, it challenges the assumption of Critical IR theory that the United States was so overpowering that non-Western agency was insignificant to the post-war order. Second, it questions the prevalent assumption of Orthodox Liberal Internationalism that only liberal states create liberal international institutions and orders. These assumptions are embedded within Eurocentric narratives that conceive the post-war order as the sole creation of the United States. Such narratives are used to frame the present crisis of world order as a result of the rise of non-Western powers, and a failure of American leadership. Any potential for non-Western states to participate in reforming world order is viewed as unprecedented and is certainly not linked to any possibility of global movements encompassing the world’s poorest states. This thesis revises such historical narratives, and in doing so, sheds light on the present crisis. A more general implication of this is a historically justified optimism. The NIEO was built by decades of work by many Third World intellectuals, diplomats, and states people. Their collective praxis culminated in evidence that amidst the uncertainties of world economic crises, global projects aimed at reforming world order can create viable power and are therefore worth pursuing.

Показаны современные версии заложенной Г. Зиммелем традиции считать предметом социологии взаимоотношения людей. Это - сетевая теория («реляционная социология») и теория «актор-сеть». Под воздействием «культурного поворота» в этих социологических теориях обнаруживаются сходства и отличия, становится возможным сближение обоих подходов.

Текст диссертационной работы, защищенной 3 марта 2015 года в диссертационном совете по социологии РГГУ.
Работа нацелена на систематизацию теоретических идей и практических наработок сетевого подхода в социологии и определение его места и роли в структуре социологического знания. В работе проанализированы теоретико-методологические основания трех направлений сетевого подхода в социологии – анализа социальных сетей, реляционной социологии и акторно-сетевой теории. Результаты исследования могут быть полезны для широкого круга исследователей и академических работников, а также студентов факультетов социальных наук и могут быть использованы в рамках преподавания курсов по истории социологии, современной социологической теории, методологии и методики социологических исследований, а также при реализации эмпирических исследований.

S osiaaliturvaan liittyvät tuen muodot eivät ole valmiita. Tällä julkaisulla Diakonia-ammattikorkeakoulun tutkimus-, kehittämis-ja innovaatiotoiminta (TKI-toiminta) tuo esiin sosiaaliturvaan liittyvää kehittämistoimintaansa ja osallistuu asiaan liittyvään yhteiskunnalliseen keskusteluun. Julkaisussa käsitellään joitain ihmisten tuen tarpeen ja palvelujen ajankohtaisia haasteita. Painopiste on sosiaalihuoltoon, sosiaalipalveluihin ja niihin läheisesti liittyvien tuen muotojen kysymyksissä. Teoksen artikkelit eivät keskity tulonsiirtoihin. Luonteeltaan teos on asiantuntijapuheenvuorojen kokonaisuus, ja kaikki artikkelit ovat kiinni nykytodellisuudessa.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

From networks to fields to figurations to discourses, relational ideas have become common in social science, and a distinct relational sociology has emerged over the past decade and a half. But so far, this paradigm shift has raised as many questions as it answers. Just what are 'relations', precisely? How do we observe and measure them? How does relational thinking change what we already know about society? What new questions does it invite us to ask? This volume and its companion volume Applying Relational Sociology: Networks, Relations, and Society bring together, for the first time, the leading experts and up-and-coming scholars in the field to address fundamental questions about what relational sociology is and how it works.

The art scene is a network of media and markets, institutions and actors - from artists to gallery owners and critics to speculators and sponsors. The book shows how fundamentally this international scene and its production, distribution and perception of art have changed since the middle of the 20th century. Andy Warhols carrier in the 1950s till the 1980s is used to show how the development of art and the social judgment about what can be considered as art have changed fundamentally. The "Rules of Art" elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu in his eponymous work have since been replaced by new rules.

The dissertation conducts an empirical case study on the transformation of the field of visual art in the second half of the 20th century.  The study applies and extends Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production to ask how pop artist Andy Warhol was able to arrive at a dominant position within the artistic field.  Drawing on numerous material – interviews with artists, curators, gallery owners, private collectors, art catalogues, reviews etc. - the analysis shows on the macro, meso, and micro level how a field of “extended production” emerged in the visual arts during the 1960s and 1970s and how it operates. The dissertation reconstructs the career of Warhol within the field to analyze the rules of the field of extended production that is located between the field of avant-garde art and mass culture and the growing power of mass media, collectors, museums and profit orientated galleries within the field of visual art.

Kaum ein Begriff wird in der soziologischen Theoriebildung derzeit so prominent und vielfältig diskutiert wie jener der Relationalität. Dabei kommt es nicht selten vor, dass auch etwas ganz Neues behauptet wird: ein "relational turn" (Dépelteau 2013) etwa. Der Titel des Seminars "Was ist relationale Soziologie?" möchte die Debatten um dieses schillernde Begriffspaar öffnen und auch danach fragen: "Gibt es überhaupt eine nicht-relationale Soziologie?" Denn so ließe sich ja auch die These vertreten, dass die Soziologie-in ihrer Multiparadigmatik-immer schon eine Beziehungswissenschaft war. Was also zeichnet ein Programm relationaler Soziologie eigentlich aus? Wir werden uns in diesem Lektürekurs zunächst aktuellen Bestimmungen dieses Programms zuwenden, das vor allen Dingen von der Netzwerkforschung reklamiert wird. Darauf aufbauend geht es dem Seminar aber vor allen Dingen um eine Öffnung der Debatte und darum, zu fragen, welche Formen relationalen Denkens die Soziologie prägen. Einerseits begeben wir uns auf eine Spurensuche bei einschlägigen soziologischen Klassikern, die mit einem Denken in Beziehungen assoziiert werden (Simmel, Marx, von Wiese...). Andererseits sollen neuere Beiträge aus der soziologischen Theorie behandelt werden und mit Blick auf ihre jeweilige Thematisierung der Beziehungsförmigkeit des Sozialen befragt werden (Bourdieu, Elias, Haraway...). Wir verfolgen dabei vor allen Dingen zwei Ziele: Zum einen erschließen wir uns soziologische Theoriegeschichte unter einem bestimmten Gesichtspunkt, nämlich des jeweiligen Denkens in und über Beziehungen; zum anderen wollen wir über diesen theoriegeschichtlichen Zugang herausarbeiten, welche Spielarten relationaler Soziologie uns zeitgemäß und interessant erscheinen und möglicherweise kritische Potentiale bergen.

Charles Tilly is among the most influential American sociologists of the last century. For the first time, his pathbreaking work on a wide array of topics is available in one comprehensive reader. This manageable and readable volume brings together many highlights of Tilly’s large and important oeuvre, covering his contribution to the following areas: revolutions and social change; war, state making, and organized crime; democratization; durable inequality; political violence; migration, race, and ethnicity; narratives and
explanations.

The book connects Tilly’s work on large-scale social processes such as nation-building and war to his work on micro processes such as racial and gender discrimination. It includes selections from some of Tilly’s
earliest, influential, and out of print writings, including The Vendée; Coercion, Capital and European States; the classic “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime;” and his more recent and lesser-known work, including that on durable inequality, democracy, poverty, economic development, and migration. Together, the collection reveals Tilly’s complex, compelling, and distinctive vision and helps place the contentious politics approach Tilly pioneered with Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam into broader context. The editors selected key passages and, in their introductory essay, they situate them within Tilly’s larger opus and contemporary intellectual debates. The chapters serve as guideposts for those who wish to study his work in greater depth or use his methodology to examine the pressing issues of our time. Read together, they provide a road map of Tilly’s work and his contribution to the fields of sociology, political science, history, and international studies. This book belongs in the classroom and in the library of social scientists, political analysts, cultural critics, and activists.

This paper offers an overview of relational sociology as developed by and around Harrison White. Relational sociology provides a substantial account of social networks, conceptualizing them as real social structures interwoven with meaning. Forms of meaning connected to network configurations (as part of their 'domains') include stories, identities, social categories (including role categories), and institutions. Recent advances lead to a network perspective on culture, and to an emphasis on communicative events in networks. In contrast to other strands of relational sociology, the approach aims at a close connection between empirical research and theoretical reflection. Theoretical concepts and arguments are geared at empirical applicability in network research, rather than mainly providing a theoretical description of the social world. Finally, the author's own version of relational sociology is sketched: social networks are seen as dynamic constructions of relational expectations. These emerge and develop over the course of communication (in the sense of Niklas Luhmann), in turn effectively channeling communicative sequence. relations the development of large-scale social phenomena (like social movements, markets, academic fields, or political regimes). This 'structuralist' research strategy reduces social phenomena to the pattern of relations, with systematic disregard for everything elsecultural imprints, individual motivations, and institutional frameworks.

Full text https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299540850_Languages_and_linguistic_exchanges_in_Swedish_academia_Practices_processes_and_globalizing_markets?_sg%5B0%5D=0urUhLVm-K6KBEuzgHuIDzcDnpM5An01hujIT4MjEeTiKd3xluRFFT7VGzxECgwlCzcA9FdVoSeiHNu9yJZTJlzsGxEdqgamFjvmmvNK.AAlgi0gpgV3Ckk3IKhZmGfeFXnaYZD4tPxXWNwzUeUzF3EKnXa6aZeruykbuAfx_c1QDW4O6LK46PXcJRyxMoQ

A theorization of the aesthetics of populism with the help of Bourdieu and Elias. Key to the essay is Elias's (and Cas Wouters') concept of informalization, which I develop as a lens for understanding populism's tension between democratization and de-democratization.

A key tenet of Bourdieu's project is his rejection of what he refers to as "substantialist" approaches to social science which he identifies with positivistic formal methodologies.  In place of this, Bourdieu makes a compelling case for the use of a relational methodology in analyzing social life.  His theorization of relationism is both sophisticated and far-reaching and it provides the foundation for many of his theoretical constructs.  In spite of the richness of these theoretical formulations, however, Bourdieu's actual research practice tends to come up short, often reflecting the same sort of linear methodological presuppositions which he has otherwise so eloquently dismissed.  Drawing upon an approach to relational analysis that takes inspiration from the American network analytic tradition, I seek to demonstrate in this paper how Bourdieu's research practices are far less relational than his theoretical statements would seem to suggest.  I emphasize a close reading of two different elements of Bourdieu's work, his research on cultural capital and his work on the analysis of institutional fields.

Soziale Beziehungen bilden einen der zentralen Untersuchungsgegenstände der Soziologie. Dennoch werden sie dort auf eine merkwürdig eingeschränkte Art und Weise behandelt. Ihre soziologische Erforschung leidet unter einem aktivistischen Vorurteil: Um soziale Beziehungen zu ermöglichen, müssen wir aktiv werden. Wir müssen handeln, kommunizieren, selektieren und konstruieren. Darüber hinaus herrscht ein weit verbreiteter anthropologischer Egoismus, da in der Soziologie in erster Linie Menschen soziale Beziehungen hervorbringen. Beziehungsweisen stellt eine relationale Soziologie vor, die soziale Beziehungen jenseits aktivistischer Vorurteile und anthropologischer Egoismen in den Blick nimmt. Die Existenzweisen und Weltverhältnisse von Subjekten, Systemen und Netzwerken gehen nicht aus deren Aktivität hervor, sondern aus sozialen Beziehungen – und diese können durchaus auch interpassiv sein.
Neben der konzeptuellen Erschließung der Vielfalt interaktiver und interpassiver Beziehungen nimmt diese relationale Soziologie auch die Vielfalt der menschlichen und nicht-menschlichen Akteure und Passeure in den Blick. Neben theoretischen und methodologischen Überlegungen werden zwei empirische Fallstudien präsentiert, die den Perspektivenwechsel dieser relationalen Soziologie illustrieren.
Die zwei sehr heterogenen Beispiele zeigen, dass man mit dieser relationalen Soziologie die Beziehungen zwischen Menschen und Tieren in sogenannten indigenen Gesellschaften genauso verstehen lernen kann wie die immersiven Versenkungen von Hochfrequenzhändlern in ihre algorithmischen Systeme

pp. 183-204. In La cité interconnectée dans le monde gréco-romain Madalina Dana et Ivana Savalli-Lestrade. Ausonius Scripta Antiqua 118, Bordeaux.
This essay uses theories from relational sociology, especially Eiko Ikegami’s work on ‘publics’, to investigate the development of the cult of Sarapis and its destruction. It explores these events as a series of interactions in which contestations of identities took place. It considers the mental states of the historical actors and the ideologies they held, as well as the social networks in which they interacted, and their larger context. This essay begins by considering the formation of identities positively, with the development of aesthetic cultural circles (‘Creation’). But in the second part (‘Destruction’) it adds the theories of Randall Collins and Eddie Hartmann to investigate how violence emerged from the complex emotional interactions of social groups, and the ways in which that violence may be linked with the attempt to create and/or maintain symbolic boundaries between perceived groups.

Full Text/Makaleye şu linkten ulaşabilirsiniz:  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/732787
Türkçesi ve Grafiklerin Renkli Hali İçin Rapor: https://bit.ly/3K1UKra
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The Ottoman Empire’s vast territory held more than one thousand cities with a population ranging from around 100 to more than 100,000 households. Th is essay aims to sketch out a typology of these Ottoman cities in terms of their three basic socio-spatial features to allow them to be studied from a comparative perspective vis-à-vis other Ottoman and world cities. Th us, the key research themes of this article are the similarities and diff erences, groupings and idiosyncrasies, and common trends and  ingularities of Ottoman cities. It uses a relational approach to define and map Ottoman cities synchronically, and in some cases diachronically, according to their diff erent attributes in diff erent geographies and time periods. It focuses on forty- fi ve cities selected from the Balkan, Anatolian, and Arab regions of the empire during the period 1450– 1700 on the basis of the research literature and archival sources, including tahrīr (cadastral) surveys and ʿavāriż (extraordinary tax) surveys. Th is essay’s conclusions are based on a project that scanned scholarly publications and primary sources, selected a representative number of the cities, gathered data about these cities, set up a database, explored the attributes- based typologies of the cities, and presented the outcomes by means of tables and maps using SPSS and GIS.

This essay proposes to view networks as sociocultural structures. Following authors from Leopold von Wiese and Norbert Elias to Gary Alan Fine and Harrison White, networks are configurations of social relationships interwoven with meaning. Social relationships as the basic building blocks of networks are conceived of as dynamic structures of reciprocal (but not necessarily symmetric) expectations between alter and ego. Through their transactions, alter and ego construct an idiosyncratic "relationship culture" comprising symbols, narratives, and relational identities. The coupling of social relationships to networks, too, is heavily laden with meaning. The symbolic construction of persons is one instance of this coupling. Another instance is the application of social categories (like race or gender), which both map and structure social networks. The conclusion offers an agenda for research on this "meaning structure of social networks." , and the late Chuck Tilly (who even in bad medical times never failed to give good advice to his students and colleagues) for helpful comments and suggestions.

Over the past two decades sociology, including the sociology of family and personal life, has seen a ‘relational turn’ with a growing body of work seeking to explain the ‘social’ by taking social relations as the primary object of sociological analyses. Relational sociologies theorise relations in social terms as either inter-actions or trans-actions. Inter-actions are relations that bring separate entities together, while trans-actions posit a relation of interdependence between entities. This article introduces a third way of conceptualising relationality as intra-actions drawing on the posthumanist relational ontology proposed by feminist philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Intra-actions are understood as social-natural or material-discursive relations of ontological inseparability and mutual constitution. Using illustrative examples from the author’s research, the article suggests that Barad’s relational ontology offers a fruitful and distinctive ontological underpinning for relational sociology and for relational approaches to theorising and studying family practices.

One of the most profound social scientific questions pertains to social order – the stability, change, and functioning of human societies. Two prongs to this question inform the background to operationalising any institutional theory: how a society can simultaneously maintain its integration and co-ordination (e.g., division of labour) and whether a society can be understood as more than the sum of its parts. The most influential contemporary tradition of institutionalism, known as neo-institutionalism, is no exception with regard to these interconnected questions. Celebrating a new era for institutionalism in the 1990s, some members of that school declared a ‘reconciliation agenda’ aimed at overcoming the vast gulf between ‘system’ and ‘lifeworld’ thinking in the social sciences, a chasm that separates between traditions on the basis of their perspective on the problem of order. Moreover, the neo-institutionalist pursuit, as a more nuanced exercise, was intended to offer a foundation for social studies that consider society to be structured but still changing, in all its richness and variety, without being unnecessarily formalistic. While neoinstitutionalism today shows greater variety than ever, this reconciliation has not yet come about. In-depth study pinpoints this failure is rooted in neo-institutionalism’s theoretical premises and in the need for academic demarcation. That conclusion is based on critical reconstruction of two branches of neo-institutionalism: historical institutionalism (HI), which represents ‘system’ thinking, and so-called ideational scholarship (IS), representing the ‘lifeworld’ approach. The main problem with theoretical underpinnings is related to their background ontologies’ connection, on one hand, with dichotomies such as agent–structure and material–ideal and, on the other, with linear causal reasoning. For example, IS tends to create theoretical causal objects as tools for empirical enquiry (‘causal’ because science is based on causal reasoning and ‘objects’ since only ‘real’ things may possess causal powers). The task of explaining empirical cases entails giving these abstractions an ontological status, making them ‘things’ with inherent properties. This objectifying leads to ambiguous conceptions of how the social world operates, though. Imaginary causal objects may detach actors from their concrete conditions, or the entirety of institutional reality may be derived from individual cognitions. In general, the essence of institutions for neo-institutionalists typically involves a weird combination of mental states with unexplained ‘materialism’ or, alternatively, a mixture that includes rules, norms, cognitive frames, and other manifestations of the social relations behind institutions. Although neo-institutionalists’ adoption of a more fine-grained and empirically based approach to institutions has addressed some shortcomings of earlier work, the ‘social’ denominator of the equation still appears to be neglected. Research into the highly debated issue of how to explain the institutional nature of society in a manner beyond the system–lifeworld dichotomy seems to suggest that the common denominator involves proceeding from social relations. A project was undertaken to revitalise the reconciliation agenda through reconstruction of further theoretical approaches. The selection used these three criteria: 1) having a direct or indirect connection with neo-institutionalism; 2) tackling the problem of order as a concrete issue as it serves as a point of reference for all the approaches; and 3) applying relevant neo-institutionalists’ development aspirations, such as Paul Pierson’s research agenda, according to which HI should address ideology theories. Among the traditions investigated were the social system theory of Talcott Parsons, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s social constructionism, and the critical ideology theory of Projekt Ideologietheorie (PIT). Both HI and IS were considered in light of these traditions and, thereby, supplemented, complemented, and challenged by them. In addition, independent consideration of the various traditions and original readings were carried out. The social system theory reconstructed in the project complements HI with a coherent structure to the theory. The perspective formed by a new reading of Parsons as a relational theorist offers a detailed description of institutional integration mechanisms also. The reconstruction of social constructionism, in turn, spotlights the problems of cognition-based lifeworld theories. Rather than describe institutionalisation, accounts in this tradition seem to focus on the (historical) formation of actors’ experiences. That formation is a key issue in all the traditions examined. One element of departure, in contrast, is that all the ones mentioned above assume people’s equilibrium-seeking behaviour, while PIT turns this around. It asks how modern capitalist societies have held together notwithstanding their internal contradictions (where these contradictions stem primarily from capitalist competition relations that, while beyond individuals’ control, form very real conditions for each individual acting in market relations). Accordingly, PIT presents capitalist society as a contradiction-rich whole, where various groups, with differing interests, must come together to sufficient extent to maintain or challenge the prevailing order. Ideology theory describes the contradictory nature of society and explains how social relations produce disorder as an unintended consequence of mundane, institutionalised practices. To synthesise the findings on all of these traditions and their underpinnings, the dissertation project’s outputs include a synthesis of social relations that extends beyond the system–lifeworld division in examining how a society may operate as more than the sum of its parts.

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorizing, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.018

Il presente lavoro, dapprima attività di ricerca e in seguito divenuto Relazione di Laurea, si propone di portare alla luce il fenomeno sociale giapponese del Karoshi e di analizzarlo  in maniera innovativa attraverso un approccio sociologico di tipo relazionale.

The core argument in this paper is that all research schools and theoretical frameworks carry with them – and, importantly, also within them, as their inherent dimensions – particular ethical orientations (systems of values and ethical endpoints) tailored to and derivative from socio-political and ultimately, practical projects in which research uniquely gains its concreteness and meaning. These projects can be differentiated along the axis either of supporting (explicitly or implicitly) the status quo by taking it for granted and not challenging its reigning assumptions or, alternatively, aiming at transcending it through resistance and social transformation. These systems of values and orientations, or a sociopolitical ethos, indelibly color all other elements and dimensions of inquiries such as their ontologies and epistemologies, forming a unified ethico-onto-epistemology. Cultural-historical theory, under certain expansions and upgrades, is a paradigmatic case for advancing this position, with Hedegaard's works seen as sharing Vygotsky's broadly defined sociopolitical ethos which sheds light on her approach's significance and promise. To establish the centrality of ethico-onto-epistemology, a revision of the constitutional framework that could enable it, away from assumptions of passivity, accommodation, and adaptation, is required. A Transformative Activist Stance paves the way to understand knowledge production as always embedded within activist pursuits of broad social projects beyond the narrow confines of academia while embracing transformative agency grounded in political imagination and commitment to resistance and radical social transformation.
available at:  https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/science/article/pii/S2210656118300953

How are masculinity and nationalism intertwined? This question has received scant theoretical attention, and existing theories tent to focus on their shared ideals and are embedded in a heteronormative, homophobic and patriarchal framework. Such views imply a static relationship between both phenomena, and are incompatible with the recent phenomenon of homonationalism and the incorporation of some homosexual bodies within the nation. Addressing this theoretical gap, this article develops a more holistic framework of the relationship between nationalism and masculinity. Drawing on relational sociology, it conceptualises nationalism as competing masculinities. It argues that the link between masculinities and nationalism is not found in their overlapping substantive ideals, but rather that the two phenomena are co-constructed through their overlapping Othering processes. The proposed theoretical framework does not only provide a more dynamic understanding of the link between masculinity and nationalism, but it also helps to overcomes the apparent duality between homonationalism and heteronationalism. It is shown that both phenomena are in fact two sides of the same coin, with the main difference between them being the location of homophobia as a technology of Othering within different type of Self/Other relations. Overall, the article provides an analytical tool that allows for the contextualisation and understanding of seemingly contradicting features of nationalism and its relationship to masculinity.