Relational Sociology

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

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

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.

For much of my personal and professional life I have had an enduring interest in the distinction between mind and awareness. As my education unfolded over these many years, I have been happy to recognize that this distinction between mind and awareness is of serious consideration in continental phenomenology, in forms of psychoanalytic understanding such as the object relations work of Donald Winnicott, as well as in many forms of the experiential psychotherapies such as Gestalt, experiential focusing, in Ericksonian hypnosis, structural family therapy, archetypal psychotherapy, existential psychotherapy, existential psychoanalysis to name a few. When I began to extend my interest based on continental phenomenology into the eastern wisdom traditions, I found the same distinction within the Hindu Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shavism. Later in my life I found the same distinction within the Tibetan non-dual Nyingma tradition of Dzogchen. In my study of the Qi Gong tradition, I had the good fortune of being able to study for a number of years with Dr. Yan Xin who is a most remarkable healer and who has this same distinction of mind and awareness in his form of Daoist Qi Gong. From an historical view point, this distinction of mind and awareness was central in gnostic philosophy and gnostic theology. In contemporary Jungian archetypal psychology there is a similar distinction between the knowing of mind of ordinary life world of lived experience and the knowing of the archetypal dimension of lived experience, as well as the knowing of the primordial awareness dimension of pure potentiality. I have also had this interest in and through the phenomena of my own knowingness, the knowing of self, the knowing of others and of knowing of the encompassing nature of Existential Being. I have had for as long as I can remember, the sense of the explicit experience of my mind as explicit thoughts, and explicit feelings and explicit sensations and explicit imaginative imagery, and at the same time a subtle sense of tacit or implicate or implicit sense of intuitive knowing. In this way I have always felt I had two ways of knowing.

Mind Alone For many years psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy was singularly centered on the unconscious mind and conscious mind. There was only mind and the mind could become aware of its own self and its own representational realm. The self itself was representational and the emphasis on the mind was in the light of analytic thinking and analytic observation. There was an emphasis on objectification of mental phenomena and subjectivity itself. Knowing was knowledge by association, by reflection and mediation by linguistic signifiers. Knowing was neither non-conceptual nor pre-reflective, nor was there a place for direct experiential knowingness. Knowing was associated as mind alone and singular mind functions such as thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination. Transitional Space as Space of Awareness With the presentation of the work of Donald Winnicott there was a shift in the psychoanalytic understanding of knowingness. A similar change in psychoanalytic thinking about knowing was also taking place in the Jungian and archetypal analytic schools. In psychotherapy Winnicott emphasizes a focus on the suspension of mind and in the process of suspension of mind, awareness was freed to focus within awareness, free to focus itself on itself. In the suspension of mind (a Winnicottian form of the phenomenological reduction,) the patient relocates themselves. The patient relocates from being located in mind alone or even located in a particular function of mind alone such as: feeling function or thinking function or sensation function or memory function; the patient enters or relocates themselves into the intermediate area of experience. This intermediate area of experience or this in-between space of experience is also described as the transitional area of experience and relatedness. Sometime this place is also described as the place of potential space. The sense of self shifts from being located in the mind or mental function of the mind into the more embodied sense of spacious awareness or as the place of potential space. Winnicott would described this knowing

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.

1. Welcome to our study of the phenomenology of awareness and the power of the awareness field. Edmund Husserl, who was the father of phenomenology, would always say at the beginning of each lecture… "What is the wonder of all wonders? Pure consciousness; and the doorway is our own subjectivity." 2. As we know from our last meeting, phenomenology influenced both western philosophy and western psychotherapy. Western phenomenology is very similar in both view and method to Dzogchen meditation which is a form of eastern meditative practice. Both phenomenology and Dzogchen are interested in the power of becoming aware of awareness itself…where the object of awareness becomes its own self. Moreover, in both phenomenology and Dzogchen, when one becomes aware of ones own awareness, the person experiences that their mind is not their awareness, awareness is not a thought, or affect, or sensation, or fantasy or even memory, but rather awareness is simply open knowingness….a non conceptual knowingness….a gaze of direct perception. And if one is able to stay with this knowingness of knowingness there appears the next discovery…when one becomes awareness of awareness itself. This awareness is a field……this field goes beyond the body boundaries…goes beyond the mind. 2c. Then if one wishes, or if one desires, the person can make one more reduction, or one more suspension and one suspends the inside and outside, one suspends their awareness of objects of mind or objects outside the mind, one suspends everything and one turns the gaze back on itself, one gazes into the gaze…one gazes into awareness itself...and in doing so one enters into awareness and even becomes awareness itself…in gazing into awareness the qualities of awareness begin to manifest…including spaciousness, energy, light and oneness….the oneness of the field…One discovers that this awareness has field characteristics, opens and closes, contracts and expands, it has depth and breath and the perception of this field can be extended and extended and this field is completely multidimensional. Ultimately, this field is direct perception, perception of the manifestations of awareness…manifestation in ones own self, manifestation in the other and also the manifestation of the field of awareness in this world. 3. This field has great power. The first power of the awareness field is that it becomes the base of experience, rather then our mind or a particular function of the mind. The awareness field and the qualities of the awareness field which are spaciousness, energy, lucidity and oneness become the base of our experience, and the mind and functions of the mind can be integrated into this base of oneness. Thus the mind or ego begins to experience itself in the oneness of the field, and the functions of the mind become infused by awareness field. One begins to live in and through the field. 4. The second power is that besides having the power to integrate ones mind functions

One Knower: Different Modes of Knowing In all philosophical and psychological traditions knowing has many different meanings. In Tibetan Buddhism there is nondual Dzogchen and in Hinduism there is nondual Kashmir Shaivism. In both these nondual traditions there is profound understanding that there is one knower with two different modes of knowing. My Mind Knowing You and Things One mode of our knowing is the conventional subject object knowing which is the mind knowing as the perceiver and the perceived. This is our ordinary knowing of mind, my mind knowing you and things. This is my mind knowing of all the various forms of otherness. This is my mind knowing of singular aspects of phenomena and my mind knowing, by discrimination, the differences within phenomena. This is my mind knowing of the reality of objects, and the actuality of events and situations. This is my mind knowing the reality of persons and sentient beings as well as non-sentient beings and things. This is my mind's natural mode of dualistic knowingness. My Knowing as Direct Perception As humans knowing we both have and are this wonderful other mode of knowing. In Dzogchen this is the great knowing of awareness and through awareness, and this knowing described as direct perception is often called gnosis, or jnana, or ye she. Kashmir Shaivism names this dimension of knowing of this vast field of awareness/consciousness vimarsa. This vast

By becoming aware of awareness we can experience the innermost sense or the felt sense of spaciousness and self-illumination. Within this state of open awareness, the openness of spacious luminous awareness, we can enter the experience of the radiance of light as energy through the sublime, luminous vibrations. The experience of the unfolding of sublime awareness and the corresponding energetic manifestation of the self-arising of primordial awareness is self-liberation. These experiences of the sublime manifestation of luminous energy was described by the 14 th century Dzogchen master Longchenpa in his text Precious Treasury of The Genuine Meaning. This meditative experience often arises spontaneously in Dzogchen meditation practice. This experience of translucent energetic manifestation is also described in Chan Buddhism, Hindu Kashmir Shavism, and Yan Xin Qi Gong. This experience of energetic manifestation can be experienced within subtle forms of respiration. Sometimes the ongoing sense of subtle luminous respiration can be experienced even as there is a profound sense of breathlessness. Breathlessness used here means no breath or minimal breath. This experience of the ongoing sense of respiration without breath is very powerful and empowering. In this experience of vast stillness there is no breath and yet there arises from deep within, a most subtle respiration within the breathlessness. During this respiration of stillness, the body seems to breathe and be breathed by most subtle inner wind. The inner sense of stillness expands and extends throughout the entire body and beyond the body's boundaries. This stillness opens us into the dimension of potential space, the dharmakaya and pure awareness.

Being within awareness as awareness and being with another who is within awareness is a most powerful skillful means to bring forth awareness within one's self and within each other. Two awarenesses are better than one, just as self regulation can be enhanced by co self regulation on the bodily dimension. Self-illumination is a co-emergent process between and within companions, compassionate companions. The lucidity within one's own awareness, as one's own awareness can experience the lucidity within the other's awareness as lucidity. It is true, awareness awakens awareness both in one's self and in the other. This is the secret of the tantra. The luminous energy within one's own body can resonate to the luminous energy in the other's body, deepening the mutual embodiment of light. Light is awareness and awareness is light. The attunement to awareness within one's own body can bring forth the attunement of awareness within the body of the other. The self arising of the awareness field in one's self resonates to the self arising of awareness within the other's body. The self arising of the energy or the chi or the shakti can bring forth the self arising within each other and can bring forth the sustaining of the energy field within each other. In essence, humanness is the manifestation of light, and the manifestation of primordial luminous energy, and the openness of the great space of compassion.

“Most cultural theorists saw network analysis as located squarely in the positivist camp, reducing cultural richness to 1s and 0s and lacking attention to processes of interpretation and meaning-construction.”; thus Ann Mische in 2011 summed up attitudes towards network analysis which are still strong also in many circles of historical studies.  Of course, these verdicts were not entirely unfounded, as Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin pointed out in 1994 in their influential paper on „Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency“: “despite its powerful conceptualization of social structure, network analysis as it has been developed to date has inadequately theorized the causal role of ideals, beliefs, and values, and of the actors that strive to realize them; as a result, it has neglected the cultural and symbolic moment in the very determination of social action.”  Although meanwhile various theoretical concepts and models of “relational sociology” have been developed , the cultural dimension is still underrepresented in many works of quantitatively oriented social and also historical network analysis. In this paper, I will present the explanatory value of some of these relational approaches to social reality for historical research and their combination with quantitative network analysis. For various case studies, the actual interplay between the structural and the cultural dimension of social, religious, economic, political or intellectual linkages between individuals, groups, communities, but also cultural concepts will be demonstrated.

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.

The lucidity of awareness is experienced directly through the doorway of our subjectivity as our own innermost awareness. As we gaze into our own interiority we can experience the unfolding of the manifestation of this field of radiance and this lucidity of awareness. The invisible field of luminous knowingness becomes experientially visible. Lucidity of Phenomena Experientially visible means seeing the flashes of light, sensing light, experiencing the presence of the radiance within us and beyond us. Experiencing the presence of the radiance means feeling the luminous experience of the light and the energy of the light in everything and anything, in anyone and everyone. As we experience the visibility of luminous knowingness within us as us, we are empowered to experience the manifestation of the lucidity within the appearance of all phenomena. Lucidity is not only within us but within all phenomena, all appearance has lucidity and all appearance is lucidity. All phenomena are the manifestation of primordial radiance. When we are experiencing the radiance of phenomenon, our inner light is meeting the outer light, and thus there is only one indivisible light. In truth there is only primordial luminous radiance that is manifesting our mind, our body and our innermost awareness, as well as the infinitely vast universal context of phenomena that we are placed within in time and in space. Our capacity to experience the radiance of the field of awareness within our own embodied subjectivity opens for us the ability to gaze into the subjectivity of all phenomena. By gazing into our own subjectivity there arises this intersubjective gaze that is direct and inside to inside. This intersubjective gaze allows us to experience the luminous openness of all phenomena and context. This intersubjective gaze opens the innermost openness of all phenomena. Subjectivity is the openness of our being to Being itself within all beings.

The paper systematizes the role of qualitative methods, statistical analyses, and formal network analysis in sociological network research, and argues for their systematic combination. Formal network analysis mainly aims at a description of network structures as well as at an explanation of the behavior of the network at the systemic level. Formal network analysis can also be used in order to explain individual behavior or the existence of individual connections from network structure. Statistical analyses of ego-centered networks are used to correlate individual attributes with the structure and composition of the individual embeddedness, thus providing a statistical explanation of network effects and determinants. Qualitative methods are important for exploring network structures, and for understanding the meaning connected to them. A historical overview shows that these three strands have long co-existed in sociological network research without engaging in combined research efforts. Combinations of these methods prove useful when considering the various aspects of networks (individual connections, structural patterns, and meaning).

Migrant integration is a pressing policy concern, and the perception that newcomers are not integrating has led to a growing backlash against migration. One outcome is ‘civic integration’ policies, according to which the most important mechanisms of integration are language training, employment counselling, and especially the inculcation of liberal-democratic values. Few authors, however, have addressed the fact that these policies are essentially civic nationalist ideology applied to migrants, and represent the most recent chapter in a long-standing debate over the relationship between majorities and minorities that focused on intra-state nationalist conflict during the 1990s. Civic integration policies reflect the self-representation of majorities, and are both politically and ontologically problematic. First, in many cases they seem best understood as a kind of symbolic politics that is more about who gets in than how they are integrated. Second, civic nationalism is based on a theory of nations and nationalism that treats these as solely ideological phenomena, and ignores the social bases of integration. ‘Shared values’ are a product of that process, not a mechanism for its achievement.

Simandan D (2005) "New Ways in Geography" Timisoara, Editura Universitatii de Vest/ West University Press, 230 pp.

The first part of the volume - "Old Ways" - addresses the question whether geography as we know it is worth keeping. The first chapter argues that traditional scientific disciplines are not as bad as we sometimes like to think they are. This argument is then deployed in the second chapter to investigate whether geography specifically is worth keeping. The chapter concludes that even if we admit a Cinderella status for geography among the disciplines, this aspect brings some secondary benefits out of which a rejuvenated geography can emerge. The second part of the book – "New Ways" – discusses some lines of flight towards this rejuvenated geography. Given the editorial constraints, I selected three possible new ways on which I have started to work lately. Thus, chapter three explores the stakes of an engagement between geography and metaphysics in the analytic tradition, chapter four makes some suggestions about how to understand the relativity of norms in geographical practice, and chapter five brings together two case studies that help explain why we need to pay sustained attention to the vicious logic of epistemic neglect.

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

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.

Der Begriff des Netzwerkes erlebt spätestens seit der rasanten Verbreitung von „social
networks“ wie Facebook einen fast inflationären Gebrauch in der öffentlichen Diskussion,
aber auch in verschiedenen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen, darunter der Geschichtsforschung.
Dabei ist es oft schwer zu entscheiden, wo dem Netzwerk-Begriff auch eine analytische
Aussagekraft zugrunde liegt und wo es sich nur um eine „Metapher“ oder ein „Schlagwort“
handelt, das Vergleichbarkeit mit Phänomenen der Gegenwart suggeriert, ohne
Wesentliches für den historischen Erkenntnisgewinn zu leisten.
Ein Ziel der sozialen Netzwerkanalyse ist es, Geflechte von Akteuren und Beziehungen in
strukturell und quantitativ fassbarer Form darzustellen. Darüber hinaus betrachtet aber die
„relationale Soziologie“ Akteure nicht nur als in soziale Netzwerke eingebettet; vielmehr
werden ihre Verhaltensweisen und Identitäten durch Interaktionen und Kommunikationsakte
im Netzwerk geprägt, ja überhaupt definiert. Die strukturell-quantitative Perspektive wird
damit wesentlich um qualitative Aspekte ergänzt; sowohl die Verknüpfungen zwischen
Akteuren als auch deren Rollen und Identitäten werden als Ergebnisse dynamischer
Prozesse verstanden.
In den letzten Jahren wurden diese Ansätze auch mit Konzepten der Systemtheorie (Niklas
Luhmann) und der Komplexitätsforschung verknüpft, um die Emergenz und Dynamik von
Gemeinschafts- und Identitätsbildungen von der individuellen Ebene über Gruppen bis hin zu
großen sozialen Formationen besser erfassen zu können. Diese Konzepte werden im
Vortrag präsentiert, diskutiert und durch auf der Grundlage mittelalterlicher Quellen erstellte
Fallbeispiele illustriert. Einige Ansätze und Beispiele wurden bereits in diversen Beiträgen
und Working Papers näher ausgeführt, die unter
http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller auch im Internet frei zugänglich sind.

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods-oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social-theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox.

This article aims to demonstrate that a greater understanding of communication in the 21st century is essential to more effective counterterrorism. In fact, while “strategic communication” and “narratives” are advocated by many analysts as essential weapons in countering extremism, few seem to truly understand the reality of the digital-age information environment where such tools need to be deployed. To contribute to bridging this gap, the article outlines some problematic misunderstandings of the contemporary information environment, provides an alternative communication-based framework to explain radicalization, and draws some counterintuitive lessons for tackling terrorism.

Over the past half-century, enormous changes have occurred in gendered divisions of housework and child care across many countries, with a growing consensus that there is a slow but steady pace of change in gendered divisions of time and tasks but one that is combined with a puzzling persistence of gender differences in parental caregiving responsibilities. Rooted in a 14-year qualitative and ethnographic research program that focuses mainly on breadwinning mothers and fathers who self-identify as stay-at-home or primary caregivers and guided by genealogical and relational sociological approaches, the author argues that the concept of parental responsibility requires greater attention and that its theorization and conceptualization have critical implications for if and how it can be measured, the methodological approaches that might be used to assess it, and the conceptual fit between parental responsibilities and gender equality.

Bourdieu claimed that a mental revolution is required to grasp ‘field theory’. Maton asks why few scholars using Bourdieu’s ideas have his relational way of thinking and offers a way forward. The chapter identifies the source of this problem in Bourdieu’s concepts themselves: they are not fully relational. The chapter shows how ‘Legitimation Code Theory’ or ‘LCT’ – a conceptual framework that is rapidly growing in education, sociology and linguistics – can augment Bourdieu’s framework to implement a fully relational analysis. Using a study of Chinese students in Australia as an example, ‘Thinking like Bourdieu’ illustrates how LCT reveals the principles underlying habituses, positions, capitals and practices. This, it is argued, enables a fully relational analysis and so offers a way of achieving Bourdieu’s mental revolution.

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.

in: Christian Stegbauer (Hg.): Netzwerkanalyse und Netzwerktheorie; Ein neues Paradigma in den Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden: VS 2008. 1 Einleitung 1 Die Sozialstrukturanalyse ist ein Kerngebiet der Soziologie. Mit statistischen Analysen der Daten aus großangelegten Bevölkerungsumfragen werden Parameter der sozialen Ungleichheit wie ethnische Herkunft, Bildung, Geschlecht, Einkommen und Berufsprestige in Beziehung zueinander gesetzt. Dahinter steht meist implizit die Vorstellung, dass die Korrelation solcher Parameter nicht nur etwas über die Ausformung sozialer Ungleichheit aussagt, sondern auch über deren Ursachen. Im Gegensatz dazu möchte ich mich hier auf eine stärker theoretisch orientierte Fassung von Sozialstruktur konzentrieren. Insbesondere soll die Rolle sozialer Netzwerke bei der Konstitution sozialer Ungleichheit diskutiert werden. Es sollen also Mechanismen diskutiert werden, über die Netzwerke soziale Ungleichheit produzieren oder reproduzieren. Diese Diskussion erfolgt in erster Linie theoretisch, wird aber mit empirischen Befunden unterfüttert. Dafür soll zunächst ein kurzer theoretisch orientierter Überblick über die Entwicklung der Sozialstrukturanalyse mit besonderem Blick auf die Rolle von sozialen Netzwerken erfolgen (2). Anschließend werden verschiede Mechanismen zur Konstitution sozialer Ungleichheit diskutiert: Opportunitätsstrukturen für persönliche Kontakte wie das Wohnumfeld oder Aktivitätsfoci , soziale Schließung (4), die Emergenz von Lebensstilen in Netzwerken (5) und das Sozialkapital-Konzept (6).

Our .personal innermost awareness is our very own subjectivity . Our subjectivity is our awareness and awareness is our subjectivity. Aham ah! I am becoming who I am!. This subjectivity is not the subjectivity of the mind. Such mind based subjectivity is of mind alone. Such subjectivity is bound like I am my mind or I am my thinking function or I am my feeling function or I am my sensation function, I am memory function. This subjectivity of mind is limited and contained and is often called the ego and is locked into duality. Western phenomenology undersands that person must know the difference between their mind and their awareness. In the upadesha instructions of dzogchen there is the admonition that it is necessary to experience the difference between your awareness and your mind. In this way you can directly and easily know that your very own innermost awareness is the manifestation of primordial awareness itself. The primordial ground manfiest within us as our own awareness. Primordial awareness manifest within us as us. This self recognition can and does take place easily. This awareness is not the mind or the functions of the mind . Nonetheless the mind can be an expression of this awareness field. The essential method of dzogchen is by becoming aware of awareness we experience directly the manifestation of ground awareness, pure awareness. To know awareness as awareness is to know primordial awareness what ever the context,whatever the dimension.

Existing scholarship of China's legal institutions has primarily focused on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of political-legal institutions in China. To understand the order and exercise of power by various political-legal institutions, the relational approach emphasizes the spatial positions of actors or institutions (the police, courts, lawyers, etc.) within the broader political-legal system and their mutual interactions. We suggest that the changing ideas of the Chinese leadership about the role of law as an instrument of governance have shaped the relations between various legal and political institutions. The interactions of these political-legal institutions (e.g. the "iron triangle" of the police, the court and the procuracy) further reveal the dynamics of power relations at work.

Today and tomorrow, our theme will be psychosomatic oneness. We will focus on oneness and its lack, then, more specifically, on the mind/body [duality or split], working with splits, and regaining oneness. Let"s enter our awareness right now.

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.

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.

(From the introduction by the editors:) Volker Rabens untersucht in seinem Beitrag „Sein und Werden in Beziehungen. Grundzüge relationaler Theologie bei Paulus und Johannes“, wie in diesen Textcorpora Relationen beschrieben werden, die Sein und (Verändert-)Werden des Menschen bestimmen. Rabens arbeitet heraus, „dass Relationalität in der paulinischen und johanneischen Literatur jeweils eigene Metaphorik und Ausdrucksformen gefunden hat, aber dass selbst auf der sprachlichen Ebene eine große Konvergenz festzustellen ist (z.B. in der Familien-Metaphorik).“ In seinem Aufsatz geht er im Anschluss an den Beitrag von Wilfried Härle auch ausführlich auf mögliche Missverständnisse gegenüber relationalen Ansätzen ein und profiliert diese so in Auseinandersetzung mit ihrer Kritik.

[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.

This paper challenges the mainstream social scientific approach that emphasizes “moral inferiority” in corruption and bribery in Central and Eastern Europe. We argue that in many cases, people participate in informal organizational resource exchanges not because of immorality or greed but rather because of powerful external forces. By using the case of contemporary Hungary to support this argument, this paper provides a systematic analysis of such imperatives. The findings of 50 in-depth qualitative interviews suggest that two main imperatives can be distinguished; macro-level social and mezzo-level organizational forces. Macro-level forces may be linked to historical paths, Hungary's socialist and pre-socialist social conditions, and its post-socialist welfare state development. Mezzo-level organizational forces are more general phenomena and can be found in many other countries in the world. Moreover, there are numerous categories within each theme. Some of them represent normative imperatives, while others are more material structural forces.

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

This paper proposes a relational and critical sociological perspective on discourse analysis, in particular on so-called “Critical Discourse Analysis” (CDA). The main argument of this paper is that CDA has not yet been able to turn its critical perspective towards its own field. Meanwhile, neither CDA nor other schools of discourse analysis can still pretend not to be integral parts of the system legitimizing social hierarchies in modern societies. The paper argues that discourse analysis can be seen as highly dependent on power relations, both because of its institutional positioning and because of its restricted reflexivity. A call for the development of a critical sociology of discourse analysis based on a relational approach is therefore presented. Its draft programme is largely based on inspiration from the sociology of knowledge, in particular from “the sociology of sociology” of Pierre Bourdieu.

Im Rahmen des Beitrags werden unterschiedliche Interpretationen des Verhältnisses von Feldern und Netzwerken diskutiert und damit mögliche Ansatzpunkte zur Verknüpfung von Feldtheorie und Netzwerkforschung ausgelotet. Hierfür werden zunächst 1) das Relationalitätsverständnis beider Paradigmen verglichen, manifeste und latente Relationen unterschieden und die Konzepte „Netzwerk“ und „Sozialkapital“ miteinander kontrastiert. Am Beispiel von Wissenschaftsnetzwerken werden in den darauffolgenden Schritten sodann Netzwerke als soziale Strukturen 2) in Feldern und 3) zwischen Feldern behandelt, um schließlich aufzuzeigen, wie 4) Netzwerke selbst als relativ autonome „transversale Felder“ konzipiert werden können. Dieser Zugriff erlaubt es, das analytische Instrumentarium der Feldtheorie für die Untersuchung von Netzwerkstrukturen fruchtbar zu machen. Dabei zeigt sich unter anderem, dass die unterschiedlichen Verwendungsweisen der Netzwerksemantik (der formal-analytische sowie der gesellschaftsdiagnostische Netzwerkbegriff) mit spezifischen Positionen in transversalen Netzwerkfeldern korrespondieren und damit systematisch zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt werden können. Der Beitrag schließt mit weiterführenden Überlegungen zum Komplementärverhältnis der zwei behandelten Spielarten relationaler Soziologie.

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.

This article discusses the impact of Pierre Bourdieu's social theorising on two related fields of debate, namely research about the evaluative practices of cultural critics, and research about the artistic legitimation of popular culture. More specifically, the article argues that the concept of field (Bourdieu 1993, 1996) makes it possible to investigate the ways in which criticism, as a cultural category, is struggled over by competing groups of experts and audiences. In this respect, field theory helps addressing criticism as a field in itself, rather than as an uncontested and uniform cultural institution.
The article will first contend that Bourdieu's attention to struggles over practices and classifications remains underappreciated in the sociological literature on critics. It will then argue that a field perspective may enhance the study of the institutional diversification of criticism within popular culture. This claim will be substantiated discussing some findings of the author's research about the rise of popular music criticism in 1970s Italy. The discussion will conclude considering the possibilities that field theory may open up for future research, particularly in relation to the impact of digital media on the institutions and practices of criticism.