Sociology Lens

Latest articles from sociology lens

Opinion / Rural Sociology / Sociology of Culture / Urban Sociology

Social innovation in crisis-shaken villages

Villages are rarely seen as centers for innovation. However, empirical research shows evidence of innovative activities taking place even in crisis-shaken rural regions. Anika Noack and Tobias Federwisch consider three initiatives, which aim to overcome local problems with socially innovative ideas. In doing so, the authors reveal external impulses by intermediates as crucial for social innovation. The rural municipality of ‘Kremmen’ (an anonymised name for the municipality involved in the study) was once a flourishing tourist destination in the Eifel...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Theory / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Power in Writing a Good Note

Why study bureaucracy? Institutions and practices that we have tended to take for granted have recently been subjected to a new awareness and interest. For instance, Timothy Snyder, in his recent book On Tyranny (2017) argued for the importance of government institutions and their capacity to preserve the rule of law when faced with the rise and coming to power of authoritarian populist parties. Others, including key political scientists such as Francis Fukyama, Bo Rothstein, Paul DuGay add to this and point...

Opinion / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Children

Child’s play? Children and young people’s resistances to domestic violence and abuse

Children’s play is often viewed through adult eyes. We worry if children don’t get to play enough, and are often concerned that they are getting opportunities for the ‘right kind’ of play – they need to play ‘properly’ to grow up into ‘proper’ adults.  In developmental research, play is often described as a kind of stepping stone or building block toward something else. So when a child is throwing a ball to another child, professionals might see this as an...

News / Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

An Interview with the American Society of Criminology’s 2018 Student Paper Award Winners

The American Society of Criminology (ASC)’s annual Gene Carte Student Paper Competition acknowledges full-time students’ exceptional contributions to the field of criminology, awarding winners with prize money and an opportunity to present their work at the society’s annual conference. Applications for the 2019 contest are now open. Having earned her master’s degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Kristina Thompson Garrity is now a doctoral student in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri –...

News / Sociology of Health & Illness

New Editorial Team Introduction: Sociology of Health & Illness

We are really pleased to be taking over the editorship of Sociology of Health and Illness (SHI) and are excited to take the journal forward over the next few years, working closely with the Editorial Board and publishers, Wiley, as well as our authors and reviewers. We thank the previous editorial team at Cardiff University – Ian Rees Jones, Gareth Williams, Davina Allen, Joanna Latimer, David Hughes, Eva Elliot and book review editors Gareth Thomas and Rebecca Dimond and, of...

News / Social Theory / Sociology of Culture

British Journal of Sociology Best Paper Prize 2018: Gabriel Abend, ‘Outline of a Sociology of Decisionism’

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 British Journal of Sociology (BJS) Best Paper Prize, awarded to what we consider to be the best – most significant, provocative, intriguing, exciting, thought provoking – piece published in the journal over a two-year period running from our March 2017 issue to the December 2018 issue. This year’s prize goes to Gabriel Abend, Professor of Sociology at University of Lucerne and Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University, for the...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Rural Sociology / Sociology of Globalization

Assembling wool and grounding globalization

In our recently published paper in Sociologia Ruralis, ‘Unravelling the global wool assemblage: researching place and production networks in the global countryside’ [1] we demonstrated the utility of assemblage thinking for revealing how globalization works through specific grounded relations and connections between places; remaking those places in the process. Despite being the subject of critique from various theoretical angles for decades, globalization is still frequently deployed as a top-down metaconcept to describe many of the processes and tendencies seen in the...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Peace, War & Social Conflict / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Identity / Social Theory

Making Sense of Brexit: Interview with Victor J. Seidler

Victor Jeleniewski Seidler is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology, at Goldsmiths University of London. His research interests include social theory and philosophy; Marxism and critical theory; moral theory; masculinity and sexual politics, and he has written on social theory, ethics and gender, particularly in relation to men and masculinities. In recent years his writing and research have focused on the cultural memory of particular events, including 9/11 and 7/7, and the ways they might challenge traditional social and...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Population & Demography / Social Welfare / Sociology of Health & Illness

“Essentially it’s just a lot of bedrooms”: care homes and the conundrums of designing for care

My mum will be 90 next month, she lives in a care home, on the top floor which is a secured space dedicated for people living with dementia. The layout of each of the three floors of the home is the same, the design is economical with individual bedrooms off a corridor, a shared dining space, a communal living room at one end of the corridor and a ‘film’ lounge.  Bedrooms reveal a repeat pattern of en-suite shower and toilet,...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Welfare / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Risking safety and rights: online sex work, crimes and ‘blended safety repertoires’

Like all areas of life, the sex industry has been massively affected by the dominance of the internet and digital technologies which now is the main mechanism for advertising, marketing and organizing how sex is sold. In our project, Beyond the Gaze, there has been some intriguing findings which tell sociologists a lot more about the practices of online sex workers. Notably we found, as reported in the British Journal of Sociology, that the internet makes sex work safer. Primarily...

Opinion / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of the Family

Imagining their Future Selves: Children’s Attitudes to Older People and their Expectations of Life at Age 70

Our recent article ‘Imagining their Future Selves: Children’s Attitudes to Older People and their Expectations of Life at Age 70’ published in the journal Children & Society provided an insight into children’s thoughts about older people, and how they imagine their own lives will be when they are older. So why is this important? Well, we know that the world’s population is ageing.  We also know that there has been scare-mongering about the ‘crisis’ this will cause, especially for the...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / News / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Theory

BJS Annual Lecture: From “Having” to “Being”: self-worth and the current crisis of American society, by Michèle Lamont

On Thursday 25th October 2018, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Department of Sociology hosted its annual British Journal of Sociology  (BJS) public lecture. The lecture, by Professor Michèle Lamont from Harvard University was entitled, From “Having” to “Being”: self-worth and the current crisis of American society. The lecture focused on diagnosing the challenges of neoliberal American society: the pitfalls of the American dream across classes, hardened group boundaries, and the need to invent new narratives of hope.  The lecture...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change

“Disgruntlement” and Protest Movements in the Trump Era

In their recently published article, “Protest Movements and Citizen Discontent: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party”[1], Martin et al. seek to explain how and why citizens support broad-based protest movements like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street.  Unlike social movements with clear constituents and defined goals, movements like these lead us to wonder why some individuals participate and not others.  Deviating from conventional frameworks that point to the extension or dislocation of political ideologies as social movement catalysts,...

News / People / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Sociology Research Led a US State to Abolish the Death Penalty

The Chronicle of Higher Education this week reported that when the Washington State Supreme Court abolished the death penalty this month, it was primarily because of the work of sociologist, Professor Katherine Beckett. On Thursday, 11th October 2018 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the death penalty violates the Washington State constitution‘s prohibition on ‘cruel punishment.’ In its ruling, the Court cited research by University of Washington Center for Human Rights Faculty Associate Prof. Katherine Beckett, and Lecturer Heather Evans, who conducted the...

News / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Welfare

Free Article Collection: International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

To celebrate the 2018 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, we have curated a research collection from Asian Social Work and Policy Review, Australian Journal of Social Issues, International Journal of Social Welfare, and Social Policy & Administration which centres around key themes of inequality. These featured articles have been made free to access until the end of December. Edited by: Ok Kyung Yang (Ewha Womans University) and Bong Joo Lee (Seoul National University) Follow the conversation happening Twitter...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Mirror, mirror on the wall… which one of the healthcare team am I? Understanding healthcare practitioners’ professional identities and what role professional regulation plays

In this article, Policy Adviser Michael Warren outlines some of the themes and challenges that arise from the Professional Standards Authority’s work on understanding professional identity and regulation. The research can be found here. Think of it, someone comes up to you and asks: “who are you?”. Where do you start? It’s a query that calls into question your entire identity. One place to start is your occupation, or ‘professional identity’. You may even have more than one professional identity,...