{"title":"Understanding revolutions: About the trilogy of Azmi Bishara","authors":"Sari Hanafi","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158845","url":null,"abstract":"Influential in his writing about the Arab Spring, Azmi Bishara delivers a trilogy about the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria which was first published in Arabic and then translated with some updates to English. while theoretically grounded, they are the outcome of extensive research and documentation of everyday events in these three countries and a reflection on the heated debates in the Arab world. Using a democratic transition theory perspective, Bishara thus explains the failure of the democratic transition and how it has impacted the Arab revolutions ever since. Despite the major setback in all these revolutions, Bishara, like myself, is still hopeful that this is the only dynamic that is possible to deliver long waiting changes.","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"182 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48084533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics","authors":"Song Xu","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158856a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158856a","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"214 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47121706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nazanin Shahrokni, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran","authors":"Alia Kassem","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158884","url":null,"abstract":"Transdisciplinary and brilliantly ethnographic, Women in Place is divided into three main case studies: Iran’s buses, parks, and football. In each, the ‘place of women’ is historicized, examined, and analysed exploring the formation, challenge, and change within state policies and women’s lived experiences. Through this, Women in Place offers a powerful intervention inviting us to re-think Iran, Islamism, and gender within the modern world. Not unlike other colonial and post-colonial contexts, the Iranian regime has sought to construct its identity – its ‘Islamic identity’ – on the bodies of ‘its’ women. This ‘Islamicness’, Women in Place argues, is primarily manufactured through mandatory hijab and gender segregation across buses, football stadiums, parks, and various institutions and spaces. Analysing the everyday lived experiences of women on whose bodies this unfolds, Shahrokni offers an in-depth analysis of the Islamic state itself. From public and personal safety, to health and wellbeing, to Islamic morality, and to national security, a large variety of different discourses are shown to have been mobilized by the Iranian state to justify and sell its various policies around the ‘women question’ over its 40-year history. Throughout, the state appears to create problems to then fashions itself as providing the solutions to these very problems including through a reformulation of such crises in a depoliticizing manner, for example, through technical or medical frames. Shahrokni’s analysis demonstrates the complexity of these discourses and, more importantly perhaps, the internal contradictions within and among them. The Iranian state accordingly emerges as ‘a flexible yet fragile’ heterogeneous body (p. 120) that has gone from revolutionary zeal to bureaucratic management. A pursuit of ‘balance’ and an attempt at ‘compromise’ here emerge as a key paradigm where the bodies of Iranian women persist as key sites upon which various political struggles are played. At times, these political struggles are within the state and among its various factions, but at others, it is with various non-state actors, such as the religious establishment, as well as international government and non-governmental bodies and organizations from Fédération internationale de football association 1158884 ISS0010.1177/02685809231158884International SociologyReviews: Sociology of Gender review-article2023","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"246 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47791001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gary Alan Fine, The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments","authors":"T. Olofsson","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158870","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"232 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46087941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Think tanks with Chinese characteristics","authors":"Wenxing Zhou","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158853","url":null,"abstract":"The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the Chinese government’s announcement of the strategy to build ‘new-type think tanks with Chinese characteristics’. As thousands of new think tanks launched across the country, has the Chinese government attained its strategic goals including advancing the scientific and democratic decision-making and the modernization of the national governance system and capacity? What key questions concerning think tanks remain unsolved? And what prospects on new think tanks could be expected? To answer these questions, this essay reviews five books written by representative Chinese think tank scholars and practitioners. It argues that while China has made progress in terms of quality, quantity, and institution building of new think tanks, as the books under review demonstrate, some major challenges remain. Among them, the most severe is that China has yet to develop a competitive idea market and cultivate an open think tank culture. This essay concludes by arguing that there is a long road ahead for China to shift from a big think tank country to a powerful think tank country.","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"194 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46321086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ramon Flecha, The Dialogic Society: The Sociology Scientists and Citizens Like and Use","authors":"Marta Soler-Gallart","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158856f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158856f","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"229 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48105252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kees van der Pijl, States of Emergency: Keeping the Global Population in Check","authors":"J. Welsh","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158885","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"258 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43176277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"翟学伟[Zhai Xuewei], 中国人的社会信任 [Social Trust among the Chinese: The Guanxi Perspective]","authors":"Jiapeng Wang","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158884b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158884b","url":null,"abstract":"Adkins L (1999) Community and economy: A retraditionalization of gender? Theory, Culture & Society 16(1): 119–139. Berlant L (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Brown W (2015) Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, 1st edn. New York: Zone Books. Butler J (2005) Giving an Account of Oneself, 1st edn. New York: Fordham University Press. Foucault M (2006) The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harvey D (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Littler J (2017) Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility. London: Routledge/ Taylor & Francis Group. McRobbie A (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Ouellette L and Hay J (2008) Better Living through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Phillips A (2015) Against Self Criticism. London Review of Books, 5 March. Available at: https:// www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n05/adam-phillips/against-self-criticism Rottenberg C (2014) The rise of neoliberal feminism. Cultural Studies 28(3): 418–437. Streeck W (2016) How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System. London: Verso.","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"252 - 257"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43751963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations: A Reconstruction","authors":"George Hong Jiang","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158856","url":null,"abstract":"While as a founding father of ‘sociology’ Max Weber has deeply imprinted sociological research, his works are famous for being difficult to be deciphered. Educated in German universities, he was good at and to some extent obsessed with writing lengthy sentences. Although the constructiveness of German guarantees relatively accurate understanding of his writings, scholars nonetheless produce various interpretations. This difficulty is further complicated by two factors. First, Weber had very broad interest in social sciences, including law, economics, history, and politics, which enabled him to cite numerous works in different disciplines. For scholars nowadays, it is arduous to retrieve the information which Weber often only mentioned discursively in footnotes or margins. While these references have been presented well in the complete historical-critical edition (Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe), such hardship is not completely eliminated because reading and understanding the references that were written over 100 years ago under particular historical contexts entail much work as well. Second, almost exclusively, Weber wrote and gave speeches in German which is a complex language for foreigners. General readers in other Western countries except German-speaking countries can only get access to Weber’s writings through translations which are not always perfect. Similar difficulties existed for Karl Marx in the first place, too. Revolutionaries and disciples of Marx’s political views made Marxian theories much more accessible to international audiences, which instigated massive radical political movements all over the world in the twentieth century. Consequently, Marx confronts more various even polarized interpretations. By contrast, Weber could ‘escape’ from the duty of instructing activists who aimed to ‘change the world’, partly because it is mainly scholars who contribute to the image-building of Weber. More importantly, Weber had the conviction that social sciences have to abstain from value judgments, that is, ‘Wertfreiheit’. Nonetheless, 1158856 ISS0010.1177/02685809231158856International SociologyReviews: Sociologists and Their Works review-article2023","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"210 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47507350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sociology of organizations in the twenty-first century","authors":"M. Reed","doi":"10.1177/02685809231158208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809231158208","url":null,"abstract":"This review article analyses six texts within the sociology of organizations published in the early decades of the twenty-first century, with a view to exploring what they tell us about the key issues and developmental trajectories the former will follow as this century unfolds. It suggests that the sociology of organizations is in good intellectual shape and continues to speak to issues which are central to our lives today and tomorrow. However, it also indicates that intellectual rejuvenation through contestation must be sustained within the field – particularly in the face of pressures towards intellectual closure and conformity – if it is to retain its relevance at a time when instability and uncertainty seem to be pervasive.","PeriodicalId":47662,"journal":{"name":"International Sociology","volume":"38 1","pages":"163 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45940092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}