{"title":"Sociologists in Italy Between Cultural and Normative Legitimization. The Failed Construction of a Community of Practice","authors":"Elvira Martini, E. Mangone","doi":"10.1007/s12108-024-09613-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-024-09613-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139810910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sociologists in Italy Between Cultural and Normative Legitimization. The Failed Construction of a Community of Practice","authors":"Elvira Martini, E. Mangone","doi":"10.1007/s12108-024-09613-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-024-09613-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139870920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art and Sociology: Thoughts on Staubmann’s Efforts","authors":"James J. Chriss","doi":"10.1007/s12108-023-09608-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-023-09608-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"101 27","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139390981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2022-01-01Epub Date: 2021-08-06DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09504-1
Estrella Gualda
{"title":"Altruism, Solidarity and Responsibility from a Committed Sociology: Contributions to Society.","authors":"Estrella Gualda","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09504-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09504-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A careful look at the international development of Sociology highlights the centrality that the study of social problems and the approach to possible solutions to them have had in the history of this discipline, not infrequently for the sake of better social integration, stability, development, social change or even modernity. Recent approaches suggest shifting this focus of attention, arguing about the deficit in sociological research and practice concerning theor etical frameworks that pay attention to the positive aspects. This text reflects on the contributions that altruism, solidarity, and collective responsibility can have to improve the quality of life in contemporary societies and face humanitarian emergencies with a certain degree of success. For instance, the so-called refugee crisis or the current COVID-19 pandemic poses significant challenges for societies. This article also explores briefly new roles of data science in connection with responsibility and altruism. The text invites us to revisit sociology, thinking about the lights more than the shadows.</p>","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"53 1","pages":"29-43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09504-1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39298569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2022-01-01Epub Date: 2021-04-30DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09483-3
Thomas Kurtz
{"title":"The End of the Profession as a Sociological Category? Systems-theoretical Remarks on the Relationship between Profession and Society.","authors":"Thomas Kurtz","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09483-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09483-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Following reflections by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, this paper is concerned with the changing meaning of the profession as a sociological category for analyzing modern society. Professions are practical academic occupational groups oriented to certain social values, to which a special significance for society was attributed in the social sciences for a long time, thus marking a connection between professions' research and theory of society. This paper now describes that the causal relationship between profession and society is limited to a historically relatively early period. In the transition to modern society, this close network of relationships begins to dissolve, and now professions operate in the context of some function systems of society whose task is the professional assistance of single clients, such as in the fields of health, law, and pastoral care. However, the professions' highlighted position in the knowledge and action structure of single function systems seems to dissolve more and more today so that one can ask whether we can speak here already of an end of the social form profession. This would correspond with the observation that actually the professions no longer appear at all in the newer theories of society and therefore their function as an important mechanism of social structure formation is no longer attributed to them.</p>","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":" ","pages":"265-282"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09483-3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38959105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2022-01-01Epub Date: 2021-11-09DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09523-y
Emiliana Mangone
{"title":"Altruistic Relationships, Responsibility, and Sociology: An Attempt at Theoretical Systematization.","authors":"Emiliana Mangone","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09523-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09523-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The book <i>Beyond the Dichotomy Between Altruism and Egoism</i> (Mangone in Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc., 2020a) raised compelling comments by distinguished scholars. Some of them were, in my opinion, particularly poignant, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses of the elements addressed in the book. I aim to answer the remarks by Roberto Cipriani, Estrella Gualda, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, Adrian Scribano, and Nikolay Zyuzev. I will leave the strengths aside and focus instead on the aspects that most attracted the reflections of the commentators, which I can summarise in three macro areas: 1) the centrality of the relationship; 2) responsibility and choices; and, finally, 3) the role of sociology. I will attempt to get to the heart of these areas with a theoretical systematization, providing a general answer to the remarks as well as addressing the specific points raised by each commentator.</p>","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"53 1","pages":"53-62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8577636/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39622712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2021-01-01Epub Date: 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09503-2
Laura Ford, Gillian Niebrugge-Brantley
{"title":"The Future of Sociology's History: New Voices in the History of Sociology.","authors":"Laura Ford, Gillian Niebrugge-Brantley","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09503-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09503-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"52 2","pages":"247-253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09503-2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39085835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2021-01-01Epub Date: 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09512-1
Lawrence T Nichols
{"title":"Editor's Introduction: History, Theory and Change.","authors":"Lawrence T Nichols","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09512-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09512-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":" ","pages":"473-476"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09512-1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39340201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2021-01-01Epub Date: 2021-05-19DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09489-x
Francesco Ranci
{"title":"The Unfinished Business of Erving Goffman: From Marginalization Up Towards the Elusive Center of American Sociology.","authors":"Francesco Ranci","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09489-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09489-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Erving Goffman's written legacy bears on sociology as a whole, or so he argued in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association (Goffman, 1983). However, while being celebrated as important to the discipline, his work is also interpreted in inconsistent ways, often downplayed or marginalized, and even neglected. This paper claims that Goffman's \"well known aversion to self-disclosure\" (Shalin, 2013) does not justify overlooking his trajectory, from the unknown \"margins\" of a Canadian small town to the elusive \"center\" of American sociology-and much less does it justify still circulating assessments of his personality, crafted while overlooking his life experiences-and, especially, his writings. Anecdotal evidence of his \"enigmatic\" personality (Lemert, 2003), or \"bad-boy outrageousness\" (Berger, 1986), works as a derailing tactic, leading to unwarranted appraisals of Goffman's personality-and, more importantly, to the neglect of crucial aspects of his work. From a theoretical standpoint, Simmel's treatment of \"the stranger\" as a social relationship, and Merton's concept of \"moral alchemy\", are used here to try to make some sense of the mixture of celebration and neglect still surrounding \"Goffman\". Historical data was gathered in part from the \"Erving Goffman Archives'' (Shalin, 2013).</p>","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"52 2","pages":"390-419"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09489-x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39023254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The American SociologistPub Date : 2021-01-01Epub Date: 2021-04-02DOI: 10.1007/s12108-021-09480-6
Victor Lidz
{"title":"Afterword: A Functional Analysis of the Crisis in American Society, 2020.","authors":"Victor Lidz","doi":"10.1007/s12108-021-09480-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09480-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 2020, American society experienced a number of crises. They involved raced relations precipitated by the Black Lives Matter movement, the Covid 19 pandemic with its huge loss of life and rates of illness, the economic recession that accompanied the pandemic and efforts to control it, and the tensions of the national political campaign, followed by the refusal of President Trump to acknowledge his defeat. Each of these crises led to cleavages in the relationships of solidarity in the societal community subsystem of American society. The cleavages may prove to be the most enduring of the crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":515284,"journal":{"name":"The American Sociologist","volume":"52 1","pages":"214-242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12108-021-09480-6","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25567146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}