The 37th World Congress of the IIS focused on theory and research at the forefront of sociology and the relationship between sociology and its neighbouring disciplines. This volume constitutes a sustained effort by prominent sociologists and other social scientists to assess the current standing of sociology. It is a stocktaking of the unique nature of sociology in the light of advances within the discipline itself and within a range of neighbouring disciplines. Some of the chapters outline institutional and professional strategies for sociology in the new millennium. Others trace scholarly advances and propose ambitious research programmes drawing on recent developments not only within traditional neighbouring disciplines such as history, political science, and economics, but also within the cognitive, cultural and mathematical sciences.Contributors include: Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Raymond Boudon, Richard Breen, Christofer R. Edling, S. N. Eisenstadt, Jack Goldstone, Philip Gorski, Peter Gärdenfors, Ulf Hannerz, Peter Hedström, Hans Joas, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Jens Rydgren, Neil Smelser, Aage B. Sørensen, Richard Swedberg, Piotr Sztompka, Peter Wagner and Björn Wittrock.
Featuring new contributions by leading globalization scholars, this timely volume analyzes the organization, geography, politics, and power dynamics of international trade and production networks understood as global commodity chains.
This book is a collection of notable papers from the first six volumes of the journal "Comparative Sociology." Its content represents leading-edge and contemporarily astute analyses in the burgeoning science of comparative sociology, especially relevant to a globalizing world in transition. Given that not everyone is acquainted with comparative sociology, this book offers an opportunity to enlighten readers unfamiliar with the discipline about the importance of comparative sociology to the new world order. Taken together, the articles illuminate various aspects of comparative sociologya "theoretical, methodological, substantive. Some compare social entities in subjective, case-study fashion, while others report on rigorous social research. All contribute in one form or another to describing the many and varied facets of the exciting a oenewa science of comparative sociology. The content of this volume has previously been published in "Comparative Sociology" volumes 1 a " 6.3.
Social Ecology in the Digital Age: Solving Complex Problems in a Globalized World provides a comprehensive overview of social ecological theory, research, and practice. Written by renowned expert Daniel Stokols, the book distills key principles from diverse strands of ecological science, offering a robust framework for transdisciplinary research and societal problem-solving. The existential challenges of the 21st Century - global climate change and climate-change denial, environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, disease pandemics, inter-ethnic violence and the threat of nuclear war, cybercrime, the Digital Divide, and extreme poverty and income inequality confronting billions each day - cannot be understood and managed adequately from narrow disciplinary or political perspectives. Social Ecology in the Digital Age is grounded in scientific research but written in a personal and informal style from the vantage point of a former student, current teacher and scholar who has contributed over four decades to the field of social ecology. The book will be of interest to scholars, students, educators, government leaders and community practitioners working in several fields including social and human ecology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, education, biology, medicine, public health, earth system and sustainability science, geography, environmental design, urban planning, informatics, public policy and global governance. Winner of the 2018 Gerald L. Young Book Award from The Society for Human Ecology"Exemplifying the highest standards of scholarly work in the field of human ecology." https://societyforhumanecology.org/human-ecology-homepage/awards/gerald-l-young-book-award-in-human-ecology/ - The book traces historical origins and conceptual foundations of biological, human, and social ecology - Offers a new conceptual framework that brings together earlier approaches to social ecology and extends them in novel directions - Highlights the interrelations between four distinct but closely intertwined spheres of human environments: our natural, built, sociocultural, and virtual (cyber-based) surroundings - Spans local to global scales and individual, organizational, community, regional, and global levels of analysis - Applies core principles of social ecology to identify multi-level strategies for promoting personal and public health, resolving complex social problems, managing global environmental change, and creating resilient and sustainable communities - Underscores social ecology's vital importance for understanding and managing the environmental and political upheavals of the 21st Century - Highlights descriptive, analytic, and transformative (or moral) concerns of social ecology - Presents strategies for educating the next generation of social ecologists emphasizing transdisciplinary, team-based, translational, and transcultural approaches
This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of global pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It brings together the reflections of leading social and political scientists who are interested in the implications and significance of the current crisis for politics and society. The chapters provide both analysis of the social and political dimensions of the Coronavirus pandemic and historical contextualization as well as perspectives beyond the crisis. The volume seeks to focus on Covid-19 not simply as the terrain of epidemiology or public health, but as raising fundamental questions about the nature of social, economic and political processes. The problems of contemporary societies have become intensified as a result of the pandemic. Understanding the pandemic is as much a sociological question as it is a biological one, since viral infections are transmitted through social interaction. In many ways, the pandemic poses fundamental existential as well as political questions about social life as well as exposing many of the inequalities in contemporary societies. As the chapters in this volume show, epidemiological issues and sociological problems are elucidated in many ways around the themes of power, politics, security, suffering, equality and justice. This is a cutting edge and accessible volume on the Covid-19 pandemic with chapters on topics such as the nature and limits of expertise, democratization, emergency government, digitalization, social justice, globalization, capitalist crisis, and the ecological crisis. Contents Notes on Contributors Preface Gerard Delanty 1. Introduction: The Pandemic in Historical and Global Context Part 1 Politics, Experts and the State Claus Offe 2. Corona Pandemic Policy: Exploratory Notes on its ‘Epistemic Regime’ Stephen Turner 3. The Naked State: What the Breakdown of Normality Reveals Jan Zielonka 4. Who Should be in Charge of Pandemics? Scientists or Politicians? Jonathan White 5. Emergency Europe after Covid-19 Daniel Innerarity 6. Political Decision-Making in a Pandemic Part 2 Globalization, History and the Future Helga Nowotny 7. In AI We Trust: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Pushes us Deeper into Digitalization Eva Horn 8. Tipping Points: The Anthropocene and COVID-19 Bryan S. Turner 9. The Political Theology of Covid-19: a Comparative History of Human Responses to Catastrophes Daniel Chernilo 10. Another Globalisation: Covid-19 and the Cosmopolitan Imagination Frédéric Vandenberghe & Jean-Francois Véran 11. The Pandemic as a Global Total Social Fact Part 3 The Social and Alternatives Sylvia Walby 12. Social Theory and COVID: Including Social Democracy Donatella della Porta 13. Progressive Social Movements, Democracy and the Pandemic Sonja Avlijaš 14. Security for Whom? Inequality and Human Dignity in Times of the Pandemic Albena Azmanova 15. Battlegrounds of Justice: The Pandemic and What Really Grieves the 99% Index
This title was first published in 2001. This book tackles the important issue of the tasks that confront sociology in the third millennium. It examines the sociological interpretations of the World-Wide revolution which - amid unprecedented scientific and technological progress and the globalization of markets - has generated new inequalities, poverty, structural unemployment and mass conditionings. A number of the most distinguished living sociologists (including Boudon, Beck, Eisenstadt, Tiryakain, Wieviorka) furnish profound and innovative interpretations of changes in world society, while outlining the frontiers of sociological research for the 21st Century. The contributions to the book not only prompt reflection on the structure and organization of sociological research, but also revitalize sociological inquiry by conducting original and stimulating analysis of theoretical and methodological issues - an undertaking essential for the survival of the discipline itself.
Oldness: a social construct at odds with reality that constrains how we live after middle age and stifles business thinking on how to best serve a group of consumers, workers, and innovators that is growing larger and wealthier with every passing day. Over the past two decades, Joseph F. Coughlin has been busting myths about aging with groundbreaking multidisciplinary research into what older people actually want -- not what conventional wisdom suggests they need. In The Longevity Economy, Coughlin provides the framing and insight business leaders need to serve the growing older market: a vast, diverse group of consumers representing every possible level of health and wealth, worth about $8 trillion in the United States alone and climbing. Coughlin provides deep insight into a population that consistently defies expectations: people who, through their continued personal and professional ambition, desire for experience, and quest for self-actualization, are building a striking, unheralded vision of longer life that very few in business fully understand. His focus on women -- they outnumber men, control household spending and finances, and are leading the charge toward tomorrow's creative new narrative of later life -- is especially illuminating. Coughlin pinpoints the gap between myth and reality and then shows businesses how to bridge it. As the demographics of global aging transform and accelerate, it is now critical to build a new understanding of the shifting physiological, cognitive, social, family, and psychological realities of the longevity economy.
To bring this volume together, the editor asked leading scholars in the field of globalization to outline a "research framework" that reflects their own approach to the subject. The resulting book presents a broad spectrum of analytical approaches to globalization. Theoretical reviews are complemented by substantive chapters and methodological analyses. Contributors include scholars in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and political science. These writings have been organized into four sections: theoretical perspectives and cultural globalization, economic globalization, political globalization, and methodological approaches.