Sociology or social science?

Modern sociology has set itself up as a specialised discipline dissociating itself from the broad-ranging theories of development of the early sociologists and breaking the links with economics, social anthropology and politics which had formed such an exciting unity in their works or at least in their lives.     

Sociology or social science?

Modern sociology has set itself up as a specialised discipline dissociating itself from the broad-ranging theories of development of the early sociologists and breaking the links with economics, social anthropology and politics which had formed such an exciting unity in their works or at least in their lives.     

Global social justice at the WTO? The role of NGOs in constructing global social contracts

Over the past decade, international non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) have been contesting the neo‐liberal economic order in international politics by campaigning for normative conditions to bring about what Richard Falk calls ‘humane governance’. However, the degree to which NGOs have contributed to the formation of global social contracts remains controversial. While NGO activists and various scholars advocate the establishment of such contracts, empirical testing of this normative argument is underdeveloped. Drawing upon this lack of empirical support, critics dismiss the global social contract concept and question the roles played by NGOs in international politics. This article addresses the controversy through a review, refinement and application of global social contract theory and an empirical study of two prominent international NGO campaigns directed at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an institution that represents a ‘hard test case’. It explores the ways in which NGOs and their networks are challenging the neo‐liberal basis of WTO agreements and contributing to the emergence of global social contracts. The article concludes that in some circumstances, NGOs have the capacity to inject social justice into international economic contracts and there is some basis for optimism regarding the formation of global social contracts involving NGOs, nation‐states and international organizations.     

Post-war changes in the influence of social structure on Australian voting: The ‘decline of social cleavages’ revisited

Franklin, Mackie and Valen's 1992 Franklin, M., Mackie, T. and Valen, H. 1992. Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar] book on Electoral Change drew on evidence taken from a small number of surveys in each included country (including Australia) during the mid-1960s to 1990 to derive some general conclusions about the historical decline of cleavage politics. In this article, I make some methodological improvements and also considerably chronologically extend the analyses for Australia, to cover the whole of the post-war period. The results show that some of the previous conclusions are incorrect and that although there has been a decline in the strength of association between social structural variables and voting for the ALP over the post-war period, the decline has not been a smooth one and predominantly occurred in the earlier part of the period. I also discuss the results in the context of broader international debates about the impact of social changes on voting.     

Children's neighbourhoods,social centres to ‘terra incognita’

Neighbourhoods are changing as people lead more spatially dispersed lives diminishing their local social connections. This paper explores the way children interact with their neighbourhoods to see whether they are still socially connected to their neighbourhoods or leading more spatially dispersed social lives. It reports findings from a study of 92 children aged 9–11 in Dunedin, New Zealand. The study found that while many children did have minimal social contact with their neighbourhood, other children retained strong social connections. Key factors determining children's levels of social connectivity include attendance at the local school, levels of independence, neighbourhood urban form, road density and locally accessible classmates.     

Do social scientists and historians write the same minority histories?

This paper is a comparison between two books, each dealing with the history of a different rural community in Northern Norway. These are Fjordfolket i Kvænangen and Balsfjorden og Malangens historie (Volume 1) written by the social anthropologist Ivar Bjørklund and the historian Anders Ole Hauglid respectively. In this comparison, two main points are emphasized: (1) To what extent can knowledge about ethnic processes of categorization, which has been acquired through contemporary research in the social sciences, be of use in the writing of the history of minorities? (2) Should the history of a minority only be a history of ethnic relations'?     

German-Austrian social democracy and the nation-state idea: 1889–1918

In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbia protested and was itself threatened by the Danube Monarchy. In 1992, Serbs are fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Is there any justification for the annexation policy of both nations in the two periods? How do the European nations react?     

Scholars at War: Australasian social scientists, 1939–1945

ABSTRACT

In 1858, a scandal rocked Sydney – the captain and the owner of the Sydney-based barque Sutton were accused of kidnapping 65 Pacific Islanders to sell to sugar planters on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. While Dorothy Shineberg highlighted this incident in a 1984 publication, she based her story on official documents located in the French and British archives and, understandably, largely portrayed it as a diplomatic dispute between the colonial powers. This paper revisits this notorious yet little known episode, taking into account the press coverage the affair received in Australia as well as the archival correspondence. It repositions the narrative in the complex colonial space of Sydney, where culpability was very much tied to local politics, class and notions of nationality. Set against the backdrop of the British anti-slavery laws, it considers the implications of this affair on future recruiting ventures in the region, including the introduction of indentured labour to Australia in 1863.     

Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.     

Bare branches and social stability: A historical perspective from China?

“Bare branches,” the name given to unmarried men in China, have historically posed a great threat to social stability in that country. Based on historical records and literature, the findings in this study reveal that female infanticide, coupled with the practice of polygyny, meant that during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Republican Era, up to twenty percent of males remained single. As a result, underclass bare branches turned to less socially accepted marriage practices. And if they were still unable to find a suitable marriage partner, they would turn to prostitutes, adultery with married women, or might even resort to sexual assault. Humiliated by their social status, bare branches tended to drift away from their hometowns and form brotherhoods, secret societies, bandit gangs and even military groups, posing a real threat to social stability. In extreme cases, they engaged in armed conflict, taking over government offices, clashing with government forces, destroying social infrastructure, and helping to topple dynastic regimes. Such extreme violence and disorder led to the reduction of local populations by the thousands or even millions, creating a subsequent negative effect on social development.     

Children’s participation: moving from the performative to the social

The body of work on children’s participation has been valuable in asserting its importance. Nonetheless, participation is a contested concept and key challenges arise relating to its emphasis on age and voice, its focus on socialising the participative responsible citizen, and its failure to sufficiently recognise the range of participatory activities of children in their everyday lives. This article presents findings of a study on children’s experiences of participation in their homes, schools, and communities including the importance of the relational context, how everyday interactions rather than ‘performative’ formal structures for participation are valued by children and how their participation is limited by adult processes based on notions of competence and voice. It concludes with an argument for recognising and facilitating children’s informal and social participation as well as new forms of democratic processes being developed by children to address the possibility of governance and over-responsibilisation of children.     

Leveraging city officials’ professional and social Identities to facilitate affordable housing

Housing affordability is an acute problem in many developed economies. It is rooted, inter alia, in a conflict of interests across levels of government. Policies that seek to increase the supply of housing and lower their purchase price are popular among the general electorate, yet local governments deploy urban planning regulations to restrict densification and development of affordable housing within their jurisdictions. Moves to address this conflict would benefit from unpacking city officials' policy preferences and their variation. This paper compares the positions of local-government politicians vs. those of unelected bureaucrats in Israeli cities, drawing on survey and interview data. Our findings confirm the conflicts of interest between levels of government even within Israel's unitary, centralized context. However, we show that career bureaucrats, given their relative freedom from electoral pressures and commitment to professional values, are more amenable to citizens' and central government's shared interest in densification and affordable housing. We also highlight city officials' place of residence—within vs. outside the city—and their social identification with citizens and residents as antecedents of their urban-planning preferences. We draw on these findings to delineate directions for more effective central–local government collaboration in seeking affordable housing solutions.