Hasil untuk "Sociology (General)"

Andrew Aldrich, J. Pfeffer

B. Pescosolido

John Scott

T. Gieryn

Technology is everywhere, yet a theory of technology and its social dimension remains to be fully developed. Building on the influential book The Social Construction of Technological Systems, this volume carries forward the project of creating a theory of technological development and implementation that is strongly grounded in both sociology and history. The 12 essays address the central question of how technologies become stabilized, how they attain a final form and use that is generally accepted. The essays are tied together by a general introduction, part introductions, and a theoretical conclusion.

P. Godfrey‐Smith

What makes science different from other ways of investigating the world? In "Theory and Reality" Peter Godfrey-Smith uses debates - such as the problem of confirmation, the new riddle of induction, and the problem of scientific realism - as a way to introduce, in a completely accessible way, the main themes in the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, "Theory and Reality" starts by surveying the last hundred years of work in the field. It covers logical positivism; induction and confirmation; Karl Popper's theory of science; Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions"; the radical views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan and Paul Feyerabend; and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism and science studies. The book then looks in detail at some of the broader philosophical issues at stake, such as philosophical naturalism, scientific realism, theories of explanation in science, Bayesianism, and other modern theories of explanation in science. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars". Examples and asides engage the beginning student, a glossary of terms explains key concepts, and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. Like no other text in this field, "Theory and Reality" combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow.

Stephen Kalberg

B. Pescosolido

T. K. Hopkins, I. Wallerstein

Alice MacLean, Annelieke Driessen, Lisa Hinton et al.

ABSTRACT Introduction Interpretations of ‘recovery’ from illness are complex and influenced by many factors, not least patient expectations and experiences. This paper examines meanings of ‘recovery’, and how it is strived towards, drawing on the example of COVID‐19 infection. Methods Drawing on qualitative interviews (n = 93) conducted in the UK between February 2021 and July 2022, we compare adults' accounts of being admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with COVID‐19 to accounts of being ill with Long COVID, defined as ongoing symptoms for at least 12 weeks postinfection. We conducted a multi‐stage comparative analysis using Nvivo to organise and code the data. Results We identified similarities and differences in participants' descriptions of their ‘worlds of illness’. For both groups, perceptions of recovery were shaped by the novel, unknown nature of COVID‐19. Participants questioned the achievability of full restoration of prior states of health, highlighted the heterogeneity of ‘recovery trajectories’ and described the hard physical and emotional work of adjusting to changed selves. Themes that revealed differences in ‘worlds of illness’ described included the different baselines, waymarkers, and pathways of illness experiences. Differences in other people's responses to their illness were also evident. For ICU participants, hospitalisation, and especially ICU admission, conferred legitimate patient status and authenticity to their symptoms. Family, friends and healthcare professionals acknowledged their illness, celebrated their survival, and granted them latitude to recover. For Long Covid participants, their patient status often lacked comparable authenticity in others' eyes. They reported encountering a lack of recognition and understanding of their ongoing need to recover. Conclusions This study highlights how the meanings of illness ascribed by others can influence how recovery is experienced. Our findings highlight the importance of ensuring people are made to feel their illness experiences are legitimate, regardless of hospitalisation status, formal diagnosis or lack of medical knowledge and pathways. They also indicate the value of emphasising the different permutations, and lack of linearity, that recovery can take. This may help to help to guard against a lack of understanding for experiences of recovery which do not meet idealised notions. Patient or Public Contribution Both studies were guided by an advisory panel that included patient and public involvement representatives with lived experience of Intensive Care/COVID experience and Long COVID respectively. Through regular meetings with the research teams, the advisory panel had input into all aspects of the study conduct, including recruitment methods and content of the interview topic guide and feedback on preliminary analyses. The Long COVID study also included a lived experience coinvestigator who contributed to data interpretation and analysis.

Faiza Bouzemlal, Ali Nabil Belouard

Exchange rate volatility can have socioeconomic challenges and a significant impact on export diversification of major global economies. The main objective of this article is to assess the symmetric and asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on Algerian export diversification. For this purpose, the autoregressive linear and nonlinear distributed lag (ARDL) model and annual data for the period 1990-2023 were used.The empirical findings using the estimation for time series data reveal that the volatility of the exchange rate has a symmetric effect on export diversification. The results revealed the presence of cointegration between the variables. The relationship between exchange rate volatility and export diversification in Algeria is positive and symmetric, which is contrary to conventional wisdom, as both currency depreciation and appreciation were found to boost diversification. Economic openness and GDP per capita significantly promote diversification, while investment and infrastructure surprisingly hinder it. Inflation also has an unexpected positive effect. The model adjusts quickly to equilibrium, though short-run results show mixed results. Diagnostic tests confirm robustness, except for serial correlation, corrected via Newey-West standard errors. This article suggests that policy makers should adopt different policies to address socio-economic challenges and keep the exchange rate stable in order to promote export diversification.

Pengjia Cui

Digital networks have profoundly transformed the ways in which individuals interact, exchange information, and establish connections, leading to the emergence of phenomena such as virality, misinformation cascades, and online polarization. This review conducts a thorough examination of the micro-macro linkages within digital social networks, analyzing how individual actions like liking, sharing, and commenting coalesce into broader systemic patterns and how these interactions are influenced by algorithmic mediation. Utilizing a multidisciplinary literature base, this study explores the interaction among user behaviors, network structures, and platform algorithms that intensify biases, strengthen homophily, and foster echo chambers. We delve into crucial dynamics including the scalability's impact on weak tie propagation, the amplification effects on influencers, and the rise of digital inequalities, employing both theoretical and empirical approaches. By synthesizing insights from sociology, network theory, and computational social science, this paper underscores the necessity for novel frameworks that integrate algorithmic processes into established micro-macro models. The conclusion presents practical strategies aimed at promoting fairer digital networks through decentralized architectures, algorithmic fairness, and improved digital inclusion, tackling significant challenges such as polarization and misinformation within networked societies.

J. Brand, Xiaoping Zhou, Yu Xie

This article reviews recent advances in causal inference relevant to sociology. We focus on a selective subset of contributions aligning with four broad topics: causal effect identification and estimation in general, causal effect heterogeneity, causal effect mediation, and temporal and spatial interference. We describe how machine learning, as an estimation strategy, can be effectively combined with causal inference, which has been traditionally concerned with identification. The incorporation of machine learning in causal inference enables researchers to better address potential biases in estimating causal effects and uncover heterogeneous causal effects. Uncovering sources of effect heterogeneity is key for generalizing to populations beyond those under study. While sociology has long emphasized the importance of causal mechanisms, historical and life-cycle variation, and social contexts involving network interactions, recent conceptual and computational advances facilitate more principled estimation of causal effects under these settings. We encourage sociologists to incorporate these insights into their empirical research.

E. Cohen

Ronsard KASONGO NGAMUKIE

La lutte contre le paludisme ne constitue pas une nouvelle préoccupation dans le champ des investigations scientifiques. Plusieurs études ont été menées à ce sujet. Quant à la présente recherche, la préoccupation essentielle porte sur les stratégies mises en place et pour ce faire, apprécier le niveau d’appropriation des mécanismes de lutte contre la malaria par les Kinois, au niveau de leurs entités locales.

Arno Simons

This paper explores the potential of contextualized word embeddings (CWEs) as a new tool in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS) for studying contextual and evolving meanings of scientific concepts. Using the term "Planck" as a test case, I evaluate five BERT-based models with varying degrees of domain-specific pretraining, including my custom model Astro-HEP-BERT, trained on the Astro-HEP Corpus, a dataset containing 21.84 million paragraphs from 600,000 articles in astrophysics and high-energy physics. For this analysis, I compiled two labeled datasets: (1) the Astro-HEP-Planck Corpus, consisting of 2,900 labeled occurrences of "Planck" sampled from 1,500 paragraphs in the Astro-HEP Corpus, and (2) a physics-related Wikipedia dataset comprising 1,186 labeled occurrences of "Planck" across 885 paragraphs. Results demonstrate that the domain-adapted models outperform the general-purpose ones in disambiguating the target term, predicting its known meanings, and generating high-quality sense clusters, as measured by a novel purity indicator I developed. Additionally, this approach reveals semantic shifts in the target term over three decades in the unlabeled Astro-HEP Corpus, highlighting the emergence of the Planck space mission as a dominant sense. The study underscores the importance of domain-specific pretraining for analyzing scientific language and demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of adapting pretrained models for HPSS research. By offering a scalable and transferable method for modeling the meanings of scientific concepts, CWEs open up new avenues for investigating the socio-historical dynamics of scientific discourses.

E. Hirschman

Анастасия Анатольевна Данилова, Екатерина Вячеславовна Забелина, Александра Юрьевна Телицына et al.

Здоровье людей пенсионного возраста, как объективное, так и субъективное, рассматривается в качестве критерия эффективной поздней социализации. В статье представлены результаты разработки модели факторов субъективного здоровья, а также ее эмпирической верификации применительно к этапу поздней социализации — на выборке пенсионеров, проживающих в г. Челябинске и Челябинской области (Россия) (N=291). В результате теоретического анализа была представлена модель факторов субъективного здоровья в условиях поздней социализации, в которой, как предполагается, биологические, социально-экономические и когнитивно-эмоциональные факторы влияют на формирование субъективного здоровья людей на пенсии. Метод анкетирования применялся для регистрации биологических (пол, хронологический возраст, наличие или отсутствие инвалидности) и социально-экономических показателей (образование, религиозная идентичность, социальное окружение и др.). Для оценки когнитивно-эмоционального фактора были использованы психодиагностические методики, определяющие субъективный возраст и базисные убеждения пенсионеров. Основным методом анализа данных выступил метод моделирования структурными уравнениями. Результаты моделирования показали хорошее соответствие эмпирических данных разработанной модели. Обнаружено, что все три группы факторов вносят вклад в улучшение субъективного здоровья пенсионеров, при этом когнитивно-эмоциональные факторы являются медиаторами, опосредующими влияние биологических и социально-экономических переменных. Результаты исследования актуализируют значимость когнитивно-эмоциональных факторов в процессе поздней социализации личности и обосновывают важность применения когнитивной психотерапии в позднем возрасте при нормальном старении. Благодарность. Исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда № 22-28-00421, https://rscf.ru/project/22-28-00421/.

Fredrik Envall, Daniel Andersson, Harald Rohracher

I denna artikel undersöks energigemenskaper som en arena inom vilken möjligheterna till en mer rättvis och demokratiskt orienterad klimatomställning tar form. Mer specifikt utforskas hur energigemenskaper i Sverige utkristalliseras mot bakgrund av EU:s Ren Energi-paket, där dessa utpekats som ett viktigt verktyg för ett utökat medborgardeltagande och en fördjupad demokratisering. Med avstamp i kritisk samhällsvetenskaplig miljöforskning undersöks det svenska landskapet av energigemenskaper som ett diskursivt slagfält där sociomateriella arrangemang och aktörsintressen formeras. Särskild uppmärksamhet ägnas åt aktörers politiska klangbotten för engagemang, de ideologiska bevekelsegrunder som kommer till uttryck, de förändringsstrategier som sätts i spel, och de allianser som bildas. Detta är av miljösociologiskt intresse för att undersöka hur lovvärda ambitioner och visioner om ett klimatneutralt samhälle omsätts i praktiken samt för att belysa maktrelationer som annars riskerar osynliggöras. Vi finner att svenska energigemenskaper generellt tvingas förhålla sig till en dominerande innovationsorienterad diskurs med avpolitiserande effekt. Samtidigt florerar en mångfald andra sätt att “energigemenskapa,” vilka återspeglar värden som avviker från den dominerande diskursen.

Rohit Deshpandé, Wayne D. Hoyer, Naveen Donthu