scholarly journals Disappearing organization? Reshaping the sociology of organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-418
Author(s):  
Cristina Besio ◽  
Paul du Gay ◽  
Kathia Serrano Velarde
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Sociology Of Organizations ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Social Scientific

This monograph showcases some recent developments in the sociology of organizations, mapping out the most productive relationships between current social scientific work on organizations and core theoretical and empirical concerns in the discipline of sociology.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

scholarly journals Differences over Difference: Sino-Russian Friendship at Interstate and Interpersonal Scales

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-721
Author(s):  
Ed Pulford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Border Town ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
Difference Form ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractRelations between states are usually framed in human terms, from partners to rivals, enemies or allies, polities and persons appear to engage in cognate relationships. Yet whether or not official ties and relationships among people from those states actually correspond remains less clear. “Friendship,” a term first applied to states in eighteenth-century Europe and mobilized in the (post)socialist world since the 1930s, articulates with particular clarity both the promise and the limitations of harmonized personal and state ties. Understandings of friendship vary interculturally, and invocations of state-state friendship may be accompanied by a distinct lack of amity among populations. Such is the case between China and Russia today, and this situation therefore raises wider questions over how we should understand interstate and interpersonal relationships together. Existing social scientific work has generally failed to locate either the everyday in the international or the international in the everyday. Focusing on both Chinese and Russian approaches to daily interactions in a border town and the official Sino-Russian Friendship, I thus suggest a new scalar approach. Applying this to the Sino-Russian case in turn reveals how specific contours of “difference” form a pivot around which relationships at both scales operate. This study thus offers both comparison between Chinese and Russian friendships, and a lens for wider comparative work in a global era of shifting geopolitics and cross-border encounters.

scholarly journals Resente Matteusnavorsing in Suid-Afrika

1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J.B. Combrink
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
South African ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Sermon On The Mount ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
African Context ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Specific Contribution

Recent Matthean-research in South Africa This article deals with recent developments in Matthean research, mostly by members of the New Testament Society of South Africa. Initially, research on Matthew was influenced to a large degree by discourse analysis. Literary criticism and narratology also made an impact on this research, as well as speech-act theory, pragmatics and rhetoric. Social-scientific criticism also played a role, and the Sermon on the Mount has also been read as littérature engagée. Recently, the specific contribution of Matthew to the subjects of Theology and Ethics has also received attention. A growing sensitivity to the South African and the broader African context is also currently being seen..

Parallel structures: André Leroi-Gourhan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the making of French structural anthropology

2020 ◽  
pp. 095269512091153
Author(s):  
Jacob Collins
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Individual Object ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Stability

This article reframes our understanding of French structural anthropology by considering the work of André Leroi-Gourhan alongside that of Claude Lévi-Strauss. These two anthropologists worked at opposite poles of the discipline, Lévi-Strauss studying cultural objects, like myths and kinship relations; Leroi-Gourhan looking at material artifacts, such as stone tools, bones, arrowheads, and cave paintings. In spite of their difference in focus, these thinkers shared a similar approach to the interpretation of their sources: Each individual object was meaningful only as part of a larger whole. For Lévi-Strauss, structuralism was designed to unlock features of the human mind; for Leroi-Gourhan, to uncover the material processes that underlay human life. Again, in spite of their difference in orientation, both structuralisms produced similar theories of human society. Whether ‘primitive’ or ‘advanced’, all societies functioned the same way: Their institutions worked harmoniously, beyond the intentions of any individual actors, to preserve the stability of the group. This eliminated the basis for thinking one society was superior to another. Finally, the article argues that both Lévi-Strauss and Leroi-Gourhan believed that structural anthropology could found a ‘new humanism’, and thereby rescue modernity from moral degeneration. This ‘new humanism’ could not only produce a universal description of human nature, but also help rethink French colonialism, broker new geopolitical alliances, and prevent the erasure of world cultures. Structural anthropology thus imagined a tight relationship between its social-scientific work and its political-moral mission.

Laser Assisted Machining: An Overview

1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (4B) ◽  
pp. 766-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Chryssolouris ◽  
N. Anifantis ◽  
S. Karagiannis
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Research Trends ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Laser Machining ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Research Topics ◽  
Laser Technology ◽  
Laser Assisted Machining ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Potential Applications

Since laser technology has considerable synergy with machining technologies, Laser Machining (LM) and Laser Assisted Machining (LAM) are relevant research topics. This paper attempts to give an overview of recent developments and research trends. Although scientific work on this area has contributed to the understanding of the process, there are still unresolved problems regarding the limitations of the techniques, optimum machining conditions, etc. The outcome of experimental investigations on LAM shows potential applications for this process but there are several issues to be resolved.

Roadkill: Between Humans, Nonhuman Animals, and Technologies

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Michael
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Cultural Artifact ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Hunting Technology

AbstractThis paper has two broad objectives. First, the paper aims to treat roadkill as a topic of serious social scientific inquiry by addressing it as a cultural artifact through which various identities are played out. Thus, the paper shows how the idea of roadkill-as-food mediates contradictions and ironies in American identities concerned with hunting, technology, and relationships to nature. At a second, more abstract, level, the paper deploys the example of roadkill to suggest a par ticular approach to theorizing broader relationships between humans, nonhuman animals, and technology. This paper draws on recent developments in science and technology studies, in particular, the work of Latour (1993) and Serres (1982,1985), to derive a number of prepositional metaphors. The paper puts these forward tentatively as useful tools for exploring and unpicking some of the complex connections and heterogeneous relationalities between humans, animals, and the technology from which roadkill emerges.

scholarly journals Not a Mirror, but an Engine: Digital Methods for Contextual Analysis of “Social Big Data”

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-47
Author(s):  
Jonas Andersson Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Network Topology ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Social Big Data ◽  
Contextual Understanding ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Social Scientific

Digital media infrastructures give rise to texts that are socially interconnected in various forms of complex networks. These mediated phenomena can be analyzed through methods that trace relational data. Social network analysis (SNA) traces interconnections between social nodes, while natural language processing (NLP) traces intralinguistic properties of the text. These methods can be bracketed under the header “social big data.” Empirical and theoretical rigor begs a constructionist understanding of such data. Analysis is inherently perspective-bound; it is rarely a purely objective statistical exercise. Some kind of selection is always made, primarily out of practical necessity. Moreover, the agents observed (network participants producing the texts in question) all tend to make their own encodings, based on observational inferences, situated in the network topology. Recent developments in such methods have, for example, provided social scientific scholars with innovative means to address inconsistencies in comparative surveys in different languages, addressing issues of comparability and measurement equivalence. NLP provides novel, inductive ways of understanding word meanings as a function of their relational placement in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, thereby identifying biases in the relative meanings of words. Reflecting on current research projects, the chapter addresses key epistemological challenges in order to improve contextual understanding.

Simulating Machines: Modelling, Metaphysics and the Mechanosphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-374
Author(s):  
F. LeRon Shults
Keyword(s):  
Computer Modelling ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Major Section

This article explores some of the ways in which the conceptual apparatus of A Thousand Plateaus, and especially its machinic metaphysics, can be connected to recent developments in computer modelling and social simulation, which provide new tools for thinking that are becoming increasingly popular among philosophers and social scientists. Conversely, the successful deployment of these tools provides warrant for the flat ontology articulated in A Thousand Plateaus and therefore contributes to the ‘reversal of Platonism’ for which Deleuze had called in his earlier works, such as Logic of Sense. The first major section offers a brief exposition of some key concepts in A Thousand Plateaus in order to set the stage for the second and third major sections, which argue that the fabrication of a metaphysics of immanence can be accelerated by connecting its conceptual apparatus more explicitly to insights derived from philosophical analyses of computational modelling and simulation and the social scientific use of ‘assemblage theory’. The article concludes with a summary of the argument and a brief consideration of some of the potential ethical and political implications of this interdisciplinary engagement.

Contributions of Organizational Sociology: Part I: Contributions to Sociology — A Liberal View

1981 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelis J. Lammers
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Organizational Sociology ◽  
Sociology Of Organizations ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S

'Sociology of organizations' is often considered to be just a name for the general social-scientific approach to the study of organizations. However, a case can be made for a one-sided, purely sociological analysis of organizations and interorganizational trans actions on the grounds that such a sociological speciality forms an essential part of sociology at large and, in addition, contributes to various other sociological specialities. As a distinct subdiscipline organizational sociology developed in the 1960s as a 'horizon tal' approach, claimed to be more theoretical, more fruitful, and more economical than the 'vertical' study of organizations. With the aid of a fourfold classification of its 'outputs' it is argued that organizational sociology has produced a wide variety of fruitful theories and findings which justify the claim that there remains a definite need for such a speciality closely tied to its 'mother discipline'. In a sequel — to appear in OS 2/4 — the contributions of organizational sociology to practical and societal concerns will be dealt with.

Post-genomic science: cross-disciplinary and large-scale collaborative research and its organizational and technological challenges for the scientific research process

2006 ◽  
Vol 364 (1843) ◽  
pp. 1533-1549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Welsh ◽  
Marina Jirotka ◽  
David Gavaghan
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Funding Mechanisms ◽  
And Training

We examine recent developments in cross-disciplinary science and contend that a ‘Big Science’ approach is increasingly evident in the life sciences—facilitated by a breakdown of the traditional barriers between academic disciplines and the application of technologies across these disciplines. The first fruits of ‘Big Biology’ are beginning to be seen in, for example, genomics, (bio)-nanotechnology and systems biology. We suggest that this has profound implications for the research process and presents challenges both in technological design, in the provision of infrastructure and training, in the organization of research groups, and in providing suitable research funding mechanisms and reward systems. These challenges need to be addressed if the promise of this approach is to be fully realized. In this paper, we will draw on the work of social scientists to understand how these developments in science and technology relate to organizational culture, organizational change and the context of scientific work. We seek to learn from previous technological developments that seemed to offer similar potential for organizational and social change.

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