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This article introduces a sociological theory of blame games, focusing on the recent financial crisis in the United States (2007-2010). Many actors could be held responsible for the crisis. Such a situation is socially explosive, leading to an intense blame game, which finds its resolution when a main culprit is found. Blame games are not irrational outbursts of anger, but rather, structured and dynamic processes of boundary drawing. They are power games, mediated by public discourse, which lead to a reassertion of collective values. I develop my theory by studying three national newspapers (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today) from August 2007 to June 2010. I present a statistical, network and content analysis of the 5,712 blaming incidences identified. I show how when the financial system exploded, blame moved in many directions, but mostly focused on the political sphere. Through public speeches, congressional hearings, and public investigations, the political sphere managed to refocus the attention on Wall Street. A blame game dominated by Democrats led to the crystallization of Wall Street's culpability. Such crystallization could not be predicted ex-ante.

In this study we explore how incorporating an arts-based pedagogical approach, specifically, the use of film, art, and music, into a second-year sociological theory course enhances students' overall learning experiences. We report on data collected from a survey given to students enrolled in this course in 2020. Findings reveal that employing this arts-based pedagogy helps students to sustain an interest in the course material, understand the theoretical course material, engage in a higher level of thinking/analysis, feel more confident in their abilities to write about theories covered in the course, apply theory in the real world, contextualize historical content, and enhance their memory of theories and concepts. Findings are also compared with data collected from a similar survey conducted in 2009, revealing that the overall favorable responses to arts-based resources have remained consistent over time and that this pedagogy remains an enduring approach that contributes to positive student learning experiences.

Pound's Cathay is a vivid case of cultural exchange between China and English-speaking countries. The most translated Li Bai's poems in Cathay not only promoted better reception of Li Bai's poems in a foreign context, but also injected powerful vitality into the Western literary world. This paper investigated Pound's translation practice of Li Bai's poems in Cathay and specifically interpreted Pound's internal and external motivations in the selection of source text, textual features formed through translation strategies and the reception of English translation of Li Bai's poems by drawing on three main concepts: field, capital, and habitus in Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory. It was found that Pound's selection of Li Bai's poems was made under the influence of the combined force of utilitarian American sinology field and flashy literary field, which conformed to the mentality of the people in war, harmonized with his Imagist principles and reflected his emotional empathy with Li Bai. Pound's habitus with cosmopolitanism and historicism shaped by American sinology and literary fields in a specific social background initiated his translation idea of "translation as creation", which further formed such main translation strategies as the ideogramic method by image juxtaposition, formal freedom by using modern English in free verse etc., language energy by deletion or expansion, etc. Finally, Pound, with his wide social network and authoritative literary status carried great social, cultural, and symbolic capital, promoting better reception of Cathay, especially Li Bai's poems. These results revealed the powerful interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory in literary translation and shed light on the communication of Chinese translated literature overseas.

As neoinstitutionalism gained a foothold in economics, as did rational choice theory in sociology, during the late 1970s & early 1980s, a closer relationship between the two disciplines began to develop. A competence-based view of the firm that attempts to synthesize transaction cost theory & evolutionary theory is presented to illustrate how economists & sociologists might learn even more from one another. How Philip Selznick's (1957) sociological theory of leadership -- particularly his criticism of the adaptationist paradigm in organizational theory -- may help clarify some of the conceptual problems remaining in a competence-based view of the firm is also discussed. 1 Table. M. Maguire

This paper reconsiders the possibility for unification of sociological theory by the rational choice model. This is induced by the claims of rational choice theorists that extending this model from economics to sociology can be conducive to establishing a unifying paradigm and method to be given `paradigmatic privilege' within sociology. The outcome of such an extension of the economic approach has been `sociological rational choice theory' or `rational action theory for sociology'. Within sociology, such a rational choice model is regarded as a major theoretical or/and methodological innovation and thus a `new' promise for sociology's unification. Overall, the paper suggests that these `ecumenistic' claims of rational choice theorists cannot be taken at face value since they are predicated upon dubious views of the relations between economy and society and between economics and sociology, including inadequate interpretations of neoclassical economics.