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AbstractThis article makes a case for a socially situated and theoretically sophisticated approach to the sociological study of journalists. This is urgently needed for us to understand the increasingly complex news production environment and the rapidly evolving nature of journalistic practice. Two theoretical approaches to studying the sociology of journalists are outlined and discussed. The first is a development of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory; the second – the 'news world' approach – emerges from the social worlds approach commonly associated with Howard S. Becker. Each approach on its own shows considerable promise for the analysis of the increasingly complex news media environment. The article concludes that the journalistic field and the news world approaches could be combined to create a new framework for the sociological study of journalism that would provide a way forward for the important empirical research on journalists that is now needed.

Discretionary food package sizes are an important environmental cue that can affect the amount of food consumed. The aim of this study was to determine sales trends and reported food industry perspectives for changing food package sizes of carbonates and confectionery between 2005 and 2019. Changes in package sizes of carbonates and confectionery were investigated in Australia, the USA, Canada, and the UK. Sales data (units per capita and compound annual growth rate between 2005 and 2019) were extracted from the Euromonitor database. Qualitative data (market research reports) on industry perspectives on package size changes were extracted from industry and marketing databases. Carbonate sales data showed increased growth of smaller package sizes (100 g), including share packages, was observed in Australia. Qualitative data (n = 92 articles) revealed key reasons identified by industry for changes in package size related to consumer health awareness, portion size control, convenience, market growth, and government or industry initiatives. Monitoring of discretionary food package sizes provides additional insights into consumers' food environment.

This article reviews S. M. Lipset's major works of comparative sociology, specifying their problematic assumptions and appraising their contribution to the cross‐national study of political and social systems. It is made clear that Lipset's perspective has shifted over the years. The second part of the paper focuses on the changes that his views have undergone, and explains such alterations by examining certain aspects of Lipset's intellectual and professional life experiences.

This book presents Ulrich Beck, one of the world's leading sociologists and social thinkers, as a Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society. His world risk society theory has been confirmed by recent disasters - events that have shaken modern society to the core, signaling the end of an era in which comprehensive insurance could keep us safe. Due to its own successes, modern society now faces failure: while in the past experiments were conducted in a lab, now the whole world is a test bed. Whether nuclear plants, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology - if any of these experiments went wrong, the consequences would have a global impact and would be irreversible. Beck recommends ignoring the mathematical morality of expert opinions, which seek to identify the level of a given risk by calculating the probability of its occurrence. Instead, man's fear of collapse should offer an opportunity for international cooperation and a cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences.

What organized crime is and how it can be prevented are two of the key questions in both organized crime research and criminal policy. However, despite many attempts, organized crime research, the criminal justice system and criminal policy have failed to provide a shared and recognized conceptual definition of organized crime, which has opened the door to political interpretations. Organized crime is presented as an objective reality—mostly based on anecdotal empirical evidence and generic descriptions—and has been understood, as being intrinsically different from social organization, and this has been a justification for treating organized crime conceptually separately. In this dissertation, the concept of organized crime is deconstructed and analyzed. Based on five studies and an introductory chapter, I argue that organized crime is an overarching concept based on an abstraction of different underlying concepts, such as gang, mafia, and network, which are in turn semi-overarching and overlapping abstractions of different crime phenomena, such as syndicates, street-gangs, and drug networks. This combination of a generic concept based on underlying concepts, which are themselves subject to similar conceptual difficulties, has given rise to a conceptual confusion surrounding the term and the concept of organized crime. The consequences of this conceptual confusion are not only an issue of semantics, but have implications for our understanding of the nature of criminal collaboration as well as both legal and policy consequences. By combining different observers, methods and empirical materials relating to dimensions of criminal collaboration, I illustrate the strong analogies that exist between forms of criminal collaboration and the theory of social organization. I argue in this dissertation that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing. In fact, the dissertation illustrates the existence of strong analogies between patterns of criminal organizing and the elements of social organizations. But depending on time and context, some actions and forms of organizing are defined as criminal, and are then, intentionally or unintentionally, presumed to be intrinsically different from social organizing. Since the basis of my argument is that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing, I advocate that the study of organized crime needs to return to the basic principles of social organization in order to understand the emergence of, and the underlying mechanism that gives rise to, the forms of criminal collaboration that we seek to explain. To this end, a new general analytical framework, "criminal organizing", that brings the different forms of criminal organizations and their dimensions together under a single analytical tool, is proposed as an example of how organizational sociology can advance organized crime research and clarify the chaotic concept of organized crime.

City of Industry is a stunning exposé on the construction of corporate capitalist spaces. Investigating Industry's archives, including sealed FBI reports, Valle uncovered a series of scandals from the city's founder James M. Stafford to present day corporate heir Edward Roski Jr., the nation's biggest industrial developer. While exposing the corruption and corporate greed spawned from the growth of new technology and engineering, Valle reveals the plight of the property-owning servants, especially Latino working-class communities, who have fallen victim to the effects of this tale of c.

SummaryAgro‐technical progress in predominantly agrarian societies moves at a slower pace and follows a different pattern from industrialised countries. In social terms the difference is between innovation search and innovation offer. It must be asked why the general trend in mechanisation policies is to transfer the pattern of industrialised countries to LDCs, and what effect this has. Depending on the land still available for cropping, mechanisation benefits either large or mediumsized farmers, but in any case neglects the small farmers. This "unwanted" social effect occurs for two reasons: the complexity of factors which raise both costs and incomes, and the fact that profitability of so‐called innovations is mostly not evident to small farmers.Rural sociology must contribute to the solution of these problems in two ways. First, by analysing the decisive differences in infrastructure that characterized nineteenth century mechanisation processes in European agriculture as against the actual situation in LDCs today. And second, by reviewing the theoretical model underlying the transfer of technologies: this assumes correspondence of social and technological structures that might be upset by contamination with innovations and reconciled with the help of innovators. Given the food deficit, appropriate agro‐mechanisation in LDCs must advance more slowly and abandon its absolute dependence on modern market structures.ZusammenfassungIn agrarisch bestimmten Gesellschaften vollzieht sich der landwirtschaftlich‐technische Fortschritt langsamer und nach einem anderen Muster als in industrialisierten Gesellschaften. Den Grund dafür kann man in der Unterscheidung von Innovations‐Suche und Innovations‐Angebot erfassen. Wir müssen uns der Frage stellen, warum und mit welchen Folgen heute allgemein nach der Vorstellung praktiziert wird, das Mechanisierungsmuster der Industriegesellschaften sei in die Entwicklungsländer zu übertragen. In der Regel bringt dieser Prozeß nur Großbetrieben Vorteile ‐ wo noch Landreserven vorhanden sind ‐ oder kapitalistisch gesonnenen Mittelbetrieben ‐ wo Landknappheit herrscht. Daß der kleine Bauer eher davon geschädigt wird, gilt als unerwünschter Effekt. Er beruht zum einen auf der Komplexität der Faktoren, die sowohl die Kosten wie das Einkommen steigern und zum anderen darauf, daß unterhalb einer bestimmten Ertragsgrenze Innovationen kaum den sozial erwünschten Effekt bringen.Der Beitrag der Agrarsoziologie zu diesem Problemkreis muß auf zwei Gebieten liegen: 1. sie muß zeigen, daß die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen der landwirtschaftlichen Mechanisierung in Europa nicht die Annahme eines übertragbaren Musters rechtfertigen, 2. sie muß das diesem Technologietransfer unterliegende theoretische Modell kritisch untersuchen. Im Ergebnis muß gefordert werden, daß der technische Fortschritt in der Landwirtschaft der Entwicklungsländer in besser angepaßter Geschwindigkeit und in geringerer Abhängigkeit von Marktbindungen vor sich gehen muß.

Sociological reconceptualisations of the structure/agency divide have motivated important theoretical advances in the discipline, and the development of `structuration theories' and `analytical dualism' has promoted fresh thought about dominant views of the human agent. These approaches have sought to release sociology from any residual reliance on the oversocialised conception of the individual that formed part of the legacy of Parsonian sociology. It is the argument of this paper, however, that while structuration theory and analytical dualism focus on the creative powers of human reflexivity, as part of their rejection of the `oversocialised agent', the theoretical weight they place on consciousness neglects the socially shaped somatic bases of action and structure, and results in an undersocialised view of the embodied agent.If the relationship between socialisation and agency needs analysing in terms of embodiment as much as in terms of the cognitive internalisation of norms and values, however, there are good reasons for structuration theory and analytical dualism rejecting attempts to ground subsequent notions of the embodied agent they may develop in dominant, static notions of the habitus. These minimise creativity and make it difficult to analyse social change. An important challenge for future reconceptualisations of the structure/agency divide, then, is to construct a sociology which recognises the significance for human agency of a socially shaped form of embodiment, yet which refuses to make the embodied actor a mere product of society.

Drawing upon case studies of the steel industry in the US, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and India, this book explains how and why the steel industry has shifted from advanced capitalist countries to late industrializing countries. Anthony P. D'Costa examines the relationship between industrial change and institutional responses to technological diffusion. He reveals the governments' and firms' differing responses to innovations lead to an uneven diffusion of technology and industrial reorganization. Moreover, when it becomes clear that existing institutional arrangements no longer serve the indu

Robert E. Park's sociology of race & ethnic relations takes the civilization process as its central concern. His well-known formulation of the four stages through which a race relations cycle would pass -- contacts, competition, accommodation, & assimilation -- though not without considerable difficulties as a theory describing the order & direction taken by the several races' actual experiences, postulates the ultimate victory of modern market civilization over all traditional modes of social organization. Park contended that modern societies -- with their centers in multiracial & multiethnic cities -- are characterized by sudden & dramatic changes of fortune, atomization, flexible rather than fixed social forms, & by a polis in which fashion & public opinion replace custom as a means of social control. Modern mobile societies have an inexorable tendency to attract tradition-oriented peoples & convert them from their custom-bound ways of life into civic-minded citizens of a new Occidental socioeconomic order, which, in turn, shifts them away from their membership in collective, family-based primary groups into individuated, impersonal, & secondary associations of persons who must struggle for necessarily scarce material & spiritual rewards in a society built around commerce & competition. Park focused on how US blacks fit into this universal process, a case that proved to be the most difficult & ambiguous instance of the operation of his postulated race relations cycle. Modified AA