Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article reviews the social scientific literature published between the late 1990s and 2021 on the illegal 'sport' of dog fighting in the UK and USA. Adopting a green criminological perspective, it argues that studying dog fighting is important for understanding the ways in which this form of animal cruelty contributes to a range of social and animal harms. The review is structured in five sections. The first situates the review theoretically by introducing key ideas within green criminology that will inform the discussion. The next section presents a typology of the different levels of dog fighting in both countries. The third section then explores both the motivations of contemporary dog fighters, as well as the justifications they deploy to defend their 'sport' to outsiders. The fourth section then adopts a green criminological perspective to explore the various social and animal harms associated with dog fighting. The final section then brings the threads of the discussion together and highlights some directions for future research.

AbstractOver the past two decades, a growing body of work has emerged in the social sciences that explores various aspects of capital punishment in the contemporary United States. This article reviews one strand of this literature that focuses on the execution ritual itself – specifically on condemned inmates' last meals and the final statements that they make in the execution chamber just prior to their execution. It also discusses some of the limitations of the research and offers some ideas for future scholarship in this area.

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation, both online and off-line, of films produced by amateurs inspired by mainstream films, TV shows, and novels. As with much other fan production, fan films exist in, at best, a legally gray area since they are produced by amateurs, rather than by the media companies that own the copyrights to the films and novels that provide both their inspiration and settings. I examine the phenomenon of fan filmmaking, focusing on films produced by fans of the Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) tabletop battle game. In particular, I examine the case of Damnatus: The Enemy Within (Damnatus: Feind Im Innern, 2005), a German-made fan film set in the W40K universe, which was banned from release by the game's rights holder, the UK company Games Workshop, in 2007. Damnatus offers an interesting case study in both the ongoing struggle between rights holders and textual poachers and the tensions that can exist between different legal understandings of copyright in an increasingly globalized world.

This article explores the extent to which weddings have been secularised within contemporary Britain at both the societal/institutional (objective) and personal (subjective) levels. Firstly, I present an extremely brief historical sketch of the changing nature of weddings within Britain over the course of the last thousand years. I will also draw on statistical evidence to discuss the trends relating to weddings over the course of the last 160 years. Following on from this, I draw on interview data to explore the reasons why non-church attendees still opt for a religious marriage service. Finally, I conclude by relating both sets of material to the question of whether weddings may be seen as a site of secularisation within contemporary Britain and exploring the nature of this situation.

"Cover" -- "Title Page" -- "Copyright Page" -- "Table of Contents" -- "Notes on Contributors" -- "Introduction" -- "PART I: CLASSICAL ROOTS" -- "1 Religion as an Elementary Aspect of Society: Durkheim's Legacy for Social Theory" -- "2 Weber, Rationalisation, and Religious Evolution in the Modern Era" -- "3 Spiritualism and the (Re-)Enchantment of Modernity" -- "4 Trajectories of Faith in the Global Age: Classical Theory and Contemporary Evidence" -- "5 'Magico-popular Religion' in Contemporary Society: Towards a Post-Western Sociology of Religion" -- "PART II: NEW GROWTH" -- "6 Religion in Ultramodernity" -- "7 Theodicy, Distribution of Risk, and Reflexive Modernisation: Explaining the Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements" -- "8 Privatisation, Globalisation, and Religious Innovation: Giddens' Theory of Modernity and the Refutation of Secularisation Theory" -- "9 From Creeds to Burgers: Religious Control, Spiritual Search, and the Future of the World" -- "10 Understanding Honour and Religion as Resource and Constraint for Young British Asians" -- "11 Preference Structures and Normative Constraints in Movements Outside, Between, and Within Religious Organisations" -- "PART III: FRESH BLOOMS" -- "12 Narrative Versus Theory in the Sociology of Religion: Five Stories of Religion's Place in the Late Modern World" -- "13 'A Minimalist Sociology of Religion'?" -- "14 New Media, Niche Markets, and the Body: Excarnate and Hypercarnate Challenges for Theory and Theology" -- "15 Inner Speech and Religious Traditions" -- "16 Sickness and Salvation: Social Theories of the Body in the Sociology of Religion" -- "17 Breaching Bleaching: Integrating Studies of 'Race' and Ethnicity with the Sociology of Religion