Category: Opinion

Opinion / Population & Demography / Science & Technology / Urban Sociology

The digitalisation of cities and housing: what will the future bring?

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the how digital technologies are or will impact on a variety of aspects of our lives, ranging from the nature of our work relations to urban life and housing. The ramifications of the impacts of digitalisation on our cities and in particular on housing have been the topic of a recent Housing Europe conference in Tallinn, Estonia. This article will draw out some of the broader themes discussed during this...

Opinion / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Urban Sociology

A Safer and More Just Society: Policy and Projections of the 1967 President’s Crime Commission Report

The past year marked the 50th anniversary of the report by the U.S. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. The Commission, chaired by Nicholas Katzenbach, included 19 commissioners and featured now-famous criminologists Lloyd Ohlin (who served as an associate director of the Commission’s staff) and Alfred Blumstein, the staff-director of science and technology. The Commission’s goal was seemingly straightforward: to create recommendations for federal, state, and local governments that could lead to “a safer and more just...

Books and arts / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Rural Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Theory / Sociology of Culture / Urban Sociology

Interview: Lisa Garforth on Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature

Lisa Garforth is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University. Her work explores green future visions, especially in fiction. Her recent book Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature (Polity 2018) examines the changing content and socio-cultural contexts of green utopias from post-war environmentalism to the challenge of the Anthropocene. What lead you to write your book, Green Utopias, and what are the major themes? I wanted to rethink environmental utopianism, not so much from the perspective of practical...

Opinion / Rural Sociology / Science & Technology

True cowmen and commercial farmers: differing opinions on what it means to be a ‘good’ dairy farmer

Farming is both an art and a science. Dairy farming in the UK is poised between being a traditional backbone of the rural economy and a high-tech industry. We need to understand what farmers and other stakeholders value within this sector in order to understand how they make decisions. The idea of the ‘good farmer’ is a useful concept within rural sociology for understanding farmer decision making12. Farmers make decisions that are in line with the ideal of being a...

Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

Sociology of Cancer: A Decade of Research

Our recent review article, which is free to read in the journal Sociology of Health & Illness reviewed sociological research on cancer over the last decade to identify the contribution of sociology to cancer research and care. The largest proportion of articles focused on living with and beyond cancer. This research showed how cancer can be disruptive, prompting changes in people’s sense of who they are.  However, people have a range of experiences which do not fit neatly into common...

Opinion / Science & Technology / Social Welfare

The Digital Nudge in Social Security Administration

This is an abridged version of our full research paper, published in the journal International Social Security Review, which can be read in full for free here. There are significant trends occurring across three major pillars of public administration, namely social investment (policy), nudge (process) and predictive analytics (technology). The European Commission defines social investment as policies designed to strengthen people’s skills and capacities, supporting them to participate fully in employment and social life (EC, 2015). Key policy areas include education,...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / People / Social Identity / Sociology of Media & Communication

Early Career Researcher Focus: Interview with Eva Cheuk-Yin Li on Gender Performance in East Asia

At the 2018 British Sociological Association Conference, we had the pleasure of speaking to sociology researchers across the breadth of the discipline, and at all career levels. Eva Cheuk-Yin Li has just completed her PhD on gender and sexuality studies and pop culture in East Asia, at King’s College London, and spoke to Sociology Lens about her research into gender performance in the context of pop culture and fandom in Chinese societies. Tell us about your research background I am...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Welfare

Why Observations about the Effectiveness of Active Labour Market Policies are Mixed

It is heavily debated how active labour market policies affect the labour market. Some argue that activation programmes help the disadvantaged, such as the low educated or people who possess obsolete skills, to improve their labour market opportunities. This is for example achieved through learning new skills through training or work programmes, making them more attractive on the labour market. Other frequently used measures are hiring and wage subsidies to make it more financially attractive for employers to hire disadvantaged...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

The body positivity movement: advancing ‘fat’ activism

Apart from the fight against fat shaming, other approaches to body positivity range from anti-shaving decisions, to unretouched campaigns by which certain media channels reject photoshopped pictures, to accepting body changes during and post-pregnancy, to celebrities’ body positivity advice (Money, 2017). Arguments are made that body image is no longer essential for an individual’s self-definition (Murray, 2007) and yet contradictory comments in body positivity forums show fluctuations between individual options and social pressures. An analytical overview of social media cues...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change

Forward March: The Next Destination for Feminism

An estimated five million people around the world marched on 21 of January 2017 to protest the sexist behaviour of the incoming US President, Donald Trump. Even as these marches took place, the scope seemed to expand and something shifted in the way that everyone, and especially women, were thinking and talking about feminism. This is an abridged version of the editorial from the most recent issue of the IPPR Progressive Review, which is free to read until the end...

Opinion / Rural Sociology / Science & Technology

Smart Farming: Wither Do It Yourself (DIY) Farmers

We have data coming out of our ears.  Between 2015 and 2016, the world generated more of it than what had been created in the previous 5,000 years.  The same holds true in agriculture—data related to soil characteristics, water quality (and quantity), weather, yield, market trends, and the like. The global market for precision farming technologies is estimated to reach approximately US$6 billion by 2021, which translates to an annual growth rate of 12.4 per cent. Adoption rates of precision...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / People / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Interview with Professor Alison Pullen, Editor-in-Chief of Gender, Work and Organization

  Alison  Pullen  is  Professor  of  Management  and  Organization  Studies at Macquarie  University,  Australia,  and  at the time of the interview, Otto Mønsted  Visiting Professor at Copenhagen  Business  School,  Department  of  Organization. Over the course of her career, Alison’s work has been concerned with analyzing and intervening in the politics of work as it concerns gender discrimination, identity politics, and organizational injustice.  Alison is joint Editor-in-Chief of Gender, Work and Organization, Associate Editor of Organization and sits on the editorial...

Opinion / Population & Demography / Urban Sociology

What does demographic change mean for the future of housing?

The population of England – in line with many other European countries – is undergoing some significant changes that will have far-reaching implications for the future of housing. In short, the population of England has grown significantly over recent years and we are likely to see a continuation of this trend in the future. But growth is going to be concentrated, both in terms of geography but also in terms of demography. This article looks at what demographic change is...

Opinion / Rural Sociology

Just Existing is Resisting: a paper-video pairing strategy to talk about the everyday struggle against GM crops in Spain

  GM crops have created (and still create) socio-political storms around the globe. These conflicts illustrate a clash of visions, values and paradigms enacted by different forms of agriculture. While the EU has put considerable weight on the concept of co-existence to manage these conflicts, the nature of GM crops and the social conditions around them pose significant challenges for achieving this aim. Both the biological agency of GM crops and the social infrastructure around these crops facilitate an unintentional...

Opinion / Social Identity / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Employee well-being and versions of corporate-driven orthorexia

Context In 1997, Steven Bratman [2] launched the concept of ‘orthorexia’, derived from the Greek “orthos”, meaning “correct or right” and “orexis”, meaning “hunger or appetite”. He described his own “pathological fixation on eating proper food”; including ritualized eating of vegetables picked no more than 15 minutes before consumption, and chewing each mouthful at least 50 times before swallowing. Following this, social discourse [1, 5, 12] has defined healthy nutrition as eating simply, ‘pure’, ‘clean’, wholesome, non-processed diets; diets which...

Opinion / People / Population & Demography

An interview with Aydan Özoğuz, German Commissioner for Immigration, Refugees and Integration

Aydan Özoğuz has been the Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration in Germany since December 2013.  Speaking with Howard Duncan, editor-in-chief of policy oriented journal, International Migration, Aydan discusses Germany’s approach to immigration. This is a condensed version of a longer interview, which can be accessed here. Germany is the destination for the second largest number of migrants in the world, second only to the United States. Why has Germany taken in so many immigrants in recent years,...