The 37th World Congress of the IIS focused on theory and research at the forefront of sociology and the relationship between sociology and its neighbouring disciplines. This volume constitutes a sustained effort by prominent sociologists and other social scientists to assess the current standing of sociology. It is a stocktaking of the unique nature of sociology in the light of advances within the discipline itself and within a range of neighbouring disciplines. Some of the chapters outline institutional and professional strategies for sociology in the new millennium. Others trace scholarly advances and propose ambitious research programmes drawing on recent developments not only within traditional neighbouring disciplines such as history, political science, and economics, but also within the cognitive, cultural and mathematical sciences.Contributors include: Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Raymond Boudon, Richard Breen, Christofer R. Edling, S. N. Eisenstadt, Jack Goldstone, Philip Gorski, Peter Gärdenfors, Ulf Hannerz, Peter Hedström, Hans Joas, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Jens Rydgren, Neil Smelser, Aage B. Sørensen, Richard Swedberg, Piotr Sztompka, Peter Wagner and Björn Wittrock.

This book is a collection of notable papers from the first six volumes of the journal "Comparative Sociology." Its content represents leading-edge and contemporarily astute analyses in the burgeoning science of comparative sociology, especially relevant to a globalizing world in transition. Given that not everyone is acquainted with comparative sociology, this book offers an opportunity to enlighten readers unfamiliar with the discipline about the importance of comparative sociology to the new world order. Taken together, the articles illuminate various aspects of comparative sociologya "theoretical, methodological, substantive. Some compare social entities in subjective, case-study fashion, while others report on rigorous social research. All contribute in one form or another to describing the many and varied facets of the exciting a oenewa science of comparative sociology. The content of this volume has previously been published in "Comparative Sociology" volumes 1 a " 6.3.

The six essays in this volume are designed to introduce the general reader to some of the main issues in the fields of education, industry, politics, family changes and the like, which concern British sociologists. While each of the essays is independently conceived, their joint aim is to show how sociologists can use empirical methods to throw fresh light on current social problems and also to convey the distinctive approach, the distinctive view of the world towards which sociologists are striving.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. Interest in social innovation continues to rise, from governments setting up social innovation 'labs' to large corporations developing social innovation strategies. Yet theory lags behind practice, and this hampers our ability to understand social innovation and make the most of its potential. This collection brings together work by leading social innovation researchers globally, exploring the practice and process of researching social innovation, its nature and effects. Combining theoretical chapters and empirical studies, it shows how social innovation is blurring traditional boundaries between the market, the state and civil society, thereby developing new forms of services, relationships and collaborations. It takes a critical perspective, analyzing potential downsides of social innovation that often remain unexplored or are glossed over, yet concludes with a powerful vision of the potential for social innovation to transform society. It aims to be a valuable resource for students and researchers, as well as policymakers and others supporting and leading social innovation.

This volume is an important contribution to our understanding of global pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It brings together the reflections of leading social and political scientists who are interested in the implications and significance of the current crisis for politics and society. The chapters provide both analysis of the social and political dimensions of the Coronavirus pandemic and historical contextualization as well as perspectives beyond the crisis. The volume seeks to focus on Covid-19 not simply as the terrain of epidemiology or public health, but as raising fundamental questions about the nature of social, economic and political processes. The problems of contemporary societies have become intensified as a result of the pandemic. Understanding the pandemic is as much a sociological question as it is a biological one, since viral infections are transmitted through social interaction. In many ways, the pandemic poses fundamental existential as well as political questions about social life as well as exposing many of the inequalities in contemporary societies. As the chapters in this volume show, epidemiological issues and sociological problems are elucidated in many ways around the themes of power, politics, security, suffering, equality and justice. This is a cutting edge and accessible volume on the Covid-19 pandemic with chapters on topics such as the nature and limits of expertise, democratization, emergency government, digitalization, social justice, globalization, capitalist crisis, and the ecological crisis. Contents Notes on Contributors Preface Gerard Delanty 1. Introduction: The Pandemic in Historical and Global Context Part 1 Politics, Experts and the State Claus Offe 2. Corona Pandemic Policy: Exploratory Notes on its ‘Epistemic Regime’ Stephen Turner 3. The Naked State: What the Breakdown of Normality Reveals Jan Zielonka 4. Who Should be in Charge of Pandemics? Scientists or Politicians? Jonathan White 5. Emergency Europe after Covid-19 Daniel Innerarity 6. Political Decision-Making in a Pandemic Part 2 Globalization, History and the Future Helga Nowotny 7. In AI We Trust: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Pushes us Deeper into Digitalization Eva Horn 8. Tipping Points: The Anthropocene and COVID-19 Bryan S. Turner 9. The Political Theology of Covid-19: a Comparative History of Human Responses to Catastrophes Daniel Chernilo 10. Another Globalisation: Covid-19 and the Cosmopolitan Imagination Frédéric Vandenberghe & Jean-Francois Véran 11. The Pandemic as a Global Total Social Fact Part 3 The Social and Alternatives Sylvia Walby 12. Social Theory and COVID: Including Social Democracy Donatella della Porta 13. Progressive Social Movements, Democracy and the Pandemic Sonja Avlijaš 14. Security for Whom? Inequality and Human Dignity in Times of the Pandemic Albena Azmanova 15. Battlegrounds of Justice: The Pandemic and What Really Grieves the 99% Index

This volume puts together the works of a group of distinguished scholars and active researchers in the field of media and communication studies to reflect upon the past, present, and future of new media research. The chapters examine the implications of new media technologies on everyday life, existing social institutions, and the society at large at various levels of analysis. Macro-level analyses of changing techno-social formation – such as discussions of the rise of surveillance society and the "fifth estate" – are combined with studies on concrete and specific new media phenomena, such as the rise of Pro-Am collaboration and "fan labor" online. In the process, prominent concepts in the field of new media studies, such as social capital, displacement, and convergence, are critically examined, while new theoretical perspectives are proposed and explicated. Reflecting the inter-disciplinary nature of the field of new media studies and communication research in general, the chapters interrogate into the problematic through a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The book should offer students and researchers who are interested in the social impact of new media both critical reviews of the existing literature and inspirations for developing new research questions.

Democratic Frontiers: Algorithms and Society focuses on digital platforms’ effects in societies with respect to key areas such as subjectivity and self-reflection, data and measurement for the common good, public health and accessible datasets, activism in social media and the import/export of AI technologies relative to regime type. Digital technologies develop at a much faster pace relative to our systems of governance which are supposed to embody democratic principles that are comparatively timeless, whether rooted in ancient Greek or Enlightenment ideas of freedom, autonomy and citizenship. Algorithms, computing millions of calculations per second, do not pause to reflect on their operations. Developments in the accumulation of vast private datasets that are used to train automated machine learning algorithms pose new challenges for upholding these values. Social media platforms, while the key driver of today’s information disorder, also afford new opportunities for organized social activism. The US and China, presumably at opposite ends of an ideological spectrum, are the main exporters of AI technology to both free and totalitarian societies. These are some of the important topics covered by this volume that examines the democratic stakes for societies with the rapid expansion of these technologies. Scholars and students from many backgrounds as well as policy makers, journalists and the general reading public will find a multidisciplinary approach to issues of democratic values and governance encompassing research from Sociology, Digital Humanities, New Media, Psychology, Communication, International Relations and Economics. Chapter 3 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license