How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real world? What binds societies together and how can these social orders be structured in a fair way? This book addresses this central ...paradox of modern life. Feelings for others—the solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or self-interest—are at the heart of this novel inquiry into the meeting place between normative theories of what we think we should do and empirical studies of who we actually are. The book demonstrates that solidarity creates inclusive and exclusive social structures, and shows how they can be repaired. It is not perfect, it is not absolute, and the horrors which occur in its lapses have been seen all too frequently in the forms of discrimination, genocide, and war. Despite its worldly flaws and contradictions, however, solidarity and the project of civil society remain our best hope—the antidote to every divisive institution, every unfair distribution, and every abusive and dominating hierarchy. A grand and sweeping statement, the book is a major contribution to our thinking about the real but ideal world in which we all reside.
This book presents a new approach to how culture works in contemporary societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the ...Holocaust, it shows how these unseen yet potent cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Only when these deep patterns of meaning are revealed, it argues, can we understand the stubborn staying power of violence and degradation, but also the steady persistence of hope. By understanding the darker structures that restrict our imagination, we can seek to transform them. By recognizing the culture structures that sustain hope, we can allow our idealistic imaginations to gain more traction in the world.
In this collaboratively authored work, five distinguished sociologists develop an ambitious theoretical model of "cultural trauma"—and on this basis build a new understanding of how social groups ...interact with emotion to create new and binding understandings of social responsibility. Looking at the "meaning making process" as an open-ended social dialogue in which strikingly different social narratives vie for influence, they outline a strongly constructivist approach to trauma and apply this theoretical model in a series of extensive case studies, including the Nazi Holocaust, slavery in the United States, and September 11, 2001.
This article develops a theory of “societalization,” demonstrating its plausibility through empirical analyses of church pedophilia, media phone-hacking, and the financial crisis. Although these ...strains were endemic for decades, they had failed to generate broad crises. Reactions were confined inside institutional boundaries and handled by intra-institutional elites according to the cultural logics of their particular spheres. The theory proposes that boundaries between spheres can be breached only if there is code switching. When strains become subject to the cultural logics of the civil sphere, widespread anguish emerges about social justice and concern for the future of democratic society. Once admired institutional elites come to be depicted as perpetrators, and the civil sphere becomes intrusive legally and organizationally, leading to repairs that aim for civil purification. Institutional elites soon engage in backlash efforts to resist reform, and a war of the spheres ensues. After developing this macro-institutional model, I conceptualize civil sphere agents, the journalists and legal investigators upon whose successful performances the actual unfolding of societalization depends. I also explore “limit conditions,” the structures that block societalization. I conclude by examining societalization, not in society but in social theory, contrasting the model with social constructionism, on the one hand, and broad traditions of macro-sociological theory, on the other.
Summary Background Emerging evidence suggests that living near major roads might adversely affect cognition. However, little is known about its relationship with the incidence of dementia, ...Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis. We aimed to investigate the association between residential proximity to major roadways and the incidence of these three neurological diseases in Ontario, Canada. Methods In this population-based cohort study, we assembled two population-based cohorts including all adults aged 20–50 years (about 4·4 million; multiple sclerosis cohort) and all adults aged 55–85 years (about 2·2 million; dementia or Parkinson's disease cohort) who resided in Ontario, Canada on April 1, 2001. Eligible patients were free of these neurological diseases, Ontario residents for 5 years or longer, and Canadian-born. We ascertained the individual's proximity to major roadways based on their residential postal-code address in 1996, 5 years before cohort inception. Incident diagnoses of dementia, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis were ascertained from provincial health administrative databases with validated algorithms. We assessed the associations between traffic proximity and incident dementia, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis using Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for individual and contextual factors such as diabetes, brain injury, and neighbourhood income. We did various sensitivity analyses, such as adjusting for access to neurologists and exposure to selected air pollutants, and restricting to never movers and urban dwellers. Findings Between 2001, and 2012, we identified 243 611 incident cases of dementia, 31 577 cases of Parkinson's disease, and 9247 cases of multiple sclerosis. The adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of incident dementia was 1·07 for people living less than 50 m from a major traffic road (95% CI 1·06–1·08), 1·04 (1·02–1·05) for 50–100 m, 1·02 (1·01–1·03) for 101–200 m, and 1·00 (0·99–1·01) for 201–300 m versus further than 300 m ( p for trend=0·0349). The associations were robust to sensitivity analyses and seemed stronger among urban residents, especially those who lived in major cities (HR 1·12, 95% CI 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road), and who never moved (1·12, 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road). No association was found with Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis. Interpretation In this large population-based cohort, living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia, but not with Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis. Funding Health Canada (MOA-4500314182).
Never before has the legitimacy of a dominant American culture been so hotly contested as over the past two decades. Familiar terms such as culture wars, multiculturalism, moral majority, and family ...values all suggest a society fragmented by the issue of cultural diversity. So does any social solidarity exist among Americans? In Diversity and Its Discontents, a group of leading sociologists, political theorists, and social historians seek to answer this question empirically by exploring ideological differences, theoretical disputes, social processes, and institutional change. Together they present a broad yet penetrating look at American life in which cultural conflict has always played a part. Many of the findings reveal that this conflict is no more or less rampant now than in the past, and that the terms of social solidarity in the United States have changed as the society itself has changed. The volume begins with reflections on the sources of the current "culture wars" and goes on to show a number of parallel situations throughout American history--some more profound than today's conflicts. The contributors identify political vicissitudes and social changes in the late twentieth century that have formed the backdrop to the "wars, " including changes in immigration, marriage, family structure, urban and residential life, and expression of sexuality. Points of agreement are revealed between the left and the right in their diagnoses of American culture and society, but the essays also show how the claims of both sides have been overdrawn and polarized. The volume concludes that above all, the antagonists of the culture wars have failed to appreciate the powerful cohesive forces in Americans' outlooks and institutions, forces that have, in fact, institutionalized many of the "radical" changes proposed in the 1960s. Diversity and Its Discontents brings sound empirical evidence, theoretical sophistication, and tempered judgment to a cultural episode in American history that has for too long been clouded by ideological rhetoric. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Seyla Benhabib, Jean L. Cohen, Reynolds Farley, Claude S. Fischer, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., John Higham, David A. Hollinger, Steven Seidman, Marta Tienda, David Tyack, R. Stephen Warner, Robert Wuthnow, and Viviana A. Zelizer.
Emerging studies have implicated air pollution in the neurodegenerative processes. Less is known about the influence of air pollution, especially at the relatively low levels, on developing dementia. ...We conducted a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, where the concentrations of pollutants are among the lowest in the world, to assess whether air pollution exposure is associated with incident dementia.
The study population comprised all Ontario residents who, on 1 April 2001, were 55–85years old, Canadian-born, and free of physician-diagnosed dementia (~2.1 million individuals). Follow-up extended until 2013. We used population-based health administrative databases with a validated algorithm to ascertain incident diagnosis of dementia as well as prevalent cases. Using satellite observations, land-use regression model, and an optimal interpolation method, we derived long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter (≤2.5μm in diameter) (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3), respectively at the subjects' historical residences based on a population-based registry. We used multilevel spatial random-effects Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for individual and contextual factors, such as diabetes, brain injury, and neighborhood income. We conducted various sensitivity analyses, such as lagging exposure up to 10years and considering a negative control outcome for which no (or weaker) association with air pollution is expected.
We identified 257,816 incident cases of dementia in 2001–2013. We found a positive association between PM2.5 and dementia incidence, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.04 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03–1.05) for every interquartile-range increase in exposure to PM2.5. Similarly, NO2 was associated with increased incidence of dementia (HR=1.10; 95% CI: 1.08–1.12). No association was found for O3. These associations were robust to all sensitivity analyses examined. These estimates translate to 6.1% of dementia cases (or 15,813 cases) attributable to PM2.5 and NO2, based on the observed distribution of exposure relative to the lowest quartile in concentrations in this cohort.
In this large cohort, exposure to air pollution, even at the relative low levels, was associated with higher dementia incidence.
•A population-based cohort of ~2.1 million adult residents in Ontario, Canada.•Exposure to ambient nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter was associated higher incidence of dementia.•15,813 cases of dementia (or 6.1% of total cases) were attributable to elevated air pollution exposure in this cohort.•Air pollution levels in Ontario are among the lowest in the world.
Social Performance Alexander, Jeffrey C; Giesen, Bernhard; Mast, Jason L
05/2006
eBook
Jeffrey C. Alexander brings together new and leading contributors to make a powerful and coherently argued case for a new direction in cultural sociology, one that focuses on the intersection between ...performance, ritual and social action. Performance has always been used by sociologists to understand the social world but this volume offers the first systematic analytical framework based on the performance metaphor to explain large-scale social and cultural processes. From September 11, to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, to the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Social Performance draws on recent work in performative theory in the humanities and in cultural studies to offer a novel approach to the sociology of culture. Inspired by the theories of Austin, Derrida, Durkheim, Goffman, and Turner, this is a path-breaking volume that makes a major contribution to the field. It will appeal to scholars and students alike.
Point defects in semiconductors can trap free charge carriers and localize excitons. The interaction between these defects and charge carriers becomes stronger at reduced dimensionalities, and is ...expected to greatly influence physical properties of the hosting material. We investigated effects of anion vacancies in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides as two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors where the vacancies density is controlled by α-particle irradiation or thermal-annealing. We found a new, sub-bandgap emission peak as well as increase in overall photoluminescence intensity as a result of the vacancy generation. Interestingly, these effects are absent when measured in vacuum. We conclude that in opposite to conventional wisdom, optical quality at room temperature cannot be used as criteria to assess crystal quality of the 2D semiconductors. Our results not only shed light on defect and exciton physics of 2D semiconductors, but also offer a new route toward tailoring optical properties of 2D semiconductors by defect engineering.
The Crust of the Moon as Seen by GRAIL Wieczorek, Mark A.; Neumann, Gregory A.; Nimmo, Francis ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
02/2013, Volume:
339, Issue:
6120
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
High-resolution gravity data obtained from the dual Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft show that the bulk density of the Moon's highlands crust is 2550 kilograms per cubic ...meter, substantially lower than generally assumed. When combined with remote sensing and sample data, this density implies an average crustal porosity of 12% to depths of at least a few kilometers. Lateral variations in crustal porosity correlate with the largest impact basins, whereas lateral variations in crustal density correlate with crustal composition. The low-bulk crustal density allows construction of a global crustal thickness model that satisfies the Apollo seismic constraints, and with an average crustal thickness between 34 and 43 kilometers, the bulk refractory element composition of the Moon is not required to be enriched with respect to that of Earth.
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