The theoretical base of clinical sociology is analyzed through Pepper's root metaphor method. Practice is found to be framed by the analogy between society and a complex ecosystem. The resulting world hypothesis is identified as Ecologism, within which the four relatively adequate world hypotheses identified by Pepper (Formism, Mechanism, Contextualism and Organicism) take their place as comple...

A philosophical exploration is presented that considers entities such as atoms, electrons, protons, reasoned (in existing physics theories) by induction, to be other than universal building blocks, but artifacts of a sociological struggle that in elemental description is identical with that of all processes of matter and energy. In a universal context both men and materials, when stressed, stru...

Research on emotion has just started to investigate emotions on higher levels of social interaction and aggregation, e.g. organizations or distributed work environments. For a long time the focus has been on the interrelation of cognition and emotion in individuals. But as more and more research is conducted on emotional effects in social interaction, aggregation, and emergence, it becomes obvi...

Debate is open as to whether social media communities resemble real-life communities, and to what extent. We contribute to this discussion by testing whether established sociological theories of real-life networks hold in Twitter. In particular, for 228,359 Twitter profiles, we compute network metrics (e.g., reciprocity, structural holes, simmelian ties) that the sociological literature has fou...

Since the early 1990s American schools have adopted a number of practices – zero tolerance, school police, metal detectors, drug sweeps, and surveillance cameras – that signal a shift from a discretionary student disciplinary framework to a crime control paradigm. The sociological subfield that centers on the examination and interpretation of the criminalization of school discipline is still in...

The term Web 2.0 is currently on everyone’s lips; even the tourism industry is awash with decision makers who are frantically searching for standardized, practicable guidelines on how not to sleep through yet again what has been touted as the new era of the Internet Version 2.0—especially now that we are finally getting a handle on Version 1.0. As to be expected, the checklists and manuals we h...

Designing human-computer interfaces that are easy and intuitive to use is important for the use of computer technology in general. Due to the growing complexity of information systems, more and more elaborated concepts of interface design can be found. One of the most advanced concepts is agent technology. Within this conceptional approach emotional agents are of increasing importance because e...

This study is based on clinical sociological principles derived from Durkheim's and Weber's theories, as well as from contemporary research findings which suggest that religion and feminism can be social sources of empowerment for women. The theoretical orientation therefore incorporates social and cultural influences on behavior, as well as the intrapsychic and interpersonal decision-making pr...

When biomedical knowledge and technology create the capacity for humans to avoid disease and circumvent early death, sociological factors become more, not less important for population health. The transformation of disease causation from cruel fate, accident, and bad luck to circumstances that are under some degree of human control facilitates a powerful social shaping of disease and death. Whe...

Although rational choice theory has made considerable advances in other social sciences, its progress in sociology has been limited. Some sociologists’ reservations about rational choice arise from a misunderstanding of the theory. The first part of this essay therefore introduces rational choice as a general theoretical perspective, or family of theories, which explains social outcomes by cons...