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Open research questions in Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice

67 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 5,325 Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • When were the individuals born, or against what historical period did they enter? What resources were available to them early on? What socialization experi- ences did they encounter? How did the timing of early identities influence the timing of later identities? There is a rich array of issues that need to be explored.

    Identities, meaning, the social structure, and the life course: Developing identity theory in sociology · 2026 · DOI

  • Although Population Review was founded through the auspices of the Indian Institute for Population Studies it has evolved into a global venture, encouraging submissions that address population processes and characteristics in all parts of the world and on emergent population issues and understudied populations.

    Introduction to the 60th Anniversary Issue of Population Review · 2021 · DOI

  • In this study, I begin to address this gap in the literature through analysis of the successful campaign to defeat Idaho’s Propositions 1, 2, and 3 in 2011–2012.

    Foul Weather Friends: Enabling Movement Alliance through an Intentionally Limited Coalition · 2017 · DOI

  • As sports journalist, Richard Hoffer writes, the massacre 'was public enough to have effectively ended the student movement, yet underreported enough that the Olympics would not be stopped on its account' (Hoffer 2011, 114-115).

    American Networks: Radicals under the Radar (1840–1968) · 2017 · DOI

  • The aspiration to designate or create laboratories as spaces of sociological knowledge production was broadly unifying in early American sociology (1890-1930), even though there was no general agreement about what "laboratory" meant, nor any explicit acknowledgment of that lack of consensus.

    ‘Laboratory Talk’ in U.S. Sociology, 1890–1930: The Performance of Scientific Legitimacy · 2014 · DOI

  • This article analyses the connections between social developments and the evolution of the theory of civil society (CS) (classical background, semantic shifts, re-emergence and open questions regarding future research).

    Civil society: A multi-layered concept · 2014 · DOI

  • At a conference, a colleague of his met Professor Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff from the University of the Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia, who shared information about his recent trip to the Chocó Department of Colombia, and mentioned that the Wounaan were an interesting people who had not been thoroughly studied by anthropologists.

    An Interdisciplinary Career: Crossing Boundaries, Ending with Beginnings · 2012 · DOI

  • The discovery of meso-level social orders in organizational theory, political sociology, and social movement theory, what have subsequently been called sectors, policy domains, and most popularly, fields (or in organizational sociology, organizational fields), opens up a theoretical terrain that has not yet been fully explored (see Martin, 2003 for one view of fields).

    A Political–Cultural Approach to the Problem of Strategic Action · 2012 · DOI

  • Are scarce, however, the investigations which analyzed the sense and shared nature of the frames, such as conceived by Gamson (1992) and Klandermans (1997).

    The shared collective action frames that legitimate the fights against the labor precariousness of a net of autonomous activism · 2010 · DOI

  • What is lacking in the non-western world is an autonomous social science tradition, generated and developed by local scholars, guided by the selection of problems from within the society, applying an independent concept of relevance in the collection and accumulation of research data and comparative attention to problems outside the country or region.

    The Autonomous, the Universal and the Future of Sociology · 2005 · DOI

  • The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptualization of social movements that is not limited to the set of theories developed in the academic scope of new social movements; on the contrary, a different theoretical scenery will be suggested in order to throw a new analytic gaze on the social practices reproduced by the, so called, new social movements.

    Towards a redefinition of social movements: proxemic macro-actors · 2003 · DOI

  • For much of the post war period in the United States, sociological research on class consciousness has tended to be limited to and by survey methods, with the result that class consciousness has been viewed as a static, individuated phenomenon, abstracted from social action and the context of class practices.

    From Class Consciousness to Culture, Action, and Social Organization · 1995 · DOI

  • We may, in fact, be moving away from pluralistic societies with open political institutions toward international control struc- tures, with decisions limited to the upper hierarchical levels of industry and finance. But as Kornhauser (1959) has pointed out, it is not so much that primary groups are lacking as that they are not inherently related to larger secondary groups.

    Factors Affecting Social Change: A Social‐Psychological Interpretation · 1974 · DOI

  • , Higbie and Hammond, 1966; Mintz, 1967; Hammond and Hibgie, 1968; Lin, Garvey, and Nelson, 1970, Leonard and Schmitt, 1973), it has not been examined extensively.

    Academic Representation and Substantive Concerns of Five Annual Meetings of the North Central Sociological Association · 1974 · DOI

  • Clearly, his choice is not infinite; it follows from everything said so far that it is limited by the demand of representativeness. For one thing, the sociologist cannot impose his own view of the world on others without any regard for the extent to which it may or may not be representative of theirs.

    The Role of Experience in the Construction of Social Theory: An Essay in Reflexive Sociology · 1973 · DOI

  • But it is clear that the fact that sociology took root essentially in universities (in contrast to eco- nomics and demography) and the structure of university roles which charac- terizes all European universities up to the Second World War, contribute to this explanation: the division of labour which is implied by the carrying out of a survey was scarcely compatible with the atomization concomitant with a university chair.

    The sociology crisis · 1972 · DOI

  • In pursuit of this object Parsons proposed that orientations to action could be investigated schematically in terms of a limited number of pure types. o r g / a t E a s t C a r o l i n a U n i v e r s i t y o n A p r i l 2 3 , 2 0 1 5 32 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 55 as before: the identification of structural types, the formal differentia- tion of past and present, is effected with such elan and internal cogency that it ends up by apparently making unnecessary any further study of the intervening structuring through which the past presum- ably became the present.

    THE SENSE OF THE PAST AND THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLOGY · 1972 · DOI

  • His analysis of the division of labour, and the conception of moral authority and individual freedom which he built upon it, is of enduring significance; more than half a century after his death, these have not yet been fully explored on a level commensurate with the subtlety and imagination of their creator.

    Durkheim's Political Sociology · 1971 · DOI

  • The British Association's attempt to cut off its economics section in 1876 was justified on the grounds tihat economics was insufficiently scientific, and Ruskin was frequently held up as an example of a truly scientific economist.

    The Sociological Movement, the Sociological Society and the Genesis of Academic Sociology in Britain · 1968 · DOI

  • Although political sociologists have so far only touched upon the interrelation between the organizational imperatives and the representativeness of voluntary associations, there are many theoretical problems and questions of fact which remain to be dealt with. Such a discrepancy between political conservatism and tactical militancy-just like the opposite combination, say, between the political radicalism and the tactical conservatism of the German Social Democratic Party-are hardly illuminated by further studies of the &dquo;iron law of oligarchy,&dquo; although in both cases the organizations were ruled by leaders who perpetuated themselves in office.

    Political Sociology · 1957 · DOI

  • These practices vary widely in scope, institutional anchoring, and democratic ambition, and beneath the uniform rhetoric, participation remains an ambiguous and contested concept.

    Engagements with participation: Pragmatic perspectives, two decades on · 2025 · DOI

  • By exploring concepts insufficiently explored by Schütz in a third step, such as Husserl’s notion of intentionality and its equivalent in Max Scheler’s thought (the frame of mind), we will explore the empirical potential of phenomenology.

    Founding Phenomenological Sociology With Alfred Schütz and Max Scheler · 2024 · DOI

  • We argue that attention to practices can strengthen the systematic, comparative analysis of social movements both by calling attention to previously under-studied types of activities and by illuminating the relationships between different types of practices.

    Theorizing Social Movement Practices · 2023 · DOI

  • We argue that a more constructive tone is warranted and explain how his criticism is largely based on a selective reading and misinterpretation of the vast literature on framing and social movements.

    An imperious, closed sandbox? A rejoinder to Van Dijk’s critique of the framing perspective on social movement mobilization · 2023 · DOI

  • For example, studies of women’s political involvement that did not account for difference among groups of women failed to account for how ethno-racial, sexual orientation, nativity, disability, or religion may have influenced women’s political experiences and political outcomes.

    Intersectionality in Political Science · 2021 · DOI

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67 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 5,325 Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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