Discipline | Sociology |
---|---|
Language | English |
Edited by | Dresden Lackey, Cameron Lippard |
Publication details | |
Former name(s) | Humanity and Society |
History | 1977–present |
Publisher | |
Frequency | Quarterly |
Standard abbreviations | |
ISO 4 | Humanity Soc. |
Indexing | |
ISSN | 0160-5976 (print) 2372-9708 (web) |
LCCN | 78640820 |
OCLC no. | 779578500 |
Links | |
Humanity & Society is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by SAGE Publications, and is the official journal of the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS). Established in 1977, the journal covers all aspects of sociology while focusing on issues of injustice, human suffering and social activism from a humanist point of view. [1] [2] The editors-in-chief are Dresden Lackey (Wofford College) and Cameron Lippard (Appalachian State). [3] [4]
The journal awards an annual Distinguished Paper Award to "the article that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of empirical, methodological, and/or theoretical research in humanist sociology." [5]
An associated publication, The Humanist Sociologist, serves as a newsletter and features shorter reports and opinion pieces. [6] [7]
At the 1976 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), the founding organizational meeting of the Association for Humanist Sociology was held. [1] [8] The president of the ASA, Alfred McClung Lee, having run into resistance against his efforts to reform the ASA, organized the formation of the AHS to be distinct and outside of the structure of the ASA. The first issue of The Humanist Sociologist newsletter was published later that year, and the first issue of the Humanity & Society journal was published in 1977, the only issue published that year. Beginning in 1978, the journal was published quarterly.
With the journal's focus outside of mainstream sociology, article themes have included "human liberation", "unity and coalition building", "analysis of oppression and inequality", "studies of specific minority and disadvantaged minority groups" and "social change". [8]
The journal would also inform potential contributors that, "authors of articles will be asked to include information as to the primary moral and/or value commitments, as well as their commitments to any particular sociological paradigm ... [and] 'domain assumptions' that undergird their analyses." [1]
The first editor of the journal was sociologist Charles P. Flynn. Although Al and Betty Lee never exercised control or edited the journal, it reflected their concern for issues of injustice, human suffering and social activism. [1] The quarterly The Humanist Sociologist newsletter was initially developed and edited by Richard H.Wells. [9]
A review of the first two years of Humanity & Society published in the Contemporary Sociology journal described how it seeks "to redraw the domain of sociological discourse, theoretically, philosophically, substantively, or ethically. They challenge the status quo and the dominant tendency of current publications. Thus they are more difficult to evaluate by conventional standards." According to this review, the journal and a couple journals like it show that the field of humanistic and interactionist sociology are active fields of inquiry, after neglect on the part of the major journals in sociology. The journal was described as having opened up previously restricted channels for qualitative sociologists to publish their empirical work. [10]
Peter Ludwig Berger was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theoretical contributions to sociological theory.
The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fifty people, the first president of the association would be Lester Frank Ward. Today, most of its members work in academia, while around 20 percent of them work in government, business, or non-profit organizations.
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Microsociology is one of the main levels of analysis of sociology, concerning the nature of everyday human social interactions and agency on a small scale: face to face. Microsociology is based on subjective interpretative analysis rather than statistical or empirical observation, and shares close association with the philosophy of phenomenology. Methods include symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology; ethnomethodology in particular has led to many academic sub-divisions and studies such as micro-linguistical research and other related aspects of human social behaviour. Macrosociology, by contrast, concerns the social structure and broader systems.
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Humanistic sociology is a domain of sociology which originated mainly from the work of the University of Chicago Polish philosopher-turned-sociologist, Florian Znaniecki. It is a methodology which treats its objects of study and its students, that is, humans, as composites of values and systems of values. In certain contexts, the term is related to other sociological domains such as antipositivism. Humanistic sociology seeks to shed light on questions such as, "What is the relationship between a man of principle and a man of opportunism?"
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Sociology in Poland has been developing, as has sociology throughout Europe, since the mid-19th century. Although, due to the Partitions of Poland, that country did not exist as an independent state in the 19th century or until the end of World War I, some Polish scholars published work clearly belonging to the field of sociology.
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency to macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenological method.
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