You are kindly invited to read and comment on the articles, which are available at the following addresses:

Issue 2 / 2011: Empirical evidence- varieties of sociological argumentation

Volume 2, Number 2, November 2011

Invited commentary

Ionela Băluță / Fermeture sociale, différence et diversité: des enjeux identitaires

Research articles

Ana Maria Borlescu / Being a homeopath. Learning and practice in a homeopathic community

Iulia Gheorghiu / Truth or story or true story? The self in the interview situation

Andrada-Mihaela Istrate / From pathological to professional: gambling stories

Andreea Lazăr / Transnational migration studies. Reframing sociological imagination and research

Ștefania Matei / Media and migration. Layers of knowledge in Romanian written press

Bogdan Mihai Radu / Parental involvement in schools. A study of resources, mobilization, and inherent inequality

Cătălin Pavel / Rational choice in field archaelology

Book reviews

Simona Ciotlăuș / Matthew Engelke (ed.), 2009, The Objects of Evidence. Anthropological approaches to the production of knowledge

Andra Letiția Jacob Larionescu / Bauman, Zygmunt, 2011, Culture in a Liquid Modern World, Cambridge and Malden, Polity

Lecture reviews

Alin Croitoru / Carl Christian von Weizsäcker, 2011, Homo Oeconomicus Adaptivus

List of Compaso reviewers in 2010-2011 

Extended deadline for manuscript submission: 20 February 2012

Send articles, research notes and book reviews to:

compaso@compaso.eu

In the early 19^th century, Johann Pestalozzi introduced object lessons to encourage children to learn from direct experience, in a progression of touch, story and abstraction. His telling objects have been gradually replaced or insistently accompanied by photos, stories and theories: objects are recalcitrant and do not stick to authorized interpretations, they do not always give pupils the proper stories. Truth be told, objects are often dangerous – but also seductive, affording effective action, play and intimate knowledge.

The Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology – Compaso invites articles attending to special objects and their distinctive work in social interaction, with a focus on learning and knowledge creation.

After a period of low profiling, objects in social research have gradually recovered their everyday life significance (Preda, 1999; Turkle, 2007).  Objects are found in many places and spaces (Law & Singleton, 2005) when inquiring into world-and-knowledge-in-the-making.  They may bear plain names in unorthodox theoretical stories, for instance (from A to D) anaemia, anthrax, alcoholic liver disease, canoe head, computer, denim, diabetes, door hinge, or Doppler apparatus. Some are special objects marked as such by dedicated names. Novel concepts point to their unfamiliar ontology or work. The much discussed immutable mobiles (Latour, 1986) and boundary objects (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Bowker & Star, 1999; Star, 2010; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Trompette & Vinck, 2009), fluid objects (Mol & Law, 1994), fire objects (Law & Singleton, 2005), affiliative objects (Suchman, 2005), or epistemic objects (Knorr Cetina, 2001; Rheinberger, 1997) are some of the notions that challenge previous theoretical threads as well as one another. Theorized objects thus become increasingly interlinked in research accounts – while also multiplying independently. All in all, a small army of objects scaffold knowledgeability (Orlikowski, 2006) and perform competing and heterogeneous realities (Law, 2010).

We invite contributions that guide reflection on objects-good-to-think-with (Turkle, 2010; 2008), including – but not limited to – the following topics:

• Materiality of knowledge: the mutual constitution of objects and knowledge;
• Temporal structures of objects and knowledge, and the materiality of time;
• Boundary objects in learning and knowledge creation;
• Objects in distributed cognition: aggregating knowledge in groups, environments and across time;
• Affordances: how objects invite actions and knowledge by virtue of their sensory structures, inscriptions, aesthetics, and other features that orient action;
• Objects that fade into invisibility and objects that rise to prominence: experiencing objects from the ordinary to the remarkable;
• Observability of objects and their workings, in social research.

Articles that engage in a comparative approach, connecting different concepts, materials, methods, situations, pieces of research or other social realities, are particularly welcome. Please check the Journal’s website for guidelines on manuscript submission: http://compaso.ro/instructions-for-authors/

References

Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011). Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 132-169.

Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. New Baskerville: MIT Press.

Knorr Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (pp. 184-197). London: Routledge.

Latour, B. (1986). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands. Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, 6, 1-40.

Law, J. (2010). Reality Failures. Retrieved August 28, 2011, from http://heterogeneities.net/publications/Law2010RealityFailures5.pdf.

Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2005). Object Lessons. Organization, 12(3), 331-355.

Mol, A., & Law, J. (1994). Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology. Social Studies of Science, 24(4), 641-671.

Orlikowski, W. J. (2006). Material knowing: the scaffolding of human knowledgeability. European Journal of Information Systems, 15(5), 460-466. Nature Publishing Group.

Preda, A. (1999). The Turn to Things: Arguments for a Sociological Theory of Things. The Sociological Quarterly, 40(2), 347-366. doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1999.tb00552.x.

Rheinberger, H.-J. (1997). Toward a history of epistemic things: synthesizing proteins in the test tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Star, S. L. (2010). This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept. Science, Technology & Human Values, 35(5), 601-617.

Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional Ecology, `Translationsʼ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387-420.

Suchman, L. (2005). Affiliative Objects. Organization, 12(3), 379-399.

Trompette, P., & Vinck, D. (2009). Revisiting the notion of Boundary Object. Revue dʼanthropologie des connaissances, Vol. 3(1), 3-25. S.A.C.

Turkle, S. (2010). Object Lessons. In M. M. Suárez-Orozco & C. Sattin-Bajaj (Eds.), Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World (pp. 109-123). New York: New York University Press.

Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2007). Evocative Objects: Things to Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2008). Falling for Science. Objects in Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

You are kindly invited to read and comment on the articles, which are available at the following addresses:

Issue 1 / 2011: Social closure and identities

Volume 2, Number 1, May 2011

Research articles

Laurence Bachmann / Women’s struggle for emancipation through their dealings with money

Larissa Bamberry / The evolution of social closure in school education in New South Wales, Australia

Stefanie Börner / Social closure and social policy. The debates on social opening within benefit societies in the advent of national health insurance

Lucie Cviklová / Social closure and discriminatory practices related to the Roma minority in the Czech Republic through the perspective of national and European institutions

Fred Dervin / The repression of us- and we-hoods in European exchange students’ narratives about their experiences in Finland

Yi-Hsuan Chelsea Kuo / Subversions of the social hierarchy: social closure as adaptation strategy

Christin Heß / Post-Soviet repatriation and nationhood in Germany and Greece

Guy Lanoue, Vincent Mirza, Jorge Pantaleon / The Impending Collapse of the European Urban Middle Class: The European Union’s De-naturing of Space and Place

Andrea Solyom / High school and university students’ opinions about politics

Essays

Miriam Cihodariu / A rough guide to musical anthropology

Sami Schalk / Self, Other and Other-Self: Going Beyond the Self/Other Binary in Contemporary Consciousness

Constantin Schifirneț / The Europeanization of the Romanian Society and the Tendential Modernity

Book reviews

Alin Croitoru The mineriads: between political manipulation and workers’ solidarity by Alin  Rus; 2007, Bucharest, Curtea Veche

Send articles, research notes and book reviews to:

compaso@compaso.eu

The Journal invites contributions to its fourth issue: Empirical evidence.

Sociology and anthropology assume various epistemologies that inform the process of knowledge production. Frequently, yet seldom acknowledged, disciplinary protocols are premised on the idea that to do science means to employ a depersonalizing gaze on the social data that, simultaneously, evacuates the so-called subjective influence in the constitution of a research object.

The forthcoming issue of Compaso aims to interrogate polished accounts of social research by focusing on the idea that disciplinary protocols frame empirical evidence, which is, thus, relational and socially embedded. Contributors are invited to reflect on the possibilities to bring experiences and data emerging in particular research situations to bear on our inquiries. Relevant questions to this discussion include, among others:

-          How are research questions related to the empirical evidence that we mobilize to discuss them? How do questions shape experiences and data, and how are questions, in turn, shaped or created by our engagement in empirical pursuits?

-          What are we to make of the quantitative versus qualitative distinction? Is it, or not, a helpful tool to orient research?

-          What hidden realities may be pursued empirically? What are the assumptions, limits, risks and hopes in the investigation of un-observables – such as implicit meanings, true motives, intimate experiences, latent variables, or shared social norms?

-          In particular, can we investigate rationality empirically? How can we observe rationality and its evil twin – irrationality?  On the other hand, can we rely on an assumption of human rationality as an instrument for our empirical inquiries? After all, how can the rationality concept be useful in empirical research?

-          What are the strategies to convert a collection of evidence assembled for one research question into empirical data for other inquiries? How can empirical evidence be “recycled”?

Articles that engage in a comparative approach, connecting different concepts, materials, methods, situations, pieces of research or other social realities, are particularly welcome.

Please check the Journal’s website for guidelines on manuscript submission: http://compaso.ro/instructions-for-authors/

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Appel à contributions: « Les arguments empiriques »

Date limite de soumission des communications: 30.06.2011

Les textes proposés (articles, notes de recherche ou comptes-rendus d’ouvrages) sont à envoyer au: journal[dot]compaso[at]gmail[dot]com

La Revue attend les contributions pour son quatrième numéro « Les arguments empiriques ».

La sociologie et l’anthropologie assument des épistémologies diverses qui nous informent sur le processus de fabrication du savoir.  Fréquemment, mais rarement avoué, les protocoles disciplinaires sont fondés sur l’idée que faire de la science veut dire considérer d’un regard dépersonnalisé les données sociales, en éliminant, simultanément, la soi-disant influence subjective dans la constitution de l’objet de recherche.

Ce numéro du Compaso a pour but d’interroger les comptes rendu des recherches sociales, en se focalisant sur l’idée que les protocoles disciplinaires encadrent les arguments empiriques, qui y sont donc relationnel et socialement ancrées. Les auteurs sont invités à réfléchir sur les possibilités d’apporter les expériences et les données émergeant dans des situations de recherche particulière, pour éclaircir nos questions. Ci-dessous, nous proposons quelques interrogations pertinentes pour notre débat, parmi d’autres :

-          Comment se rapportent les questions de recherche aux arguments empiriques dont nous nous mobilisons de discuter ? Comment les questions déterminent-elles les expériences et les données et comment, à leur tour, les question sont-elles influencées ou formulées par notre engagement dans la poursuite empirique ?

-          Comment pouvons- nous traiter la distinction qualitative – quantitative ? Est-elle un instrument utile dans l’orientation de la recherche ou pas?

-          Quelles sont les réalités cachées qui peuvent être étudiées d’une manière  empirique ? Quelle sont les suppositions, les limites, les risques et les chances dans les enquêtes sur les non-observables – comme, par exemple, le sens implicite, les vrais raisons, les expériences intimes, les variables latentes ou les normes sociales partagées ?

-          En particulier, avons-nous le droit d’analyser la rationalité empiriquement? Comment pouvons-nous observer la rationalité et son mauvais jumeau l’irrationalité ? D’autre part, sommes- nous en mesure de compter sur l’hypothèse de la rationalité humaine comme outil de nôtres recherches empiriques ? Finalement comment la notion de rationalité peut être utile dans la recherche empirique ?

-          Quelles sont les stratégies de transformer une base de données, assemblée pour répondre à une question de recherche, dans des données empiriques utilisées pour d’autres enquêtes ? Comment pouvons-nous « recycler » les arguments empiriques ?

Les articles qui s’engagent dans des approches comparatives, liant différents concepts, matériaux,  méthodes, situations, pièces de recherche ou d’autres réalités sociales sont les bienvenues.

Pour soumettre les manuscrits, consulter le site Web de la Revue: http://compaso.ro/instructions-for-authors/

 You are kindly invited to read and comment on the articles, which are available at the following addresses:

Issue 2 / 2010: Online lives

Volume 1, Number 2, October 2010

Invited article

Oana Mateescu / Introduction: Life in the Web 

Research articles

Laura Arosio / Personal documents on the Internet: what’s new and what’s old

Smadar Ben-Asher and Udi Lebel / Social structure vs. self rehabilitation: IDF widows forming an intimate relationship in the sociopolitical discourse

Greg Bowe B. A. Mod / Reading romance: the impact Facebook rituals can have on a romantic relationship

Ioana Cărtărescu / Utility of online communities – Ways one can benefit from one’s online life

Iulia Cornigeanu / The clones: A new phenomenon in the literary environment

Ioana Florea / Narrative online and offline spaces. Field notes from the becoming of an anthropologist

Gevisa la Rocca / Follow me on academia.edu: Analysis of a distraction online and of its consequences on daily life

Laura Nistor / The role of the Internet in shaping environmental concern. A focus on post-communist Europe

Alexandra Zontea / Advertising identities: virtual galleries as places of identity

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Rossalina Latcheva / Nationalism versus patriotism, or the floating border? National identification and ethnic exclusion in post-communist Bulgaria

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Book Reviews

Simona Ciotlăuș / Ethnography put to good use: researching the virtually human. Review of the book: Tom Boellstorff, “Coming of age in Second Life. An anthropologist explores Second Life”

Monica Costache / Eric Qualman, “Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business”

Andra Letiția Jacob / Pietro Cingolani, “Romeni d’Italia. Migrazioni, vita quotidiana e legami transnazionali”

Extended deadline for submission of papers: January 25, 2011

Send articles, research notes and book reviews to:

compaso@compaso.eu

The Journal invites contributions for its third issue: “Social closure and identities”. Authors are invited to explore the differentiation of “us” from “them”, its transformation and trespassing in various social classifications based on gender, ethnicity, occupation, lifestyles, body shapes, beliefs, or other marks.

The Call for papers invites contributions that clarify, for Journal readers, the social processes involved in social closure and social openings, and their relevance for shaping identities. Some of the topics which may be of interest in this reflection include:

- How are social borders created, maintained, transformed, discarded, or ignored?
- What repertoires of norms regulate border crossings?
- How do individuals approach social borders and their rules of use?
- How do moral concepts and judgments relate to processes of social closure?
- How are groups and group identities shaped and transformed?
- Does social closure shape in any way the process of sociological or anthropological research?

Illustration: “Border of time” by h.koppdelaney on Flickr

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Appel à communication: Les barrières sociales et les identités

La Revue de recherche comparative en anthropologie et sociologie ouvre son appel a contributions pour son troisième numéro: “Les barrières sociales et les identités”. Les articles ou notes de recherche doivent explorer les différenciations entre “notre” et “leur”, les transformations et le franchissement des frontières dans les diverses classifications sociales centrées sur le genre, l’ethnie, l’occupation, le style de vie, le corps, les croyances etc.

L’appel à  articles pour la revue accepte les contributions qui traitent les processus sociaux engagés dans la fermeture ou dans l’ouverture des barrières sociales. Quelques pistes de réflexions qui peuvent intéresser nos lecteurs sont proposées:

- Comment sont structurés et comment se transforment les groups et les identités de groupe?

- Comment sont crées, maintenues, transformées, quittées ou ignorées  les barrières sociales?

- Quels répertoires de normes règlent le franchissement des barrières sociales?

- Comment se fait l’approche des barrières sociales et de leurs réglementations par les individus?

- Comment se rapporte le processus de la constitution des barrières sociales aux concepts et aux jugements moraux?

- Comment les études sur les barrières sociales structurent le champ de la recherche sociologique et anthropologique?

 You are kindly invited to read and comment on the articles, which are available at the following addresses:

Issue 1 / 2010: Women and Men

Volume 1, Number 1, May 2010

Invited article

Laura Grünberg / Gendering research. From skepticism to trust. General contexts, local comments

Research articles

Edgar Burns / Women teachers and policemen: different career transition paths to becoming lawyers

Catarina Delaunay / Gender differentiation and new trends concerning the division of household labour within couples: the case of emergency physicians

Bogdana Humă / Gender differences in impression formation

Marta Maia / Construction identitaire, relations amoureuses et comportements sexuels à risque de jeunes de la banlieue parisienne

Shirley Sun Hsiao-Li / The “final say” is not the last word. Gendered patterns, perceptions, and processes in household decision making among Chinese immigrant couples in Canada

Research notes

Akinyemi Akanni & Aransiola Joshua / Gender perspectives in self assessment of quality of life of the elderly in South-Western Nigeria. Are there variations in quality of life among ageing male and female?

Chioma Daisy Ebeniro / Knowledge and beliefs about HIV/AIDS among male and female students of Nigerian Universities

Michael Olakunle Folami / Women’s response to the question of development in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Review articles

Lavinia Alexe / Romantic relationships and their transformation in the reflexive society – themes and methods in Jean-Claude Kaufmann’s surveys

Simona Ciotlăuș / Questioning subordination: women and feminism in anthropology

Irina Zamfirache / Women and politics – the glass ceiling

Send articles, research notes and book reviews to:

compaso@compaso.eu

The Journal invites contributions for its second issue: “Online lives”. Submitted articles and research notes should explore online experiences from a comparative perspective, including such topics as construction of identities, relationships and social networks, privacy and use of personal information, personal and professional communication.

This issue aims to examine questions such as:

• How do virtual worlds and information flows relate to our offline lives?
• How do people create and manage multiple identities, status/roles or social spaces in online surroundings?
• How do different generations, including children, experience the online environment?
• How does the Internet transform interpersonal communication in various social settings?
• How does the Internet change communication in organizations and markets?
• How is access to online information distributed across social spaces, and how does it affect existing social inequalities?
• How does the Internet contribute to methodological developments in sociology and anthropology?

[Cartoon source: Cartoons by Michael Cooke, Flickr user MJ Rap-Rock]

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Appel à communication: Des vies en ligne

Date limite de soumission des communications: 20.06.2010

Veuillez envoyer les articles, notes de recherche ou compte-rendus à:

La Revue invite aux contributions pour son deuxième numéro, « Des vies en ligne ». Les articles et les notes de recherche soumis doivent explorer des expériences en ligne, avec une approche comparative. Cela comprend également des sujets tels que la construction des identités, des relations et des réseaux sociaux, la vie privée et l’utilisation des données personnelles, la communication personnelle et professionnelle.

Ce numéro traite des questions telles que:

* Comment les mondes virtuels et les flux d’information se rapportent à notre vie hors ligne?
* Comment les gens créent et gèrent des identités multiples, des statuts / rôles ou des espaces sociaux dans un environnement en ligne?
* Comment les différentes générations, y compris les enfants, vivent-ils l’environnement en ligne?
* Comment la communication interpersonnelle (dans de divers contextes sociaux) est transformée par l’internet ?
* Comment la communication dans les organisations et marchés est changée par l’internet?
* Comment se passe l’accès aux informations en ligne, réparties dans des espaces sociaux, et quel est son impact sur les inégalités sociales?
* Comment l’internet contribue aux développements méthodologiques en sociologie et anthropologie?

[Illustration: Cartoons by Michael Cooke, Flickr user MJ Rap-Rock]

Deadline for submission of papers: January 31, 2010

Send articles, research notes and book reviews to:

compaso@compaso.eu

The Journal invites contributions for its first issue: “Women and Men”. Submitted articles and research notes should explore differences and similarities in experiences and perspectives of women and men around the globe, in various historical and cultural contexts. Papers that illustrate, explain and discuss the gendered construction of social institutions and individual life trajectories are welcome.

This issue aims to explore both specific and more general questions:

• What patterns of alikeness and dissimilarity between women and men can be found in social research data?
• How can these patterns be explained?
• What methods and techniques are best suited to investigate gender differences and gender effects? What are the methodological pitfalls in quantitative and qualitative comparisons of men and women?
• How should gender be understood and studied in sociological and anthropological research?