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Full-Text Articles in Theory, Knowledge and Science
The Continued Importance Of Research With Children And Youth: The “New” Sociology Of Childhood 40 Years Later, Melissa Swauger, Ingrid E. Castro, Brent D. Harger
The Continued Importance Of Research With Children And Youth: The “New” Sociology Of Childhood 40 Years Later, Melissa Swauger, Ingrid E. Castro, Brent D. Harger
Sociology Faculty Publications
This chapter presents the broad themes of this special issue by introducing the contributions and connections among the chapters in the volume. Recent theoretical constructions of childhood have positioned children as social actors resulting in a growth of child- and youth-centered empirical research. Yet, there is a continued importance for researchers to discuss ethical issues that arise in research with youth, contend with the competing constructions of children as social agents and in need of protection, and explore innovative methodological strategies used in research with youth.
Between Structure And Agency: Assassination, Social Forces, And The Production Of The Criminal Subject, Cary H. Federman
Between Structure And Agency: Assassination, Social Forces, And The Production Of The Criminal Subject, Cary H. Federman
Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Assassins are often regarded as ahistorical figures of evil. In this article, I contest this view by analyzing the assassination of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz in 1901. There are two purposes to this article. The first is to situate McKinley’s assassination within the history and development of the social sciences, principally sociology, rather than assume that the assassin is a trans-historical representation of willful irresponsibility. The second is to describe and critique the discourse that made Czolgosz into a rational agent once he entered history as an assassin.
Agency: The Internal Split Of Structure, Yong Wang
Agency: The Internal Split Of Structure, Yong Wang
Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
In this article I first examine the ways in which the dual terms of structure and agency are used in sociological theories. Then, relying on Lacan’s notions of split‐subject, the formula of sexuation, and forms of discourses, and Laclau’s theory of ideological hegemony, I argue that agency in most current sociological formulations is but a posited other of the structure that dissolves if examined closely; it is similar to the Lacanian fantasmic object. To resolve the fundamental paradoxes in structure‐agency theories, I reformulate structures as paradoxical, incomplete, and contingent symbolic formations that are always partial and unstable due to their …