scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
JournalISSN: 0038-0261

The Sociological Review 

Wiley-Blackwell
About: The Sociological Review is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Poison control & Suicide prevention. It has an ISSN identifier of 0038-0261. Over the lifetime, 3677 publications have been published receiving 132395 citations. The journal is also known as: The Sociological Review.


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a scientific and economic controversy about the causes for the decline in the population of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay and the attempts by three marine biologists to develop a conservation strategy for that population.
Abstract: This paper outlines a new approach to the study of power, that of the sociology of translation. Starting from three principles, those of agnosticism (impartiality between actors engaged in controversy), generalised symmetry (the commitment to explain conflicting viewpoints in the same terms) and free association (the abandonment of all a priori distinctions between the natural and the social), the paper describes a scientific and economic controversy about the causes for the decline in the population of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay and the attempts by three marine biologists to develop a conservation strategy for that population. Four ‘moments’ of translation are discerned in the attempts by these researchers to impose themselves and their definition of the situation on others: (a) problematisation: the researchers sought to become indispensable to other actors in the drama by denning the nature and the problems of the latter and then suggesting that these would be resolved if the actors negotiated the ‘obl...

5,884 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness.
Abstract: Is it possible to devise a set of concepts that could replace the technology/society divide? This set of new concepts - association and substitution - might help to rephrase some of the traditional questions of social order and especially that of the durability of domination of power. However, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range. By reconstructing networks it is argued that a full description of power and domination may be obtained.

2,040 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the heterogeneous processes of social and technical change, and in particular the dynamics of techno-economic networks, by considering the way in which actors and intermediaries are constituted and define one another within such networks in the course of translation.
Abstract: This paper explores the heterogeneous processes of social and technical change, and in particular the dynamics of techno-economic networks. It starts by considering the way in which actors and intermediaries are constituted and define one another within such networks in the course of translation. It then explores, first the way in which parts of such heterogeneous networks converge to create unified spaces linking incommensurable elements, and second how some of these links achieve longevity and tend to shape future processes of translation.

1,698 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The paper explores one after the other the four difficulties of actor-network theory, that is the words ‘actor’, ‘network’ and ‘theory’—without forgetting the hyphen.
Abstract: The paper explores one after the other the four difficulties of actor-network theory, that is the words ‘actor’, ‘network’ and ‘theory’—without forgetting the hyphen. It tries to refocus the originality of what is more a method to deploy the actor's own world building activities than an alternative social theory. Finally, it sketches some of its remaining potential.

1,606 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a diffusion model of power in which a successful command moves under an impetus given it from a central source is contrasted with a translation model in which such a command, if it is successful, results from the actions of a chain of agents each of whom 'translates' it in accordance with his/her own projects.
Abstract: This article starts with a paradox: when an actor simply has power nothing happens and s/he is powerless; when, on the other hand, an actor exerts power it is others who perform the action. It appears that power is not something one can possess – indeed it must be treated as a consequence rather than as a cause of action. In order to explore this paradox a diffusion model of power in which a successful command moves under an impetus given it from a central source is contrasted with a translation model in which such a command, if it is successful, results from the actions of a chain of agents each of whom ‘translates’ it in accordance with his/her own projects. Since, in the translation model, power is composed here and now by enrolling many actors in a given political and social scheme, and is not something that can be stored up and given to the powerful by a pre-existing ‘society’, it follows that debates about the origins of society, the nature of its components, and their relationships become crucial data for the sociologist. It also follows that the nature of society is negotiable, a practical and revisable matter (performative), and not something that can be determined once and for all by the sociologist who attempts to stand outside it (ostensive). The sociologist should, accordingly, seek to analyse the way in which people are associated together, and should, in particular, pay attention to the material and extrasomatic resources (including inscriptions) that offer ways of linking people that may last longer than any given interaction. In the translation model the study of society therefore moves from the study of the social as this is usually conceived, to a study of methods of association.

1,594 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
20235
2021194
2020110
2019101
201890
201793