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Journal ArticleDOI

Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference

01 Jun 1970-British Journal of Sociology-Vol. 21, Iss: 2, pp 231
About: This article is published in British Journal of Sociology.The article was published on 1970-06-01. It has received 4205 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Social organization & Ethnic group.
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22 Nov 2012
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the global rise of the nation-state and its formation and war, and the role of ethnic politics and armed conflict in the creation of a nation state.
Abstract: 1. Introduction and summary 2. The birth of the nation 3. The global rise of the nation-state 4. Nation-state formation and war 5. Ethnic politics and armed conflict 6. Can peace be engineered? 7. Conclusion Appendices.

205 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a synthesis of these two fields that adjoins conventional qualitative methods and new techniques for automated analysis of large amounts of text in iterative fashion.
Abstract: The rise of the Internet, social media, and digitized historical archives has produced a colossal amount of text-based data in recent years. While computer scientists have produced powerful new tools for automated analyses of such “big data,” they lack the theoretical direction necessary to extract meaning from them. Meanwhile, cultural sociologists have produced sophisticated theories of the social origins of meaning, but lack the methodological capacity to explore them beyond micro-levels of analysis. I propose a synthesis of these two fields that adjoins conventional qualitative methods and new techniques for automated analysis of large amounts of text in iterative fashion. First, I explain how automated text extraction methods may be used to map the contours of cultural environments. Second, I discuss the potential of automated text-classification methods to classify different types of culture such as frames, schema, or symbolic boundaries. Finally, I explain how these new tools can be combined with conventional qualitative methods to trace the evolution of such cultural elements over time. While my assessment of the integration of big data and cultural sociology is optimistic, my conclusion highlights several challenges in implementing this agenda. These include a lack of information about the social context in which texts are produced, the construction of reliable coding schemes that can be automated algorithmically, and the relatively high entry costs for cultural sociologists who wish to develop the technical expertise currently necessary to work with big data.

198 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A central dilemma is: to what extent are health disparities the result of unequal distribution of resources, and thus a consequence of varied socioeconomic status (or blatant racism), and t how much are they a result of varied socio-economic status?
Abstract: Eliminating the well-documented health disparities found within the United States population is a laudable public policy goal. Social justice demands that we understand the sources of health inequality in order to eliminate them. A central dilemma is: To what extent are health disparities the result f unequal distribution of resources, and thus a consequence of varied socioeconomic status (or blatant racism), and t what extent are…

193 citations