Current Sociology

Values and morality are the key concepts sociologists have been using to emphasize the normative dimension of social behavior since the very dawn of our discipline. Yet, while one can find two modern traditions of research concentrated around the concepts of values and morality in sociology, the strict relations between them are rarely explicitly addressed. In this article, we aim to analyze the concepts of values and morality as used in sociological theory and research, specifying the core meanings and contexts in which sociologists employ either of them. Based on this, we propose four analytical optics – empirical vs theoretical emphasis, moral vs non-moral values, bottom-up vs top-down approach, realism vs relativism – that help clarify the crucial features of the two strands in comparison to each other while suggesting the ways by which they may further complement each other.

In Germany, equality between men and women in mathematics, particularly in scientific leadership positions, is far from being achieved. This is despite to different equality measures implemented over the last few decades. Grounded in sociology of knowledge, interaction theory, and field theory, this article analyzes possible causes and mechanisms that maintain gender differences in a mathematical cluster of excellence in which gender equality is formulated as a goal and implemented in various measures. Based on 65 semi-structured interviews, the focus is on the self-perceptions of female early career researchers as mathematicians, as well as the (gendered) attributions they have to deal with by (male and female) scientists in leadership positions against the background of the specific culture in a mathematical cluster of excellence. We highlight the tensions that female early career researchers identify in being regarded as women when they want to be perceived and recognized first as mathematicians. We shed light on how this tension is connected to the discipline and (re)produced by scientists in leadership positions in their patterns of interpretation about equality (measures).

Developmental states see a vital role for women in development, but women do not always share the state’s enthusiasm. In development circles, this is still treated largely as a problem to fix, so how women make sense of their own participation in development projects is a crucial understudied question. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 50 semi-structured interviews, we use the case of community development meetings in rural Ethiopia as a window into women’s engagement in state-led development projects. Women farmers tended to explain their absence by citing a woman’s need to care for the household as a mother, a finding that seemed to support prior research on the negative consequences of the gendered caregiving burden. But in-depth analysis, particularly of exceptional cases when women did participate, showed that a woman’s need to care for the household as a mother operated not as a static harmful cultural expectation, but as a discursive resource that women farmers could use to avoid the developmental state – or justify their engagement in state-led activities. As such, this article contributes to research on carework, gender, and development of a fuller and more nuanced account of the strengths and limitations of motherhood expectations in development contexts.

The impact of shocks and crises on workers and workers’ crisis coping strategies are issues of global concern and have generated a rich literature on resilience and sustainable livelihoods. Drawing on insights from social reproduction theory and biographical-narrative research, we draw lessons for the resilience literature from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers in a high-outmigration area of Eastern Europe. The area had some of the highest mortality and lowest vaccination rates in the European Union and is heavily dependent on remittances from work in German, Italian, and British agriculture, construction, and cleaning and care services. We use biographical interviews to show how respondents’ coping capacity builds on previous experiences of crisis and on social relationships and care arrangements at work and home, which are both sources of support and vulnerability; and we discuss why young workers in sectors deemed ‘essential’ during the pandemic were particularly vulnerable. By showing how care arrangements translate into both support and pressure, our findings speak to global debates about resilience and its costs for workers in high migration areas and beyond.

The refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016 were largely housed in village communities where people did not previously have extensive exposure to cultural diversity. This article focuses on the relationships between refugees and the volunteers who support them as they arrive in their new communities, which were examined over a long-term period based on qualitative data. It also examines the role of perceptions of reciprocity and conflict resolution between volunteers and refugees in fostering trust. When relationships are perceived as reciprocal, trust develops; when reciprocity is blocked or denied, mistrust emerges. In addition, when conflicts are addressed in a productive manner, trust can be repaired or even strengthened. Since the sociological literature on trust usually assumes that it flourishes where there is no conflict, this is a surprising finding. The article illustrates on a micro-level what might be a valuable perspective on pluralistic societies in general: The integrative role of conflict.

This article presents findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of racism and sexism of Chinese-origin women living in the Netherlands during the pandemic. The emergence of the COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, and its labeling as the ‘Chinese virus’ in public discourse has triggered xenophobia and racial discrimination against people of Chinese and Asian descent worldwide. This study seeks to shed light on how women of Chinese origin residing in the Netherlands experienced racism during the pandemic, the intersectionality of racism and sexism, and their coping strategies. Participants’ orientations toward the possibilities of digital media in relation to their coping strategies were also explored. Espousing a multiactor frame of reference, semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 Chinese women residing in four major Dutch cities located within the Randstad Region (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht) as well as one nongovernmental organization representative, one artist, and one activist. Participants’ narratives provide rich insights for feminist and antiracist work in the context of coping with racism, evaluations of Dutch society and gendered stereotypes of Asian women.

Scholars frequently associate vaccine hesitancy with the effects of neoliberalism, including healthism culture, intensive mothering ideology, and a decrease in institutional trust. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring this link outside of established democracies, in a society that diverges from liberal principles on both political and institutional levels. Using qualitative interviews with middle-class Russian mothers, I trace how their doubts about vaccination reflect the specificities of neoliberal parenting in the contradictory post-socialist context. Research findings show that the mix of statist and neoliberal trends in Russian welfare translates into parents’ different perspectives on (state) institutions. This heterogeneity, in turn, leads to variation in their vaccine hesitancy, with parents oscillating between civic and consumerist critiques. Disunity of views and political restrictions on grassroots activism hinder mothers’ open opposition to vaccination. However, my interviewees still demonstrate institutional agency. They exercise it by developing informal workarounds and navigating paid healthcare options. As mothers repeatedly enact those diverse solutions, they routinize vaccine-hesitant parenting scripts and stimulate the development of organizational niches for unvaccinated children at the margins of the established welfare system.