Feeling the scope of solidarity: the role of emotions for volunteers supporting refugees in Germany

In recent political debates in Germany, volunteers and citizens who support the cause of refugees are often accused of being "too emotional". Based mainly on empirical evidence from 10 group discussions and 35 individual interviews with volunteers, conducted in 2016, this article undertakes a sociological analysis of the role of emotions for volunteers

Two Ontological Orientations in Sociology: Building Social Ontologies and Blurring the Boundaries of the 'Social'

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The article highlights two contrasting ways in which social theorists have been trying to define the ontological boundaries of sociology since the early days of the discipline. Some (e.g. Durkheim, Weber, and critical realists) have attempted to demarcate social reality as a causally autonomous and qualitatively distinct realm in a segmented/stratified universe. Others (e.g. Tarde, Spencer, Luhmann, sociobiologists, and actor-network theorists) have postulated a more open (or flat) ontological space and blurred such demarcations by either rejecting the causal autonomy of sociological phenomena, or their qualitative distinctiveness, or both. So far, there has been little convergence between these two orientations since according to the former, the opening of the boundaries is likely to give way to reductionist conceptions of society, whereas the latter tends to associate rigid boundaries with essentialism. Through a close examination of these opposing orientations, the article aims to shed light on current ontological dilemmas of sociology. © 2014, © The Author(s) 2014

Adapting, Defending and Transforming Ourselves: Conceptualizations of Self Practices in the Social Science Literature

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Self practices – mental and bodily activities through which individuals try to give a shape to their existence – have been a topic of interest in the social science literature for over a century now. These studies bring into focus that such activities play important roles in our relationship to our social environment. But beyond this general insight we still do not have a framework for elucidating what kind of roles/uses have been attributed to self practices by social theorists historically. Through an analysis of the works of 5 major contributors to the literature (Durkheim, Mauss, Simmel, Giddens and Foucault), the article highlights three distinct conceptualizations, which draw attention to the adaptive, defensive and transformative uses of self practices. Adaptive uses allow individuals to adjust their conduct to collective norms; defensive uses serve the maintenance and protection of self-identity despite de-individualizing pressures; and transformative self practices target the development of alternative ways of living. It is further suggested that the framework developed in the article can provide important clues about the different ‘practical’ solutions offered by social theorists to the problems that modern individuals face in constituting themselves as autonomous subjects

More Network Conscious than Ever? Challenges, strategies and analytic labor of users in the Facebook Environment

Cataloged from PDF version of article.As is widely observed, social network sites (SNS) constitute a new environment of interaction where users encounter various challenges that they usually do not encounter in other environments. This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of how users deal with the challenges in this unique environment, paying particular attention to the ways in which they examine and reflect on their social ties and networks. On the basis of 36 semistructured interviews with Facebook users, the article presents the hypothesis that participants of SNS develop a tendency to become highly observant and inquisitive about their networks and are frequently involved in an activity that the authors call analytic labor. © 2013 International Communication Association

Voluntarios y solicitantes de asilo

La gente de las comunidades donde han llegado solicitantes de asilo y refugiados les ofrece diversas formas de apoyo ya que los Estados no les han provisto ni siquiera de lo esencial

xDBTagger: Explainable Natural Language Interface to Databases Using Keyword Mappings and Schema Graph

Translating natural language queries (NLQ) into structured query language (SQL) in interfaces to relational databases is a challenging task that has been widely studied by researchers from both the database and natural language processing communities. Numerous works have been proposed to attack the natural language interfaces to databases (NLIDB) problem either as a conventional pipeline-based or an end-to-end deep-learning-based solution. Nevertheless, regardless of the approach preferred, such solutions exhibit black-box nature, which makes it difficult for potential users targeted by these systems to comprehend the decisions made to produce the translated SQL. To this end, we propose xDBTagger, an explainable hybrid translation pipeline that explains the decisions made along the way to the user both textually and visually. We also evaluate xDBTagger quantitatively in three real-world relational databases. The evaluation results indicate that in addition to being fully interpretable, xDBTagger is effective in terms of accuracy and translates the queries more efficiently compared to other state-of-the-art pipeline-based systems up to 10000 times.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures. This work is the extended version of arXiv:2101.04226 that appeared in PVLDB'2

Duality and diversity in the lives of immigrant children: Rethinking the "problem of the second generation" in light of immigrant autobiographies

In light of immigrant autobiographies written in 20th-century North America, this paper examines the widespread thesis that children of immigrants are caught between their parental community and the host society, and therefore constitute a "problem group." Autobiographies provide a more complex picture than what this model portrays, indicating not just an "ambivalent" existence but also a life imbued with dreams of a new identity. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's work on "minor literature," the author suggests that the realization of these dreams is a central aspect of the so-called "problem of the second generation"

Social distance and affective orientations

Most groups have social distance norms that differentiate "us" from "them." Contrary to a widespread assumption in the sociological literature, however, these normative distinctions, even when they are collectively recognized, do not always overlap with the affective orientations of group members in a uniform manner. Relations between normatively close members of a group are not always warm and friendly, and normatively distant groups can sometimes be an object of reverence and love. In this study, a typology of five different ways in which normatively distant groups can be perceived is presented: as competitors, allies, symbols of otherness, saviors, and ambivalent figures. Each type tends to emerge under certain circumstances and triggers different affective orientations. This typology is not a substitute for a general theory, but it aims to provide preliminary insights for investigating why affective orientations toward normatively distant groups take different forms and, more generally, to motivate further inquiry into the relationships between different dimensions of social distance. © 2009 Eastern Sociological Society

The uses of the stranger: Circulation, arbitration, secrecy, and dirt

Little attention has been paid to the role of strangers in the social division of labor that is otherwise a key concept in sociological theory. Partly drawing upon Simmel, this article develops a general framework for analyzing the "uses" of "the stranger" throughout history. Four major domains in which strangers have often been employed are identified: (1) circulation (of goods, money, and information); (2) arbitration; (3) management of secret/sacred domains; and (4) "dirty jobs," The article also explores how these activities relate to the characteristics of stranger-relations. It is suggested that such an inquiry, in addition to helping us to understand how the presence of strangers in a society affects the processes of social differentiation, might equip us with a conceptual framework often lacking from purely political and ethical considerations of stranger-relations. © American Sociological Association