The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

Editors

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, USA. Among his awards are an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; and the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He has chaired the American Sociological Association's Section on Theoretical Sociology, as well as the Section on Organizations and Occupations. Among his books in metatheory are Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science (1974) and Metatheorizing in Sociology (1991). In the application of social theory to the social world, his books include The McDonaldization of Society (1993; 11th edition forthcoming with J. Michael Ryan, 2025), Enchanting a Disenchanted World (1999), and The Globalization of Nothing (2004; 2nd edition 2007). He has published two volumes of his collected works, one in theory and the other in the application of theory to the social world, especially consumption. In the latter area, he is founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He edited the Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists (2011) and coedited the Handbook of Social Theory (2003). He edited the first edition of the eleven-volume Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007), as well as the two-volume Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005). His books have been translated into over 20 languages, with more than a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.

Chris Rojek was previously a Senior Editor in Sociology with Routledge, London (1986-1994), and Publisher in Sociology with Sage Publications, London (1994-2015). He pursued a parallel degree as a teacher and researcher in sociology with Lecturer posts at the College of St Mark and St John (1981-82) and Queen's College, Glasgow (1982-1986), both UK. He has held four professorial posts in sociology: at Staffordshire University (1994-1996), Nottingham Trent University (1996-2006), Brunel University London (2006-2014), and City, University of London (2013), all UK. At City he has been Head of the Department of Sociology and Communications since 2022. Professor Rojek regards himself as a general sociologist. He has special interests in the study of celebrity, culture, leisure, and mega-events. He has authored 15 books and over 50 refereed articles. His latest book (written with Eugene McLaughlin and Stephanie Baker) is Cults (2024).

Michael Ryan is Professor-Researcher (docente-investigador) at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. After receiving his doctorate in sociology from the University of Maryland, USA, he has gone on to become an award-winning teacher who has held academic positions at leading universities across five continents. Before returning to academia, Dr. Ryan worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Washington, DC, USA, where he led multiple projects aimed at improving national statistical survey methodology. He is coauthor (with George Ritzer) of The McDonaldization of Society, 11th edition (2025), and the highly successful textbook Introduction to Sociology, 6th edition (2024). He is also a coauthor (with Serena Nanda) of COVID-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities (2022). Dr. Ryan has edited multiple volumes, including Core Concepts in Sociology (2019) and COVID-19: Individual Rights and Community Responsibilities (2023) and is the Series Editor for Routledge's COVID-19 Pandemic Series and Wiley's Core Concepts in the Social Sciences Series.

Advisory Editors

Rob Beamish is a Professor Emeritus at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, where for the previous 42 years he held a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. His research has focused on the philosophy of science, contemporary and classical sociological theory, social inequality, and high-performance sport as a form of labor. His current work centers on theories of social action and the nature of the human condition. In addition to numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries related to social theory and sport sociology, he is the author of several books, including Marx, Method and the Division of Labor (1992), Fastest, Highest, Strongest: The Critique of High-Performance Sport (with Ian Ritchie, 2006), The Promise of Sociology: The Classical Tradition and Contemporary Sociological Thinking (2010), and Steroids: A New Look at Performance-Enhancing Drugs (2011). Administratively, he served as an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's and for two terms as the Head of the Department of Sociology.

Dinur Blum has been a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, USA, since earning his doctorate from the University of California, Riverside, USA. His research topics include the social causes of mass shootings in the United States, the sociology of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic's effects on higher education in the United States and on social movements, and obstacles student-athletes face academically. He has published on the sociology of COVID-19 with Dr. Adam G. Sanford and Dr. Stacy L. Smith in a book series edited by Dr. J. Michael Ryan, and published Critical Mass: Understanding and Fixing the Social Roots of Mass Shootings in the United States (with Christian Jaworski, 2021), a book nominated for awards from both the Pacific Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He co-hosts (with Dr. Adam G. Sanford) the Learning Made Easier podcast, which offered effective learning and teaching techniques to students and educators, and received the Pacific Sociological Association's Award for Early Career Innovation in Teaching Sociology in 2023. He has also received the Association of College and University Educators' certificate in effective college teaching.

Marie Sarita Gaytan is Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, USA. Her research has appeared in journals such as Social Problems, Poetics, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, and she has been recognized with awards by the Latin American Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, and the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. She is the author of Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico (2014).

Rusi Jaspal is Professor of Psychology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He is the author or editor of six books and over 100 articles and book chapters, many of which use qualitative methods to explore the social psychological aspects of sexual identity, sexual health, and behavior among gay men. He is the author of The Social Psychology of Gay Men (2019) and a coeditor of Identity Process Theory: Identity, Social Action and Social Change (with Dame Glynis Breakwell, 2014).

Nazneen M. Khan is Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at Randolph-Macon College, USA, where she also serves as Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. Using intersectional theory and methodology, her research and teaching focus on families, children, and reproductive health and wellbeing in a US context. Her recent scholarship can be read in Contexts, Children & Society, and Sociological Focus. She is the editor of COVID-19 and Childhood Inequality (2022) and a coeditor of Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought (2024).

Greg Martin is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Understanding Social Movements (2015) and Crime, Media and Culture (2019), and a coeditor of Secrecy, Law and Society (2015) and The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology (2023). His latest book is Social Movements and Protest Politics (2024). He is a founding coeditor of the book series Emerald Studies in Activist Criminology, Associate Editor of Crime Media Culture, and a member of editorial boards for Social Movement Studies and The Sociological Review.

Adam G. Sanford is a long-term Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA. In 2020 he published three coauthored chapters (with Stacy L. Smith and Dinur Blum) on the sociology of COVID-19 in a new two-volume set from Routledge, edited by J. Michael Ryan. His research focuses on legitimacy assignment, decision-making, viral ideas, bureaucracy, and pedagogical methods. His past research centered on socioeconomic status and life expectancy (with David Swanson), student-athletes' assignments of legitimacy to coach and family demands (with Dinur Blum), and effective teaching methods. His research interests include the sociology of education, criminology and deviance, pedagogy, social theory, and cognitive studies. He cohosted the Learning Made Easier podcast with Dr. Dinur Blum, and has been interviewed for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Valerie Visanich is a Senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of Malta. Her research interests include the sociology of the arts, visual sociology, and cultural policy. She is a coeditor (with Victoria Alexander and Christopher Mathieu) of the book series The Sociology and Management of the Arts (Routledge). She is a board member of the European Sociological Association and was chair of its Research Network Sociology of Art (RN02) between 2017 and 2019. She is a board member and cofounder of the Malta Sociological Association. Her recent publications include a coedited book titled Accomplishing Cultural Policy in Europe: Financing, Governance and Responsiveness (with Christopher Mathieu, 2022). Other publications include the monograph Education, Individualization and Neoliberalism: Youth in Southern Europe (2019) and Transformations in Social Science Research Methods during the COVID-19 pandemic (edited with J. Michael Ryan and Gaspar Brindle, 2024). She is Lead Researcher in various tendered national projects in Malta, including the Strategy for Culture for All Regions in Malta and Gozo, and a coauthor of the National Cultural Policy in Malta 2021.

Editor and Managing Editors

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Among his awards: Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin; American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He has chaired the American Sociological Association's Section on Theoretical Sociology, as well as the Section on Organizations and Occupations. Among his books in metatheory are Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science and Metatheorizing in Sociology. In the application of social theory to the social world, his books include The McDonaldization of Society, Enchanting a Disenchanted World, and The Globalization of Nothing. He has published two volumes of his collected works, one in theory and the other in the application of theory to the social world, especially consumption. In the latter area, he is founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He has edited the Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists and co-edited the Handbook of Social Theory. In addition to the Encyclopedia of Sociology, he has edited the two-volume Encyclopedia of Social Theory. His books have been translated into over 20 languages, with over a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.

J. Michael Ryan is a Professor-Researcher (docente-investigador) at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. After receiving his PhD in sociology from the University of Maryland, he has gone on to become an award-winning teacher who has held academic positions across five continents. He was previously an Associate Professor of Sociology at Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan), a researcher for the TransRights Project at The University of Lisbon (Portugal) and has taught courses at The American University in Cairo (Egypt), Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO; Ecuador) and the University of Maryland (USA). Before returning to academia, Dr. Ryan worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics (which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Washington, D.C. where he led multiple projects aimed at improving national statistical survey methodology. Dr. Ryan is co-author (with Ritzer) of the next editions of The McDonaldization of Societ, 11^th edition and the highly successful textbook Introduction to Sociology, 6^th edition.  He is also the author (with Serena Nanda) of COVID-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities (2022). Dr. Ryan has edited or co-edited more than 15 volumes, including The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, 2nd edition (with William Cockerham et. al., forthcoming); Pandemic Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2023); COVID-19: Global Pandemic, Societal Responses, Ideological Solutions (2021); Trans Lives in a Globalizing World: Rights, Identities, and Politics (2020); Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges (with Helen Rizzo; 2020); Essential Concepts in Sociology (2019); and The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory (with Bryan Turner et al., 2017). He has also served as advisory editor on The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies and is the founding editor of Routledge’s The COVID-19 Pandemic series.

Betsy Thorn is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Maryland. Her interests include social theory and the sociology of the family. Her recent work includes a master's thesis that applies Pierre Bourdieu's theory to a qualitative analysis of women's roles as consumers and in the labor force in the post-war era, as well as quantitative analyses of time-use patterns within the family. Her awards include a C. Wright Mills fellowship.

Advisory Editors

Rebecca G. Adams is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her publications include: Deadhead Social Science (2000), Placing Friendship in Context (1998), Adult Friendship (1992), and Older Adult Friendship: Structure and Process (1989). A Past President of the Southern Sociological Society and Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and of the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, she serves as Editor of Personal Relationships and as a Member-at-Large of the Council of the American Sociological Association.

Syed Farid Alatas is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore specializing in sociological theory and historical sociology. His publications include Alternative Discourse in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006) and Democracy and Authoritarianism in Indonesia and Malaysia: The Rise of the Post-Colonial State (1997).

Graham Allan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Keele, UK, and Visiting Professor in Family Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His recent books include Placing Friendship in Context (1998, with Rebecca Adams); Families, Households, and Society (2001, with Graham Crow); and The State of Affairs (2004, with Jean Duncombe, Kaeren Harrison, and Dennis Marsden).

Peter Beilharz is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Thesis Eleven Center for Critical Theory at La Trobe University, Australia. He is author or editor of 22 books, including Imagining the Antipodes (1997) and Zygmunt Bauman (2000). He was Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, 1999–2000, and is Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale. He is collaborating on an intellectual biography of the founding mother of Australian sociology, Jean Martin.

Suzanne M. Bianchi is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She is a Past President of the Population Association of America and coeditor of the journal Demography. She is author of Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (with John Robinson and Melissa Milkie, 2006).

Chris Carter is a Professor of Management at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is a Visiting ICAN Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has published in journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Human Relations, Industrial Relations Journal, and Organization and Organization Studies.

Roberto Cipriani is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sciences of Education at the University of Rome 3. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo, at the University of Buenos Aires, and at Laval University, Quebec. He served as editor-in-chief of International Sociology, and is currently President of the Italian Sociological Association.

Stewart R. Clegg is a Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Director of ICAN Research, a Key University Research Center. He also holds Chairs at Aston University and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Maastricht and the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He has published extensively in many journals and has contributed a large number of books to the literature, including the award-winning Handbook of Organization Studies (2nd edition 2006, co-edited with Cynthia Hardy, Walter Nord, and Tom Lawrence). His most recent books are Managing and Organizations: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (2005, with Martin Kornberger and Tyrone Pitsis) and Power and Organizations (2006, with David Courpasson and Nelson Phillips).

Jay Coakley is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He is author of Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (2007). He was also founding editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal (1984–89) and co-editor of Handbook of Sport Studies (2000, with Eric Dunning) and Inside Sports (1999, with Peter Donnelly).

William C. Cockerham is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the 2004 recipient of the university's prestigious Ireland Prize for Scholarly Distinction. His recent publications include Medical Sociology, 10th edition (2007), Risk-Taking Society: Living Life on the Edge (2006), Sociology of Mental Disorder, 7th edition (2006), The Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (2005), and “Health Lifestyle Theory and the Convergence of Agency and Structure” in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2005).

Miriam Alfie Cohen is a Professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University. Her publications include Cross-Border Activism and Its Limit: Mexican Environmental Organizations and the United States (with Barbara Hogenboom and Edit Antal, 2003), Maquila y Movimientos Ambientalistas: Examen de un Riesgo Compartido Matamoros, Brownsville (with Luis H. Menendez Berrueta, 2000), Y el Desierto Se Volvio Verde: Movimentos Ambientalistas Binacionales Ciudad Juarez-El Paso (1998), and Democracia y Desafio medioambiental en México (2005).

Daniel Thomas Cook is Associate Professor of Advertising and Communications at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He is the author of The Commodification of Childhood (2004) and editor of Symbolic Childhood (2002). His articles on children and consumer culture have appeared in academic journals such as the Sociological Quarterly, the Journal of Consumer Culture, and Childhood, and in more popular publications like Global Agenda and LiP Magazine.

Rutledge M. Dennis is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. He is editor of Black Intellectuals (1997) and Marginality, Power, and Social Structure (2005). He is the co-author of The Politics of Annexation (1982), and co-editor of Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches (2003), The Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington (2006), and The New Black (2006). He is the recipient of the Joseph Himes Distinguished Scholarship Award (2002) and the Du Bois-Johnson-Frazier Award for an Outstanding Career in Research, Writing, Teaching, and Social Action, presented by the American Sociological Association.

Erich Goode is Sociology Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the author of ten books, mainly on deviance anddrug use.

Jeff Goodwin is Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (2001), and the co-editor of Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (2001), The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts (Blackwell, 2003), and Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Culture, and Emotion (2004). He has published articles on social movements, revolutions, and terrorism in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Theory and Society, Politics and Society, Mobilization, Sociological Forum, and other journals.

Kevin Fox Gotham is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. He is the author of Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2000 (2002). His forthcoming book, Transforming New Orleans (2007), examines the intersection of race, culture, and tourism in the historical development of New Orleans. He is on leave from Tulane University from 2006 to 2008, living in Washington, DC, and working as a Program Officer for the Sociology Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Axel Groenemeyer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Applied Sciences, Esslingen, Germany. He has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Essen; Professor of Social Policy, Social Work, and Social Administration at the University of Siegen; and invited Professor of Sociology at universities in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sofia, Bulgaria, and Lille, France. He is President of the Social Problems and Social Control Section within the German Association of Sociology, editor of Soziale Probleme, and a member of the editorial board of Déviance et Société.

Eva Illouz was born in Morocco and has lived for extended periods of time in France, the United States, and Israel. She currently holds Israeli and French citizenships. In 1991 she completed her PhD in the United States. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the New School for Social Research, New York University, and at Tel Aviv University. She currently teaches at the Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Peter Kivisto is the Richard Swanson Professor of Social Thought and Chair of Sociology at Augustana College. Among his recent books are Multiculturalism in a Global Society (2002), Key Ideas in Sociology, 2nd edition (2004), Incorporating Diversity: Rethinking Assimilation in a Multicultural Age (2005), and Intersecting Inequalities (2007, with Elizabeth Hartung). With Thomas Faist, he is completing a book on citizenship for Blackwell. He is the current editor of the Sociological Quarterly.

Yvonna S. Lincoln is Professor of Higher Education and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University, and holds the Ruth Harrington Chair of Educational Leadership and University Distinguished Professor of Higher Education. She is the co-author of Effective Evaluation, Naturalistic Inquiry, and Fourth Generation Evaluation, the editor of Organizational Theory and Inquiry, the co-editor of the newly released Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edition, and co-editor of the international journal Qualitative Inquiry.

David R. Maines is Professor of Sociology and Chair (2000–6) at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He has contributed to narrative studies and to efforts at developing a symbolic interactionist conception of macrosociology. Much of his work is found in his recent book, The Faultline of Consciousness: A View of Interactionism in Sociology (2001). In the past decade he has conducted research on liturgical change in Catholicism, which will be published in his forthcoming book Transforming Catholicism: Liturgical Change in the Vatican II Church (2007, with Michael J. McCallion).

Barry Markovsky is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of South Carolina. He has been the editor, with several other sociologists, of Advances in Group Processes, Vols. 4–14 (1987–97), and, with Edward J. Lawler, published Social Psychology of Groups: A Reader in 1993.

Chandra Muller is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She has written extensively on the topic of educational achievement, adolescence, parental involvement in education, and educational policy. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Spencer Foundation.

Nancy A. Naples is Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is author of Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research (2003) and Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty (1998), and editor of Community Activism and Feminist Politics: Organizing Across Race, Class, and Gender (1998). She is also co-editor, with Manisha Desai, of Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles with Transnational Politics and, with Karen Bojar, of Teaching Feminist Activism, both published in 2002.

Jodi O'Brien is a Professor of Sociology at Seattle University. She is the author of Social Prisms: Reflections on Everyday Myths and Paradoxes (1999) and was the editor of The Production of Reality: Essays and Readings on Social Interaction (2005).

Nick Perry is Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His publications include Controlling Interests: Business, the State, and Society in New Zealand (1992, co-edited with John Deeks); The Dominion of Signs: Television, Advertising, and Other New Zealand Fictions (1994); Hyperreality and Global Culture (1998); and Television in New Zealand: Programming the Nation (2004, coedited with Roger Horrocks). He was President of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, 1985–6.

Ken Plummer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, and a Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is editor of the journal Sexualities and his books include Sexual Stigma (1975); Documents of Life (1983); Telling Sexual Stories (1995); and Inventing Intimate Citizenship (2003). He has also edited The Making of the Modern Homosexual (1981); Modern Homosexualities (1992); Symbolic Interactionism (1990); The Chicago School (1997); and Sexualities: Critical Assessments (2002). In addition, he has co-authored two textbooks: Sociology: A Global Introduction, 2nd edition (2002) and Criminology: A Sociological Introduction (2004).

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Brunel University, West London. He is the author of many books, the most recent of which are Celebrity (2001), Stuart Hall (2003), Frank Sinatra (2004), Leisure Theory (2005), and Cultural Studies (2006). He is currently writing a book on “Brit-Myth.”

John Stone is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Boston University. He has published on race and ethnic conflict, migration and nationalism, and sociological theory. His books include Colonist or Uitlander?; Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy, Revolution, and Society (with Stephen Mennell); Racial Conflict in Contemporary Society; and Race and Ethnicity (Blackwell, with Rutledge M. Dennis). He is the Founder Editor of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies (1978–).

Yoshio Sugimoto is a Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, Australia. His publications include An Introduction to Japanese Society (2003) and Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality (1990). He was, with J. Arnason, the editor for Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity (1995).

Edward A. Tiryakian is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Duke University. He taught at Princeton and Harvard prior to his appointment at Duke, where he has served as Departmental Chair and as Director of International Studies. He is a Past President of the American Society for the Study of Religion (1981–4) and of the International Association of French-Speaking Sociologists (1988–92). He has twice been Chair of the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association and was Chair of the ASA History of Sociology Section (2005–6). He has had visiting appointments at Laval University (Quebec), the Institut d'Études Politiques (Paris), and the Free University of Berlin.

Ruth Triplett is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University. She received her PhD in 1990 from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include social disorganization, labeling theory, and the role of gender and class in criminological theory. Her most recent publications are found in Theoretical Criminology, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Journal of Crime and Justice.

Wout Ultee is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Nijmegen. He has been published in the Annual Review of Sociology (1991), European Sociological Review (1990), American Sociological Review (1998), and American Journal of Sociology (2005).

Steve Yearley is Professor of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Director of the ESRC Genomics Forum. He specializes in the sociology of science and in environmental sociology. His recent books include Making Sense of Science (2005) and Cultures of Environmentalism (2005).

Milan Zafirovski is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Texas. He holds doctoral degrees in economics and sociology. His research interests are interdisciplinary, focusing on the relations between economy and society. He is the author of the books Market and Society, The Duality of Structure in Markets, and Exchange, Action, and Social Structure, and of about 50 articles in refereed economics and sociology journals. He is also a co-editor of the International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology (2006).