Ever since Durkheim it has been a commonplace of family sociology that marriage serves as a protection against anomie for the individual. Interesting and pragmatically useful though this insight is, it is but the negative side of a phenomenon of much broader significance. If one speaks of anomic states, then one ought properly to investigate also the nomic processes that, by their absence, lead to the aforementioned states. If, consequently, one finds a negative correlation between marriage and anomie, then one should be led to inquire into the character of marriage as a nomos-building instrumentality, that is, of marriage as a social arrangement that creates for the individual the sort of order in which he can experience his life as making sense. It is our intention here to discuss marriage in these terms. While this could evidently be done in a macrosociological perspective, dealing with marriage as a major social institution related to other broad structures of society, our focus will be microsociological, dealing primarily with the social processes affecting the individuals in any specific marriage, although, of course, the larger framework of these processes will have to be understood. In what sense this discussion can be described as microsociology of knowledge will hopefully become clearer in the course of it.

The terms ‘gossip’ and ‘urban legend’ are often used interchangeably with ‘rumor’ by both naïve laypersons and professional scholars. Consider our students as naïve laypersons: When asked to evaluate the terms ‘rumor’ and ‘gossip’ along certain dimensions, they rate them almost identically. When asked to ‘think of a rumor’, they frequently report a scandalous tidbit of gossip. Similarly, some of our colleagues - professional scholars of rumor, gossip and/or urban legends - also tend to use these terms interchangeably. For example, participants at a recent interdisciplinary conference on rumor and legend came to no consensus over what distinguishes rumor from legend; scholars of rumor and gossip at a recent conference of social psychologists also argued over whether rumor could be differentiated from gossip. This conceptual fuzziness has been noted for some time (Ojha, 1973). And though much progress has been made in sharpening the construct of rumor (Fine, 1985; Rosnow and Georgoudi, 1985; Rosnow and Kimmel, 2000), ambiguities still remain.

Meaningful and important differences do exist, however. In this article we further clarify the concept of rumor and distinguish it from its two cousins, gossip and urban legend. The source of conceptual difficulties has arisen from insufficient attention to the context and function of these genres of informal communication, and conversely, overmuch attention to content.2 We therefore posit a definition of rumor focused upon contexts, functions and contents. We also examine contexts, functions and contents of gossip and urban legends, and explore similarities and differences between these three forms of social discourse. We begin with rumor.

This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer change in people's beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. With the increasing presence of such visuals comes a more emotive media environment with which people are forced to engage, and, under certain circumstances, disengage.

In tracing the history of emotions and of mentalities, one is immediately confronted with a question of method resulting from the interplay of emotions and language.

The emotions whose history we wish to retrace are accessible to us only from the time when they find expression, verbally or by other means. For the critic, for the historian, an emotion exists only beyond the point at which it attains a linguistic status. No facet of an emotion can be traced before it is named, before it is designated and expressed. It is not, then, the emotion itself which comes before us; only that part which has passed into a given form of expression can be of interest to the historian.

This paper presents an overall view of the Philosophy of Tian-xia, a particular form of neo-universalism developed by its author and very much debated in the last years. The system of Tian-xia, or ‘all-under-heaven’, is a philosophical re-elaboration of an ancient form of Chinese universalism. The world is constituted as a global unity and a basic concept of political philosophy. It aims at a world institution as a way to rethink all problems in the world as problems of the world. Zhao Tingyang has analytically developed this view in some recent publications in Chinese. This article represents the most recent attempt to provide a synthetic view of his philosophy of ‘all-under-heaven’.

If from the etymological point of view the term category denotes a class of objects sharing a common feature, under linguistic category we generally understand a class of linguistic units (chiefly words) sharing a common meaning or syntactical function, expressed by a common external (phonetic) form. Thus the words room-s, table-s, pencil-s, match-es, glass-es… are representative of the category of the plural number; (be) describe-d, contrive-d, share-d, found-ed, assert-ed… represent the category of the past tense. Forms like men, children, etc., on the one hand, (he) rode, went, etc., on the other, are also members of the category of the plural or past, respectively, in spite of the lack of the characteristic feature -(e)s or -(e)d, since functionally (i.e. as regards meaning) they lean upon the pattern of the productive -s and -d forms, thus:

the semantic difference between man and men (child and children) is the same as that between e.g. room and room-s, rendered by the sign -s versus zero;

the semantic difference between rides and rode (goes and went) is the same as that between describe-s and describe-d, rendered by the sign -d as against -s.

With its recognition of the combined effects of the social categories of race, class and gender intersectionality has risen to the rank of feminism's most important contribution to date. Though the first intersectional research (American and British) gave visibility to the social locus of women who self-identified as “black” or “of colour”, current research goes beyond the confines of the English-speaking world and aims increasingly to develop an intersectional instrument to deal with discrimination. This project gives rise to two kinds of debate: one related to producing intersectional information and to ways of carrying out research in this area, the other to do with the use of this information in the political struggle for equality. The current paper, which is confined to the first debate, attempts to bring out the main tension points in present theorizations of intersectionality. Its objective is twofold: to demonstrate certain limits to the explanatory power of intersectionality, and to suggest ways forward in the light of discussions already in train. In order to do so four points are tackled: intersectionality as a research paradigm, the issue of levels of analysis, the theoretical difference of opinion on the ontological status of categories of difference and the issue of widening the theoretical scope of intersectionality.

Since “in human speech, different sounds have different meaning,” Leonard Bloomfield's influential manual of 1933 concluded that “to study this coordination of certain sounds with certain meanings is to study language.” And one century earlier Wilhelm von Humboldt taught that “there is an apparent connection between sound and meaning which, however, only seldom lends itself to an exact elucidation, is often only glimpsed, and most usually remains obscure.” This connection and coordination have been an eternal crucial problem in the age-old science of language. How it was nonetheless temporarily forgotten by the linguists of the recent past may be illustrated by the repeated praises for the amazing novelty of Ferdinand de Saussure's interpretation of the sign, in particular the verbal sign, as an indissoluble unity of two constituents—signifiant and signifié— although this conception jointly with its terminology was taken over entirely from the twelve-hunded-year-old Stoic theory. This doctrine considered the sign (sêmeion) as an entity constituted by the relation of the signifier (sêmainon) and the signified (sêmainomenon). The former was defined as “perceptible” (aisthêton) and the latter as “intelligible” (noêton) or, to use a more linguistic designation, “translatable.”

We should approach this topic with great fear and respect. It is not a merely “academic” issue. Human rights are trampled upon in the East as in the West, in the North as in the South of our planet. Granting the part of human greed and sheer evil in this universal transgression, could it not also be that Human Rights are not observed because in their present form they do not represent a universal symbol powerful enough to elicit understanding and agreement?

In order to dispel “the iron curtain of false enigmas,” of which Claude Roy speaks, it is urgent to undertake a revision, a critical reevaluation of the general conception, the methods and implements for the understanding of the Orient that have been used by the West, notably from the beginning of the last century, on all levels and in all fields.

This is an imperative of every exact science, which aims at understanding. And yet the resurgence of the nations and the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, in the last two generations, was required in order to provoke a prise de conscience, tardy and frequently reticent, of an exigency of principle become an unavoidable practical necessity, precisely due to the decisive influence of the political factor, i.e., the victories achieved by the various movements of national liberation on a world scale.

This paper traces the history of uses of the word “gender”. It suggests that though “gender” has been recuperated and become commonplace, many issues persist around the way “women” and “men”, and the power relations between them, are defined and are evolving. Provided it still allows us to question the meanings attached to the sexes, how they are established and in what contexts, gender remains a useful, because critical, analytical category.

Beads and other ‘body ornaments’ are very widespread components of the archaeological record of early modern humans (Homo sapiens). They appear first in the Middle Stone Age in Africa, and somewhat later in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia. The manufacture and use of ornaments is widely considered to be evidence for significant developments in human cognition. In our view, the appearance of these objects represents the interaction of evolved cognitive capacities with changing social and demographic conditions. Body ornamentation is a medium or technology for communication, particularly of socially-relevant information. The widespread adoption of beads and other discrete objects as media for communication implies changes in the complexity and stability of social messages, as well as the scale of social networks. The relatively sudden appearance of beads in the Paleolithic archaeological record coincides with genetic and archaeological evidence for expansion of human populations. We argue that these changes reflect expanding scales of social interaction and more complex social landscapes resulting from unprecedentedly large and internally differentiated human populations.

In this article I am arguing that the concept of Ubuntu which means humanness was articulated against a situation of the dehumanization that was meted to the Africans during the eras of slavery and colonialism. It is further argued that since Ubuntu implies character qualities such as compassion, kindness, courtesy and respect for other persons, the ethic of Ubuntu remains indispensable to the reconstruction of post-colonial African societies. Ubuntu is indispensable to the post-colonial African quest for an identity in the spheres such as the public sector and the business sector because Ubuntu is mostly valued as the ideal for human conduct in all spheres of life. Lastly, I have also argued that because of its relational worldview and individual ontology, Ubuntu connected with the concept of Ukama implies that human existence cannot be separated from the generality of existence.

This paper examines the stability of the concept of rumor in the past century. It is suggested that not only do models of explanation change, but rumors themselves also change - not just in content, but perhaps in the way they are believed or disbelieved. Social scientific interest in rumors begins with the birth of modern psychology in the 19 th century, shifts to social psychology and sociology in mid-20th century, prompted by governmental concern over subversion through rumor during the Second World War, and is finally revived by folklorists in more recent decades. Understood variously as a conduit of the unconscious and otherwise unendorsable thoughts, a mundane communication drift, or an intentional form of deception and provocation, many of our rumor model assumptions are drawn from that era and remain basically unchallenged. A central assumption emerged that ambiguous situations create a vacuum which rumor fills. By the late 1960s, despite a decline in social scientific interest in the topic, a handful of significant empirical and theoretical challenges emerge from scattered studies. The discipline of folklore begins to take more interest in contemporary rumor in the 1970s, and by the early 1990s the rubric of the rumor is almost entirely supplanted in English language scholarship by the ‘urban legend’ (Brunvand, 1981).

The question is this: we as African writers have always complained about the neo-colonial economic and political relationship to Euro-America. Right. But by our continuing to write in foreign languages, paying homage to them, are we not on the cultural level continuing that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit? What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?

The land has come Into its own. At last it has become the focus of great national problems which until now were evoked most frequently with regard to and for the benefit of cities, or even of metropolitan areas. Its very representation, until very recent ages held to be terribly abstract and reserved to technicians, today belongs to the public domain. Exhibitions bearing titles such as Maps and Illustrations of the Earth (Paris, 1980) or Landscape: Image and Reality (Bologna, 1981) attract as many visitors as an Impressionist retrospective, not only because of the novelty of the theme, the rarity of certain documents or the beauty of most of them, as proven by the success of even more specialized events such as those dedicated to the 1730 Sardinian cadastre in Savoy or to the one of Maria-Theresa in Lombardy (Chambéry and Pavia, 1980).

Most conspiracy theories exist as part of “stigmatized knowledge” – that is, knowledge claims that have not been accepted by those institutions we rely upon for truth validation. Not uncommonly, believers in conspiracy theories also accept other forms of stigmatized knowledge, such as unorthodox forms of healing and beliefs about Atlantis and UFOs. Rejection by authorities is for them a sign that a belief must be true. However, the linkage of conspiracy theories with stigmatized knowledge has been weakening, because stigmatized knowledge itself is growing more problematic. What was once clearly recognizable as “the fringe” is now beginning to merge with the mainstream. This process of “mainstreaming the fringe” is the result of numerous factors, including the ubiquity of the Internet, the growing suspicion of authority, and the spread of once esoteric themes in popular culture. Only a permeable membrane now separates the fringe from the mainstream. Thus conspiracism is no longer the province only of small, isolated coteries. It now has the potential to make the leap into public discourse. This, of course, does not apply to every conspiracy theory, but it happens enough to suggest that we are at an important transition point. The recent controversy in the United States over whether a conspiracy existed to hide President Obama's alleged foreign birth – a claim that years earlier would never have emerged beyond small radical groups – suggests the nature of the change. It also suggests the dangers that political cultures may face in the future.

For about a century, Western culture has really been two cultures: the traditional kind—let us call it ‘High Culture’—that is chronicled in the textbooks, and a ‘Mass Culture’ manufactured wholesale for the market. In the old art forms, the artisans of Mass Culture have long been at work: in the novel, the line stretches from Eugène Süe to Lloyd C. Douglas; in music, from Offenbach to tin-pan alley; in art, from the chromo to Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell; in architecture, from Victorian Gothic to suburban Tudor. Mass Culture has also developed new media of its own, into which the serious artist rarely ventures: radio, the movies, comic books, detective stories, science-fiction, television.

This article explores the rehabilitation of the ethical dimension of human interactions with nature, using cross-cultural perspectives in Africa. Cross-cultural comparison of indigenous concepts of the relationship between people and nature with contemporary environmental and scientific issues facilitate the rehabilitation, renewal and validation of indigenous environmental ethics. Although increasing attention is being given to the environmental concerns of non-western traditions, most of the related research has centered on Asia, Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines with little attention being paid to Africa. However, this study has confirmed that, like other multicultural traditions, African indigenous traditions contain symbolic and ethical messages that are passed from generation to generation in order to ensure respect and compassion for other living creatures. The article shows, however, that not all indigenous knowledge is environmentally friendly. Indigenous and modern environmental ethics alike have something to teach as well as something to learn.

Contemporary societies are awash in rumor. For better and worse, we live in an information surround in which there is simultaneously too much information and too little. Many wish to persuade us of truth claims, or, at the very least, to share them. These claims may have an uncertain provenance, but, under the right circumstances, we incorporate them into our belief system, act upon them, and recall them through collective memory.

Given these claims, the question becomes who, what, where and when do we trust. To the extent that reactions to assertions about society channel our actions, judgment is necessary, even if it is only implicit and tacit. The analysis of rumor belongs to the sociology of action. To produce a response, we must judge both those who communicate and what they communicate. As an everyday practice, we engage in the politics of credibility and the politics of plausibility. These concepts are tied to issues of public trust within civil society.