title: Interpol

text: From 2004 to 2010, Interpol's external auditors was the French Court of Audit. In November 2010, the Court of Audit was replaced by the Office of the Auditor General of Norway for a three-year term with an option for a further three years.


title: Interpol

text: Despite its politically neutral stance, some have criticized the agency for its role in arrests that critics contend were politically motivated. In their declaration, adopted in Oslo (2010), Monaco (2012), Istanbul (2013), and Baku (2014), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) criticized some OSCE member States for their abuse of mechanisms of the international investigation and urged them to support the reform of Interpol in order to avoid politically motivated prosecution. The resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of 31 January 2014 criticizes the mechanisms of operation of the Commission for the Control of Interpol's files, in particular, non-adversarial procedures and unjust decisions. In 2014, PACE adopted a decision to thoroughly analyse the problem of the abuse of Interpol and to compile a special report on this matter. In May 2015, within the framework of the preparation of the report, the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights organized a hearing, during which both representatives of NGOs and Interpol had the opportunity to speak. According to Freedomhouse, Russia is responsible for 38% of Interpol's public Red Notices. There currently are "approximately 66,370 valid Red Notices, of which some 7,669 are public."


title: Interpol

text: Refugees who are included in the list of Interpol can be arrested when crossing the border. In the year 2008, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees pointed to the problem of arrests of refugees on the request of INTERPOL in connection with politically motivated charges.


title: Interpol

text: In 2021, Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela were accused of abusing Interpol by using it to target political opponents. Despite Interpol's policy that forbids countries from using the organization to pursue opponents, autocrats have been increasingly abusing the constitution of Interpol. China used Interpol against the Uyghurs, where the government issued a Red Notice against activists and other members of the ethnic minority group living abroad. Since 1997, 1,546 cases from 28 countries of detention and deportation of the Uyghurs were recorded. In the case of Turkey, Interpol had to turn down 800 requests, including one for NBA basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom. The UAE was also accused as one of the countries attempting to buy influence in Interpol. Using the Interpol Foundation for a Safer World, the Arab nation gave donations of $54 million. The amount was estimated as equal to the statutory contributions together made by the rest 194 members. It was asserted that the Emirates' growing influence over Interpol gave it the opportunity to host the General Assembly in 2018 and in 2020 (that was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic).


title: Interpol

text: Organizations such as Detained in Dubai, Open Dialog Foundation, Fair Trials International, Centre for Peace Studies, and International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, indicate that non-democratic states use Interpol to harass opposition politicians, journalists, human rights activists, and businessmen. The countries accused of abusing the agency include China, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Venezuela, and Tunisia.


title: Interpol

text: The Open Dialog Foundation's report analysed 44 high-profile political cases which went through the Interpol system. A number of persons who have been granted refugee status in the European Union (EU) and the U.S.—including Russian businessman Andrey Borodin, Chechen Arbi Bugaev, Kazakh opposition politician Mukhtar Ablyazov and his associate Artur Trofimov, and Sri Lankan journalist Chandima Withana —continue to remain on the public INTERPOL list. Some of the refugees remain on the list even after courts have refused to extradite them to a non-democratic state (for example, Pavel Zabelin, a witness in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexandr Pavlov, former security chief of the Kazakh oppositionist Ablyazov). Another case is Manuel Rosales, a politician who opposed Hugo Chavez and fled to Peru in 2009 and was subject to a red alert on charges of corruption for two weeks. Interpol deleted the request for prosecution immediately. Interpol has also been criticized for mistaking people on yellow alerts. One case was Alondra Díaz-Nuñez, who in April 2015 was apprehended in Guanajuato City, Mexico being mistaken for . Interpol came under heavy criticism from Mexican news and media for helping out Policia Federal Ministerial, Mexican Federal Police, and the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Mexico, in what was believed to be a kidnapping.


title: Interpol

text: The 2013 PACE's Istanbul Declaration of the OSCE cited specific cases of such prosecution, including those of the Russian activist Petr Silaev, financier William Browder, businessman Ilya Katsnelson, Belarusian politician Ales Michalevic, and Ukrainian politician Bohdan Danylyshyn.


title: Interpol

text: On 25 July 2014, despite Interpol's Constitution prohibiting them from undertaking any intervention or activities of a political or military nature, the Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary leader Dmytro Yarosh was placed on Interpol's international wanted list at the request of Russian authorities, which made him the only person wanted internationally after the beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 2014. For a long time, Interpol refused to place former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych on the wanted list as a suspect by the new Ukrainian government for the mass killing of protesters during Euromaidan. Yanukovych was eventually placed on the wanted list on 12 January 2015. However, on 16 July 2015, after an intervention of Joseph Hage Aaronson, the British law firm hired by Yanukovych, the international arrest warrant against the former president of Ukraine was suspended pending further review. In December 2014, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) liquidated a sabotage and reconnaissance group that was led by a former agent of the Ukrainian Bureau of INTERPOL that also has family relations in the Ukrainian counter-intelligence agencies. In 2014, Russia made attempts to place Ukrainian politician Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Ukrainian civic activist Pavel Ushevets, subject to criminal persecution in Russia following his pro-Ukrainian art performance in Moscow, on the Interpol wanted list.


title: Interpol

text: According to a report by the Stockholm Center for Freedom that was issued in September 2017, Turkey has weaponized Interpol mechanisms to hunt down legitimate critics and opponents in violation of Interpol's own constitution. The report lists abuse cases where not only arrest warrants but also revocation of travel documents and passports were used by Turkey as persecution tools against critics and opponents. The harassment campaign targeted foreign companies as well. Syrian-Kurd Salih Muslim was briefly detained at Turkey's request on 25 February 2018 in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but was released 2 days later, drawing angry protests from Turkey. On 17 March 2018, the Czech authorities dismissed Turkey's request as lacking merit.


title: Interpol

text: After a senior UAE government official, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi became the President, Interpol ignored an injunction by the European court of human rights (ECHR), and cooperated with Serbian authorities to extradite a Bahraini activist. Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali was extradited to Bahrain in a charter aircraft of Royal Jet, a private Emirati airline headed by an Abu Dhabi royal family member. Critics raised concerns that it was just first example of how "red lines will be crossed" under the presidency of Al-Raisi. Besides, a warning was raised that after its decision, Interpol will be complicit in any abuse that Ali will face. In 2021 it was reported that Ahmed Naser had also allegedly tortured a number of people in the UAE before.


title: Interpol

text: The procedure for filing an appeal with Interpol is a long and complex one. For example, the Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo and a colleague of Kazakh activist Ablyazov, and Tatiana Paraskevich, who were granted refugee status, sought to overturn the politically motivated request for as long as one and a half years, and six months, respectively.


title: Interpol

text: Interpol has previously recognized some requests to include persons on the wanted list as politically motivated, e.g., Indonesian activist Benny Wenda, Georgian politician Givi Targamadze, ex-president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-mayor of Maracaibo and 2006 Venezuelan presidential election candidate Manuel Rosales and ex-president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales; these persons have subsequently been removed. However, in most cases, Interpol removes a Red Notice against refugees only after an authoritarian state closes a criminal case or declares amnesty (for example, the cases of Russian activists and political refugees Petr Silaev, Denis Solopov, and Aleksey Makarov, as well as the Turkish sociologist and feminist Pinar Selek).


title: Interpol

text: In 2016, Taiwan criticised Interpol for turning down their application to join the General Assembly as an observer. The United States supported Taiwan's participation, and the US Congress passed legislation directing the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to obtain observer status for Taiwan.


title: Interpol

text: The election of Meng Hongwei, a Chinese person, as president and Alexander Prokopchuk, a Russian, as vice president of Interpol for Europe drew criticism in Anglo media and raised fears of Interpol accepting politically motivated requests from China and Russia.


title: Interpol

text: In 2013, Interpol was criticised over its multimillion-dollar deals with such private sector bodies as FIFA, Philip Morris, and the pharmaceutical industry. The criticism was mainly about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest, such as Codentify. After the 2015 FIFA scandal, the organization has severed ties with all the private-sector bodies that evoked such criticism, and has adopted a new and transparent financing framework.


title: Interpol

text: After the disappearance of Meng Hongwei, four American senators accused his presumptive successor, Alexander Prokopchuk, of abusing Red Notices, likening his election to "putting a fox in charge of the henhouse". A statement posted by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and signed by other NGOs raised concerns about his ability to use his Interpol position to silence Russia's critics. Russian politicians criticized the U.S. accusation as politically motivated interference.


title: Interpol

text: On 1 October 2020, the delegate of Interpol's executive committee for Asia, United Arab Emirates security chief, Ahmed Naser al-Raisi, accused of serious human rights abuses in the Middle East, including against British citizens, was seeking to become the new head of Interpol. Interpol was warned that it could lose credibility if al-Raisi was elected as the president. When al-Raisi was in charge of security and police forces in the UAE, a Durham University PHD student, Matthew Hedges was held for almost six months in solitary confinement, after being arrested in Dubai on spying charges. He was also fed a cocktail of drugs during his imprisonment. Another Briton and a football fan, Ali Ahmad was imprisoned in the UAE for wearing a Qatar shirt to a match. He was stabbed with a pocket knife in his chest and arms, struck in the mouth causing him to lose a front tooth, suffocated with a plastic bag and had his clothing set on fire by arresting officers.


title: Interpol

text: In an April 2021 report written by the ex-UK DPP, Sir David Calvert-Smith in assistance from IHR Advisors, questions were raised over the influence of the UAE over Interpol, calling out UAE general bidding for Interpol chief as unfit for the role. The report stated that the Emirati general, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi who bid for the role of Interpol chief was unsuitable for the position following links to human rights abuses. The allegations were made based on several facts drawn by Sir David, including the influential donation worth $50 million made by the UAE and accepted by Interpol in 2017 through an entirely UAE-funded organization based in Geneva, Interpol Foundation for a Safer World.


title: Interpol

text: A French human rights lawyer, William Bourdon filed an official complaint on behalf of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights or GCHR against Maj. Gen. Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi in connection with the unauthorized arrest and torture of a GCHR Board member and human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor. The complaint lodged with the Prosecutor's Office in Paris on 7 June 2021, was based on the universal jurisdiction concept, seeking to bring Al-Raisi to justice while he was in France in 2021 for his bid to seek the presidency of Interpol.


title: Interpol

text: In June 2021, 35 French Parliamentarians, Members of Parliament and Senators, including from the majority and the opposition, urged President Emmanuel Macron to oppose the candidacy of the UAE's General Ahmed Nasser Al-Raisi, citing the accusations of torture against him. It was the second appeal by the deputy of the Rhône, Hubert Julien-Laferrière, who had first written to Macron earlier in 2021. He questioned how a profile like Al-Raisi's, who was responsible for the torture of political opponent Ahmed Mansoor and of a British academic Matthew Hedges, can become the president of a most respectable institution.


title: Interpol

text: In August 2021, reports revealed that the UAE was promoting its candidate, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi, for the Interpol presidency. Viewed as an “international pariah”, Al-Raisi was receiving increasing condemnation for his involvement in the detention and torture of Ahmed Mansoor, Mathhew Hedges, and Ali Issa Ahmad. Considering that, the Emirates initiated a plan to promote Raisi by organizing his trips to Interpol member countries to gain support.


title: Interpol

text: While the UAE was arranging trips for al-Raisi to Interpol's member countries, opposition against the Emirati candidate amplified. A number of German MPs signed a petition to express “deep concern” and reject the candidacy of al-Raisi for the post of Interpol director. British lawyer of Matthew Hedges and Ali Ahmad, Rodney Dixon submitted a complaint and urged the Swedish authorities to arrest al-Raisi upon his arrival in Sweden. The two Britons also raised a similar request to arrest al-Raisi with the Norwegian police authorities. Both Sweden and Norway apply jurisdiction that allows them to open investigations of crime, irrespective of a person's nationality or the origin country of the crime.


title: Interpol

text: In October 2021, the Emirati candidate for Interpol presidency, Naser Al-Raisi had to face further opposition, as the lawyers submitted a complaint to the French Prosecutor in Paris. The claims cited Al-Raisi's role in the unlawful detention and torture of Ali Issa Ahmad and Matthew Hedges. Filed under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the complaint gave French officials the authority to investigate and arrest foreign nationals. As Raisi is not a head of state, French authorities had all the rights to arrest and question him on entering the French territory.


title: Interpol

text: As the General Assembly was approaching, the opposition was rising. In November 2021, a Turkish lawyer Gulden Sonmez filed a criminal complaint against Al-Raisi's nomination in Turkey, where the vote was to take place. Sonmez said its the Emirates’ attempt to cover its human rights records and to launder its reputation. Besides, Hedges and Ahmad were also expected to file a lawsuit in Turkey against Al-Raisi, ahead of the General Assembly.


title: Interpol

text: On 20 December 2021, The Heritage Foundation called out Interpol presidency, Secretary General Jürgen Stock, for failing to properly vet the police cooperation requests of member nations like Turkey and for the election to presidency of United Arab Emirates’ major general Ahmed Naser al-Raisi, despite credible accusations of torturing detainees including British national, Matthew Hedges. The think tank raised questions on the choices and support of reforms by Interpol for electing member states and members who have a poor record. Stock assured the selection of Raisi asserting that the latter would continue to represent his homeland and not Interpol.


title: Interpol

text: From 1 to 3 July 2015, Interpol organized a session of the Working Group on the Processing of Information, which was formed specifically in order to verify the mechanisms of information processing. The Working Group heard the recommendations of civil society as regards the reform of the international investigation system and promised to take them into account, in light of possible obstruction or refusal to file crime reports nationally.


title: Interpol

text: The Open Dialog Foundation, a human rights organization, recommended that Interpol, in particular: create a mechanism for the protection of rights of people having international refugee status; initiate closer cooperation of the Commission for the Control of Files with human rights NGOs and experts on asylum and extradition; enforce sanctions for violations of Interpol's rules; strengthen cooperation with NGOs, the UN, OSCE, the PACE, and the European Parliament.


title: Interpol

text: Fair Trials International proposed to create effective remedies for individuals who are wanted under a Red Notice on unfair charges; to penalize nations which frequently abuse the Interpol system; to ensure more transparency of Interpol's work.


title: Interpol

text: The Centre for Peace Studies also created recommendations for Interpol, in particular, to delete Red Notices and Diffusions for people who were granted refugee status according to 1951 Refugee Convention issued by their countries of origin, and to establish an independent body to review Red Notices on a regular basis.


title: Interpol

text: Three member states of the United Nations and three partially-recognized states are currently not members of Interpol: North Korea, Palau, and Tuvalu, as well as Kosovo, Taiwan and Western Sahara.


title: Interpol

text: In addition to its General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon, Interpol maintains seven regional bureaus and three special representative offices:


title: Interpol

text: Interpol's Command and Coordination Centres offer a 24-hour point of contact for national police forces seeking urgent information or facing a crisis. The original is in Lyon with a second in Buenos Aires added in September 2011. A third was opened in Singapore in September 2014.


title: Interpol

text: Interpol opened a Special Representative Office to the UN in New York City in 2004 and to the EU in Brussels in 2009.


title: Interpol

text: The organization has constructed the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore to act as its research and development facility, and a place of cooperation on digital crimes investigations. It was officially opened in April 2015, but had already become active beforehand. Most notably, a worldwide takedown of the SIMDA botnet infrastructure was coordinated and executed from IGCI's Cyber Fusion Centre in the weeks before the opening, as was revealed at the launch event.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Kenan Thompson (; born May 10, 1978) is an American actor and comedian. He has been a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy series "Saturday Night Live" since 2003, making him the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history. He was also the first regular cast member born after the show's premiere in 1975. He starred on the NBC sitcom "Kenan" (2021–2022).


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson began his acting career in the early 1990s, and was an original cast member of Nickelodeon's sketch comedy series "All That", where he often collaborated with co-star Kel Mitchell. In 1996, they began starring in their own sitcom "Kenan & Kel" (1996–2000). Thompson also had roles in "The Mighty Ducks" franchise, "Good Burger", and as the title character in the 2004 film "Fat Albert".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: He has been nominated five times for a Primetime Emmy Award for his work on "SNL", winning once. He is ranked at No. 88 on VH1's 100 Greatest Teen Stars.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson was born on May 10, 1978 in Columbus, Ohio. His parents are Fletcher and Elizabeth Ann Thompson. He has two siblings: an older brother and a younger sister. His family moved to Atlanta, Georgia when he was 9 months old. Thompson's mother enrolled him in acting classes at age five. His first role as Toto in a church production of "The Wiz" had no lines. He continued acting throughout his youth, appearing in school plays such as "The Gingerbread Duck". He auditioned for a theater company, The Youth Ensemble of Atlanta (YEA). As a child he was a fan of "The Price Is Right" which he referred to as "my first love" and "very joyful viewing", which had an effect on his future acting style.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: One of Thompson's earliest roles was as an entertainment reporter for CNN's "Real News for Kids". He went on to star in the original run of "All That" for its first five seasons, with such characters as Principal Pimpell, Miss Piddlin, Pierre Escargot, and Superdude. He starred as Kenan Rockmore on Nickelodeon's "Kenan & Kel" from 1996 to 2000, mostly while still working on "All That". While attending Tri-Cities High School, a Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School in East Point, Georgia, he began filming his first movie, "".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson has starred in several films including "Good Burger", based on the "All That" sketch of the same title, and "Fat Albert", in which he played the title character. He has also had supporting roles in the movies "Heavyweights", "", "", "Love Don't Cost a Thing", "", "My Boss's Daughter", and "Snakes on a Plane".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2009, Thompson was a regular voice actor in the Fox cartoon series "Sit Down, Shut Up", portraying Sue Sezno who, as evidenced by her last name, always says no. The series premiered on April 19, 2009, but was canceled after only four episodes due to low ratings and less than favorable reviews. Thompson provided the voice for the LeBron James puppet in Nike's MVP "Most Valuable Puppets" commercials, which were produced to be shown throughout the 2009 NBA Playoffs. Thompson also guest starred on the USA Network series "Psych" in the fourth season episode "High Top Fade Out". He played Gus's estranged college singing buddy. In 2011, he returned to Nickelodeon, as he guest starred in "iParty with Victorious", a crossover episode of sitcoms "iCarly" and "Victorious".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson appeared as a host of sorts of TeenNick's retro programming block, The '90s Are All That, appearing in many of the block's early bumpers and hyping material. He would return to the block, eventually called NickRewind but at the time called The Splat, for "All That"s 22nd anniversary, with segments filmed at the 2015 New York Comic-Con.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2015, movie ticketing website Fandango announced that Thompson would play their brand character, Miles Mouvay. Thompson would play Mouvay in 18 videos, eight 30-second commercials, and a few comedic skits.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: On September 23, 2015, Thompson appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" alongside former "All That" co-star Kel Mitchell in which they reprised their popular "Good Burger" roles as "Ed" and "Lester Oakes, Construction Worker". They later competed against one another in an episode of the revived Nickelodeon game show "Double Dare" that aired in November 2018.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2019, Thompson served as a judge for NBC's comedy competition series "Bring the Funny". He also became an executive producer with Mitchell for Nickelodeon's "All That" revival, premiering in June. In May 2019, NBC announced they had picked up Thompson's single-camera comedy "The Kenan Show" to series. The series, retitled "Kenan", premiered in 2021 on NBC, featuring Thompson as a newly-widowed father determined to be a "super dad". He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series after its first season. In May 2022, the series was canceled after its second season.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2020, he became the spokesman for Universal Parks & Resorts’ "Let Yourself Woah" campaign, and was set to host the 2020 White House Correspondents' Dinner before it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: 2021 would also see Thompson be named host of that year's Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and People's Choice Awards. He also hosted "The Jonas Brothers Family Roast" on Netflix.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In December 2021, Thompson co-founded the production company and talent incubator Artists for Artists (AFA). Their first announced project, "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth Part 2" is in collaboration with Mike Tyson and wife Lakiha "Kiki" Spicer and a sequel to the boxer's 2013 HBO special. In March 2022, AFA fully funded the launch of Twenty Two Entertainment, led by actors Michael Rainey Jr. and Gianni Paolo, best known from the Starz series "".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: He appears in the third episode of the revival of "The Kids in the Hall" as Ron, a Friend of the Kids in the Hall and hosted the NHL Awards in June 2022.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson returned to sketch comedy when he joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live" in 2003, becoming the show's first cast member born after its 1975 premiere. According to Thompson he had previously sent an audition tape to "SNL" multiple times with them claiming he looked too young, with him noting "it was a couple years' worth of that". A fan of the show before joining, Thompson noted that he feared that being on the show was a "disservice" to it stating "It was weird for me for a long time". Thompson was a featured player until 2005 (spanning the 29th and 30th seasons) and was promoted to repertory player at the beginning of season 31 (the 2005–2006 season).


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2013, he refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded "SNL" hire black women instead.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson has been a cast member on "SNL" for 20 seasons, breaking the record for the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history previously held by Darrell Hammond, who was on the show for 14 years. Thompson became the most senior cast member in the second half of the 2013–14 season, following the departure of Seth Meyers. He is also the longest-serving African-American cast member, surpassing Tim Meadows, who stayed on the show for ten seasons. Thompson also holds the record for most celebrity impressions performed on the show, performing 139, beating Hammond's previous record of 107. Although early on he planned to stay on the show until something else came along, by 2019 he noted that "SNL" was his "forever plan".


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson has been nominated for five Primetime Emmys for his work on "SNL", winning once. He has thrice been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, in 2018, 2020 and 2021. For co-writing the song "Last Christmas", in 2017 he was nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, an award he then won in 2018 for the lyrics to "Come Back Barack" (along with Chris Redd and Will Stephen).


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In 2014, "SNL" head writer Brian H. Tucker noted that simply putting "KENAN REACTS" would get a script more laughs, further elaborating, "Put him in your sketch somewhere, anywhere, and your sketch will get better. Because Kenan knows how to take ordinary lines and make them funny, and take funny lines and make them special." Similarly, Lorne Michaels in a 2019 article referred to Thompson as "the person I most rely on in the cast". "Vulture" referred to him as the "heir apparent" to Phil Hartman, both being "the glue" of their respective casts.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson's celebrity impressions on "SNL" include Al Sharpton, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Cosby, Charles Barkley, David Ortiz, OJ Simpson, and Steve Harvey on the recurring "Family Feud" sketch.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: He has performed in over 1,500 sketches, hitting the mark during the March 5, 2022 episode hosted by Oscar Isaac.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: In commemoration of his 20th anniversary on the show, Thompson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 11, 2022. It was placed next to Lorne Michaels' star.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson married model Christina Evangeline on November 11, 2011. Together, they have two daughters, born in June 2014, and August 2018.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: On April 7, 2022, it was announced that the two had been separated for over a year, but are co-parenting their daughters. On June 15, 2022, it was announced that Thompson was officially filing for divorce.


title: Kenan Thompson

text: Thompson stood in for Simon Cowell, who was still recovering from a back injury the previous week that required him to rest under medical observation.


title: 2012 (film)

text: 2012 is a 2009 American science fiction disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich. It was produced by Harald Kloser, Mark Gordon, and Larry J. Franco, and written by Kloser and Emmerich. The film stars John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oliver Platt, Thandiwe Newton (credited as Thandie Newton), Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson. Based on the 2012 phenomenon, its plot follows geologist Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) and novelist Jackson Curtis (Cusack) as they experience an eschatological sequence of events including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, megatsunamis and a global flood, all of which were imagined by subscribers to the hypothesis.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Filming, planned for Los Angeles, began in Vancouver in early August 2008 and wrapped up in mid-October 2008. After a lengthy advertising campaign which included the creation of a website from its main characters' point of view and a viral marketing website on which filmgoers could register for a lottery number to save them from the ensuing disaster, "2012" was released on November 13, 2009, to commercial success, grossing over $791 million worldwide against a production budget of $200 million, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 2009. The film received mixed reviews, with praise for its visual effects, but criticism of its screenplay and runtime.


title: 2012 (film)

text: In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley visits astrophysicist Satnam Tsurutani in India and learns that an exotic new type of neutrino from a huge solar flare is heating the Earth's core. In Washington, Adrian informs White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser, who brings him to meet President Thomas Wilson.


title: 2012 (film)

text: In 2010, Wilson and other world leaders begin building nine arks, each capable of carrying 100,000 people, in the Himalayas in Tibet. Nima, a Buddhist monk, is evacuated, and his brother Tenzin joins the ark project. Tickets are secretly sold to the rich for €1 billion per person to fund the construction.


title: 2012 (film)

text: In 2012, struggling science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis is a chauffeur in Los Angeles for Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov. Jackson's former wife Kate and their children, Noah and Lilly, live with Kate's boyfriend, plastic surgeon and amateur pilot Gordon Silberman. Jackson takes Noah and Lilly camping in Yellowstone National Park. When they enter an area fenced off by the United States Army, they are caught and brought to Adrian. After being released, they meet conspiracy theorist Charlie Frost, who hosts a radio show from the park. Charlie shows Jackson his video of Charles Hapgood's theory that polar shift and the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar predict a 2012 phenomenon and the end of the world. Charlie reveals that anyone attempting to inform the public was killed. The sudden departure of Yuri's sons Alec and Oleg makes Jackson realize Charlie is right. He rents a Cessna 340A to rescue his family. As the disaster unfolds, causing a colossal earthquake, Jackson and his family reach the airport and get the plane airborne just before the coast slides into the ocean. The group flies to Yellowstone and retrieve Charlie's map of the arks' location. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts, with Charlie staying behind to finish his broadcast and dying in the eruption; while the group barely escape the growing pyroclastic cloud. Realizing they need a larger plane, the group lands in Las Vegas.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Adrian, Carl, and First Daughter Laura fly to the arks, while President Wilson remains in Washington to address the nation. With the Vice-President's helicopter going down and the Speaker of the House missing, Carl becomes the acting commander-in-chief. Jackson runs into Yuri, Alec and Oleg, Yuri's girlfriend Tamara, and their pilot Sasha. Sasha and Gordon fly them out in an Antonov An-500 as the Yellowstone ash cloud envelops Las Vegas. Billions die in other ensuing disasters worldwide, including President Wilson.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Upon reaching the Himalayas in China, the plane runs out of fuel. Sasha instructs everyone to escape using a car stored in the hold, while Sasha crash-lands the jet on a glacier which then slides off a cliff, killing him. The survivors are spotted by Chinese Air Force helicopters. Yuri and his sons have tickets, and are taken to the arks, but everyone else, including Tamara (due to her having an affair with Sasha) are abandoned. Nima picks them up and takes them to the arks with his grandparents. With Tenzin's help, they stow away on ark 4, assigned to the U.S.


title: 2012 (film)

text: With a large tsunami approaching, a panicking Carl orders the loading gates be closed though most people have not boarded, however, Adrian begs the captain and the other arks not to carry out the order. The loading gates are opened and the passengers quickly board the arks, but Yuri falls to his death in a canyon as he pushes his sons into the ark. As the gate closes, Tenzin is injured and Gordon is crushed to death in the gears. The impact driver used to access the ship gets lodged in the gears of the gate machinery, preventing the gate from closing completely, and in turn, the ship's engines from starting. As the tsunami strikes, the back of the ark starts flooding and the ark itself is set adrift, heading for Mount Everest. Adrian rushes to clear the gears, but the flood doors close, trapping the stowaways and drowning Tamara. Jackson swims to clear the gears. With Noah following him, they dislodge the tool. The crew regains control of the ark just in time, while Jackson and Noah make it back safely.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Twenty-seven days later, the waters start to recede. The arks approach the Cape of Good Hope, where the Drakensberg mountains have now become the highest mountain range on Earth. Adrian and Laura begin a relationship, while Jackson and Kate rekindle their romance and reunite their family.


title: 2012 (film)

text: An alternate ending appears in the film's DVD release. After Captain Michaels (the captain of ark 4) announces that they are heading for the Cape of Good Hope, Adrian learns by phone that his father, Harry, and Harry's friend Tony survived a megatsunami which capsized their cruise ship "Genesis". Adrian and Laura strike up a friendship with the Curtis family; Kate thanks Laura for taking care of Lily, Laura tells Jackson that she enjoyed his book "Farewell Atlantis", and Jackson and Adrian have a conversation reflecting the events of the worldwide crisis. Jackson returns Noah's cell phone, which he recovered during the Ark 4 flood. The ark finds the shipwrecked "Genesis" and her survivors on a beach.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" was listed in "2012" credits as the film's inspiration, and Emmerich said in a "Time Out" interview: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's crust displacement theory in Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods"." He and composer-producer Harald Kloser worked closely together, co-writing a spec script (also titled "2012") which was marketed to studios in February 2008. A number of studios heard a budget projection and story plans from Emmerich and his representatives, a process repeated by the director after "Independence Day" (1996) and "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004).


title: 2012 (film)

text: Later that month, Sony Pictures Entertainment received the rights to the spec script. Planned for distribution by Columbia Pictures, "2012" cost less than its budget; according to Emmerich, the film was produced for about $200 million.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Filming, originally scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in July 2008, began in Kamloops, Savona, Cache Creek and Ashcroft, British Columbia in early August 2008 and wrapped up in mid-October 2008. With a Screen Actors Guild strike looming, the film's producers made a contingency plan to salvage it. Uncharted Territory, Digital Domain, Double Negative, Scanline, and Sony Pictures Imageworks were hired to create the film's visual effects.


title: 2012 (film)

text: The film depicts the destruction of several cultural and historical icons around the world. Emmerich said that the Kaaba was considered for selection, but Kloser was concerned about a possible fatwa against him.


title: 2012 (film)

text: "2012" was marketed by the fictional Institute for Human Continuity, featuring main character Jackson Curtis' book "Farewell Atlantis", streaming media, blog updates and radio broadcasts from zealot Charlie Frost on his website, "This Is the End". On November 12, 2008, the studio released the first trailer for "2012", which ended with a suggestion to viewers to "find out the truth" by entering "2012" on a search engine. "The Guardian" called the film's marketing "deeply flawed", associating it with "websites that make even more spurious claims about 2012".


title: 2012 (film)

text: The studio introduced a viral marketing website operated by the Institute for Human Continuity, where filmgoers could register for a lottery number to be part of a small population which would be rescued from the global destruction. David Morrison of NASA, who received over 1,000 inquiries from people who thought the website was genuine, condemned it. "I've even had cases of teenagers writing to me saying they are contemplating suicide because they don't want to see the world end", Morrison said. "I think when you lie on the internet and scare children to make a buck, that is ethically wrong." Another marketing website promoted "Farewell Atlantis".


title: 2012 (film)

text: Comcast organized a "roadblock campaign" to promote the film in which a two-minute scene was broadcast on 450 American commercial television networks, local English-language and Spanish-language stations, and 89 cable outlets during a ten-minute window between 10:50 and 11:00 pm Eastern and Pacific Time on October 1, 2009. The scene featured the destruction of Los Angeles and ended with a cliffhanger, with the entire 5:38 clip available on Comcast's Fancast website. According to "Variety", "The stunt will put the footage in front of 90% of all households watching ad-supported TV, or nearly 110 million viewers. When combined with online and mobile streams, that could increase to more than 140 million".


title: 2012 (film)

text: The film's score was composed by Harald Kloser and Thomas Wander. Adam Lambert contributed a song to the film, "Time for Miracles", originally written by Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider. The 24-song soundtrack includes "Fades Like a Photograph" by Filter and "It Ain't the End of the World" by George Segal and Blu Mankuma. "Master of Shadows" by Two Steps from Hell was used for the film's trailers.


title: 2012 (film)

text: "2012" was released to cinemas on November 13, 2009, in Indonesia, Mexico, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, China, India, Italy, the Philippines, Turkey, the United States, and Japan. According to Sony Pictures, the film could have been completed for a summer release but the delay allowed more time for production.


title: 2012 (film)

text: The DVD and Blu-ray versions were released on March 2, 2010. The two-disc Blu-ray edition includes over 90 minutes of features, including Adam Lambert's music video for "Time for Miracles" and a digital copy for PSP, PC, Mac, and iPod. A 3D version was released in Cinemex theaters in Mexico in February 2010. It was later released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on January 19, 2021.


title: 2012 (film)

text: "2012" grossed $166.1 million in North America and $603.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $769.6 million against a production budget of $200 million, making it the first film to gross over $700 million worldwide without crossing $200 million domestically. Worldwide, it was the fifth-highest-grossing 2009 film and the fifth-highest-grossing film distributed by Sony-Columbia, (behind Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" trilogy and "Skyfall"). "2012" is the second-highest-grossing film directed by Roland Emmerich, behind "Independence Day" (1996). It earned $230.5 million on its worldwide opening weekend, the fourth-largest opening of 2009 and for Sony-Columbia.


title: 2012 (film)

text: "2012" ranked number one on its opening weekend, grossing $65,237,614 on its first weekend (the fourth-largest opening for a disaster film). Outside North America it is the 28th-highest-grossing film, the fourth-highest-grossing 2009 film, and the second-highest-grossing film distributed by Sony-Columbia, after "Skyfall". "2012" earned $165.2 million on its opening weekend, the 20th-largest overseas opening. Its largest opening was in France and the Maghreb ($18.0 million). In total earnings, the film's three highest-grossing territories after North America were China ($68.7 million), France and the Maghreb ($44.0 million), and Japan ($42.6 million).


title: 2012 (film)

text: In 2020, the film received renewed interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the second-most popular film and seventh-most popular overall title on Netflix in March 2020.


title: 2012 (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 39% based on 247 reviews and an average rating of 5.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Roland Emmerich's "2012" provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: 2012 (film)

text: Roger Ebert praised "2012", giving it stars out of 4 and saying that it "delivers what it promises and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year". Ebert and Claudia Puig of "USA Today" called the film the "mother of all disaster movies". Dan Kois of "The Washington Post" gave the film 4/4 stars, deeming it "the crowning achievement in Emmerich's long, profitable career as a destroyer of worlds." Jim Schembri of "The Age" gave the film 4/5 stars, describing it as "a great, big, fat, stupid, greasy cheeseburger of a movie designed to show, in vivid detail, what the end of human civilisation will look like according to his vast army of brilliant visual effects artists."


title: 2012 (film)

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" compared the film to "", writing: "Beware "2012", which works the dubious miracle of almost matching "Transformers 2" for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity." Rick Groen of "The Globe and Mail" gave the film 1/4 stars, writing: "As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper." Christopher Orr of "The New Republic" wrote that the film's "ludicrous thrills begin burning themselves out by the movie’s midpoint", and added: "As the movie approaches its two-and-a-half hour mark, you, too, may feel that The End can’t come soon enough." Tim Robey of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the film 2/5 stars, saying that it was "dim, dim, dim, and so absurdly overscaled that we're not supposed to mind." Linda Barnard of the "Toronto Star" gave the film 1/4 stars, writing: "the clunky script and kitchen-sink approach to Emmerich's global apocalypse tale... makes the movie fail on a bunch of fronts."


title: 2012 (film)

text: In 2010 "Entertainment Weekly" reported a planned spin-off television series, "2013", which would have been a sequel to the film. "2012" executive producer Mark Gordon told the magazine, "ABC will have an opening in their disaster-related programming after "Lost" ends, so people would be interested in this topic on a weekly basis. There's hope for the world despite the magnitude of the 2012 disaster as seen in the film. After the movie, there are some people who survive, and the question is how will these survivors build a new world and what will it look like. That might make an interesting TV series." However, plans were canceled for budget reasons. It would have been Emmerich's third film to spawn a spin-off; the first was "Stargate" (followed by "Stargate SG-1", "Stargate Infinity", "Stargate Atlantis", "Stargate Universe"), and the second was "Godzilla" (followed by the animated "").


title: Sociology

text: Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society (i.e. of individual interaction and agency) to macro-level analyses (i.e. of social systems and social structure).


title: Sociology

text: Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and individual agency, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to other subjects and institutions, such as health and the institution of medicine; economy; military; punishment and systems of control; the Internet; sociology of education; social capital; and the role of social activity in the development of scientific knowledge.


title: Sociology

text: The range of social scientific methods has also expanded, as social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century, especially, have led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophical approaches towards the analysis of society. Conversely, the turn of the 21st century has seen the rise of new analytically, mathematically, and computationally rigorous techniques, such as agent-based modelling and social network analysis.


title: Sociology

text: Social research has influence throughout various industries and sectors of life, such as among politicians, policy makers, and legislators; educators; planners; administrators; developers; business magnates and managers; social workers; non-governmental organizations; and non-profit organizations, as well as individuals interested in resolving social issues in general. As such, there is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields.


title: Sociology

text: Sociological reasoning predates the foundation of the discipline itself. Social analysis has origins in the common stock of universal, global knowledge and philosophy, having been carried out from as far back as the time of Old comic poetry which features social and political criticism, and ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, if not earlier. For instance, the origin of the survey (i.e. the collection of information from a sample of individuals) can be traced back to at least the Domesday Book in 1086, while ancient philosophers such as Confucius wrote about the importance of social roles.


title: Sociology

text: There is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arabic writings as well. Some sources consider Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century Arab-Muslim scholar from Tunisia, to have been the father of sociology, although there is no reference to his work in the writings of European contributors to modern sociology. Khaldun's "Muqaddimah" was perhaps the first work to advance social-scientific reasoning on social cohesion and social conflict.


title: Sociology

text: The word "sociology" (or ) derives part of its name from the Latin word "socius" ('companion' or 'fellowship'). The suffix "-logy" ('the study of') comes from that of the Greek -λογία, derived from λόγος (, 'word' or 'knowledge').


title: Sociology

text: The term "sociology" was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript.


title: Sociology

text: "Sociology" was later defined independently by French philosopher of science Auguste Comte in 1838 as a new way of looking at society. Comte had earlier used the term "social physics", but it had been subsequently appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology, and economics through the scientific understanding of social life. Writing shortly after the malaise of the French Revolution, he proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in the "Course in Positive Philosophy" (1830–1842), later included in "A General View of Positivism" (1848). Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, in the progression of human understanding. In observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and having classified the sciences, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.


title: Sociology

text: Both Comte and Karl Marx set out to develop scientifically justified systems in the wake of European industrialization and secularization, informed by various key movements in the philosophies of history and science. Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a "science of society" nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin (1967), even though Marx did not consider himself to be a sociologist, he may be regarded as the "true father" of modern sociology, "in so far as anyone can claim the title."To have given clear and unified answers in familiar empirical terms to those theoretical questions which most occupied men's minds at the time, and to have deduced from them clear practical directives without creating obviously artificial links between the two, was the principal achievement of Marx's theory. The sociological treatment of historical and moral problems, which Comte and after him, Spencer and Taine, had discussed and mapped, became a precise and concrete study only when the attack of militant Marxism made its conclusions a burning issue, and so made the search for evidence more zealous and the attention to method more intense.


title: Sociology

text: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was one of the most popular and influential 19th-century sociologists. It is estimated that he sold one million books in his lifetime, far more than any other sociologist at the time.


title: Sociology

text: So strong was his influence that many other 19th-century thinkers, including Émile Durkheim, defined their ideas in relation to his. Durkheim's "Division of Labour in Society" is to a large extent an extended debate with Spencer from whose sociology, many commentators now agree, Durkheim borrowed extensively. Also a notable biologist, Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest". While Marxian ideas defined one strand of sociology, Spencer was a critic of socialism as well as a strong advocate for a laissez-faire style of government. His ideas were closely observed by conservative political circles, especially in the United States and England.


title: Sociology

text: The overarching methodological principle of positivism is to conduct sociology in broadly the same manner as natural science. An emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method is sought to provide a tested foundation for sociological research based on the assumption that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only arrive by positive affirmation through scientific methodology.


title: Sociology

text: The term has long since ceased to carry this meaning; there are no fewer than twelve distinct epistemologies that are referred to as positivism. Many of these approaches do not self-identify as "positivist", some because they themselves arose in opposition to older forms of positivism, and some because the label has over time become a pejorative term by being mistakenly linked with a theoretical empiricism. The extent of antipositivist criticism has also diverged, with many rejecting the scientific method and others only seeking to amend it to reflect 20th-century developments in the philosophy of science. However, positivism (broadly understood as a scientific approach to the study of society) remains dominant in contemporary sociology, especially in the United States.


title: Sociology

text: Loïc Wacquant distinguishes three major strains of positivism: Durkheimian, Logical, and Instrumental. None of these are the same as that set forth by Comte, who was unique in advocating such a rigid (and perhaps optimistic) version. While Émile Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method. Durkheim maintained that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisted that they should retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. He developed the notion of objective "sui generis" "social facts" to serve as unique empirical objects for the science of sociology to study.


title: Sociology

text: The variety of positivism that remains dominant today is termed "instrumental positivism". This approach eschews epistemological and metaphysical concerns (such as the nature of social facts) in favour of methodological clarity, replicability, reliability and validity. This positivism is more or less synonymous with quantitative research, and so only resembles older positivism in practice. Since it carries no explicit philosophical commitment, its practitioners may not belong to any particular school of thought. Modern sociology of this type is often credited to Paul Lazarsfeld, who pioneered large-scale survey studies and developed statistical techniques for analysing them. This approach lends itself to what Robert K. Merton called middle-range theory: abstract statements that generalize from segregated hypotheses and empirical regularities rather than starting with an abstract idea of a social whole.


title: Sociology

text: The German philosopher Hegel criticised traditional empiricist epistemology, which he rejected as uncritical, and determinism, which he viewed as overly mechanistic. Karl Marx's methodology borrowed from Hegelian dialecticism but also a rejection of positivism in favour of critical analysis, seeking to supplement the empirical acquisition of "facts" with the elimination of illusions. He maintained that appearances need to be critiqued rather than simply documented. Early hermeneuticians such as Wilhelm Dilthey pioneered the distinction between natural and social science ('Geisteswissenschaft'). Various neo-Kantian philosophers, phenomenologists and human scientists further theorized how the analysis of the social world differs to that of the natural world due to the irreducibly complex aspects of human society, culture, and being.


title: Sociology

text: In the Italian context of development of social sciences and of sociology in particular, there are oppositions to the first foundation of the discipline, sustained by speculative philosophy in accordance with the antiscientific tendencies matured by critique of positivism and evolutionism, so a tradition Progressist struggles to establish itself.


title: Sociology

text: At the turn of the 20th century the first generation of German sociologists formally introduced methodological anti-positivism, proposing that research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a resolutely subjective perspective. Max Weber argued that sociology may be loosely described as a science as it is able to identify causal relationships of human "social action"—especially among "ideal types", or hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena. As a non-positivist, however, Weber sought relationships that are not as "historical, invariant, or generalisable" as those pursued by natural scientists. Fellow German sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies, theorised on two crucial abstract concepts with his work on ""gemeinschaft" and "gesellschaft"" (). Tönnies marked a sharp line between the realm of concepts and the reality of social action: the first must be treated axiomatically and in a deductive way ("pure sociology"), whereas the second empirically and inductively ("applied sociology").


title: Sociology

text: Both Weber and Georg Simmel pioneered the ""Verstehen"" (or 'interpretative') method in social science; a systematic process by which an outside observer attempts to relate to a particular cultural group, or indigenous people, on their own terms and from their own point of view. Through the work of Simmel, in particular, sociology acquired a possible character beyond positivist data-collection or grand, deterministic systems of structural law. Relatively isolated from the sociological academy throughout his lifetime, Simmel presented idiosyncratic analyses of modernity more reminiscent of the phenomenological and existential writers than of Comte or Durkheim, paying particular concern to the forms of, and possibilities for, social individuality. His sociology engaged in a neo-Kantian inquiry into the limits of perception, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?'


title: Sociology

text: The first formal Department of Sociology in the world was established in 1892 by Albion Small—from the invitation of William Rainey Harper—at the University of Chicago. The American Journal of Sociology was founded shortly thereafter in 1895 by Small as well.


title: Sociology

text: The institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline, however, was chiefly led by Émile Durkheim, who developed positivism as a foundation for practical social research. While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his "Rules of the Sociological Method" (1895). For Durkheim, sociology could be described as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning."


title: Sociology

text: Durkheim's monograph "Suicide" (1897) is considered a seminal work in statistical analysis by contemporary sociologists. "Suicide" is a case study of variations in suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, and served to distinguish sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. It also marked a major contribution to the theoretical concept of structural functionalism. By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than that of Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes. He developed the notion of objective "sui generis," "social facts", to delineate a unique empirical object for the science of sociology to study. Through such studies he posited that sociology would be able to determine whether any given society is 'healthy' or 'pathological', and seek social reform to negate organic breakdown or "social anomie".


title: Sociology

text: Sociology quickly evolved as an academic response to the perceived challenges of modernity, such as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and the process of "rationalization". The field predominated in continental Europe, with British anthropology and statistics generally following on a separate trajectory. By the turn of the 20th century, however, many theorists were active in the English-speaking world. Few early sociologists were confined strictly to the subject, interacting also with economics, jurisprudence, psychology and philosophy, with theories being appropriated in a variety of different fields. Since its inception, sociological epistemology, methods, and frames of inquiry, have significantly expanded and diverged.


title: Sociology

text: Durkheim, Marx, and the German theorist Max Weber are typically cited as the three principal architects of sociology. Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Lester F. Ward, W.E.B. Du Bois, Vilfredo Pareto, Alexis de Tocqueville, Werner Sombart, Thorstein Veblen, Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, Jane Addams and Karl Mannheim are often included on academic curricula as founding theorists. Curricula also may include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Marianne Weber, Harriet Martineau, and Friedrich Engels as founders of the feminist tradition in sociology. Each key figure is associated with a particular theoretical perspective and orientation.


title: Sociology

text: The first college course entitled "Sociology" was taught in the United States at Yale in 1875 by William Graham Sumner. In 1883 Lester F. Ward, who later became the first president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), published "Dynamic Sociology—Or Applied social science as based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences", attacking the laissez-faire sociology of Herbert Spencer and Sumner. Ward's 1200-page book was used as core material in many early American sociology courses. In 1890, the oldest continuing American course in the modern tradition began at the University of Kansas, lectured by Frank W. Blackmar. The Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago was established in 1892 by Albion Small, who also published the first sociology textbook: An introduction to the study of society 1894. George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley, who had met at the University of Michigan in 1891 (along with John Dewey), moved to Chicago in 1894. Their influence gave rise to social psychology and the symbolic interactionism of the modern Chicago School. The "American Journal of Sociology" was founded in 1895, followed by the ASA in 1905.


title: Sociology

text: The sociological "canon of classics" with Durkheim and Max Weber at the top owes in part to Talcott Parsons, who is largely credited with introducing both to American audiences. Parsons consolidated the sociological tradition and set the agenda for American sociology at the point of its fastest disciplinary growth. Sociology in the United States was less historically influenced by Marxism than its European counterpart, and to this day broadly remains more statistical in its approach.


title: Sociology

text: The first sociology department to be established in the United Kingdom was at the London School of Economics and Political Science (home of the "British Journal of Sociology") in 1904. Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and Edvard Westermarck became the lecturers in the discipline at the University of London in 1907. Harriet Martineau, an English translator of Comte, has been cited as the first female sociologist. In 1909 the "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie" (German Sociological Association) was founded by Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, among others. Weber established the first department in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1919, having presented an influential new antipositivist sociology. In 1920, Florian Znaniecki set up the first department in Poland. The "Institute for Social Research" at the University of Frankfurt (later to become the Frankfurt School of critical theory) was founded in 1923. International co-operation in sociology began in 1893, when René Worms founded the "", an institution later eclipsed by the much larger International Sociological Association (ISA), founded in 1949.


title: Sociology

text: The contemporary discipline of sociology is theoretically multi-paradigmatic in line with the contentions of classical social theory. Randall Collins' well-cited survey of sociological theory retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four theoretical traditions: Functionalism, Conflict, Symbolic Interactionism, and Utilitarianism.


title: Sociology

text: Accordingly, modern sociological theory predominantly descends from functionalist (Durkheim) and conflict (Marx and Weber) approaches to social structure, as well as from symbolic-interactionist approaches to social interaction, such as micro-level structural (Simmel) and pragmatist (Mead, Cooley) perspectives. Utilitarianism (aka rational choice or social exchange), although often associated with economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory.


title: Sociology

text: Lastly, as argued by Raewyn Connell, a tradition that is often forgotten is that of Social Darwinism, which applies the logic of Darwinian biological evolution to people and societies. This tradition often aligns with classical functionalism, and was once the dominant theoretical stance in American sociology, from , associated with several founders of sociology, primarily Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward, and William Graham Sumner.


title: Sociology

text: Contemporary sociological theory retains traces of each of these traditions and they are by no means mutually exclusive.


title: Sociology

text: A broad historical paradigm in both sociology and anthropology, functionalism addresses the social structure—referred to as "social organization" by the classical theorists—with respect to the whole as well as the necessary function of the whole's constituent elements. A common analogy (popularized by Herbert Spencer) is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work towards the proper functioning of the entire 'body' of society. The perspective was implicit in the original sociological positivism of Comte but was theorized in full by Durkheim, again with respect to observable, structural laws.


title: Sociology

text: Functionalism also has an anthropological basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown. It is in the latter's specific usage that the prefix "structural" emerged. Classical functionalist theory is generally united by its tendency towards biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism, in that the basic form of society would increase in complexity and those forms of social organization that promoted solidarity would eventually overcome social disorganization. As Giddens states:Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and the function of social systems and to analyzing processes of evolution via mechanisms of adaptation. Functionalism strongly emphasizes the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects).


title: Sociology

text: Functionalist theories emphasize "cohesive systems" and are often contrasted with "conflict theories", which critique the overarching socio-political system or emphasize the inequality between particular groups. The following quotes from Durkheim and Marx epitomize the political, as well as theoretical, disparities, between functionalist and conflict thought respectively:


title: Sociology

text: Symbolic interaction—often associated with interactionism, phenomenology, dramaturgy, interpretivism—is a sociological approach that places emphasis on subjective meanings and the empirical unfolding of social processes, generally accessed through micro-analysis. This tradition emerged in the Chicago School of the 1920s and 1930s, which, prior to World War II, "had been "the" center of sociological research and graduate study." The approach focuses on creating a framework for building a theory that sees society as the product of the everyday interactions of individuals. Society is nothing more than the shared reality that people construct as they interact with one another. This approach sees people interacting in countless settings using symbolic communications to accomplish the tasks at hand. Therefore, society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings. Some critics of this approach argue that it only looks at what is happening in a particular social situation, and disregards the effects that culture, race or gender (i.e. social-historical structures) may have in that situation. Some important sociologists associated with this approach include Max Weber, George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, George Homans, and Peter Blau. It is also in this tradition that the radical-empirical approach of ethnomethodology emerges from the work of Harold Garfinkel.


title: Sociology

text: Utilitarianism is often referred to as exchange theory or rational choice theory in the context of sociology. This tradition tends to privilege the agency of individual rational actors and assumes that within interactions individuals always seek to maximize their own self-interest. As argued by Josh Whitford, rational actors are assumed to have four basic elements:


title: Sociology

text: Exchange theory is specifically attributed to the work of George C. Homans, Peter Blau and Richard Emerson. Organizational sociologists James G. March and Herbert A. Simon noted that an individual's rationality is bounded by the context or organizational setting. The utilitarian perspective in sociology was, most notably, revitalized in the late 20th century by the work of former ASA president James Coleman.


title: Sociology

text: Following the decline of theories of sociocultural evolution in the United States, the interactionist thought of the Chicago School dominated American sociology. As Anselm Strauss describes, "we didn't think symbolic interaction was a perspective in sociology; we thought it was sociology." Moreover, philosophical and psychological pragmatism grounded this tradition. After World War II, mainstream sociology shifted to the survey-research of Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University and the general theorizing of Pitirim Sorokin, followed by Talcott Parsons at Harvard University. Ultimately, "the failure of the Chicago, Columbia, and Wisconsin [sociology] departments to produce a significant number of graduate students interested in and committed to general theory in the years 1936–45 was to the advantage of the Harvard department." As Parsons began to dominate general theory, his work primarily referenced European sociology—almost entirely omitting citations of both the American tradition of sociocultural-evolution as well as pragmatism. In addition to Parsons' revision of the sociological canon (which included Marshall, Pareto, Weber and Durkheim), the lack of theoretical challenges from other departments nurtured the rise of the Parsonian structural-functionalist movement, which reached its crescendo in the 1950s, but by the 1960s was in rapid decline.


title: Sociology

text: By the 1980s, most functionalist perspectives in Europe had broadly been replaced by conflict-oriented approaches, and to many in the discipline, functionalism was considered "as dead as a dodo:" According to Giddens:The orthodox consensus terminated in the late 1960s and 1970s as the middle ground shared by otherwise competing perspectives gave way and was replaced by a baffling variety of competing perspectives. This third 'generation' of social theory includes phenomenologically inspired approaches, critical theory, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories written in the tradition of hermeneutics and ordinary language philosophy.


title: Sociology

text: While some conflict approaches also gained popularity in the United States, the mainstream of the discipline instead shifted to a variety of empirically oriented middle-range theories with no single overarching, or "grand", theoretical orientation. John Levi Martin refers to this "golden age of methodological unity and theoretical calm" as the "Pax Wisconsana", as it reflected the composition of the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: numerous scholars working on separate projects with little contention. Omar Lizardo describes the "pax wisconsana" as "a Midwestern flavored, Mertonian resolution of the theory/method wars in which [sociologists] all agreed on at least two working hypotheses: (1) grand theory is a waste of time; [and] (2) good theory has to be good to think with or goes in the trash bin." Despite the aversion to grand theory in the latter half of the 20th century, several new traditions have emerged that propose various syntheses: structuralism, post-structuralism, cultural sociology and systems theory.


title: Sociology

text: The structuralist movement originated primarily from the work of Durkheim as interpreted by two European scholars: Anthony Giddens, a sociologist, whose theory of structuration draws on the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure; and Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist. In this context, 'structure' does not refer to 'social structure', but to the semiotic understanding of human culture as a system of signs. One may delineate four central tenets of structuralism:


title: Sociology

text: The second tradition of structuralist thought, contemporaneous with Giddens, emerges from the American School of social network analysis in the 1970s and 1980s, spearheaded by the Harvard Department of Social Relations led by Harrison White and his students. This tradition of structuralist thought argues that, rather than semiotics, social structure is networks of patterned social relations. And, rather than Levi-Strauss, this school of thought draws on the notions of structure as theorized by Levi-Strauss' contemporary anthropologist, Radcliffe-Brown. Some refer to this as "network structuralism", and equate it to "British structuralism" as opposed to the "French structuralism" of Levi-Strauss.


title: Sociology

text: Post-structuralist thought has tended to reject 'humanist' assumptions in the construction of social theory. Michel Foucault provides an important critique in his "Archaeology of the Human Sciences", though Habermas (1986) and Rorty (1986) have both argued that Foucault merely replaces one such system of thought with another. The dialogue between these intellectuals highlights a trend in recent years for certain schools of sociology and philosophy to intersect. The anti-humanist position has been associated with "postmodernism", a term used in specific contexts to describe an "era" or "phenomena", but occasionally construed as a "method".


title: Sociology

text: Overall, there is a strong consensus regarding the central problems of sociological theory, which are largely inherited from the classical theoretical traditions. This consensus is: how to link, transcend or cope with the following "big three" dichotomies:


title: Sociology

text: Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with the problem of integrating or transcending the divide between micro, meso, and macro-scale social phenomena, which is a subset of all three central problems.


title: Sociology

text: The problem of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into two parts: a concern over the general possibilities of social actions, and the specific problem of social scientific knowledge. In the former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with the individual, and the individual's intentions and interpretations of the objective. The objective is often considered any public or external action or outcome, on up to society writ large. A primary question for social theorists, then, is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective, that is to say: how is "intersubjectivity" achieved? While, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also attempt to capture individual subjectivities. Also, some qualitative methods take a radical approach to objective description in situ.


title: Sociology

text: The latter concern with scientific knowledge results from the fact that a sociologist is part of the very object they seek to explain, as Bourdieu explains:


title: Sociology

text: Structure and agency, sometimes referred to as determinism versus voluntarism, form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices, whereas "structure" relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of individuals (e.g. social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, etc.). Discussions over the primacy of either structure or agency relate to the core of sociological epistemology (i.e. "what is the social world made of?", "what is a cause in the social world, and what is an effect?"). A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically, structures producing inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals?


title: Sociology

text: Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction that emerged through the work of Levi-Strauss who inherited it from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. Synchrony slices moments of time for analysis, thus it is an analysis of static social reality. Diachrony, on the other hand, attempts to analyse dynamic sequences. Following Saussure, synchrony would refer to social phenomena as a static concept like a "language", while diachrony would refer to unfolding processes like actual "speech". In Anthony Giddens' introduction to "Central Problems in Social Theory", he states that, "in order to show the interdependence of action and structure…we must grasp the time space relations inherent in the constitution of all social interaction." And like structure and agency, time is integral to discussion of social reproduction.


title: Sociology

text: In terms of sociology, historical sociology is often better positioned to analyse social life as diachronic, while survey research takes a snapshot of social life and is thus better equipped to understand social life as synchronized. Some argue that the synchrony of social structure is a methodological perspective rather than an ontological claim. Nonetheless, the problem for theory is how to integrate the two manners of recording and thinking about social data.


title: Sociology

text: Sociologists are often divided into camps of support for particular research techniques. These disputes relate to the epistemological debates at the historical core of social theory. While very different in many aspects, both qualitative and quantitative approaches involve a systematic interaction between theory and data. Quantitative methodologies hold the dominant position in sociology, especially in the United States. In the discipline's two most cited journals, quantitative articles have historically outnumbered qualitative ones by a factor of two. (Most articles published in the largest British journal, on the other hand, are qualitative.) Most textbooks on the methodology of social research are written from the quantitative perspective, and the very term "methodology" is often used synonymously with "statistics". Practically all sociology PhD programmes in the United States require training in statistical methods. The work produced by quantitative researchers is also deemed more 'trustworthy' and 'unbiased' by the general public, though this judgment continues to be challenged by antipositivists.


title: Sociology

text: The choice of method often depends largely on what the researcher intends to investigate. For example, a researcher concerned with drawing a statistical generalization across an entire population may administer a survey questionnaire to a representative sample population. By contrast, a researcher who seeks full contextual understanding of an individual's social actions may choose ethnographic participant observation or open-ended interviews. Studies will commonly combine, or 'triangulate', quantitative "and" qualitative methods as part of a 'multi-strategy' design. For instance, a quantitative study may be performed to obtain statistical patterns on a target sample, and then combined with a qualitative interview to determine the play of agency.


title: Sociology

text: Quantitative methods are often used to ask questions about a population that is very large, making a census or a complete enumeration of all the members in that population infeasible. A 'sample' then forms a manageable subset of a population. In quantitative research, statistics are used to draw inferences from this sample regarding the population as a whole. The process of selecting a sample is referred to as 'sampling'. While it is usually best to sample randomly, concern with differences between specific subpopulations sometimes calls for stratified sampling. Conversely, the impossibility of random sampling sometimes necessitates nonprobability sampling, such as convenience sampling or snowball sampling.


title: Sociology

text: Sociologists increasingly draw upon computationally intensive methods to analyse and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, text mining, complex statistical methods, and new analytic approaches like social network analysis and social sequence analysis, computational sociology develops and tests theories of complex social processes through bottom-up modelling of social interactions.


title: Sociology

text: Although the subject matter and methodologies in social science differ from those in natural science or computer science, several of the approaches used in contemporary social simulation originated from fields such as physics and artificial intelligence. By the same token, some of the approaches that originated in computational sociology have been imported into the natural sciences, such as measures of network centrality from the fields of social network analysis and network science. In relevant literature, computational sociology is often related to the study of social complexity. Social complexity concepts such as complex systems, non-linear interconnection among macro and micro process, and emergence, have entered the vocabulary of computational sociology. A practical and well-known example is the construction of a computational model in the form of an "artificial society", by which researchers can analyse the structure of a social system.


title: Sociology

text: Sociologists' approach to culture can be divided into ""sociology of culture"" and ""cultural sociology""—terms which are similar, though not entirely interchangeable. Sociology of culture is an older term, and considers some topics and objects as more or less "cultural" than others. Conversely, cultural sociology sees all social phenomena as inherently cultural. Sociology of culture often attempts to explain certain cultural phenomena as a product of social processes, while cultural sociology sees culture as a potential explanation of social phenomena.


title: Sociology

text: For Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." While early theorists such as Durkheim and Mauss were influential in cultural anthropology, sociologists of culture are generally distinguished by their concern for modern (rather than primitive or ancient) society. Cultural sociology often involves the hermeneutic analysis of words, artefacts and symbols, or ethnographic interviews. However, some sociologists employ historical-comparative or quantitative techniques in the analysis of culture, Weber and Bourdieu for instance. The subfield is sometimes allied with critical theory in the vein of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and other members of the Frankfurt School. Loosely distinct from the sociology of culture is the field of cultural studies. Birmingham School theorists such as Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall questioned the division between "producers" and "consumers" evident in earlier theory, emphasizing the reciprocity in the production of texts. Cultural Studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. For example, a study of a subculture (e.g. white working class youth in London) would consider the social practices of the group as they relate to the dominant class. The "cultural turn" of the 1960s ultimately placed culture much higher on the sociological agenda.


title: Sociology

text: Sociology of literature, film, and art is a subset of the sociology of culture. This field studies the social production of artistic objects and its social implications. A notable example is Pierre Bourdieu's "Les Règles de L'Art: Genèse et Structure du Champ Littéraire" (1992). None of the founding fathers of sociology produced a detailed study of art, but they did develop ideas that were subsequently applied to literature by others. Marx's theory of ideology was directed at literature by Pierre Macherey, Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson. Weber's theory of modernity as cultural rationalization, which he applied to music, was later applied to all the arts, literature included, by Frankfurt School writers such as Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas. Durkheim's view of sociology as the study of externally defined social facts was redirected towards literature by Robert Escarpit. Bourdieu's own work is clearly indebted to Marx, Weber and Durkheim.


title: Sociology

text: Criminologists analyse the nature, causes, and control of criminal activity, drawing upon methods across sociology, psychology, and the behavioural sciences. The sociology of deviance focuses on actions or behaviours that violate norms, including both infringements of formally enacted rules (e.g., crime) and informal violations of cultural norms. It is the remit of sociologists to study why these norms exist; how they change over time; and how they are enforced. The concept of social disorganization is when the broader social systems leads to violations of norms. For instance, Robert K. Merton produced a typology of deviance, which includes both individual and system level causal explanations of deviance.


title: Sociology

text: The study of law played a significant role in the formation of classical sociology. Durkheim famously described law as the "visible symbol" of social solidarity. The sociology of law refers to both a sub-discipline of sociology and an approach within the field of legal studies. Sociology of law is a diverse field of study that examines the interaction of law with other aspects of society, such as the development of legal institutions and the effect of laws on social change and vice versa. For example, an influential recent work in the field relies on statistical analyses to argue that the increase in incarceration in the US over the last 30 years is due to changes in law and policing and not to an increase in crime; and that this increase has significantly contributed to the persistence of racial stratification.


title: Sociology

text: The sociology of communications and information technologies includes "the social aspects of computing, the Internet, new media, computer networks, and other communication and information technologies."


title: Sociology

text: The Internet is of interest to sociologists in various ways, most practically as a tool for research and as a discussion platform. The sociology of the Internet in the broad sense concerns the analysis of online communities (e.g. newsgroups, social networking sites) and virtual worlds, meaning that there is often overlap with community sociology. Online communities may be studied statistically through network analysis or interpreted qualitatively through virtual ethnography. Moreover, organizational change is catalysed through new media, thereby influencing social change at-large, perhaps forming the framework for a transformation from an industrial to an informational society. One notable text is Manuel Castells' "The Internet Galaxy"—the title of which forms an inter-textual reference to Marshall McLuhan's "The Gutenberg Galaxy". Closely related to the sociology of the Internet is digital sociology, which expands the scope of study to address not only the internet but also the impact of the other digital media and devices that have emerged since the first decade of the twenty-first century.


title: Sociology

text: As with cultural studies, media study is a distinct discipline that owes to the convergence of sociology and other social sciences and humanities, in particular, literary criticism and critical theory. Though neither the production process nor the critique of aesthetic forms is in the remit of sociologists, analyses of socializing factors, such as ideological effects and audience reception, stem from sociological theory and method. Thus the 'sociology of the media' is not a subdiscipline "per se", but the media is a common and often indispensable topic.


title: Sociology

text: The term "economic sociology" was first used by William Stanley Jevons in 1879, later to be coined in the works of Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel between 1890 and 1920. Economic sociology arose as a new approach to the analysis of economic phenomena, emphasizing class relations and modernity as a philosophical concept. The relationship between capitalism and modernity is a salient issue, perhaps best demonstrated in Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905) and Simmel's "The Philosophy of Money" (1900). The contemporary period of economic sociology, also known as "new economic sociology", was consolidated by the 1985 work of Mark Granovetter titled "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness". This work elaborated the concept of embeddedness, which states that economic relations between individuals or firms take place within existing social relations (and are thus structured by these relations as well as the greater social structures of which those relations are a part). Social network analysis has been the primary methodology for studying this phenomenon. Granovetter's theory of the strength of weak ties and Ronald Burt's concept of structural holes are two of the best known theoretical contributions of this field.


title: Sociology

text: The sociology of work, or industrial sociology, examines "the direction and implications of trends in technological change, globalization, labour markets, work organization, managerial practices and employment relations to the extent to which these trends are intimately related to changing patterns of inequality in modern societies and to the changing experiences of individuals and families the ways in which workers challenge, resist and make their own contributions to the patterning of work and shaping of work institutions."


title: Sociology

text: The sociology of education is the study of how educational institutions determine social structures, experiences, and other outcomes. It is particularly concerned with the schooling systems of modern industrial societies. A classic 1966 study in this field by James Coleman, known as the "Coleman Report", analysed the performance of over 150,000 students and found that student background and socioeconomic status are much more important in determining educational outcomes than are measured differences in school resources (i.e. per pupil spending). The controversy over "school effects" ignited by that study has continued to this day. The study also found that socially disadvantaged black students profited from schooling in racially mixed classrooms, and thus served as a catalyst for desegregation busing in American public schools.


title: Sociology

text: Environmental sociology is the study of human interactions with the natural environment, typically emphasizing human dimensions of environmental problems, social impacts of those problems, and efforts to resolve them. As with other sub-fields of sociology, scholarship in environmental sociology may be at one or multiple levels of analysis, from global (e.g. world-systems) to local, societal to individual. Attention is paid also to the processes by which environmental problems become "defined" and "known" to humans. As argued by notable environmental sociologist John Bellamy Foster, the predecessor to modern environmental sociology is Marx's analysis of the metabolic rift, which influenced contemporary thought on sustainability. Environmental sociology is often interdisciplinary and overlaps with the sociology of risk, rural sociology and the sociology of disaster.


title: Sociology

text: Human ecology deals with interdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. In addition to Environmental sociology, this field overlaps with architectural sociology, urban sociology, and to some extent visual sociology. In turn, visual sociology—which is concerned with all visual dimensions of social life—overlaps with media studies in that it uses photography, film and other technologies of media.


title: Sociology

text: Social pre-wiring deals with the study of fetal social behavior and social interactions in a multi-fetal environment. Specifically, social pre-wiring refers to the ontogeny of social interaction. Also informally referred to as, "wired to be social". The theory questions whether there is a propensity to socially oriented action already present "before" birth. Research in the theory concludes that newborns are born into the world with a unique genetic wiring to be social.


title: Sociology

text: Circumstantial evidence supporting the social pre-wiring hypothesis can be revealed when examining newborns' behavior. Newborns, not even hours after birth, have been found to display a preparedness for social interaction. This preparedness is expressed in ways such as their imitation of facial gestures. This observed behavior cannot be attributed to any current form of socialization or social construction. Rather, newborns most likely inherit to some extent social behavior and identity through genetics.


title: Sociology

text: Principal evidence of this theory is uncovered by examining Twin pregnancies. The main argument is, if there are social behaviors that are inherited and developed before birth, then one should expect twin foetuses to engage in some form of social interaction before they are born. Thus, ten foetuses were analyzed over a period of time using ultrasound techniques. Using kinematic analysis, the results of the experiment were that the twin foetuses would interact with each other for longer periods and more often as the pregnancies went on. Researchers were able to conclude that the performance of movements between the co-twins were not accidental but specifically aimed.


title: Sociology

text: The social pre-wiring hypothesis was proved correct: The central advance of this study is the demonstration that 'social actions' are already performed in the second trimester of gestation. Starting from the 14th week of gestation twin foetuses plan and execute movements specifically aimed at the co-twin. These findings force us to predate the emergence of social behavior: when the context enables it, as in the case of twin foetuses, other-directed actions are not only possible but predominant over self-directed actions.


title: Sociology

text: Family, gender and sexuality form a broad area of inquiry studied in many sub-fields of sociology. A family is a group of people who are related by kinship ties :- Relations of blood / marriage / civil partnership or adoption. The family unit is one of the most important social institutions found in some form in nearly all known societies. It is the basic unit of social organization and plays a key role in socializing children into the culture of their society. The sociology of the family examines the family, as an institution and unit of socialization, with special concern for the comparatively modern historical emergence of the nuclear family and its distinct gender roles. The notion of "childhood" is also significant. As one of the more basic institutions to which one may apply sociological perspectives, the sociology of the family is a common component on introductory academic curricula. Feminist sociology, on the other hand, is a normative sub-field that observes and critiques the cultural categories of gender and sexuality, particularly with respect to power and inequality. The primary concern of feminist theory is the patriarchy and the systematic oppression of women apparent in many societies, both at the level of small-scale interaction and in terms of the broader social structure. Feminist sociology also analyses how gender interlocks with race and class to produce and perpetuate social inequalities. "How to account for the differences in definitions of femininity and masculinity and in sex role across different societies and historical periods" is also a concern.