Advantages of studying ethnic issues from the perspective of sociology

The research content of sociology is very extensive, and new disciplines (such as social psychology, social policy, social anthropology, etc.) have been derived from it. Almost none of them can cover all the fields involved or satisfy all sociologists. In addition, sociology is still relatively young compared with other social sciences. Based on the above two points, a negative definition method has always been popular: it does not belong to economics, politics, history and history. Don't belong? You study the scope of sociology.

This is just a general definition, but sociologists don't do research at will. Therefore, the question of "what does sociology study" is specific to different scholars, who will have different views according to their own research. For example, my research involves scientific research, engineering, policy, grass-roots movement and other cases. But in fact, I have only studied one thing: boundaries, that is, "human beings" (people, including people and things, things and things). How are the boundaries formed and changed?

Some of my colleagues think that sociology studies "structure", that is, how social relations are established, maintained and operated. Individuals have no meaning, only structure has meaning; Other colleagues think that sociology is the study of "(action) individuals", that is, the behavior patterns of social individuals; Other colleagues think that sociology, especially contemporary sociology, studies "risk", that is, life, illness, death, eating, drinking and having fun are all related to risk. Others think that they study violence, alienation, identity and so on.

A Review of Ethnic Studies in Sociology Abroad

It is the responsibility of social science researchers to reveal the deep laws of social development through their own academic research. However, whether social science researchers can grasp people's confusion and thinking in what scope and depth, provide people with an understanding of the macro trends in the world today, and make convincing answers in the face of various social contradictions obviously requires sociologists to provide a new theoretical framework and thinking perspective.

Since 2007, the Ministry of Education has organized relevant experts to conduct a comprehensive study on the frontiers of various disciplines abroad. As a research group, the author of this paper is responsible for tracking the progress of sociology. This paper is a complete introduction to the research papers on race/nationality in four English periodicals in 2009. American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, European Sociological Review and Social Forces are the four most important English academic journals recognized by foreign sociologists. In 2009, these four journals published 204 papers and 207 book reviews. Among them, the largest number is concentrated in the core areas of immigration and race/ethnicity studies. This paper briefly introduces this, from which readers can get a general understanding of the latest progress of the frontier topic of race/nationality in foreign sociological research in 2009, as well as the research perspective, research methods and research propositions.

The United States has been an immigrant country since colonial times. Racial conflicts and immigration are the core issues that have plagued American society for hundreds of years. Because of this, the study of immigrants/nationalities has always been the most important research field in American sociology. European countries are not only the cradles of nationalism and nation-states, but also the regions that absorbed a large number of immigrants from Africa, South Asia and the Middle East after World War II. History and reality make the issue of race and nationality the focus of American and European sociologists, so American and European sociologists have been paying close attention to the study of race and nationality.

American Journal of Sociology.

Jurgen Gerhards and Silke Hans of the Free University of Berlin wrote an article "From Hassan to Herbert: Naming Pattern of Immigrant Parents between Culturalization and Racial Attachment" (from Hassan to Herbert: I Naming Pattern). M immigrant parents are concerned about how immigrants name their children. Names usually indicate a person's ethnic affiliation. Gehaz and Hans believe that when new immigrant parents give their children a name that is very common in the immigrant society, they show a high degree of cultural assimilation with the mainstream society in the immigrant country. On the contrary, if they choose a name that is commonly used in their country of origin, they are sending a message trying to maintain their cultural identity. The data used by Gehaz and Hans are from the German Institute of Social Economics, including data on immigrants from Turkey, Southwest Europe and the former Yugoslavia. The author tries to explain that from the perspective of naming, the degree of cultural adaptation depends on several factors: the cultural boundary between the country of origin and the country of immigration, the degree of immigrants' integration into the social structure of the country of immigration, cross-racial networks, and religious affiliation.

Alexandra Kalev of the University of Arizona's article "Breaking the Glass Cage: Reconstruction and Subjective Inequality at Work" focuses on the position of women and ethnic minorities in the labor market. Keller pointed out that women and ethnic minorities have made important contributions in the labor market, but they are usually isolated in low-level positions, and their contributions are often underestimated. Early research regarded career achievement as the result of personal characteristics, while the study of organizational structure tried to bring the organizational system itself into hierarchical research. They discussed how the personnel department put women and ethnic minorities in certain positions and how these jobs were degraded. Keller pointed out that in fact, few studies pay attention to the impact of occupational segregation on the opportunity structure, and this segregation plays an important role in unequal reproduction. Isolated work or responsibility can be regarded as a "glass cover", which institutionalizes informal obstacles in job promotion. The organizational system of work, especially the position structure, can maintain or erode gender and racial disadvantages. Reorganizing the work structure of staff around "team work" and weakening the responsibility boundary can improve the visibility of women and ethnic minorities' abilities and contributions, thus improving their advantages in professional competition. On the other hand, advocates of bureaucracy believe that loose job responsibilities and emphasis on work cooperation will deepen the preemptive disadvantage of women and ethnic minorities. Keller's research examines the above two viewpoints, and the results show that if employers adopt popular team work and implement project training, the degree of preemptive inequality can indeed be reduced.