Most recent papers:

• Imagining an Affective Sociology.
  Seth Abrutyn.
  Sociological Theory. 6 days ago
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  In the following essay, I make the case that sociology is long overdue for an affective “turn,” or a full-scale embrace of emotional dynamics. For most of its history, sociology has had a tenuous relationship with emotions and affect. Sometimes ignored, ...

  May 04, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261440890   open full text
• The Baroque as Grammar of Digital Modernity: Rethinking Labor, Informality, and Platforms from the Global South.
  Federico De Stavola, Gianmarco Peterlongo.
  Sociological Theory. 11 days ago
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  This article proposes the Latin American Baroque as an interpretative matrix for analyzing digital modernity. Drawing on Echeverría’smodernidad barrocaand Latin American theories of dependency and historical-structural heterogeneity, we argue that ...

  April 29, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261436791   open full text
• Theorist Ignored: Hubert Harrison and the Birth of Racial Capitalism Theory.
  Julian Go.
  Sociological Theory. April 22, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927) was an early twentieth-century writer who engaged Marxist theoreticians and conventional American sociological theory in his writings, but he remains unknown to social theorists and histories of American social science. ...

  April 22, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261436365   open full text
• Theorizing the Monogamous State: Intersections of Race, Coloniality, and Sexuality.
  Melanie Heath.
  Sociological Theory. April 08, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  Theorizing the importance of the state in regulating sexuality and how sexuality shapes the state has been key to understanding state control and definition. Monogamy has been treated as an implicit aspect of sexual regulation, but its significance in ...

  April 08, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261434594   open full text
• The Secular Sacred Canopy: A Paradigm Revision in the Study of Secularization.
  Galen Watts, Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme.
  Sociological Theory. March 17, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  This article revisits and revises the secularization paradigm in light of late-stage secularization. Whereas secularization theory, influenced by Peter Berger, holds that structural differentiation, rationalization, pluralism, and individualization erode ...

  March 17, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261427015   open full text
• The Paradoxes of Trans Identity Claims.
  Eduardo Duran.
  Sociological Theory. March 05, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  As both ethnoracial and sex/gender categories come to be increasingly understood as fluid, contextual, and constructed, transgender identities have gained cultural legitimacy, yet transracial claims remain widely contested. This contrast has prompted the ...

  March 05, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751261422728   open full text
• A Cognitive-Structural Sociological Account of the Emergence of Novel Worlds.
  Giacomo Negro, Michael T. Hannan.
  Sociological Theory. February 17, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  This article proposes a cognitive structural account of the emergence of social worlds that organize the expectations of producers and audiences. The proposed model considers the emergence process in three stages: (1) the arrival of distinctive clusters ...

  February 17, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751251411890   open full text
• The Art of Saying No: Hermeneutic Theorizing and the Force of Negation.
  Fabian Anicker.
  Sociological Theory. January 13, 2026
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  Recently, sociology saw a surge of interest in practical theorizing. Many contributions to this discourse adopt an empiricist approach to theory building characterized by data centrism, a separation between discovery and justification, and an unclear or ...

  January 13, 2026   doi: 10.1177/07352751251413221   open full text
• Outline of a Theory of “Work-Life Balance”: How Multiple Fields Structure the Family-Employment-Leisure Nexus.
  Will Atkinson.
  Sociological Theory. December 26, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  The phenomena going under the label of “work-life balance” (WLB) are crucial for understanding not only major pressures weighing on people’s well-being and choices but also the very organization and negotiation of everyday life. Despite being heavily ...

  December 26, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251405187   open full text
• Redefining Freedom: Sociological Transformations from Ancient Liberties to Global Interdependencies.
  Giacomo Bazzani.
  Sociological Theory. December 18, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  Freedom has long been central to philosophical inquiry and political discourse, yet sociological analyses remain limited. This article introduces a novel sociological framework structured around two dimensions—superordinate unity (dominant configurations ...

  December 18, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251403508   open full text
• (An)Aesthetic Emotions: A Pragmatist View of Sensibility Change.
  Giacomo Lampredi.
  Sociological Theory. December 06, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 80-106, March 2026.
  This article presents a pragmatist framework for the sociology of emotions by introducing the concepts ofaestheticandanaestheticemotions. Aesthetic emotions arise from disruptions of habits, generating emotional qualities that unify experience and ...

  December 06, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251396510   open full text
• Specifying Race: The Colonial Constitution of Race in a Set-Theoretic Framework.
  Luna Vincent.
  Sociological Theory. November 24, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 1-24, March 2026.
  Sociologists of race tend to prioritize either how race structures people’s lives or the change and variation of racial categories across time and space. This bifurcation constrains sociological race theorizing. Structural materialist sociologists tend to ...

  November 24, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251395706   open full text
• Steps toward an Ecology of Markets: Markets as Evolving Computational Algorithms.
  James Rosenberg.
  Sociological Theory. November 14, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 52-79, March 2026.
  Approaches to the study of markets in economic sociology have been converging with an approach to markets found in the field of evolutionary economics. In this view, markets are treated as sets of rules that facilitate the exchange of goods and ...

  November 14, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251390470   open full text
• Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage.
  Heba Alex.
  Sociological Theory. October 08, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 25-51, March 2026.
  This article describes a strategic mechanism, fuzzy boundaries, that groups use to accumulate advantage. In contrast to the dominant view that rigid, well-defined boundaries maximize group rewards, I argue that ambiguity in membership criteria can, under ...

  October 08, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251378516   open full text
• The Prison of Misrecognition: The Epistemic Struggle against “Bad Words” in Philippine Politics.
  Marco Z. Garrido.
  Sociological Theory. July 13, 2025
  Sociological Theory, Ahead of Print.
  For scholars of the Global South, epistemic struggle happens in the particular, that is, over the course of debates around particular models of reality. To illustrate, I reconstruct debates around an influential model of Philippine politics, arguing that ...

  July 13, 2025   doi: 10.1177/07352751251350963   open full text