This article examines the development and trajectory of Iranian sociology, highlighting its entanglement with abstraction, domination, and the erasure of difference. Imported as a discipline, Iranian sociology has historically followed a Eurocentric model of knowledge and domination, framing the realities of non-sovereign identities in Iran through a metropolitan lens, thereby marginalizing peripheral identities. The analysis identifies three interrelated forms of abstraction—historical, patriotic, and discursive—that obscure social difference while legitimizing centralized power and nationalist narratives. Historical abstraction, informed by colonial legacies and evolutionary paradigms, sustains social hierarchies; patriotic abstraction emerges in state-sanctioned scholarship, which privileges a homogenized national narrative over plural social realities; and discursive abstraction, shaped by methodological nationalism, excludes the multiplicity of non-Persian realities and perspectives not anchored in the Iranian nation-state. Drawing on critical sociology and postcolonial theory, the article advocates a decolonial reorientation that centers marginalized epistemologies, embraces relational methodologies, and challenges the nation-state as the default entity. This approach invites Iranian sociology to adopt a reflexive, ethical stance attuned to lived experiences beyond abstraction. Methodologically, this article proceeds as a meta-theoretical analysis, deploying a critical review to interrogate the sociological field itself by examining theoretical foundations, dominant research methods, canonical textbooks, and the broader academic infrastructures of Iranian social science.
Two parallel, seemingly contradictory trends appear to co-exist: the scientization of politics and the increasing contestation of science in politics. This article examines the long-term development of these trends through legislative debates of parliaments of Canada, Finland, Kenya, and the United Kingdom from 1960 to 2020. While contestations around expert knowledge occur throughout the period, results indicate that in recent decades legislators have become increasingly inclined to debate its appropriate or problematic use in lawmaking. This development is closely linked to the consolidation of the norms and ideals of evidence-based policymaking. In this sense, contestations around the use of expert knowledge intensify, which is particularly visible in the upsurge of explicit accusations that others are violating these norms and ideals. Even as the role of evidence becomes more intensively politicized, most contestations still reflect the highly legitimized status of science and expert knowledge. We discuss the findings in relation to world society theory's scientization thesis, emphasizing the importance of accounting for contrasting trends. The article contributes to understanding the complex relation of expert knowledge to lawmaking by foregrounding politicians’ metadiscourse on the relationship between expert knowledge and politics as a cultural resource that political actors both draw upon and seek to shape.
The aim of this paper is to examine how social class and welfare status, separately and jointly, are related to cumulation of disadvantages among young Norwegian adults aged 25–30 years. This is an important issue given the numerous challenges young people face in the transition from youth to adulthood, also in a comprehensive and generous welfare state like Norway. We use national register data encompassing all young adults ( N = 428,391) in 2017, and identify six disadvantages: weak labour market attachment, income poverty, payment difficulties, debt issues, mental health issues and somatic disease. Methods applied include cross-tabulations, correlation analysis and multiple ordinary least squares (OLS). Sensitivity analyses are conducted to check the robustness of the results. The results show that a large majority (63%) do not have any disadvantages. Ten per cent have two or more. The measured disadvantages are significantly interrelated. Yet, overall, the statistical associations are not strong. The OLS analyses indicate that social class has a strong effect on the number of disadvantages, an effect that is mostly indirect and mediated via welfare status and sociodemographics. To a substantial degree, welfare status, independent of social class and various sociodemographic variables, accounts for the number of disadvantages, but the strength of the association depends on benefit status. Recipients of work assessment allowance, that is, people with reduced work capacity due to illness or injury, and recipients of disability benefit and social assistance stand out as particularly exposed groups.
Although native-immigrant gaps in tangible labor market outcomes such as wages have been widely studied, people's experiences at work are also crucial for their wellbeing. This article considers two generic sources of native-immigrant differentials in desirable individual workplace experiences, especially job autonomy. Following the occupational segregation literature, the first is that foreign-borns and natives are recruited to do different types of jobs. This results in native-immigrant interoccupational segregation. The second is that, once employed in a particular occupation, natives and immigrants are assigned different tasks and subject to different working conditions. This results in intraoccupational segregation and differences between immigrants and natives employed in the same occupation. The empirical analysis involves large-scale individual-level cross-national survey data and focuses on job autonomy as a chief individual workplace experience. I find strong evidence of both inter- and intraoccupational segregation, with the former being the largest source of the observed immigrant-native job autonomy gap. Results are similar when considering other individual workplace experiences with a quality trait such as job satisfaction. I conclude that the ethnic labor market penalty extends beyond tangible job features to individuals' experiences in their places of work.
