Gabriel Ignatow
Biographic Data
| ID | 253244 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gabriel Ignatow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gabriel |
| FAMILY NAME | Ignatow |
| SIGNATURE | IGNATOW G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Texas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8091-6726 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 286 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Arbitrage in Sociological Theorizing: The case of W. E. B. Du Bois
The transnational capitalist class as managers of the international monetary system
Elite class self‐interest, socioeconomic inequality and U.S. population health
Class‐based perspectives on the persistent social gradients in health within modern welfare states largely focus on the adverse consequences of unfettered neoliberalism and entrenched meritocratic socioeconomic selection. Namely, neoliberal‐driven economic inequality has fuelled resentment and stress among lower‐status groups, while these groups have become more homogeneous with regard to health behaviours and outcomes. We synthesise several soci…
Sociology and the international monetary system: An update of Hoogvelt and Vermeiren
While money is centrally important to globalization, inequality, and social conflict, sociological globalization theories lack a macro theoretical framework for analysis of the international monetary system. Because studies of the US dollar by Hoogvelt (2010 Hoogvelt, A. (2010). Globalization, crisis and the political economy of the international monetary (dis) order. Globalizations, 7(1-2), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731003593133[Taylor…
Forming an affective public online: Aggressive posts and comments in the My Stealthy Freedom movement
We use social psychology research on emotional selection of information to model how social movements use social media in the formation of affective publics and apply our model to Instagram post data from the My Stealthy Freedom anti-mandatory hijab movement in Iran. Thematic analysis applied to samples of posts and comments revealed six main themes, one of which, aggression, includes three subthemes related to verbal aggression and physical viol…
Cognitive Sociology after Relational Biology 1
This article advances an argument first made fourteen years ago (Ignatow 2007) that sociologists interested in culture and cognition should theorize cognition as an embodied phenomenon rather than in terms of abstract information processing. I further develop the theoretical element of the 2007 argument by considering the implications of research on the microbiome‐gut‐brain axis (MGB) from contemporary biology for the theoretical foundations of c…
The microbiome‐gut‐brain and social behavior
This paper argues for the sociological relevance of contemporary research from ‘relational’ or ‘systems’ biology on the microbiome‐gut‐brain (MGB) axis. I review research on the MGB from microbial neuroendocrinology, nutritional psychiatry and other fields with a specific focus on nutrition as a critical element of the social environment influencing gene‐environment interactions and a range of social behaviors. I discuss two plausible causal path…
Beyond Bourdieu: From Genetic Structuralism to Relational Phenomenology
Generational Peers and Alcohol Misuse
This study investigates the influence of generational peers on alcohol misuse among immigrant youth. We derive hypotheses from sociological theories of generations regarding race/ethnicity, gender, and immigrant generation and test these hypotheses using a measure that accounts for the proportion of peers within a given peer network that are of the same immigrant generation. Results show that generational ties decreased the odds of alcohol misuse…
Agenda setting and active audiences in online coverage of human trafficking
Online news platforms and social media increasingly influence the public agenda on social issues such as human trafficking. Yet despite the popularity of online news and the availability of sophisticated tools for analyzing digital texts, little is known about the relations between news coverage of human trafficking and audiences’ reactions to and interpretations of such coverage. In this paper, we examine journalists’ and commenters’ topic choic…
Embodiment and Culture
Theoretical Foundations for Digital Text Analysis
Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machine‐assisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groun…
Religion, environment and milieu
As sociologists with long-standing interests in cognition, embodiment, and religion, we find ourselves agreeing with most of the main points of Barrett's essay. In our view, his position that relig
Global System Theory and ‘Market-friendly’ Religion
This article explores some implications of the interplay of neoliberal economic policy and religion for Leslie Sklair's global system theory (GST), and some implications of Sklair's theory for the study of contemporary religion. We first suggest that Sklair needlessly restricted his theory's scope by analyzing culture in terms of consumerist ideologies without systematic consideration of religious doctrines and practices. Second, based on studies…
Ontology and Method in Cognitive Sociology
The sociology of cognition could serve as a more effective bridge between sociology and other disciplines, and more of a two‐way thoroughfare, if we would consider doing the following two things, which we are already doing here and there. First, we need to take a stand in philosophy of social science debates. Second, we need to show how what we do contributes to sociological methods, and not only say that what we do contributes to sociological th…
Race and Reciprocity: Inter‐household Exchanges in a Multiracial Neighborhood
This study investigates the degree to which African‐American households are socially integrated into a multiracial, middle‐class suburban neighborhood near Dallas, Texas. Although U.S. neighborhoods are becoming increasingly heterogeneous in composition, little is known about black households' participation in social and informational networks within multiracial middle‐class neighborhoods. Drawing on theories of the gift and social capital, we vi…
Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times
Mauss's lectures to psychologists: A case for holistic sociology
In lectures delivered to psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s, Marcel Mauss argued for a rapprochement between sociology and psychology. His goal was not disciplinary unification, but rather a more holistic sociology that recognized the mutual constitution of the body and mind, and the effects of society on the embodied person. Following a review of main points from Mauss's lectures, I critically review several research programs that are advancin…
Inter-organizational digital divide: Civic groups’ media strategies in the Trinity River Corridor Project
This study’s goals are 1) to investigate how leaders of civic groups make decisions about using new and social media versus older media forms of media, and 2) to reexamine major theses on the social effects of new media equipped with a better understanding of civic groups’ internal decision-making. To explore these issues, we conducted interviews with leaders of eight civic groups involved in the Trinity River Corridor development project in Dall…
New Media and the ‘Anchor Baby’ Boom
The term 'anchor baby' refers to children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents who are thought to have been conceived in order to improve their parents' chances of attaining citizenship. Though the term is considered racist and dehumanizing by many, it has recently entered into common usage. This study investigates the process by which this has occurred. We test hypotheses derived from theories of mass and new media using multiple dat…
National Identity and the Informational Welfare State: Turkey and Malaysia Compared
Researchers have found a number of economic, technological, and political factors to be associated with the diffusion of information technology in developing countries. But cultural factors generally, and national identity in particular, have almost never been viewed as consequential. Castells and Himanen's 2002 study of the information society in Finland, in which the authors identify Finnish national culture as an impetus to the development of …
What has globalization done to developing countries' public libraries
The goal of this article is to highlight the major trends in the establishment of public libraries in developing countries under conditions of globalization. Based on a review of research from library history and the sociology of culture, the author develops hypotheses about the conditions under which public libraries are likely to be established in relatively large numbers in developing countries. Analysis of historical trends in library establi…
Morality and Mind-Body Connections
Culture and Embodied Cognition: Moral Discourses in Internet Support Groups for Overeaters
This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis of culture as embodied cognitive structures linking individuals to primary-group discourses. To demonstrate the utility of this conception, I examine the unique abstra…
Why the Sociology of Morality Needs Bourdieu's Habitus
Though Pierre Bourdieu has been criticized for ignoring the moral dimensions of social judgments, I suggest that his habitus concept can provide a useful theoretical foundation for a sociological analysis of morality. If the habitus is revised in a way that recognizes the embodied nature of cognition, it can be treated as a foundation for moral judgments of the self and of others. A revised habitus concept can account for two processes by which m…
Theories of Embodied Knowledge: New Directions for Cultural and Cognitive Sociology
Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be…
Why the Sociology of Morality Needs Bourdieu's Habitus
Though Pierre Bourdieu has been criticized for ignoring the moral dimensions of social judgments, I suggest that his habitus concept can provide a useful theoretical foundation for a sociological analysis of morality. If the habitus is revised in a way that recognizes the embodied nature of cognition, it can be treated as a foundation for moral judgments of the self and of others. A revised habitus concept can account for two processes by which m…
Culture and Embodied Cognition: Moral Discourses in Internet Support Groups for Overeaters
This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis of culture as embodied cognitive structures linking individuals to primary-group discourses. To demonstrate the utility of this conception, I examine the unique abstra…
Ontology and Method in Cognitive Sociology
The sociology of cognition could serve as a more effective bridge between sociology and other disciplines, and more of a two‐way thoroughfare, if we would consider doing the following two things, which we are already doing here and there. First, we need to take a stand in philosophy of social science debates. Second, we need to show how what we do contributes to sociological methods, and not only say that what we do contributes to sociological th…
Theoretical Foundations for Digital Text Analysis
Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machine‐assisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groun…
Speaking Together, Thinking Together? Exploring Metaphor and Cognition in a Shipyard Union Dispute
Idea hamsters" on the "bleeding edge
Mauss's lectures to psychologists: A case for holistic sociology
In lectures delivered to psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s, Marcel Mauss argued for a rapprochement between sociology and psychology. His goal was not disciplinary unification, but rather a more holistic sociology that recognized the mutual constitution of the body and mind, and the effects of society on the embodied person. Following a review of main points from Mauss's lectures, I critically review several research programs that are advancin…
Beyond Bourdieu: From Genetic Structuralism to Relational Phenomenology
Cognitive Sociology after Relational Biology 1
This article advances an argument first made fourteen years ago (Ignatow 2007) that sociologists interested in culture and cognition should theorize cognition as an embodied phenomenon rather than in terms of abstract information processing. I further develop the theoretical element of the 2007 argument by considering the implications of research on the microbiome‐gut‐brain axis (MGB) from contemporary biology for the theoretical foundations of c…
New Media and the ‘Anchor Baby’ Boom
The term 'anchor baby' refers to children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents who are thought to have been conceived in order to improve their parents' chances of attaining citizenship. Though the term is considered racist and dehumanizing by many, it has recently entered into common usage. This study investigates the process by which this has occurred. We test hypotheses derived from theories of mass and new media using multiple dat…
Economic dependency and environmental attitudes in Turkey
Studies of public opinion on environmental issues have been influenced by theories of class conflict and of value change resulting from economic security, but not much by dependency theories. This paper argues that the economic dependence of developing nations on wealthier nations and international lending institutions can substantially affect public opinion within developing nations. Specifically, in developing nations, citizens' awareness of th…
The microbiome‐gut‐brain and social behavior
This paper argues for the sociological relevance of contemporary research from ‘relational’ or ‘systems’ biology on the microbiome‐gut‐brain (MGB) axis. I review research on the MGB from microbial neuroendocrinology, nutritional psychiatry and other fields with a specific focus on nutrition as a critical element of the social environment influencing gene‐environment interactions and a range of social behaviors. I discuss two plausible causal path…
From Science to Multiculturalism: Postmodern Trends in Environmental Organizations
Postmodern social theory has had little impact on studies of global environmental activism and politics, and has often been treated with suspicion. Yet, in this article, I argue that social science theories of both postmodernization and cultural modernization can provide insights into how globalizing processes have affected environmental politics. Where current perspectives on globalization and environmental politics tend to focus on globalizatio…
Arbitrage in Sociological Theorizing: The case of W. E. B. Du Bois
Generational Peers and Alcohol Misuse
This study investigates the influence of generational peers on alcohol misuse among immigrant youth. We derive hypotheses from sociological theories of generations regarding race/ethnicity, gender, and immigrant generation and test these hypotheses using a measure that accounts for the proportion of peers within a given peer network that are of the same immigrant generation. Results show that generational ties decreased the odds of alcohol misuse…
What has globalization done to developing countries' public libraries
The goal of this article is to highlight the major trends in the establishment of public libraries in developing countries under conditions of globalization. Based on a review of research from library history and the sociology of culture, the author develops hypotheses about the conditions under which public libraries are likely to be established in relatively large numbers in developing countries. Analysis of historical trends in library establi…
Transnational Environmentalism at Europe's Boundaries: Identity Movements in Lithuania and Turkey
This article discusses the environmental activism of the Aukuras and Romuva movements in Lithuania, and of several organizations opposed to a dam project in the Tunceli region of Turkey. Since the late 1980s, these movements have combined celebration of cultural traditions and identities with environmental protests, lobbying and education projects. Implicit in these movements is a response to criticisms that environmentalism has become overly bur…
Sociology and the international monetary system: An update of Hoogvelt and Vermeiren
While money is centrally important to globalization, inequality, and social conflict, sociological globalization theories lack a macro theoretical framework for analysis of the international monetary system. Because studies of the US dollar by Hoogvelt (2010 Hoogvelt, A. (2010). Globalization, crisis and the political economy of the international monetary (dis) order. Globalizations, 7(1-2), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731003593133[Taylor…
Global System Theory and ‘Market-friendly’ Religion
This article explores some implications of the interplay of neoliberal economic policy and religion for Leslie Sklair's global system theory (GST), and some implications of Sklair's theory for the study of contemporary religion. We first suggest that Sklair needlessly restricted his theory's scope by analyzing culture in terms of consumerist ideologies without systematic consideration of religious doctrines and practices. Second, based on studies…
Race and Reciprocity: Inter‐household Exchanges in a Multiracial Neighborhood
This study investigates the degree to which African‐American households are socially integrated into a multiracial, middle‐class suburban neighborhood near Dallas, Texas. Although U.S. neighborhoods are becoming increasingly heterogeneous in composition, little is known about black households' participation in social and informational networks within multiracial middle‐class neighborhoods. Drawing on theories of the gift and social capital, we vi…
National Identity and the Informational Welfare State: Turkey and Malaysia Compared
Researchers have found a number of economic, technological, and political factors to be associated with the diffusion of information technology in developing countries. But cultural factors generally, and national identity in particular, have almost never been viewed as consequential. Castells and Himanen's 2002 study of the information society in Finland, in which the authors identify Finnish national culture as an impetus to the development of …
Idea hamsters" on the "bleeding edge
Speaking Together, Thinking Together? Exploring Metaphor and Cognition in a Shipyard Union Dispute
From Science to Multiculturalism: Postmodern Trends in Environmental Organizations
Postmodern social theory has had little impact on studies of global environmental activism and politics, and has often been treated with suspicion. Yet, in this article, I argue that social science theories of both postmodernization and cultural modernization can provide insights into how globalizing processes have affected environmental politics. Where current perspectives on globalization and environmental politics tend to focus on globalizatio…
Economic dependency and environmental attitudes in Turkey
Studies of public opinion on environmental issues have been influenced by theories of class conflict and of value change resulting from economic security, but not much by dependency theories. This paper argues that the economic dependence of developing nations on wealthier nations and international lending institutions can substantially affect public opinion within developing nations. Specifically, in developing nations, citizens' awareness of th…
Theories of Embodied Knowledge: New Directions for Cultural and Cognitive Sociology
Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be…
Globalizations and the Transformation of Environmental Activism: Turkey since the 1980s
Social scientists have developed two main arguments regarding the impacts of globalization on environmental activism and politics. Environmental activism is thought to be associated with instances of local resistance to transnational corporations, and also with a diffusion of environmentalist ideas, practices, and regulations from global core to periphery. Alternatively, this paper argues that by eroding states' sovereignty and supporting ethnic …
Transnational Environmentalism at Europe's Boundaries: Identity Movements in Lithuania and Turkey
This article discusses the environmental activism of the Aukuras and Romuva movements in Lithuania, and of several organizations opposed to a dam project in the Tunceli region of Turkey. Since the late 1980s, these movements have combined celebration of cultural traditions and identities with environmental protests, lobbying and education projects. Implicit in these movements is a response to criticisms that environmentalism has become overly bur…
Culture and Embodied Cognition: Moral Discourses in Internet Support Groups for Overeaters
This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis of culture as embodied cognitive structures linking individuals to primary-group discourses. To demonstrate the utility of this conception, I examine the unique abstra…
Why the Sociology of Morality Needs Bourdieu's Habitus
Though Pierre Bourdieu has been criticized for ignoring the moral dimensions of social judgments, I suggest that his habitus concept can provide a useful theoretical foundation for a sociological analysis of morality. If the habitus is revised in a way that recognizes the embodied nature of cognition, it can be treated as a foundation for moral judgments of the self and of others. A revised habitus concept can account for two processes by which m…
Morality and Mind-Body Connections
Inter-organizational digital divide: Civic groups’ media strategies in the Trinity River Corridor Project
This study’s goals are 1) to investigate how leaders of civic groups make decisions about using new and social media versus older media forms of media, and 2) to reexamine major theses on the social effects of new media equipped with a better understanding of civic groups’ internal decision-making. To explore these issues, we conducted interviews with leaders of eight civic groups involved in the Trinity River Corridor development project in Dall…
New Media and the ‘Anchor Baby’ Boom
The term 'anchor baby' refers to children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents who are thought to have been conceived in order to improve their parents' chances of attaining citizenship. Though the term is considered racist and dehumanizing by many, it has recently entered into common usage. This study investigates the process by which this has occurred. We test hypotheses derived from theories of mass and new media using multiple dat…
National Identity and the Informational Welfare State: Turkey and Malaysia Compared
Researchers have found a number of economic, technological, and political factors to be associated with the diffusion of information technology in developing countries. But cultural factors generally, and national identity in particular, have almost never been viewed as consequential. Castells and Himanen's 2002 study of the information society in Finland, in which the authors identify Finnish national culture as an impetus to the development of …
What has globalization done to developing countries' public libraries
The goal of this article is to highlight the major trends in the establishment of public libraries in developing countries under conditions of globalization. Based on a review of research from library history and the sociology of culture, the author develops hypotheses about the conditions under which public libraries are likely to be established in relatively large numbers in developing countries. Analysis of historical trends in library establi…
Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times
Mauss's lectures to psychologists: A case for holistic sociology
In lectures delivered to psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s, Marcel Mauss argued for a rapprochement between sociology and psychology. His goal was not disciplinary unification, but rather a more holistic sociology that recognized the mutual constitution of the body and mind, and the effects of society on the embodied person. Following a review of main points from Mauss's lectures, I critically review several research programs that are advancin…
Race and Reciprocity: Inter‐household Exchanges in a Multiracial Neighborhood
This study investigates the degree to which African‐American households are socially integrated into a multiracial, middle‐class suburban neighborhood near Dallas, Texas. Although U.S. neighborhoods are becoming increasingly heterogeneous in composition, little is known about black households' participation in social and informational networks within multiracial middle‐class neighborhoods. Drawing on theories of the gift and social capital, we vi…
Religion, environment and milieu
As sociologists with long-standing interests in cognition, embodiment, and religion, we find ourselves agreeing with most of the main points of Barrett's essay. In our view, his position that relig
Global System Theory and ‘Market-friendly’ Religion
This article explores some implications of the interplay of neoliberal economic policy and religion for Leslie Sklair's global system theory (GST), and some implications of Sklair's theory for the study of contemporary religion. We first suggest that Sklair needlessly restricted his theory's scope by analyzing culture in terms of consumerist ideologies without systematic consideration of religious doctrines and practices. Second, based on studies…
Ontology and Method in Cognitive Sociology
The sociology of cognition could serve as a more effective bridge between sociology and other disciplines, and more of a two‐way thoroughfare, if we would consider doing the following two things, which we are already doing here and there. First, we need to take a stand in philosophy of social science debates. Second, we need to show how what we do contributes to sociological methods, and not only say that what we do contributes to sociological th…
Embodiment and Culture
Theoretical Foundations for Digital Text Analysis
Much of social life now takes place online, and records of online social interactions are available for social science research in the form of massive digital text archives. But cultural social science has contributed little to the development of machine‐assisted text analysis methods. As a result few text analysis methods have been developed that link digital text data to theories about culture and discourse. This paper attempts to lay the groun…
Agenda setting and active audiences in online coverage of human trafficking
Online news platforms and social media increasingly influence the public agenda on social issues such as human trafficking. Yet despite the popularity of online news and the availability of sophisticated tools for analyzing digital texts, little is known about the relations between news coverage of human trafficking and audiences’ reactions to and interpretations of such coverage. In this paper, we examine journalists’ and commenters’ topic choic…
Generational Peers and Alcohol Misuse
This study investigates the influence of generational peers on alcohol misuse among immigrant youth. We derive hypotheses from sociological theories of generations regarding race/ethnicity, gender, and immigrant generation and test these hypotheses using a measure that accounts for the proportion of peers within a given peer network that are of the same immigrant generation. Results show that generational ties decreased the odds of alcohol misuse…
Beyond Bourdieu: From Genetic Structuralism to Relational Phenomenology
Sociology (27 works) · Political science (18 works) · Social science (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (9 works)