Search Results (60)

Behavioral epigenetics links experiences of adversity, stress, and care to molecular variation associated with health and behavior and can reshape understandings of embodiment across the life course. As such findings enter legal and policy debates, they raise pressing questions about how judges assess responsibility, weigh extralegal factors in sentencing, and govern the use of emerging scientific evidence. This article develops a framework of biological justice to guide the translation of epigenetic evidence into judicial decision-making without reintroducing biological determinism or naturalizing structural inequality. Integrating insights from epigenetics, sociology of science, bioethics, and criminal law, we clarify the inferential limits of current research and examine risks of biologizing inequality, predictive governance, and eugenic logics. We argue that epigenetic evidence should be restricted to contextual, defendant-protective, and rehabilitation-oriented uses in sentencing and post-conviction proceedings, while predictive and coercive applications should be explicitly excluded. Overall, this framework emphasizes structural framing, community oversight, and equity to prevent molecular accounts of adversity from reinforcing existing hierarchies. Full article

Despite increasing efforts by the scientific community to raise awareness of breed-related health problems through educational campaigns, public information initiatives, and veterinary outreach programmes, brachycephalic dog breeds remain highly popular. As the number of brachycephalic dogs increases, the prevalence of associated health problems rises accordingly. Ethical and animal welfare considerations appear to play a limited role in breed selection. In German-speaking regions, extensive educational efforts have been undertaken in recent years to address the issue of so-called torture breeding, defined as intentional selection for extreme phenotypic traits that impair health, reduce welfare, and cause chronic suffering, particularly in brachycephalic breeds. The aim of this study was to determine the underlying reasons for the decision to buy and keep a brachycephalic dog. Although the veterinary profession is already improving education and communication, this qualitative study intended to find new starting points for targeted education against animal suffering and to explore the sociological background of the ownership of such dogs. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews with people with brachycephalic dogs were conducted throughout Switzerland (n = 16). The focus was on the animal–human relationship. The interviews were defined by systematically applied guidelines for the design of the interview process, while still allowing maximum openness (all possibilities for expression). The transcribed interviews were coded and analysed according to the Kuckartz methodology, which allows us to set certain focal points of analysis and to structure them according to codes. The results of this study indicate that, although awareness of torture breeding is present within the broader population, owners of brachycephalic dogs frequently rely on individualised arguments and rationalisations. These typically involve emphasising the perceived health, functionality, or exceptional characteristics of their own animal (e.g., claims that their dog is “healthy” or not affected by breed-related problems), thereby distancing their personal ownership experience from the general welfare concerns associated with the breed. This psychological pattern can be interpreted as cognitive dissonance, in which contradictory beliefs are harmonised through selective perception or re-evaluation. The results also show that brachycephalic dogs offer a very strong projection surface: their owners assign them a variety of social roles that go beyond the classic animal–human relationship—for example, as a substitute for children, a romantic partner, or a best friend. This qualitative study provides differentiated insights into the attitudes and motivations of owners of brachycephalic dogs and illustrates that traditional awareness campaigns have not been sufficient to effectively change problematic breeding practices and ownership patterns. In order to develop long-term effective solutions, interdisciplinary cooperation is therefore needed—for example, between veterinary medicine, animal welfare, communication science, psychology and law. In addition to individual education, new, target-group-specific communication strategies and consistent legal regulations are needed to protect animal welfare in the long term. This study is intended to serve as a catalyst for a broader ethical and social debate on the keeping of torture breed dogs. Full article

This article argues that the da’wa movements initiated by Islamic mass organizations such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) through the concept of Islamic locality constitute one of the key factors contributing to the failure of the caliphate idea in Indonesia. This locality is characterized by the synthesis of Islamic theology, law, and practice with the sociocultural, political, and historical realities of the Archipelago. Employing a historical–sociological method and document analysis, this article traces how these da’wa movements have embedded a distinctly Indonesian notion of Islamic locality. The findings reveal that through the establishment of socio-educational institutions (schools, hospitals, pesantren), cultural adaptation, and participation in the nation-building project, these Islamic da’wa movements have addressed the social and spiritual needs of Indonesian Muslims within the framework of the nation state. Therefore, the failure of the caliphate idea is not due to a lack of religiosity of Indonesian Muslims, but rather because localized Islamic understanding has rendered the caliphate not only irrelevant but also theologically incongruent with the perspectives of the majority of Indonesian Muslims. Full article

From the winter of 2024 through the spring of 2025, public plazas in Seoul, particularly Yeouido and Gwanghwamun, became major sites of anti-martial law political mobilization. A striking feature of these protests was the visible leadership and participation of young women, who transformed civil resistance into a festive and affective form of collective action through cheering sticks and performative solidarity. The main driving force behind the political mobilization of young women was the increased influence of feminism after the “feminism reboot” in Korea since 2016. During the civil resistance, they were also active in solidarity with various minorities. The resistance was successful, and Korea has regained the order of a democratic society. However, young women who had experienced autonomous protest and mutual solidarity found themselves, upon returning to their everyday lives, still facing the remaining task of struggling against patriarchal cultures and institutions. Among them, Christian women confronted an even more inhospitable sphere—that of the Korean Protestant church, which remains largely constrained by patriarchal norms, a Christian–Confucian mixture. A representative example is the emphasis on “women’s calling” based on fundamentalist/sexist readings of the Bible. The huge gap between current social change and the church situation is reflected in the recent phenomenon of many young female Christians’ de-churching. In confronting the incongruous realities of young Christian women, this study seeks to provide an ethico-theological basis for a feminist reinterpretation of the Protestant concept of “calling”. After analyzing the social/existential topos of young Korean Christian women in the recent Korean context, this work considers a feminist reinterpretation of the “creation order” and “calling” in the process of an intersubjective dialog between the Bible and pre-patriarchal Korean cultural resources of “Mago-affiliated” myth, Seolmundaehalmang (the Great Grandmother Seolmun) narratives in particular. By providing sociological, ethical, and theological resources to construct new norms of “calling”, this research contributes to enabling young Christian women in Korea to overcome their existential fragmentation and to seek forms of women’s calling that are attuned to their historical moment and identity. Full article

Against the dual backdrop of the rural revitalization strategy and the pursuit of high-quality, balanced urban–rural education, optimizing rural campus spaces has emerged as an important lever for addressing educational resource disparities and improving pedagogical quality. However, conventional evaluation of campus space optimization faces two systemic dilemmas. First, top-down decision-making often neglects the authentic needs of diverse stakeholders and place-based knowledge, resulting in spatial interventions that lose regional distinctiveness. Second, routine public participation is constrained by geographical barriers, time costs, and sample-size limitations, which can amplify professional cognitive bias and impede comprehensive feedback formation. The compounded effect of these challenges contributes to a disconnect between spatial optimization outcomes and perceived needs, thereby constraining the distinctive development of rural educational spaces. To address these constraints, this study proposes a novel method that integrates regional spatial feature recognition with digital media-based public perception assessment. At the data collection and ethical governance level, the study strictly adheres to platform compliance and academic ethics. A total of 12,800 preliminary comments were scraped from major social media platforms (e.g., Douyin, Dianping, and Xiaohongshu) and processed through a three-stage screening workflow—keyword screening–rule-based filtering–manual verification—to yield 8616 valid records covering diverse public groups across China. All user-identifying information was fully anonymized to ensure lawful use and privacy protection. At the analytical modeling level, we develop a Transformer-based deep learning system that leverages multi-head attention mechanisms to capture implicit spatial-sentiment features and metaphorical expressions embedded in review texts. Evaluation on an independent test set indicates a classification accuracy of 89.2%, aligning with balanced and stable scoring performance. Robustness is further strengthened by introducing an equal-weight alternative strategy and conducting stability checks to indicate the consistency of model outputs across weighting assumptions. At the scenario interpretation level, we combine grounded-theory coding with semantic network analysis to establish a three-tier spatial analysis framework—macro (landscape pattern/hydro-topological patterns), meso (architectural interface), and micro (teaching scenes/pedagogical scenarios)—and incorporate an interpretive stakeholder typology (tourists, residents, parents, and professional groups) to systematically identify and quantify key features shaping public spatial perception. Findings show that, at the macro level, naturally integrated scenarios—such as “campus–farmland integration” and “mountain–water embeddedness”—exhibit high affective association, aligning with the “mountain-water-field-village” spatial sequence logic and suggesting broad public endorsement of ecological campus concepts, whereas vernacular settlement-pattern scenarios receive relatively low attention due to cognitive discontinuities. At the meso level, innovative corridor strategies (e.g., framed vistas and expanded corridor spaces) strengthen the building–nature interaction and suggest latent value in stimulating exploratory spatial experience. At the micro level, place-based practice-oriented teaching scenes (e.g., intangible cultural heritage handcraft and creative workshops) achieve higher scores, aligning with the compatibility of vernacular education’s “differential esthetics,” while urban convergence-oriented interdisciplinary curriculum scenes suggest an interpretive gap relative to public expectations. These results indicate an embedded relationship between public perception and regional spatial features, which is further shaped by a multi-actor governance process—characterized by “Government + Influencers + Field Study”—that mediates how rural educational spaces are produced, communicated, and interpreted in digital environments. The study’s innovative value lies in integrating sociological theories (e.g., embeddedness) with deep learning techniques to fill the regional and multi-actor perspective gap in rural campus POE and to promote a methodological shift from “experience-based induction” toward a “data-theory” dual-drive model. The findings provide inferential evidence for rural campus renewal and optimization; the methodological pipeline is transferable to small-scale rural primary schools with media exposure and salient regional ecological characteristics, and it offers a new pathway for incorporating digital media-driven public perception feedback into planning and design practice. The research methodology of this study consists of four sequential stages, which are implemented in a systematic and progressive manner: First, data collection was conducted: Python and the Octopus Collector were used to crawl online comment data related to Fuwen Township Central Primary School, strictly complying with the user agreements of the Douyin, Dianping, and Xiaohongshu platforms. Second, semantic preprocessing was performed: The evaluation content was segmented to generate word frequency statistics and semantic networks; qualitative analysis was conducted using Origin software, and quantitative translation was realized via Sankey diagrams. Third, spatial scene coding was carried out: Combined with a spatial characteristic identification system, a macro–meso–micro three-tier classification system for spatial scene characteristics was constructed to encode and quantitatively express the textual content. Finally, sentiment quantification and correlation analysis was implemented: A deep learning model based on the Transformer framework was employed to perform sentiment quantification scoring for each comment; Sankey diagrams were used to quantitatively correlate spatial scenes with sentiment tendencies, thereby exploring the public’s perceptual associations with the architectural spatial environment of rural campuses. Full article

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly serve as decision-support systems across linguistically diverse populations, yet whether they reason consistently across languages remains underexplored. We investigate whether LLMs exhibit language-dependent preferences in distributive justice scenarios and whether domain persona prompting can reduce cross-linguistic inconsistencies. Using six behavioral economics scenarios adapted from canonical social preferences research, we evaluate Gemini 2.0 Flash across English and Korean in both baseline and persona-injected conditions, yielding 1,201,200 observations across ten professional domains. Results reveal substantial baseline cross-linguistic divergence: five of six scenarios exhibit significant language effects (9–56 percentage point gaps), including complete preference reversals. Domain persona injection reduces these gaps by 62.7% on average, with normative disciplines (sociology, economics, law, philosophy, and history) demonstrating greater effectiveness than technical domains. Systematic boundary conditions emerge: scenarios presenting isolated ethical conflict resist intervention. These findings parallel human foreign-language effects in moral psychology while demonstrating that computational agents are more amenable to alignment interventions. We propose a compensatory integration framework explaining when professional framing succeeds or fails, providing practical guidance for multilingual LLM deployment, and establishing cross-linguistic consistency as a critical alignment metric. Full article

Social assistance is one of the primary programs organized in developing countries in a bid to reduce poverty. In Indonesia, the government has allocated IDR 152 trillion toward poverty alleviation. However, the persistent misuse of social assistance funds has unfolded to be a serious concern. According to the Ombudsman of Indonesia, approximately 81.37% of the 1004 complaints received between 29 April and 29 May 2020 were related to the misuse and misallocation of COVID-19 social assistance funds. Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively describe the legal enforcement model for preventing the misuse of social assistance funds and to identify the challenges faced by law enforcement from the perspective of legal sociology. In order to achieve the stated objectives, a qualitative approach grounded in legal sociology was adopted, utilizing empirical study methods. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with academics specializing in administrative law and public policy, as well as through an extensive review of the relevant literature. Subsequently, the gathered data were analyzed qualitatively using a descriptive approach. The obtained results showed that the key challenges in preventing the misuse of social assistance funds include weak regulatory frameworks, limited competency among law enforcement officials, and inadequate institutional infrastructure. Cultural factors were also found to play a significant role in influencing the effectiveness of law enforcement. Based on these insights, preventive measures were inferred to be essential and should focus specifically on strengthening the legal structure and utilizing technological tools to enhance transparency and monitoring. Accordingly, the substance of social assistance laws must be revised to include more detailed and specific provisions, while repressive measures should impose stricter sanctions on individuals who engage in misuse. Fostering a shift in the legal culture of society was also considered very important. These combined efforts are expected to reduce the misuse of social assistance funds, improve legal enforcement effectiveness, and essentially contribute to poverty reduction in Indonesia. Full article

This paper examines conversion to Islam in eighteenth-century Ottoman Jerusalem as a multifaceted transformation negotiated across social, legal, and economic domains. Drawing on Jerusalem Court Registers and the scholar al-Khalīlī’s (d. 1734, Jerusalem) fatwās, the study suggests that conversion was both a declaration of faith and a mechanism for restructuring social boundaries. The removal of the yellow turban after the shahāda signalled a symbolic rupture that reshaped kinship, property and legal status. Court cases and fatwās reveal that marriage, dowry, custody, inheritance, and debts were governed not only by Islamic law but also by social negotiation. While the situation of the children illustrates the fragility of social boundaries, the principle of subordination to one’s origins was a crucial factor in the transmission of identity. Through the amalgamation of normative discourse with judicial practices, this article provides a nuanced micro-sociological contribution to the comprehension of Ottoman Jerusalem. Conversion transcends a personal change in belief and emerges as a social experience that reorganizes family ties, property relations, and social belonging. Consequently, conversion functions as a boundary-making site where integration and exclusion are contested and where symbolic authority intersects with material interests. Full article

Recent theories of citizenship call into question the dominance of ancestry (jus sanguinis) and territory (jus soli) as the primary criteria for membership in a polity. Debates around postnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and transnationalism increasingly locate the legitimacy of citizenship in world-level models of rights that extend beyond the state. Yet national citizenship remains remarkably persistent, posing three interrelated puzzles for the sociology of citizenship: (1) How can rights-based and birth-based legitimations of citizenship be reconciled? (2) How can citizenship be conceptualized in non-national terms without eroding the state’s central role? (3) How can we account for the rise of multinational citizenship rights? Drawing on recent global shifts in nationality laws, this article offers a unified analytical framework to address these puzzles through the concept of modular citizenship, which inverts the conventional understanding: it is not the juridical category of citizenship that determines the scope of rights, but the enforceable rights themselves that determine the quantum of citizenship. Full article

(1) Background: Data literacy is becoming increasingly important for healthcare professionals in both outpatient care and research. Since healthcare data and the possibilities for its use and misuse are increasing in these areas, healthcare professionals need diverse knowledge regarding the collection, use and evaluation of data. A core component of this is an understanding of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of working with health data. (2) Methods: Within the DIM.RUHR project (Data Competence Center for Interprofessional use of Health Data in the Ruhr Metropolis), the challenge of training in data literacy for different healthcare professionals is addressed. Based on a learning objectives matrix for interprofessional data literacy education, an ELSI concept was developed through collaboration with interprofessional project partners. The study was conducted between December 2024 and April 2025. (3) Results: The foundational structure of the ELSI concept was based on the learning objectives matrix and an unstructured literacy search for ELSI concepts in similar contexts. Using an iterative design-based research approach, a group of experts from different fields (didactics, applied ethics, health sciences, law, sociology, informatics, and psychology) developed an ELSI concept for healthcare professionals. The following categories were identified as crucial: 1. philosophy of science: a basic understanding of science and the hurdles and opportunities; 2. ethics: an overview of the biomedical principles and a technological assessment; 3. law: an overview of the reservation of permission and self-determination; 4. social aspects: an overview of health inequalities and different forms of power relations and imbalances. (4) Conclusions: The ELSI concept can be used in the orientation of healthcare professionals in outpatient care and research—regardless of their profession—to develop data competencies, with the aim of providing a holistic view of the challenges and potential in the collection, use, and evaluation of healthcare data. The DIM.RUHR project’s approach is to develop open educational resources that build on the ELSI concept to teach specific skills at different competence levels. Full article

Enterprise digital transformation has emerged as a key strategy for enhancing innovation capacity in the age of the digital economy. This article aims to analyze the influence mechanism of digital transformation on corporate innovation and evaluate the mediating function of corporate innovation and cooperative cultures between digital transformation and corporate innovation capability. This work builds a panel data model based on data from Chinese A-share listed businesses from 2012 to 2021, empirically analyzes it using the Tobit model and the fixed effects model with instrumental variables technique, and uses the mediation effect test to uncover the course of action. According to the report, digital transformation significantly enhances creativity capability; second, corporate collaborative and innovation cultures mediate the relationship between digital transformation and innovation outcomes, and cultural capital becomes a crucial link; and third, the influence of digital transformation on corporate innovation capability is greater in state-owned enterprises, non-monopoly industries, and high-tech industries. According to the study, businesses should work to realize the dual-wheel drive of “technological investment + cultural cultivation” and establish an open and collaborative innovation ecosystem, while the government should intensify the development of digital infrastructure, enhance the supporting system, encourage cultural construction and talent supply, and create an environment that supports the synergistic development of digitization and innovation. Full article

Gender equality is a fundamental principle that forms the basis of modern society. In the context of the Greek Public Administration, the promotion of gender equality is highlighted as a priority. However, despite efforts, incidents of violation of this principle continue to occur. In this context, the Integrity Advisor is emerging as an important tool for addressing incidents of gender equality violations, being the guardian of coherence and transparency in the public sector. The Integrity Advisor represents the ‘guardian’ of values and ethical principles within the public administration. His/her role focuses on ensuring that public organizations comply with the principles of transparency, accountability, and ethics. In this context, the violation of the principle of gender equality emerges as a specific area of intervention for the Integrity Advisor. The institutionalization of the Integrity Advisor is an innovative attempt to create an institution capable of helping any public body to ‘confide’ problems that have been identified in its environment and to mediate their management, the possible finding of a solution, or their referral to the appropriate authorities. The Integrity Advisor is required to develop a strong channel of communication with public sector employees and executives to establish a sense of security and trust among all. Full article

Brain drain represents a critical challenge to global development, reflecting structural inequalities and tensions between mobility and rootedness. This study analyzes the determinants of skilled migration in 178 countries (2006–2022) using a regression model based on panel data, identifying six key variables: uneven economic development, the quality of public services, external intervention, voice and accountability, the rule of law, and political stability. Governance, particularly political stability and the rule of law, stands out as crucial for retaining talent, while external interventions and economic inequality exacerbate emigration. From a sociological perspective, migrants are active agents who transform transnational networks, challenging traditional notions of citizenship and belonging. Civil society organizations play a central role by facilitating sociocultural inclusion, mediating resettlement processes, and promoting brain circulation as an alternative to retention-focused models. Additionally, this study highlights the cultural and symbolic dimension of migration, revealing the impact of uprooting on communities of origin. Future research should explore how inclusive policies, digital nomadism, and remittances can reduce structural inequalities, strengthen the connection between migrants and their communities, and advance towards a sustainable and equitable mobility model. Full article

Only the incurious and philosophically challenged doubt the significance of dignity as a central issue in human interactions. Human dignity is much debated in religion, law, moral philosophy, anthropology, psychiatry, bioethics, sociology, philosophical anthropology, psychology, communication studies, and elsewhere. It is subject to competing discourses of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and logic. It appears in intercultural and international discussions of rights, autonomy, race, ethnicity, economics, war, and peace. It is contrasted with guilt, shame, and humiliation, both ordinary and extreme. However, the dynamic roots of dignity are usually presupposed or ignored in favor of reductionist typologies and antinomies. Returning us to lived experience and with post-humanist animal studies and the medical model of psychiatry as exemplary cases of reductionism, I interpret H. Plessner’s semiotic phenomenology as a communicative philosophy of the humane in dignity. Full article

The aim of this study was to explore maternity care providers’ knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions about the use of calcium supplements during pregnancy for the prevention of preeclampsia in three hospitals from Metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina. We conducted semi-structured interviews and followed a thematic analysis framework. Maternity care providers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding calcium supplementation during pregnancy are linked to barriers to the potential implementation of calcium supplementation. Free provision of calcium supplements by the government, coupled with training that reinforces the scientific evidence supporting their use to prevent preeclampsia, along with documented recommendations from credible sources, would be crucial to ensure that health providers adopt the use of calcium supplements in antenatal care. Future studies should assess pregnant women and policymakers’ perceptions about calcium supplementation during pregnancy, as well as local infrastructure to provide access to free-of-charge calcium supplements in antenatal care settings. Economic evaluation with local information could inform policymakers and advocate for the implementation of strategies to reduce preeclampsia. Full article