The Resurgence of Medical Education in Sociology: A Return to Our Roots and an Agenda for the Future.

From 1940 to 1980, studies of medical education were foundational to sociology, but attention shifted away from medical training in the late 1980s. Recently, there has been a marked return to this once pivotal topic, reflecting new questions and stakes. This article traces this resurgence by reviewing recent substantive research trends and setting the agenda for future research. We summarize four current research foci that reflect and critically map onto earlier projects in this subfield while driving theoretical development elsewhere in the larger discipline: (1) professional socialization, (2) knowledge regimes, (3) stratification within the profession, and (4) sociology of the field of medical education. We then offer six potential future directions where more research is needed: (1) inequalities in medical education, (2) socialization across the life course and new institutional forms of gatekeeping, (3) provider well-being, (4) globalization, (5) medical education as knowledge-based work, and (6) effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sociological dimensions of marital satisfaction in Romania.

We are living nowadays in a social paradigm characterized by a high degree of fluidity. From professional career to leisure, from family patterns to neighborhood relationships, from cultural consumption to domestic technology, almost all the components of social reality have changed during recent decades. A given couple's experience is not insulated from these dynamics, or at least from the pressure that new trends constantly put on it. How can functional relationships be preserved in a continuously changing world? What possibilities are there for couples to sustain viable relationships in the face of all the waves of change, involving as they do new content, new rules, and, in many cases, new values? This paper sets out to analyze how the main factors related to marital life interact and what their impact is on individual satisfaction in the dyadic experience. To this end we planned and applied a sociological survey to a national sample (N = 455 participants, error limit 4.7) using a questionnaire focusing on an evaluation of dyadic life experience that included the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS). The major finding is that more liberal sexual attitudes and people's high view of the importance of money are the strongest predictors of a low-quality dyadic experience. The patterns observed also raise the possibility that positive perception of the parental model may serve to compensate for a couple's relatively shorter period of marital experience.

The Practicalities and Perils of Ambulatory Assessment's Promise: Introduction to a Special Section.

Ambulatory assessment (AA) offers one of the most exciting approaches for opening the dynamic "black box" of adolescents' daily lives. In this introduction, we spotlight AA's surprisingly restricted market share within adolescent scholarship. We describe thorny challenges these intense methods can pose when conducting adolescent research "in situ" and underscore that capturing quality AA data means placing adolescents' developmental stage at the forefront. The novel research reported in this special section speaks to these challenges and underscores the promise of AA for conducting developmentally salient science. The nine articles included in the section span multiple disciplines (Sociology, Psychology, Public Health) and reflect diverse viewpoints, approaches, and theories. All provide multiple novel best-practice strategies for conducting AA scholarship with adolescents.

Co-evolution of physical and social sciences in synthetic biology.

Emerging technologies research often covers various perspectives in disciplines and research areas ranging from hard sciences, engineering, policymaking, and sociology. However, the interrelationship between these different disciplinary domains, particularly the physical and social sciences, often occurs many years after a technology has matured and moved towards commercialization. Synthetic biology may serve an exception to this idea, where, since 2000, the physical and the social sciences communities have increasingly framed their research in response to various perspectives in biological engineering, risk assessment needs, governance challenges, and the social implications that the technology may incur. This paper reviews a broad collection of synthetic biology literature from 2000-2016, and demonstrates how the co-development of physical and social science communities has grown throughout synthetic biology's earliest stages of development. Further, this paper indicates that future co-development of synthetic biology scholarship will assist with significant challenges of the technology's risk assessment, governance, and public engagement needs, where an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to foster sustainable, risk-informed, and societally beneficial technological advances moving forward.

Think then act or act then think?

We introduce a new agent-based model of opinion dynamics in which binary opinions of each agent can be measured and described regarding both pre- and post-influence at both of two levels, public and private, vis-à-vis the influence source. The model combines ideas introduced within the q-voter model with noise, proposed by physicists, with the descriptive, four-dimensional model of social response, formulated by social psychologists. We investigate two versions of the same model that differ only by the updating order: an opinion on the public level is updated before an opinion on the private level or vice versa. We show how the results on the macroscopic scale depend on this order. The main finding of this paper is that both models produce the same outcome if one looks only at such a macroscopic variable as the total number of the individuals with positive opinions. However, if also the level of internal harmony (viz., dissonance) is measured, then significant, qualitative differences are seen between these two versions of the model. All results were obtained simultaneously within Monte Carlo simulations and analytical calculations. We discuss the importance of our studies and findings from three points of view: the theory of phase transitions, agent-based modeling of social systems, and social psychology.

Dos clássicos na literatura aos clássicos na sociologia e na sociologia médica/saúde / From classic literature to the classics in sociology and medical sociology / health

Neste trabalho, revisitamos a noção de clássicos a partir da literatura, retomamos o tema no campo da sociologia e estendemos esta ideia para a sociologia médica/saúde. Analisamos algumas das noções desenvolvidas por diversos autores - Gellius, Sainte-Beuve, Twain, T. S Elliot, Borges, Calvino, Merton, Schwartzman, Baehr - e discutimos a possibilidade da aplicação dessa noção em campos mais recentes, como o da sociologia médica/saúde/doença. Apontamos a coexistência, na atualidade, de noções de "clássicos" na tradição do século XVII (os "escolhidos", "modelos de ensino", "modelos de linguagem") às noções de modelos eternos e universais (século XIX) e à de "autoridade" (século XX). Ressaltamos o caráter de reelaboração e de aplicação do "clássico" a uma nova situação. Nesse sentido, entendemos sua extensão ao campo da sociologia da saúde.

In this paper, we revisit the notion of classics from the literature, we return to the topic in the field of sociology and extend this idea to the medical / health sociology. We have analyzed some of the concepts developed by several authors - Gellius, Sainte-Beuve, Twain, T. S Elliot, Borges, Calvino, Merton, Schwartzman, Baehr - and discussed the possibility of applying this notion in more recent fields, such as medical sociology / health / disease. We've pointed out the coexistence, nowadays, of notions of "classic" in the tradition of the 17th century (the "chosen", "teaching models", "language models") to notions of eternal and universal models (19th century) and of "authority" (20th century). We emphasize the character of redesigning and implementing the "classic" to a new situation. In this sense, we understand its extension to the field of sociology of health.

O envelhecimento na Sociologia brasileira contemporânea: notas preliminares / Aging in contemporary Brazilian Sociology: preliminary notes

Este artigo propõe caracterizar algumas contribuições bibliográficas da Sociologia brasileira contemporânea sobre envelhecimento. Tendo por questões norteadoras: quais são os grupos de pesquisas e o que priorizam em suas investigações sobre o tema envelhecimento, realizou-se um estudo exploratório sobre os dados disponibilizados no Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq. A partir dos descritores envelhecimento e gerontologia, na grande área de Ciências Humanas, identificaram-se 53 grupos (Antropologia n=9; Educação n=13; Filosofia n=1; Psicologia n=25; Sociologia n=5). Utilizou-se o software Script Lattes para caracterização dos grupos de pesquisa. Ao todo, identificaram-se 440 pesquisadores entre líderes e membros. Observou-se que 20% desses pesquisadores atuam em mais de um grupo. A análise dos resultados aponta aspectos relevantes para refletir o espectro da sociologia e sua capilarização nas Ciências Humanas, com indicadores expressivos nos recursos humanos, nas produções científicas, bem como a localização geográfica dos pesquisadores e redes de coautoria.

This article proposes to characterize some bibliographic contributions of contemporary Brazilian Sociology of aging. Having as guiding questions: hat are the research groups and to prioritize in their investigations on the topic aging, there was an exploratory study on the data available in the CNPq Research Groups Directory. From the descriptors aging and gerontology, in the area of Humanities, they identified 53 groups (n = 9 Anthropology, Education n = 13; n = 1 Philosophy Psychology n = 25; Sociology n = 5). We used the Script Lattes software for characterization of the research groups. Altogether, they identified 440 researchers between leaders and members. It was observed that 20% of researchers working in more than one group. The results point to reflect the relevant aspects of sociology spectrum and its capillarity in the Humanities, with significant indicators of human resources, scientific productions, as well as the geographical location of researchers and co-authorship networks.

Defining aging in cyborgs: a bio-techno-social definition of aging.

Initially the aim of this article was to discuss and define aging at the intersection point between biology and sociology. However, recent biomedical and technological advances are changing the discourse on aging, and against this background the author of this article argues that current definitions of aging should be improved. The author emphasizes that there is a need to update current definitions of aging, or to formulate new multidisciplinary ones. The author suggests that (besides biology, psychology and sociology) the technological discipline should be included in the integrative gerontology model. Finally, in this article a new definition of aging is put forward. According to the author of this article, human bio-techno-social aging is characterized by: (a) a time-bound process of change including, (b) both reversible and irreversible biological processes, (c) social processes forming an irreversible chain of events, and (d) an increasing use of technological artifacts whose purpose is to support or replace damaged biological functions; and/or an increasing use of technological artifacts whose purpose is to facilitate or enable interaction.

Cooperation between medicine and sociology in head and neck oncology.

Twenty-first-century medicine is facing many challenges--knowledge and command of technical advances, research development, team management, knowledge transmission, and adaptation to economic constraints--without neglecting "human" aspects, via transformed carer-patient relationships, social change, and so on. The "modern" physicians know that simply treating disease is no longer enough. One of their essential missions lies in offering the individual patient overall care, which implies acknowledging the latter as an individual within a family, social, and professional environment. Indeed, medical practice requires pluridimensional knowledge of the patients' experience of their disease. Yet the contribution sociology can offer to health care remains largely unknown to many physicians, and medical training includes only limited instruction in the human sciences. On the basis of a few observations taken from sociological research, we would like to demonstrate how, in head and neck oncology, interdisciplinary collaboration between medicine and sociology can prove propitious to improving patient care and attention to their close relations.

Conception through a looking glass: the paradox of IVF.

As we enter the fifth decade of human IVF, this technique presents a paradox. On the one hand, IVF has become more regular and ordinary, even a new norm of social life. On the other hand, it has arguably become, as Alice might have said, 'curiouser and curiouser', with the development of its applications such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and gestational surrogacy, as well as human embryonic stem cell derivation. Five million miracle babies later, in the midst of 'the age of biological control', IVF can be seen as the source of important changes in how reproductive biology is understood - socially, ethically, medically and in terms of basic science. This article reviews three decades of social scientific research into IVF and suggests that, while the passage of time may have allowed IVF to become more 'routine', the opposite is also true. With hindsight, some of the more radical changes to the understandings of parenthood, kinship, fertility and technology to which IVF has contributed can be appreciated. Learning from this paradox must be part of the legacy of IVF's first half-century if its future evolution is to be directed wisely, safely and conscientiously.

The compatibility between sociological and cognitive neuroscientific ideas on consciousness: is a neurosociology of consciousness possible?

This article considers the possibility of integrating sociological and cognitive neuroscience ideas on consciousness and developing a new research area: neurosociology of consciousnesses. Research was conducted taking into account the limited knowledge on consciousness produced in these disciplines and the necessity of finding ways to study the social roles concerning the neural correlates of consciousness. Applying several ideas on consciousness from these disciplines (intersubjectivity, close connection with collective forms representations, deriving awareness from the brain's processes, and so on), I show that it is difficult to reconcile the differences in the treatment of consciousness through the simple combination of the different ideas. The integration should be pursued in light of the neuroscientific findings concerning consciousness in different social contexts (role behavior, social interactions, and so on). In integrating the concepts, I predicted the role of time delay in conscious awareness in decision making, synchronization of neural oscillations under conscious perception, and the activations of certain brain zones in correspondence to different conscious cognitive processes for understanding in face-to-face situations. The study reveals that the optimal path for neurosociological research on consciousness is in its primary development without a rigid binding to either sociology or neuroscience.

[Social anthropology and anthropologists of the past and present: from exoticism and the imagined reciprocity to everyday inequalities]. / Antropología social y antropólogos de ayer y de hoy: del exotismo y la reciprocidad imaginada a las desigualdades cotidianas.

In this article we examine two moments in anthropology. First we characterize anthropology as a subject specialized in the study of "the others", which developed in those countries that led the European and North American colonial expansion. We underline the links that existed between this historical context, the features of ethnography -the theoretic-methodological approach developed by anthropologistsand the concept of culture, that became the core of this discipline. Secondly, we intend to further the understanding of some trends of contemporary anthropology: the fact that nowadays anthropologists work on the societies they belong to, their operations (documenting the undocumented, unveiling dayliness, de-naturalizing), which find their roots in earlier anthropology. It also highlights the shift of focus from reciprocity relations to power and inequity relations. Finally it sheds light on some original developments in Latin American anthropology, considering some cases in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

[Perspectives of studies about physicians and medical students]. / Az orvosokkal, orvostanhallgatókkal kapcsolatos vizsgálatok távlatai.

INTRODUCTION: The fundamental purpose of sociological studies is to explore social problems which should be also in focus when examining doctors and medical students. In addition to fact findings, published reports may raise awareness toward these issues. AIM: The authors formulate a possible change of the research approach exploring possibilities to move forward with special focus on the health status among doctors, the role-conflict among female doctors and the professional socialisation among medical students. METHODS: Secondary analysis of published studies among health care professionals. RESULTS: Almost all published papers convey the conflict of being a physician in some aspect, but they fail to explore issues related to professional success, protective factors, resources and conflict management modes. CONCLUSION: In addition to exploration of risk factors, future studies should promote medical identity, should call attention to existing positive examples and should provide hints to cope with challenging issues in order to achieve a successful medical career.