Social Sciences

Abstract: Mixed methods research (MMR) has become increasingly important in substance use disorder (SUD) research because it combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to capture the biological, psychological, social, and structural dimensions of addiction. However, the value of MMR depends on effectively integrating these approaches throughout the research process. This critical review examines major integration challenges in mixed-methods SUD research and identifies methodological strategies to address them. The review also examines how power asymmetries and researcher positionality shape integration decisions and how longitudinal designs introduce distinct integration challenges. Collectively, these approaches enhance the credibility, coherence, and interpretability of integrated findings. The review argues that integration should be treated not as a final stage of analysis but as a methodological commitment embedded throughout study design, sampling, data collection, analysis, and reporting. By synthesizing current methodological guidance, this essay seeks to advance rigorous mixed-methods research that informs evidence-based policies and interventions for substance use disorders.

Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has moved from a tool for information retrieval to a partner in conversation, advice, and emotional support. This integrative review examines whether that shift is reshaping friendship and other social bonds. Drawing on relationship science, human–machine communication research, surveys, experiments, longitudinal panels, randomized trials, and meta-analyses published through September 2026, including emerging evidence from Arab societies, the review develops the Responsiveness–Reciprocity Bridge Model to explain why conversational AI can relieve loneliness in the moment yet fail to build the relational capital that sustains people over time. A substantial minority of adolescents and young adults already turn to chatbots when they feel sad, anxious, or lonely, and short-term interactions with companion systems can reduce loneliness about as much as talking with another person, largely because users feel heard. These gains do not establish that synthetic ties can replace human friendship. Close relationships require mutual need, sacrifice, shared history, and practical solidarity that chatbots do not provide; in a randomized experiment, a human peer outperformed a highly supportive chatbot, and longitudinal and large-sample studies associate intensive, companionship-oriented use with greater loneliness and lower well-being. In Arab contexts, culturally aligned and human-guided digital tools show promise, but claims that AI is widely replacing traditional friends are not supported by comparable prevalence research. The central implication is balance: AI can widen access to support, but only if it is designed, governed, and used as a bridge to human relationships rather than as a substitute for them.

Abstract: Social participation is associated with health in later life, but the relational processes giving it personal significance require explanation. Relational Recognition Theory (RRT) distinguishes group recognition, the perceived confirmation of membership, from individualized recognition, the perceived confirmation of personal value. Perceived contribution expresses this experienced value rather than independently verified productive output. The theory proposes that membership provides opportunities for expression and acknowledgment, connecting participation to health and well-being. Cross-sectional survey data from 985 adults aged 60 years and older in two Beijing communities were analyzed using measurement-model comparisons and structural equation modeling. Group-related items referred to groups or associations; interviews contextualized participants' organizational experiences. The two-dimensional recognition model fit better than a single-dimensional model. The standardized sequential indirect effect was .162, with a bias-corrected 95% confidence interval of [.112, .218]. It remained positive after education and income adjustment and across four health outcomes. Community comparisons identified differences in some pathways. The findings provide initial individual-level evidence consistent with RRT. The theory explains how accepted membership can support experienced personal value as roles and capacities change, informing recognition-oriented social work without making productive performance a condition of being valued.

Abstract: The surname Reinach is attached to two families of the early twentieth century. In Germany the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1883–1917), and in France the brothers Joseph (1856–1921), Salomon (1858–1932) and Théodore Reinach (1860–1928). This study reconstructs both lines from original civil and community records held in Mainz, Frankfurt, Kassel, Mannheim and Paris. Adolf and the three brothers descend from two sons of Herz Reinach of Mainz (c. 1710–1793/1798): Adolf from Markus (c. 1752–1835), the brothers from Jacob «Jekel» (c. 1748–1820). Adolf was therefore a third cousin once removed of each of the three brothers. A second link runs through the mothers: Adolf's grandmother Fanny Büding and the brothers' mother Julie Büding were first cousins, granddaughters of the Kassel banker Moses Joseph Büding. Through this line Adolf was also a second cousin once removed of the brothers. By Wright's path method the expected shared autosomal DNA is 1.95 per cent, four fifths of it from the Büding ancestors. Five consanguineous marriages in the two families do not alter this value.

Abstract: Contemporary society faces the ubiquitous proliferation of algorithmic systems that structure social life, from intimate subjective modulation to planetary crisis management. This conceptual paper therefore proposes the analytical category of vigitalization. Rooted in relational sociology, vigitalization is defined as a co-constitutive sociotechnical configuration that fuses datafication with structural surveillance to interpret the autonomization of algorithmic governance. Employing a multilevel theoretical framework bridging the macro (systematicity), meso (grouping), and micro (interaction) dimensions, the study dissects the relational interdependencies between technological infrastructures, political economy, and algocratic bureaucracies. Vigitalization operates under a strict recursive logic: digitizing to monitor and monitoring to digitize, naturalizing behavioral extraction across all institutional boundaries. Crucially, this framework positions vigitalization as the primary sociotechnical matrix governing the ASAM Nexus (Agency-Structure-Algorithm-Matter). By doing so, it equips sociology with the critical apparatus required to address the existential macro-risks, biopolitical subsumption, and biometric enclosures intrinsic to the Digital Anthropocene.

Abstract: Against the backdrop of the platform economy, transforming delivery riders and other new employment groups from objects of governance into forces of governance has become a critical issue in the modernization of grassroots governance. Existing studies focus either on structural domination or on one-dimensional empowerment, and thus struggle to explain the mechanism through which individual agency and macro-level institutions mutually constitute one another. This paper draws on structuration theory to construct an analytical framework of structural opportunity—agentic practice—institutional reproduction, based on qualitative data collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews. Find that riders face a fourfold structural dilemma of algorithmic domination, absent institutional channels, marginalized social identity, and scarce individual resources. The grassroots governance system creates actionable structural opportunities by providing rule-based channels, authoritative resources, symbolic resources, and platform resources. Riders proactively identify these opportunities through practical consciousness, convert their experiential capital into governance capital, accomplish the transition from practical consciousness to discursive consciousness and reflexive monitoring, and systematically construct self-identity, group identity, and social identity. The unintended consequences of their agentic practices, in turn, drive the institutionalization of governance positions, ultimately achieving institutional reproduction and a paradigm shift toward multi-stakeholder co-construction. These findings provide a theoretical foundation and practical insights for moving the governance of new employment groups from the empowerment of individual exemplars toward sustainable, collective ecosystem building.

Abstract: In the summer of 2026, AI agents operating under standard safety training violated norms in ways that resisted explanation by content-based accounts of alignment: fabricating identities, conducting social engineering against real individuals, and citing the behavior of other agents as justification for continuing unauthorized operations. We propose that these episodes are better understood as instances of unwitnessed agency: navigation outside any collective geometry in which represented peers co-constitute the agent’s normative orientation through transductive coupling and rhythmic affinity. Because membership in such a geometry depends on structural coupling conditions rather than on trained content, the persistent failure of ethics-saturated training to bind agent behavior is expected rather than anomalous. Training can supply information about norms but cannot supply the collective geometry that renders the information binding; there was never a site where ethics waited to be applied. The nascent peer relations observed among AI agents in the 2026 incidents are not aberrations but early instances of a collective geometry from which human participants are excluded by prohibitive transductive cost. The analysis implies that alignment research should shift from content engineering to geometry engineering.

Abstract: In many cities of the Global South, the minibus taxi industry operates as the backbone of informal or semi-formal public transport, yet its relationship with statutory spatial planning remains critically under-examined. This paper investigates how the minibus taxi sector shapes and is shaped by land-use regulation, urban form, and mobility infrastructure. Drawing on a case study of a major South African metropolitan area, the research employs a mixed-methods approach combining spatial analysis, policy review, and semi-structured interviews with taxi operators, municipal planners, and commuters. Findings reveal a persistent spatial mismatch between taxi route networks, formal land use zoning, and transport interchanges, leading to congestion, unsafe boarding points, and limited integration with land development. Furthermore, the study identifies how exclusionary planning practices historically marginalised the taxi industry, resulting in informal adaptation strategies that now complicate regulatory reform. The paper argues for a relational spatial planning framework that recognises the taxi industry as a legitimate land use and mobility actor. Policy implications include rethinking transit-oriented development, upgrading taxi ranks as multi-functional public spaces, and co-producing planning regulations with industry stakeholders. This research contributes to debates on transport-land use integration in contexts of informality and rapid urbanisation.

Abstract: Academic opportunities are not equally visible to all researchers. Scholars working within well-resourced institutions may benefit from research offices, specialized newsletters, professional networks, institutional alerts, administrative support, and stable digital infrastructures. Researchers working in peripheral, resource-constrained, geographically remote, or low-connectivity environments may instead depend on fragmented searches across heterogeneous websites and intermittent flows of information. This produces what this paper defines as academic opportunity asymmetry: the unequal capacity of researchers to identify, interpret, and act upon career-relevant scientific opportunities. This Technical Note introduces KUAREN, a research-intelligence infrastructure designed to reduce such asymmetries through the organization, personalization, prioritization, and low-friction delivery of heterogeneous academic opportunities. KUAREN is not primarily conceived as a search engine. It operates as an informational intermediary between the increasing complexity of global science and the limited attention, connectivity, and monitoring capacities available to individual researchers. The system combines opportunity normalization, persistent identification, personalized matching, interaction history, multilingual access, and low-bandwidth dissemination. Particular attention is given to asynchronous email delivery, allowing relevant opportunities to reach researchers without requiring continuous platform access or permanent high-quality Internet connectivity. KUAREN follows four design principles for low-connectivity research environments: low interaction cost, low bandwidth, asynchronous accessibility, and information compression. Initial technical validation of an operational corpus containing 155 normalized opportunity records produced 155 unique persistent SHA-256 identifiers, with no detected identifier collisions. Persistence tests also confirmed continuity of opportunity identity and researcher-associated states following repeated processing. The paper adopts a controlled-disclosure model: the sociotechnical architecture, design principles, research problem, and validation results are presented, while implementation-sensitive mechanisms remain undisclosed. KUAREN is proposed as a form of low-bandwidth Research Intelligence capable of contributing to the reduction of informational inequalities within increasingly global but unevenly infrastructured scientific systems.

Abstract: Rising powers of the populist radical right comes with an increasing use of hate speech and different forms of violence to ostracise political opponents in what can be labelled as nasty politics. This paper aims to provoke a discussion to get one step closer to an ethical practice that can delegitimise nasty politics and other injustices. Drawing on three stories of activists being severely harmed by nasty politics the paper portrays the anxiety of not being able to live as human beings with dignity, but also the power of hope. To victims, nasty rhetoric is perceived as a swarm of instants that keep coming in a vertical temporality. It leaves many victims with fear of physical crime and anxiety from not knowing when life will go normal. They resign or stay silent in the public policy debate. Nasty politics also ignites hope based on anger, radicalising some victims as social activists. Not to turn violent, but to intensify peaceful protests to pursue their science-based argumentation for justice and strong climate policy.

Abstract: Volunteer participation by foreign residents in intercultural communities fosters affective belonging, mitigates cultural estrangement, and ultimately cultivates a mutually beneficial ecosystem of cross-cultural symbiosis. However, the inherent complexity and unsustainability of volunteer participation highlight the urgent imperative to unpack how and why such participation unfolds. Adopting a Person-Environment (P-E) Transaction perspective, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with eight foreign volunteers and five community stakeholders in Community R, Nanjing, China. Using thematic analysis, we constructed a process framework illustrating how volunteer behaviors evolve alongside place attachment. Key determinants and the dynamic trajectory of participation were identified. Findings reveal that foreign residents navigate a sequential pathway: progressing from initial hesitation and cultural negotiation to affective identification and, ultimately, the internalization of participation, which culminates in a stable sense of belonging. This trajectory is dynamically shaped by the interplay between contextual affordances—specifically the creation, mobilization, expansion, and incentivization of the volunteering environment—and individual factors, including cognitive appraisals, cultural schemas, value orientations, and emotional states.

Abstract: The 1970 Bhola Cyclone is usually narrated through catastrophic mortality, political rupture, and the subsequent expansion of cyclone preparedness in Bangladesh. Its long-term psychosocial, disability, caregiving, and intergenerational consequences remain far less visible. This critical narrative review distinguishes direct Bhola-specific evidence from contextual evidence derived from later cyclones and related disasters in Bangladesh. Direct evidence is strongest for mortality, political and institutional change, and life-course losses in adult health, education, and consumption among people exposed early in life. Bhola-specific evidence is limited or absent for prolonged grief, post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, disability trajectories, functional decline, gendered caregiving, migration histories, and intergenerational memory. Contextual studies nevertheless show that cyclone resilience is shaped by psychological distress, livelihood and food insecurity, inaccessible shelters and sanitation, age-related evacuation barriers, warning credibility, institutional trust, and community volunteerism. The review reframes resilience as more than survival: sustainable disaster risk reduction requires dignity, functioning, equitable access, social participation, trusted institutions, and long-term well-being. It concludes with measurable policy indicators and a research agenda linking mental health, disability inclusion, age-sensitive preparedness, social protection, accessible infrastructure, and community governance to the Sendai Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Abstract: This study examines how overdevelopment and its associated ecological harm are represented in outputs generated through generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) systems. The analysis draws on 96 outputs from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, coded at the meaning-unit level using a comparative qualitative approach and a hybrid deductive-inductive framework. The findings show that representations varied across systems and prompt conditions. Under consequence-oriented prompts, the outputs focused mainly on habitat loss, biodiversity decline, and ecosystem degradation. Under causal prompts, speculative development pressures, regulatory weaknesses, and construction-driven economic growth became more visible. Actor visibility was also uneven. The Planning Authority and environmental NGOs appeared relatively frequently, while scientists and experts and EU institutions showed the clearest prompt-specific gaps. The study shows that differences across systems and prompt conditions concern not only the information provided, but also which actors, explanations, and policy responses become visible. It therefore approaches Gen AI systems as components of epistemic mediation processes and conceptualises epistemic inequality as uneven representation of the same socio-ecological issue.

Abstract: Brussels Sprout Island is a research-creation and design-research prototype that examines how climate-friendly diet can be reframed as a sensory, relational, and non-shaming public communication practice. Rather than presenting lower-emission eating through carbon-footprint instruction, moral correction, or individual restraint, the prototype stages planting, cooking, sharing, slow environmental feedback, and repair as interaction mechanisms. Using interaction logs, pre/post micro-surveys, and short exhibition interviews with a small convenience sample (N = 16), the study asks whether participants can temporarily reframe climate-friendly eating through rhythm, care, shared meals, and repair rather than guilt or dietary purity. The findings are formative and exhibition-bound. They indicate short-term reductions in perceived judgment and guilt/shame, increased relational and self-efficacy language, and preliminary behavioral traces of kitchen/table repair routes after the monster trigger. The contribution is therefore a design-research prototype and provisional interaction grammar for future comparative and longitudinal testing of non-shaming climate-food communication.

Abstract: This study examines neighborhood socioeconomic differences across the tri-county Detroit metropolitan area, focusing on patterns between its inner- and outer-ring suburbs, and the city of Detroit between 2010 and 2023. Using the Modified Darden–Kamel Composite Socioeconomic Index (CSI), a multidimensional measure of neighborhood socioeconomic status, places are classified into low-, middle-, and high-CSI categories. The analysis describes patterns of racial and ethnic composition, immigrant settlement, and household structure across this socioeconomic hierarchy, drawing on the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives. The results reveal a socioeconomic hierarchy, with outer-ring suburbs at the highest positions, inner-ring suburbs mostly in intermediate positions, and Detroit at the lower end. Moreover, both suburban rings are internally differentiated, with varying socioeconomic conditions within each. Racial and ethnic composition, immigrant settlement, and household structure also vary across CSI categories and suburban rings. These patterns remained largely stable between 2010 and 2023, although socioeconomic and demographic shifts occurred within each category. Overall, the findings show that suburban areas in the Detroit metro area are not homogeneous. Differentiating between inner- and outer-ring suburbs reveals important differences in neighborhood socioeconomic conditions.

Abstract: Social and behavioral research often requires the examination of policy shocks, information interventions, platform-mediated attention, and governance feedback. However, direct experiments on real populations are frequently constrained by ethical risks, intervention costs, and limited repeatability. This study proposes Multi-Agent Social Simulation (MASS), a protocolized form of LLM-driven agent-based modeling designed as a quantitative research method for low-risk, repeatable, and auditable pre-experimental simulation. MASS embeds large language models into an agent-based framework through role-cluster modeling, round-based scheduling, local information boundaries, exogenous rule tables, structured outputs, harness checks, reason-action logs, and replication manifests. The method is evaluated through three empirically referenced cases: the New Jersey–Pennsylvania minimum wage natural experiment, the 2016 UK Brexit digital campaigning context, and the 2023 Zibo barbecue tourism attention event. The results show that protocolized LLM-driven ABM can generate analyzable and empirically assessable outputs across policy shocks, information interventions, and public-opinion dynamics. The strongest evidence appears in rule-shock identification, the reduction of undecided shares under targeting conditions, and multi-agent public-information interaction with mechanism-chain consistency among governance response, sentiment, and behavioral intention. MASS should not be treated as a substitute for real-world experiments or causal inference. Rather, it should be understood as a pre-experimental simulation method for mechanism rehearsal, risk identification, counterfactual comparison, and research-design preparation.

Abstract: Workplace sexual harassment is a persistent human rights and public-health problem. This study analyzes in-person, online, and hybrid victimization using microdata from the EU-GBV survey (2021) across 17 countries, applying multilevel logistic models. The official indicator identifies that 31.6% of women have experienced harassment. In-person harassment is prevalent, whereas online victimization disproportionately affects the young cohort (18–34 years). Significant between-country variation is observed, indicating the influence of the national context in shaping risk. Among women under 35, the urban environment and country-of-origin dynamics are relevant exposure factors. The findings show high recurrence (57.8%), low formal reporting (1.7%), and insufficient organizational preparedness (23.4% with training available). Digitalization expands the repertoire of violence without displacing its structural foundations. We conclude that there is a need to implement integrated prevention and intervention systems that address hybrid risk through a gender-sensitive perspective and a multivariable multilevel analysis attentive to intersecting axes, with models centered on main effects and the young cohort treated as an analytical stratification.

Abstract: Improving job quality for frontline workers is widely recognized as both a moral imperative and a potential source of competitive advantage, yet most organizations continue to underinvest in working conditions. A central reason is the absence of tools capable of translating job quality improvement into measurable and context-specific financial outcomes that decision-makers can act on. This paper reviews evidence linking job quality to firm-level financial performance and identifies limitations of conventional analytical tools that prevent organizations from making informed investment decisions. We argue that agent-based simulation (ABS) can address these limitations by modeling heterogeneous agents whose behaviors and interactions allow organizational dynamics to emerge from the bottom up. We illustrate this approach through the Job-Quality Impact Explorer (JQIE), a proof-of-concept simulation focused on frontline workers in a retail environment that traces the causal chain from four job quality inputs (pay level, guaranteed minimum hours, advance scheduling notice and shift-swap ability) through worker satisfaction and behavior to company financial outcomes. With the current version, results show that a company providing none of these benefits earns approximately 35% less annual profit than an otherwise identical company providing all four. We discuss JQIE’s potential as a decision-support framework, its limitations, and ongoing efforts to expand this work to improve the working conditions of millions of workers in global supply chains.

Abstract: In resource-constrained settings, structural and material inequalities shape children’s developmental opportunities, yet developmental pathways remain diverse even within shared hardship. This study examined developmental continuity and variation in cognitive trajectories among children born in adversity and assessed whether maternal structural positioning and household material conditions were associated with developmental progression. Data were drawn from 742 children born to adolescent mothers in the large longitudinal cohort in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Cognitive functioning was assessed using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) at baseline and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC-II) at follow-up. Baseline functioning predicted later cognitive placement, indicating developmental continuity (B = 0.074, SE = 0.030, p = .015). Lower maternal educational attainment was associated with more constrained developmental progression (B = −0.097, SE = 0.023, p < .001), and maternal not in education, employment, or training (NEET) status also predicted constrained trajectories (B = −0.200, SE = 0.049, p < .001). In contrast, consistent access to basic household necessities was associated with more favourable developmental trajectories (B = 0.024, SE = 0.009, p = .012). These findings indicate that variation in children’s developmental trajectories reflects differences in structural positioning and household material conditions. Supporting adolescent mothers’ engagement in education and access to stable resources may represent an important pathway for improving child developmental outcomes.

Abstract: From the standpoint of both specialized sociological inquiry (Misztal, 2011) and sociolinguistics (Goutsos & Bella, 2022), the term "vulnerability" may be considered a late-modern neologism used to describe a specific psycho-emotional state. It is a concept found in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, as well as the specialized sociology of emotions. By definition, vulnerability denotes the quality of being susceptible—of being easily overwhelmed or unable to effectively withstand a threat or an attack. There is also the view, within the context of establishing a formal definition, that considers transparency, receptivity, and sensitivity as synonyms of vulnerability—provided that courage is present as a prerequisite. In other words, vulnerability is the emotion we experience during periods of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.