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Algorithms, particularly machine learning (ML) algorithms, are increasingly important to individuals’ lives, but have caused a range of concerns revolving mainly around unfairness, discrimination and opacity. Transparency in the form of a “right to an explanation” has emerged as a compellingly attractive remedy since it intuitively promises to open the algorithmic “black box” to promote challenge, redress, and hopefully heightened accountability. Amidst the general furore over algorithmic bias we describe, any remedy in a storm has looked attractive. However, we argue that a right to an explanation in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is unlikely to present a complete remedy to algorithmic harms, particularly in some of the core “algorithmic war stories” that have shaped recent attitudes in this domain. Firstly, the law is restrictive, unclear, or even paradoxical concerning when any explanation-related right can be triggered. Secondly, even navigating this, the legal conception of explanations as “meaningful information about the logic of processing” may not be provided by the kind of ML “explanations” computer scientists have developed, partially in response. ML explanations are restricted both by the type of explanation sought, the dimensionality of the domain and the type of user seeking an explanation. However, “subject-centric" explanations (SCEs) focussing on particular regions of a model around a query show promise for interactive exploration, as do explanation systems based on learning a model from outside rather than taking it apart (pedagogical versus decompositional explanations) in dodging developers' worries of intellectual property or trade secrets disclosure. Based on our analysis, we fear that the search for a “right to an explanation” in the GDPR may be at best distracting, and at worst nurture a new kind of “transparency fallacy.” But all is not lost. We argue that other parts of the GDPR related (i) to the right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") and the right to data portability; and (ii) to privacy by design, Data Protection Impact Assessments and certification and privacy seals, may have the seeds we can use to make algorithms more responsible, explicable, and human-centered.

The world's peoples face daunting challenges in the twenty-first century. While apologists herald the globalization of capitalism, many people on our planet experience recurring economic exploitation, immiseration, and environmental crises linked to capitalism's spread. Across the globe social movements continue to raise the issues of social justice and democracy. Given the new century's serious challenges, sociologists need to rediscover their roots in a sociology committed to social justice, to cultivate and extend the longstanding “ countersystem” approach to research, to encourage greater self-reflection in sociological analysis, and to re-emphasize the importance of the teaching of sociology. Finally, more sociologists should examine the big social questions of this century, including the issues of economic exploitation, social oppression, and the looming environmental crises. And, clearly, more sociologists should engage in the study of alternative social futures, including those of more just and egalitarian societies. Sociologists need to think deeply and imaginatively about sustainable social futures and to aid in building better human societies.

This study of the Mississippi civil rights movement and the War on Poverty examines the relationship between social movements and policy implementation. A "movement infrastructure" model is developed that focuses on organizational structure, resources, and leadership to account for the impact of social movements on policy implementation. A two-tiered research design is employed that includes (1) a quantitative analysis of poverty programs in Mississippi counties from 1965 to 1971, and (2) case studies that show the complex interaction between the civil rights movement, resistance by whites, local powerholders, and federal agencies. The quantitative analysis shows that counties with strong movement infrastructures generated greater funding for Community Action Programs. The case studies show that movements were excluded from the initial formation of these programs as local whites attempted to preempt civil rights activists. However, in counties with strong movement infrastructures, activists were able to gain access to decision-making bodies and shape the content of poverty programs.

This paper examines sociologists' current interest in the topics of human rights and globalisation. Some descnbe a world where everyone has rights (or at least a modicum of rights), because we are all human, and we all interact and communicate with one another in a global environment which will (it is argued), result in greater toleration and recognition of differences. In contrast, this paper emphasises the political instability of rights in a world characterised by vast economic inequalities which does not fit neatly into some of the visions of international or global community being proposed. Rather than the inevitability of rights discourse, I argue that it is the force of law that demands human problems be cast in the language of rights and rights language is legal language. Nonetheless, there has been relatively little attention paid by sociologists to the institutions, especially courts, for example, that will recognise and enforce those rights designated as human rights. The paper closes with some suggestions for further sociological endeavour in this regard.

This article explores the dilemmas of the sociology of human rights – a growing field of academic research. Sociologists are increasingly conceptualizing poverty, global economic inequality, and social inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation not as social problems, but rather as human rights abuses. The shift of emphasis from the social problems perspective to the human rights perspective demands a different set of remedies from IGOs, national governments, and local authorities. Whereas in the past sociologists tended either to recommend modifications to social policies or to propose large-scale social transformation, they now find themselves advocating the implementation of human rights on the global, national, and local levels. This has brought sociologists into the area of global governance. The process of delineating an explicitly sociological perspective on human rights is impeded by two overlapping dilemmas: (1) the tension between an approach that emphasizes the analysis of ‘rights effects’ on the global, national, and local levels and an approach that stresses the advocacy of rights as a palliative for social inequalities; and (2) the tension between an interdisciplinary vision, in which sociology would join other disciplines in illuminating human rights and a unidisciplinary vision, in which sociologists and their allies would push for a unified social science founded on human rights.

This article aims at drawing on sociological insights into reconciliation processes which emerge out of ethnic, national and state conflicts. First, the concept of reconciliation is interrogated as an instrument for sociological enquiry. The article locates the concept’s lexical origins in western/northern Christian traditions and identifies the usages of religious connotations in secularised strands of conflict resolution theory and praxis. While acknowledging the problems involved in assuming a conceptual universality, the basic meaning of the concept is located in many different historical, religious and secular traditions across the globe. Once overcoming Christiano-centric and western/northern biases and limitations, reconciliation can be retrieved and operationalised as a sociological concept for understanding and comparing ethnically and other deeply divided societies. Second, the article argues for further development of sociological comparative perspectives on how societies deal with violent and divisive past, which enhances academic knowledge and may impact policy as regards reconciliation processes, both in terms of understanding the past as well as dealing with the present and future of post-conflict societies. A sociology of conflict and reconciliation offers frames for transferring knowledge and experience that transcends simplistic assumptions and enriches understanding of the complexities of conflict and its transformations.

This article examines whether the content of the International Human Rights Covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join. The author evaluates three theoretical perspectives-rationalism, world polity institutionalism, and the clash of civilizations-with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999. Rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sovereignty arrangements, human rights practices, and ideological commitments, all of which become more important as treaty enforcement strengthens. World polity institutionalists expect ratification to be loosely coupled with a country's conduct or its political, ideological, or cultural commitments, although this gap narrows as compliance is more effectively enforced. A civilizations approach predicts tight coupling between ratification and cultural values, regardless of the mechanisms in place for enforcing compliance. Results lend partial support to rationalism and world polity theory, whereas the clash of civilizations thesis is much less successful in accounting for patterns of ratification. Furthermore, the costs of ratifying a treaty, considered in terms of its surveillance and enforcement provisions, influence rates of accession more than the specific rights a treaty protects.

This paper examines how global interdependencies and the consolidation of a human rights discourse are transforming national sovereignty. Social researchers frequently address the supremacy of state sovereignty and the absoluteness of human rights as mutually exclusive categories. However, rather than presupposing that a universal rights discourse is necessarily leading to the demise of sovereignty, we suggest that an increasingly de-nationalized conception of legitimacy is contributing to a reconfiguration of sovereignty itself. Through the analytic prism of historical memories – which refers to shared understandings specific pasts carry for present concerns of a political community – we provide an explanatory factor for the salience of human rights norms as a globally available repertoire of legitimate claim making. While states retain most of their sovereign functions, their legitimacy is no longer exclusively conditioned by a contract with the nation, but also by their adherence to a set of nation-transcending human rights ideals. Legitimacy is mediated by how willing states are to engage with ‘judicial memories’ of human rights abuses and their articulation in cosmopolitan legal frames. Empirically, we focus on war crime trials and how legal inscriptions of memories of human rights abuses are recasting the jurisdiction of International Law. The readiness of states to engage with rights abuses is becoming politically and culturally consequential, as adherence to global human rights norms confers legitimacy.

How do bureaucracies pattern durable inequalities? Predominant approaches emphasize the role of administrative categories, which prioritize certain populations for valued resources based on broader regimes of human worth. This article extends this body of work by examining how categorical inequalities become embedded within administrative infrastructures and institutional pathways. I develop this argument through a case study of the United States’ refugee resettlement program. Drawing together previously unseen government statistics, expert interviews, and documentary analysis, I show that U.S. resettlement is organized through administrative pipelines that create path dependent imbalances in the distribution of scarce resettlement spaces. Social and political logics of immigrant worthiness are important, yet a full understanding of these imbalances requires attention to the tendency of pipelines to become self-reproducing. I identify three factors that account for this tendency: calculative rationales, administrative reactivity, and structured visibility. This three-part conceptualization of pipelines can be applied to other institutional contexts to study the origins, dynamics, and durability of social inequalities. My findings also demonstrate the analytically autonomous role of policy administration in shaping ethnoracial imbalances in immigrant selection.

Harm reduction has gradually entered social work discourse and is now seen as a promising approach for treating individuals with drug and alcohol problems. However, beyond statements and data supporting the utility of a harm reduction approach, few guidelines for clinical practice have been detailed in the social work literature. This lack of concrete detail regarding how harm reduction is actually practiced limits the potential implementation of the model into day-to-day clinical work. This article reiterates that harm reduction is a viable approach to clinical social work practice with individuals who have drug- and alcohol-related problems and for whom traditional approaches may be inappropriate. It focuses on harm reduction therapy as an emerging treatment model that can be implemented by clinical social workers and mental-health and substance use treatment providers. The article identifies and elaborates several basic tenets that can be incorporated into clinical social work. It is hoped that social workers who learn how harm reduction is implemented in clinical practice will be more apt to incorporate its principles into their work.