To live in the post-truth era is to face unusual realities and fractal reports in which facts, truths and lies are merged and everything appears distorted. For Sociology, this is an enormous challenge that advises us to un-learn much of our once strong convictions about how to research. When everything seemed to be increasingly more accessible and open, we are faced up against a neo-tribal closure in networks and networks of networks that say and unsay everything with intrepid speed. Capitalism, that today is (also) knowledge capitalism, acts fast and soft on the ways of perceiving society, the market and power. It uses research centres and laboratories on its behalf, subjects CVs to sinister metrics, and renders the explanation of its failures and world’s disconnections to become scapegoats. Sociology has to re-do itself and mobilize all senses to account, as the poet, how the flock is being tended.

The idea of happiness, omnipresent in today’s western societies, is a life goal. However, the fact that happiness occupies individual thoughts does not make it a private and singular experience. Happiness idealization is socially shaped, interpreted and shared, translating cultural ways of thinking, being and acting. Based on the results from a sociological survey using a questionnaire applied to a sample of residents of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, and carried out in the city of Lisbon, we explore the meanings of happiness in relation to the life circumstances in which they are produced. Results show that the meaning of happiness is socially differentiated. Moreover, it incorporates broader social inequalities. Consequently, interpreting and seeking happiness are not merely individual choices, detached from the social setting. These are associated by the respondents with individual capacities and decisions, however, they are deeply marked by individuals circunstances, paths and social backgrounds.

Fans of media content tend to be repeatedly used as an example of participatory online culture. Indeed, many of these fans having their fandom objects as the main catalyst, use digital tools as a form of expression, developing different practices. Among these, fandubbing is a practice that lacks academic attention. Based on a qualitative methodology and the testimonies of eight elements belonging to the Portuguese fandubbers community, this article contributes with in-depth information about the activity itself, its practitioners, the relationship with the media objects and the mediation platforms. Our main results shouw that fandubbers have a deep connection with both their fandom objects and fandubbing itself. Users tend, through practice, to grasp a range of skills, in several cases in a self-taught way and in informal learning contexts. They also seek to share their free labor productions on public online platforms, such as Youtube, coming across difficulties due to the copyrighted nature of the activity.

This article analyzes criminal justice processes of drug trafficking by the Juvenile Court in Petrolina-PE/Brazil (2011-2014) mobilizing the Theory of Sentencing. The social content of the legal and extralegal variables was characterized through the analyzes of the the cumulative effect of the determinants of the sentences. The most frequent judicial decisions were procedural extinction and acquittal. The most applied penalties were warning and probation. Restriction of freedom was less frequent. However, there were disparities of sentences in similar cases and the attribution of analogous sentences in disparate cases. It is concluded that the penal system is a producer and reproducer of social inequalities. In addition, punishment is perceived and used as a technique of control and transformation of poor adolescents seized with small amounts of drugs.

Every so often, sociologists have debated whether their scientific-professional group should be organized as an “association” or “order”. In Portugal, this debate has been held since the foundation of the Associação Portuguesa de Sociologia, with the inclusive associativism option being chosen over the corporate closure alternative. This choice was based on fundamental sociological questions, including of cognitive and ethical order, as well as of pragmatic and strategic order. Taking in account the growing plurality of sociologists’ fields of professional intervention, this option is increasingly more justified. However, in some domains, sociologists have been confronted with barriers to professional activity by groups with other backgrounds that aim for unjustifiable professional monopolies. Sometimes, these groups have been supported by state bodies. In such scenarios, the worst that sociologists could do would be to reproduce corporate closure strategies. On the contrary, sociologists can develop strategies of inclusive openness, which are more effective and consistent with the reflective and ethical matrix of sociology.

Review of the book "ROBÓTICA E TRABALHO. O FUTURO HOJE".