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The thesis studies the emergent aesthetic in comedy in Flanders. The younger highly educated seem to have developped a change in taste from the Kantian aesthetic. However, this change has not been studied in the sociology of humor. This paper aims to fill this gap by conducting qualitative, in-depth duo interviews of young highly educated people in Flanders. The observations show that respondents adopt the emergent aesthetic in the evaluation of comedy by deploying an open an knowing attitude with a focus on authentic appearances. The adoption of the emergent aesthetic depends however on the cultural capital background. Respondents with a Kantian easthetic express the taste in a aesthetical and playfull way, whereas those with a middlebrow aesthetic espress it in a moral and serious way. As the middle class comes to share the positions of power with the higher class thanks to their high level of participation in university, the highbrow aesthetic can get challenged or altered by this middlebrow aesthetic.

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By analysing two famine inquiry reports from 1880 and 1945, I argue in this paper that researchers of colonial famines should consider the set of beliefs held by actors responsible for the management of the economy and state policies in the regions suffering from famines. Bureaucrats ruling over India were highly trained individuals who acted upon the dominant social theories at the time. This set of beliefs in the age of empires was a positivist, functionalist vision in the era of classical modernity. In this paper, I suggest that the bureaucracy’s functionalist vision of society constrained the colonial state’s effort to mitigate the effects of famines caused by multiple factors. I suggest that British colonial authorities were against governmental interference in times of famines not only because they believed in Malthusian and Smithian theories but also because they saw India and Indian society as fundamentally fragile and thus prone to collapse. The evidence from the commission report of 1880 testifies to a functionalist vision of society, where the various actors perform specific functions in society. In such a society, social cohesion stems from mutual dependence. The famine report shows that the British administration saw its task first of all in maintaining this balance, that they saw as acutely fragile. By seeing social order fragile together with essentializing famine as a normal condition of India, in effect, tied the hands of decisionmakers during the great famines of the Victorian era. By the time of writing the report of 1945, the colonial bureaucracy had shifted its focus to small-scale technical questions of social engineering. In this way, I argue that by bringing in what we know about modernity to the study of famines, we can refine our understanding of why states acted as they did, why they prioritized certain solutions over others, and on what grounds they defined social problems at their time.

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Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EID) present a perpetual burden and challenge for global public health. While infectious diseases continue to increase, our armamentarium for their treatment is reduced as the resistance to antimicrobials (AMR) also increases. These public health challenges have been the subject of multidisciplinary research, yet social science research has so far received little examination. The objective of this research was to demonstrate the relevance of sociological research within this multidisciplinary field, with the overarching aim of addressing the social impacts of these health threats. The data for the research was collected through a document content analysis on the topic of antimicrobial resistance and pharmaceutical legislation (LUISA, A., 2023), as well as through expert interviews on the topics of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, respectively. The research demonstrates that the social impacts of EID and AMR are embedded in a complex framework, involving a multiplicity of clinical, social, environmental, political, and economic factors. The research found that there is the need for further education and awareness, sensibilization of the healthcare personnel, the following of treatment guidelines on the one hand, and allowing for more individualized treatment on the other, market regulations and policies, innovative research studies and national or regional research and development (R&D) manufacturing plants, active public health measures, and technological advancement for diagnostics and drug development. The social impacts resulting from the failure to meet these requirements can manifest in several ways. Herein, vulnerability can fluctuate depending on the structural response in times of crisis (Sam, 2020), for which it requires continued evaluation of its resulting impacts on health and health-related risks. The failure to prioritize EID and AMR on a structural level within health governance and market regulations can impact the availability, accessibility, and affordability of medicinal products and vaccines, which will be felt most strongly within lower socio-economic groups and low- or middle-income countries. This further increases social and health inequalities and health inequities. A failure to meet the medical needs of vulnerable groups within care and within the development and provision of new medicinal products, such as antibiotics and vaccines, is affecting those who are mostly dependent on them, such as immunocompromised patients. These findings indicate that there is a need for the implementation of a more social approach to healthcare as well as the further prioritization of One Health factors. Within the One Health approach, there should be greater acknowledgement of social components and their resulting impacts. A prioritization of the health threats of EID and AMR concerns both public health institutional activities and governance, clinical occupation, and society at large.

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The sociology of video games is but a nascent field on inquiry. As a result, the research on video games is often discordant, contradictory and inconclusive. Despite this, it has emerged that the status of women in the space is that of a cultural minority who face many harsdships as a result of status (Kuznekoff & Rose, 2012; Kuss, Kristensen, Williams & Lopez-Fernandez, 2022). These two factors combined mean that an investigation of the experiences of female gamers is potentially very interesting, and that the tools and frameworks developped by video game researchers will likely be insufficient to accomplish such a task. In this master thesis I attempt to resolve this issue by drawing on a much more developped and standardized field of research, namely that of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). STEM and video gaming both being male-dominated environments – either numerically or culturally or both) also allowed me to engage in a comparitive analysis to determine which parts of women’s experiences stem from the fact that they are in a male-dominated environment and which parts stem specifically from the video game environment specifically. To accomplish this task I performed an extensive literature review encompassing both the research on video gaming as well as that on STEM. Insights from research on STEM were then used as a framework with which to structure my thematic analysis (Makarova et al., 2016; Miner et al., 2019). Interviews were performed with ten women, transcripts were then analysed using a semi-inductive version of thematic analysis: some themes had been brought directly from research in STEM, while others emerged organically from the data. Results showed that while overall experiences followed the same structure, they are different for two fundamental reasons. Firstly the digital environment plays an active role in bringing out the worst in men, making their behavior more inappropriate or offensive than it would be in real life (Sproull & Kiesler, 1992, p. 42; Kiesler & Sproull, 1986, p. 411). Secondly, it was found that the status of gaming as a leisure activity actively prevents women from engaging in any kind of activism to attempt to alter the space for the better. To be clear, they are absolutely right, no one should have to fight for their right to exist while engaging in a hobby. However, this results in complete stagnation and a lack of progress meaning that women continue to suffer while simply trying to play video games.

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With the growing intensification of bordering practices in Europe, this study investigates the everyday bordering experiences of Muslim migrant women residing in Belgium. It also examines the processes by which Muslim migrant women renegotiate and reconstruct their agency and social actorhood in the context of everyday bordering. Drawing upon data from ten semi-structured interviews conducted in different cities in Belgium, such as Brussels, Antwerp, Leuven, and Mechelen, this study employs an intersectional analytical approach to illuminate the intricate experience of Muslim migrant women. The findings of this study underscore the presence of intersecting configurations of bordering practices that particularly affect Muslim women with intersecting identities. However, Muslim migrant women are not often passive in the face of everyday bordering, but they employ everyday agency to eliminate bordering practices and reconstruct their actorhood in the Belgian society.