bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Celebrity Gossip and the New Melodramatic Imagination
Authors: Beer David , Penfold-Mounce Ruth
Published: March 2010

This article uses a range of media sources to ‘follow’ or ‘trace’ the well-known celebrity Miley Cyrus. Through the development of the concept of a new melodramatic imagination the case study develops the methodological potentials of the types of online archives that now exist. In this instance the authors exercise their own melodramatic imaginations to draw out substantive issues relevant to the case of Miley Cyrus. The article therefore has two aims, the first is the exploration of a particular approach toward understanding transformations in popular culture, and the second is to draw out the types of ‘grammar of conduct’ that face those who assemble the information about celebrities into consumable narratives. The piece considers how people, in what has been called the Web 2.0 context, assemble melodramatic narratives amongst celebrity gossip that might then shape everyday experiences, understandings and practices.
Solo-Living, Demographic and Family Change: The Need to know more about men
Authors: Jamieson Lynn , Wasoff Fran , Simpson Roona
Published: March 2010

Solo-living is analytically separate from ‘being single’ and merits separate study. In most Western countries more men are solo-living than women at ages conventionally associated with co-resident partners and children. Discussions of ‘demographic transition’ and change in personal life however typically place women in the vanguard, to the relative neglect of men. We draw on European Social Survey data and relevant qualitative research from Europe and North America demonstrating the need for further research.
Here be Dragons: Researching the Unbelievable, Hearing the Unthinkable. A Feminist Sociologist in Uncharted Territory
Authors: Scott Sara
Published: March 2010

This paper describes a number of ways in which the dominant societal response to allegations of ritual abuse as untrue - as being produced by a combination of ‘moral panic’ and ‘false memories’ - impacted on research conducted with women and men who identified themselves as survivors of such abuse. (In Britain the research conducted by Jean La Fontaine and the press coverage it received is taken to exemplify this response.)The author's research was based on life history interviews conducted with 14 adults aged between 19 and 58 (11 women and 3 men).

This is a reflexive, feminist account of knowledge production that endeavours to make visible the specific social and political context that shaped the researcher's engagement with ethical and epistemological issues, the selection of interviewees, structure of interviews, the questions and answers of the research interviews, and the interpretation of ‘data’. The collision between the lived experience of the researcher, that of her informants, and the ‘discourse of disbelief’ surrounding the subject of ritual abuse, is understood as crucially determining of the research knowledge produced. Attention is given to the disembedding process by which research moves from specific, emotional and embodied encounters to academic articles, and the implications for belief/disbelief in this process.
Rethinking the Social Construction of Technology through ‘Following the Actors’: A Reappraisal of Technological Frames
Authors: Prell Christina
Published: March 2010

In this paper, I summarize case study research on an information system called Connected Kids. This case study was guided by an approach to technology studies called the ‘Social construction of technology’ or SCOT Pinch and Bijker (1984). In discussing Connected Kids, I illustrate many of SCOT's main tenents, e.g. the various social interactions that surround and influence technology design. As the paper progresses, however, I focus on one concept in particular, that being SCOT's notion of a ‘technological frame,’ which is used as a catch-all concept for handling the structural influences in technology design. My discussion and illustration of this concept shows that – whilst technological frames help an analyst understand, in general terms, the role structure(s) play in shaping technology – the ‘heterogeneity’ of technological frames can cloak the more obvious, and potentially most influential, forces at work in technology design. In the case of Connected kids, the role of resources, and which actors had access to these resources, was critical in pointing Connected Kids down a particular trajectory. Further, this discovery emerged from listening carefully to respondents’ comments on the role of resources in their community. These comments, and my own observations on how resource-access propelled certain actors into a leadership position, led to my developing an alternative method for analyzing technological frames. The implications of this analysis are then discussed within the context of SCOT and technology studies more generally.
‘You Don't Know How Lucky you are to be Here!’: Reflections on Covert Practices in an Overt Participant Observation Study
Authors: McKenzie John S.
Published: March 2010

There has been a tendency in sociology to see covert and overt roles of social researchers in participant observation studies as opposites. This is both in terms of the researcher role and the surrounding ethics, with the overt researcher role being seen as fundamentally more ethical than the covert participant observer. However, Calvey (2008) alleged that covert practices often remain unreported in overt accounts. The purpose of this paper is therefore to address this issue through reflections on my own research experience. Drawing on my research with the contemporary spiritual milieu in Scotland, I will argue that the covert and overt roles are far from opposites and should be seen as part of a continuum. The moral high ground attributed to overt research is often questionable and most overt studies will employ covert practices. It will therefore be argued that decisions regarding the role of the participant observer should be grounded in the intellectual contemplation of specific research situations, including ethical considerations, rather than condemning sound social enquiry on the misguided basis that overt research is always superior to covert studies because of its ethical standards. In conclusion it will be argued that all researchers have a responsibility to reflect honestly upon their research experience as part of wider reflexive turn in social research.
Migration and Recession: Polish Migrants in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland
Authors: Krings Torben , Bobek Alicja , Moriarty Elaine , Salamonska Justyna , Wickham James
Published: March 2010

In this paper we explore the impact of the current economic downturn on Polish migrants in the Irish labour market. Ireland appears to be well suited to study the impact of the recession on intra-European migration. The country has not only experienced large-scale inward migration from the new EU Member states (NMS) in recent years, but has also been severely hit by a recession. At times of an economic crisis, questions have begun to be asked about the future intentions of migrants. By drawing on an ongoing Qualitative Panel Study on the experience of Polish migrants in the Irish labour market, we argue that simplistic assumptions about migrants leaving the country ‘when times are getting tough’ are misplaced. No doubt some NMS migrants will leave because of the worsening economic situation and new opportunities elsewhere. As East-West migration has adopted a more temporary and circular character facilitated by a free movement regime, NMS migrants have the opportunity to move on elsewhere at times of a downturn. At the same time, many Polish migrants are ‘here to stay’, for the moment at least. This is for at least three reasons. A clear majority of NMS migrants remains in employment, in spite of the downturn. Furthermore, even if migrants should lose their jobs, welfare state arrangements in the host country offer some protection against destitution. Moreover, the decision to migrate, and consequently to stay or move on, is not just reached on the basis of economic considerations alone. Particularly social networks are of importance in sustaining the migration process relatively independent from short-term economic change, including an economic downturn.
Work as Community: Narratives of Solidarity and Teamwork in the Contemporary Workplace, who Owns Them?
Authors: Vogl Gillian
Published: March 2010

The workplace provides a very important context for the development of community. Structural changes that have occurred in the workplace in the last 25 years have impacted on how community has been constructed and experienced in the workplace. These structural changes have often been accompanied by particular types of organisational cultures and forms of work organisation. One such form of work organisation has been teamwork. Some have argued that management induced forms of employee collectivism, such as teamwork have undermined more genuine employee generated forms of community and solidarity. Through in-depth interviews with employees in a number of organisations from two research projects, this article explores employee's experiences of community and highlights the different ways in which teamwork is interpreted and experienced by workers.
Using Mead's Theory of Emergence as a Framework for Sociological Inquiry into Pre-Service Teacher Education
Authors: Allen Jeanne , Sinclair Mark , Smith Richard
Published: March 2010

In this paper we take up Chang's (2004) challenge to apply Mead's theory of emergence in sociological inquiry. Largely overlooked by scholars, this theory is shown to prove explanatory in one field where limited solutions have been found to date. Specifically, the theory sheds light on how the theory-practice gap is created and sustained in pre-service teacher education. The argument is that under current institutional arrangements the trainee/beginning teacher encounters different and oft-times conflicting environmental, social and cultural conditions in the two ‘fields of interaction’ (Mead, 1934: 249) of their training program, namely, the on-campus pre-service program and the school. The argument draws on interview and focus group data collected via a study of first-year graduate teachers of an Australian pre-service teacher education program. We conclude that the Meadian mechanisms of role taking and self-regulated behaviour within the two environmental fields of interaction inhibit the trainee/beginning teacher from exercising the power of agency to implement theory learned at university in practice in the classroom. In this sense Mead's theory of emergence predicts the obduracy of the gap between theory and practice in teacher education.
‘The Callous Credit Nexus’: Ideology and Compulsion in the Crisis of Neoliberalism
Authors: Law Alex
Published: March 2010

Many accounts of the rise and decline of neoliberalism forefront its ideological nature and capacity for hegemonic leadership. In contrast, I argue that outside of elite groups neoliberalism did not become hegemonic in Gramsci's sense of a ‘national-popular’ force. Neoliberalism is a convenient term to describe a two-stage process of ‘purifying’ the coercive nature of the capital relation through what Gramsci broadly called ‘a war of movement’ in the 1970s and 1980s and ‘a war of position’ in the 1990s and 2000s. This double-movement compelled credit-worthy individuals to routinely market, sell, purchase and perform for money-wages. New techniques of the self were perfected in the marketised war of position to service the credit-led financialisation of everyday life. Social positionings dependent on financialisation are now subject to a ‘crisis of authority’.
Analysing an Advertising Campaign: Towards an Integrated Cultural-Industrial Analysis
Authors: O'Boyle Neil
Published: March 2010

This article critically examines an advertising campaign for Smithwick's ale that is known as the ‘locals’ campaign and was televised in Ireland throughout the 1990s. My intention is not to ‘explain’ the campaign but to suggest an analytical approach that captures and preserves its sociological complexity. The article is divided into two parts and the analysis is built primarily around the interview accounts of producers of the campaign. In the first part I suggest that the ‘retelling’ of the Smithwick's ‘locals’ campaign not only animates a variety of sociologically significant themes in Ireland but also reveals some of the cultural assumptions of its producers, especially regarding Irishness. In the second part I switch my analytical focus to foreground the inherent ‘uncertainty’ of advertising expertise and the asymmetrical power relations which characterise the advertising industry. From this perspective, I suggest that Irishness is a malleable ingredient of advertising production that often has little to do with what producers ‘believe’, or even necessarily what consumers want, but is largely shaped by the exogenous pressures put on advertising agencies, such as the demands of the client company (in this case Diageo). However, the article concludes by highlighting the benefits of a ‘synthetic’ approach that incorporates different modes of analysis with a view to building an ‘integrated cultural-industrial analysis’.
Making Use of Audio Diaries in Research with Young People: Examining Narrative, Participation and Audience
Authors: Worth Nancy
Published: March 2010

This article examines the use of audio diaries as an innovative method for research with young people. As the second stage of a project about visually impaired (VI) young people's transitions to adulthood, young people recorded their experiences and reflections about growing up on microcassette recorders. As a follow-up to a narrative interview, audio diaries allowed the research to get closer to the lives of young people, as participants actively reinterpreted the research questions in the context of their own lives. This article focuses on the utility of audio diaries—detailing the research process and the accessibility of the method for VI young people. Then, using excerpts from a set of twenty-two audio diaries, this article examines how the audio diary technique designed for this project engages with three key issues: how audio diaries capture narrative in distinctive ways; how the method can be employed within a participatory framework; and how audio diaries raise complex issues about the nature of audience.
Futures Narratives, Possible Worlds, Big Stories: Causal Layered Analysis and the Problems of Youth
Authors: Watson Cate
Published: March 2010

Narratives of the future can be seen as a form of colonialisation, structuring fields of discourse, in a process which Johan Galtung (cited in Andersson, 2006) refers to as ‘chronological imperialism’. However, futures narratives can also be used to disrupt these attempts at colonialisation through surfacing problematic assumptions in order to explore alternative scenarios. In this paper I first consider modal narratives and possible worlds and their relevance to the social sciences. I then discuss Sohail Inayatullah's ‘Causal Layered Analysis’ (CLA) - a narrative technique for constructing past and present and imagining the future. CLA draws on a ‘poststructural toolbox’ to examine problematic issues using a process which focuses on four levels of analysis: litany (the official public description of the issue); social science analysis (which attempts to articulate causal variables); discourse analysis or prevailing worldview; and myth/metaphor analysis. The aim is to disrupt current discourses which have become sedimented into practice and so open up space for the construction of alternative scenarios. In the third part I demonstrate how this approach can be used to examine ‘big issues’ taking as my example the current preoccupation with troubled and troublesome youth.
Blurring Public and Private Sociology: Challenging an Artificial Division
Authors: Butler Kate
Published: March 2010

This article encourages sociologists to take a hybrid approach to the incorporation of public sociology into the discipline. The idea of public sociology rests upon a double conversation between sociologists as public actors, and the involvement of the ‘extra-academic’ world into the dialogue. However, the separation of public sociology from professional sociology is artificial. The division of labour between those working solely in academia, and those reaching out to the public at large is imaginary: sociologists do work in both the public and private. By blurring the line between public sociology and professional sociology (which constitutes a ‘privacy’ of sorts), sociology is able to reach a larger audience. To illustrate this argument, I examine how three theoretical approaches within sociology, governmentality literature, critical realism and second modernity, exemplify both public and private sociology, while remaining methodologically coherent and rigorous. These approaches show sociology to be a field in which disparate, multiple, fluid theories and metatheories exist side-by-side in work that is both public and professional.
Through the Interviewer's Lens: Representations of 1960s Households and Families in a Lost Sociological Study
Authors: Goodwin John , O'Connor Henrietta
Published: March 2010

In this paper we aim to use the interviewer notes from a lost sociological project (The Young Worker Project) to answer two broad, interrelated, questions: i) how was family life documented and represented by the researchers in their interviewer notes and ii) what does analysing interviewer notes in this way add to our understanding of families and households? The answers to these questions are considered in the context of a further question – why did the young worker research contain so much data on families and households when the research was concerned with young workers’ early workplace experiences? In answering these questions we offer some insight into family life in the 1960s as documented by the researchers and locate Norbert Elias's young worker research within the context of the other large sociology research projects being undertaken at the time.
‘Their Risks Are My Risks’: On Shared Risk Epistemologies, Including Altruistic Fear for Companion Animals
Authors: Walby Kevin , Doyle Aaron
Published: March 2010

This paper builds in two ways on previous sociological studies concerning how people experience risk. Firstly, we discuss how risk is experienced in shared or altruistic ways as concern for others, and thus how emotions regarding risks produce solidarity. Secondly, we consider in particular how the others for whom one becomes concerned are not always people, and are sometimes instead companion animals such as cats and dogs, thus expanding the analysis beyond anthropocentrism and towards ‘animal-human symmetry’. Previous studies that have examined the shared or altruistic elements of fear (eg Warr, 1992) focus narrowly on crime. Those that broaden out to consider other risks besides crime (Lupton and Tulloch, 2002) do not include companion animals as subjects about whom people have concern. The article draws examples from open-ended interviews conducted in Ottawa, Canada, demonstrating how these themes arise as people narrate their experiences of risk, and pointing to the need for future research.
Sociological Futures: From Clock Time to Event Time
Authors: Adkins Lisa
Published: March 2010

This article articulates a shift from clock time to event time, a shift which raises particular challenges to dominant sociological strategies in regard to temporality, especially in regard to the future. In particular it raises challenges to the idea that alternative futures may be found by stretching time to the time disenfranchised or by seeking out and uncovering counter hegemonic forms of time. Taking feminist sociological approaches to time as a case in point, this article shows that while such strategies were relevant when time operated externally to events; they have little traction when time unfolds with events. For Sociologists to continue in their promise of working to secure alternative futures, their analyses must therefore become entangled in event time.
Researching ‘Care’ in and around the Workplace
Authors: Smith Andrew , McKie Linda
Published: March 2010

In this research note we critically consider the concept of ‘care’ both inside and around the workplace. Care, we assert, is ever-present in the workplace and evident in friendships and wider social relations. Moreover, many organisational policies and practices provide a framework within which caring may take place or be denied. ‘Organisation carescapes’ is introduced as a conceptual framework, which we argue can aid the identification and analysis of ‘care’ in employing organisations. Drawing on exploratory interviews, we discuss the implications these had on future stages of the research project in terms of our use of language and ways of conceptualising care at work. We explain how we operationalised the concept of care at work through the development of a questionnaire, which sought to map the care policies and services offered by a range of employing organisations. Furthermore, we discuss the appropriateness of the critical incident interview technique in uncovering the cultures and practices of care both in and around the workplace. Hence, through our conceptual and empirical research, we seek to bridge the sociologies of work and care.
Archiving from below: The Case of the Mobilised Hawkers in Calcutta
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Ritajyoti
Published: March 2010

In the last two decades or more, critical scholarship in the human sciences has been commenting on different aspects of the ‘archive’. While much has been said on the archive of the state, especially in the historiography of colonial South Asia, very little is known about the archival functions of political parties, movements, grassroots community organisations, and trade unions that are involved in the governance of populations in the post-colonial state. The paper argues that archival claims lie at the heart of negotiations between the state and population groups. It looks at the archival function of the Hawker Sangram Committee (HSC) in Calcutta to substantiate the point. Following Operation Sunshine (1996), a move by the state to forcibly evict hawkers from some selected pavements of Calcutta, in order to reclaim such ‘public’ spaces, a mode of collective resistance developed under the banner of the HSC. The HSC has subsequently come to occupy a central position in the governance of the realm of pavement-hawking through the creation and maintenance of an archival database that articulates the entrepreneurial capacity of the ‘poor hawker’ and his ability to deliver goods and services at low-cost. The significance of the HSC's archive is that, it enables the organisation to form a moral and rational critique of the exclusionary discourses on the hawker, mostly propagated by a powerful combination of a few citizens’ associations, the judiciary and the press. The paper also documents how the successful mobilisation of a population group like the hawkers is marked by the virtual destruction of a pre-existing archive on the other group of ‘encroachers’ of the pavement space, the pavement dwellers.
Apocalypse in the Long Run: Reflections on Huge Comparisons in the Study of Modernity
Authors: Hall John R.
Published: March 2010

Methodologies of historical sociology face research problems centered on the instability of historical referents, their historical non-independence, and the privileging of objective time of the clock and calendar. The present essay, by reflecting on an analysis of the apocalyptic in the long run (Hall 2009), proposes the potential to solve these problems by way of a phenomenology of history, which analyzes the enactment and interplay of multiple social temporalities. Whereas high-modern theories of modernity tended to portray a secular trend toward the triumph of rationalized social order centred in diachronic time, analysis of the historical emergence of apocalyptic times in relation to other temporalities - especially objective (or diachronic) temporalities, the here-and-now, and the collective synchronic - reveals that the apocalyptic has survived within modernity through the articulation of rationalized diachronic time with the sacred strategic time of apocalyptically framed ‘holy war.’ Overall, the ‘empire of modernity’ is a hybrid formation that bridges diachronic and strategic temporalities. Despite diachronic developments that tend toward what Habermas described as the colonization of the lifeworld, a phenomenological analysis suggests the durability of the here-and-now and collective synchronic times. These analyses unveil a research agenda that deconstructs the high-modern ‘past’ versus ‘present’ binary in favour of a model that analyzes the interplay of multiple social forms, and thus encourages a retheorization of modernity as ‘recomposition’ encompassing multiple temporalities.
The Sociology of Health and Illness at the Turn of the Century: Back to the Future?
Authors: Williams Simon , Annandale Ellen , Tritter Jonathan
Published: March 2010

A ‘think piece’ in both style and content, this article offers some thoughts and reflections on selected themes and issues which, we believe, provide some important indicators not simply of the sociology of health and illness’ current status, but also of its future prospects. Four key themes have been chosen: (i) social inequalities in health; (ii) emotions and embodiment; (iii) (bio)technology, and finally; (iv) the shifting configuration of health care in Britain. Underlying these four themes, and running through the discussion as a whole, are two further key issues, namely, the contested nature of health and medical knowledge, and debates concerning consumption and risk in late modern society. The article concludes by suggesting that, in the era of the new genetics and the resurgence of biological explanations in the social and natural sciences, the charge of sociological imperialism constitutes both a constraint and opportunity for practitioners working in health and related fields.
Part-Time Work and Activity in Voluntary Associations in Great Britain
Authors: Kamerāde Daiga
Published: March 2010

This paper evaluates both the economic, or rational choice, and sociological theories to examine the effects of part-time working on employees’ activity in voluntary associations. Using longitudinal data analysis of the British Household Panel Survey from 1993 to 2005, this study demonstrates that, in Britain, part-time work increases the likelihood of individual level involvement in expressive voluntary associations (i.e. associations orientated to relatively immediate benefits for their members) but it is negatively related to their involvement in instrumental-expressive (such as trade unions and professionals’ associations) and instrumental (political, environmental, and voluntary service) associations. The main conclusion is that time is an important resource for activity in expressive voluntary associations; however, for activity in instrumental and instrumental-expressive associations other factors are more important.
Gender Differences at Work: International Variations in Occupational Segregation
Authors: Jarman Jennifer , Blackburn Robert M. , Brooks Bradley , Dermott Esther
Published: March 2010

Despite the prominence of discussions of gender segregation in explanations of labour market inequalities, there have been relatively few cross-national studies due to a lack of suitably detailed data. A recent ILO initiative obtained suitable data for cross-national analysis of 38 countries, with a much greater number of occupational categories than has usually been available. This paper reports findings from the analysis of these data. The problems and potential of using such data are discussed and a standardisation is introduced to control for the effects of the number of occupations in the segregation measure. There are important differences in the level of segregation in different countries. The highly segregated countries are to be found in Western Europe, and in particular Scandinavia. Several Arab countries also have high levels of segregation. An argument is made suggesting that the context and meaning of segregation patterns may be quite different from what might be inferred from single country studies.
Jade's Dying Body: The Ultimate Reality Show
Authors: Walter Tony
Published: March 2010

The article analyses the scale of, and reactions to, print media coverage of the dying from cancer in 2009 of young British media celebrity Jade Goody. Some sociologists have argued that death is sequestrated, with the dying body particularly hidden and problematic; hence the sociological significance of the intense and high profile coverage of Jade's final weeks. In particular, the baroque emotionality of press photos, especially those which glamorised her baldness (the result of failed chemotherapy), challenges the sequestration thesis. Reactions were complex, with criticism of her public dying mixed with criticism of reality television in general, together with class prejudice. New media's blurring of public and private creates new arenas for publicising the bodily, personal and emotional experience of dying, while at the same time affirming the public/private boundary so that the ordinary dying of ordinary people remains substantially hidden.
Using Focus Group Research in Exploring the Relationships between Youth, Risk and Social Position
Authors: Merryweather Dave
Published: March 2010

This paper draws upon current research to consider the value of the focus group method for exploring the relationships between youth, risk and social position. Groups comprising young people occupying similar social positions were used to generate talk about aspects of everyday life regarded as risk. Through the processes of conversational interaction facilitated by the focus group method, participants co-produced detailed risk narratives, understood here in Bourdieu's terms as product and producer of the habitus related to social position. Using data from several of the focus groups I illustrate how the method was especially useful in generating narratives indicative of how risks were experienced and understood in different ways according to social positions of class, gender and ethnicity. Such risk narratives also reproduced distinctions between and within different social positions. Consideration is given to certain limitations of the focus group method in respect of this research. Ultimately, however, the ability of the method to generate collaborative narratives reflective of shared social position is viewed as an invaluable means for developing a rich and nuanced account of the relations between youth and risk.
Portfolio-Based Performance Appraisal for Doctors: A Case of Paperwork Compliance
Authors: Chamberlain John Martyn
Published: March 2010

This paper discusses the findings of research exploring the conduct of portfolio-based performance appraisal within medicine. Portfolios are now used throughout medical school and junior doctor training, in later specialist training, as well as to support the implementation of annual NHS appraisal of doctors as part of their employment contract. They will also play a role in the new medical governance quality assurance process known as revalidation, when it is implemented in 2010. The paper discusses how the growth of portfolio-based performance appraisal within medicine is bound up with the growth of managerial systems of surveillance and control within western health care systems. Theoretically, it draws upon a Governmentality perspective to analyse doctor's accounts of the appraisal process. This views appraisal as an information panopticon that to better enable social control seeks to construct appraisees as calculable and administrable subjects. However, the paper highlights how the doctors interviewed used the tacit dimensions of their expertise to engage in creative game-playing toward appraisal, adopting a stance of paperwork compliance toward it. Paperwork compliance leaves a paper trail that makes it appear doctors have complied with the technical requirements of performance appraisal when in fact they have not. The paper concludes that current reforms to medical governance introduced to ensure the general public is protected from medical error and malpractice, provide sociologists with an invaluable opportunity to undertake a dedicated research program into the performance management of medical work.
Revisiting Role Theory: Roles and the Problem of the Self
Authors: Raffel Stanley
Published: March 2010

This paper looks at some of the major texts in the history of role theory. The question that is asked is whether any of these works have been able to theorize the self adequately. It is suggested that neither Parsons nor Merton has any place for the self in their respective theories. While Goffman does make a space for the self, it is only a negative space. Even ethnomethodological theory cannot imagine a role player capable of self-expression. It is argued that a solution to the problem of how to conceive of self and role can be developed from some ideas present in the work of the philosopher Lawrence Blum. The concept of self as identity that can be extracted from his work can allow social theory to imagine actors who are simultaneously expressing their selves and fulfilling their roles. Affinities between this idea and some key concepts in theories of both (Alan) Blum and Peter McHugh and Charles Taylor are suggested.
Token Salaries and Social Answers in Work Relations in Africa
Authors: Repetti Massimo
Published: March 2010

In Dakar, faced with crisis and uncertainty, social answers begin to appear. Only those having a supportive social network could find a place in the labour's market.

The observation of the daily routine of any of Dakarís micro-businesses and its social aspects, reveals the wide area of interference that exists between waged worker and the relation networks with family and relatives, ethnic groups and Muslim brotherhoods. The urban economy is supported by a network of family, alliance, and client relations.

The overlap existing between waged and unwaged work can be understood only by looking closely at the network of social ties present outside the production site.

Switching from the analysis of urban work relationships in Africa to the analysis of social networks is almost spontaneous, because a system of relational actions and strategies grows around the figure of the worker. The importance of the “strength of weak ties” in procuring employment is as a whole confirmed, but African sociability creates an intense inter-network relational interchange. Dakarís urban space feeds a “popular economy” where social networks and the gift-giving logic co-exist with market economy. This economy utilise different wage embryos or tokens salaries for each of the social players.
The Cyber-Ethnographic (Re)Construction of Two Feminist Online Communities
Authors: ward katie j.
Published: March 2010

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that cyber-ethnography is the most appropriate tool in reaching an understanding of the online community. I argue that cyber-ethnography's reflexive qualities allow the characteristics of the online community to emerge. I demonstrate, through the cyber-ethnographic exploration of two feminist online communities, how the participants define their own perimeters. I suggest that the online community has two main characteristics. Through its convergence with the physical, the online community's existence is apparent, though not unconditionally virtual. Indeed, the online community does not compete with, or supersede physical space, rather a hybrid space emerges that is neither absolutely physical or virtual. Secondly, I depict the participants as having a transitory, unconditional relationship with the online community. That is; they will only participate for short periods when they require use of the resources that the online community has to offer.
Is Class Changing? A Work-Life History Perspective on the Salariat
Authors: Halpin Brendan
Published: March 2010

Has the massive transformation of the class structure over the twentieth century changed the consequences of class? In particular, does the fact that the salariat has taken over from the manual working classes as the largest category mean that the implications of membership of the salariat for one's life chances is no longer the same? This paper takes retrospective life-history data from the British Household Panel Study and models patterns of change in the structure of work-life mobility between the ages of 25 and 35 for individuals born between 1900 and 1959. The purpose is to seek evidence of broad changes in the consequences of class, through the middle and late 20th century, using an extremely valuable data resource. The evidence suggests that there is cross-cohort change in the patterns of work-life mobility, both in terms of traditional class categories and in terms of the relationship between class and more general employment status categories, but more strongly in the latter case. In general, the pattern is one of declining immobility, including declining salariat retentiveness. The paper concludes with a consideration of what the data mean, and what this particular bounded analysis has to say about the question of change in the consequences of class.
Theory-Building with Nud.Ist: Using Computer Assisted Qualitative Analysis in a Media Case Study
Authors: MacMillan Katie , McLachlan Shelley
Published: March 2010

We examine Nud.ist software in terms of its ëtheory-buildingí properties in order to access the extent to which Nud.ist can be used, not only to develop content categories, but also to develop a research method using two potentially incompatible approaches.

The methods, content analysis and discourse analysis, were used in a single case study on education news in the press. Our case study, on how news about education issues gets constructed and framed by the national press into generalized themes and narratives, was initially informed by an extensive content analysis of the news over a twelve month period. Having identified variations in press coverage, we then collected large quantities of media text on education issues, using Nud.ist to organize and to recode the subsequent data. Having categorized the news extracts our aim was to then explore whether Nud.ist could assist a discourse analysis of the text.
Understanding the Police Investigation of the Murder of Stephen Lawrence: A ‘Mundane Sociological Analysis’
Authors: Holdaway Simon
Published: March 2010

‘Race’ is a litmus test for understanding relationships within institutions. Conflicts between ethnic majorities and minorities (and other minorities too) have a capacity to not only bring particular features of racialised relations to view but to also lay bare generic, institutional relationships.

In this paper, I argue that the Lawrence Inquiry report directs us to mundane features of policing. Crucially we need to understand the complex ways in which the occupational culture of policing constructs and sustains particular forms of racialised relations. There are two key features of this culture. One is a tendency to use stereotypical thinking generally and in relation to ethnic minorities in particular. The other is to neglect the pertinence of race to rouitne police work. The presence and absence of ‘race’ is woven into the routines of the occupational culture. Police action can, as the Lawrence Inquiry report suggests be ‘unwitting’. To argue the existence of ‘unwitting’ action, however, it is necessary to demonstrate that police officers could have acted differently. The murder of Stephen Lawrence and the police investigation into it have to be placed within this context if an adequate sociological analysis is to be undertaken.
Institutional Racism, Cultural Diversity and Citizenship: Some Reflections on Reading the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report
Authors: Yuval-Davis Nira
Published: March 2010

The paper discusses some of the issues emanating out of reading the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report and the surrounding media reports. In particular, the paper looks at the ways the notion of ‘cutural diversity’ has been incorporated to the Report's recommendations on racism awareness training. This is linked with the fundamental problem of the inclusion of Britain's racialized minorities into its citizenship body in a way that would reflect differences and differential positionings. The paper ends with a note on a particular kind of active citizenship - that of political motherhood and the way Doreen Lawrence has been constructed in the British national imagination.
Social Research and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
Authors: Solomos John
Published: March 2010

This article begins by exploring the conceptualisation of racism that is to be found in the Macpherson Report and the implications that this has for social research. It then looks at some of the policy recommendations of the report and the ways in which its key recommendations raise important dilemmas for policy initiatives on race. The final part of the article moves somewhat beyond the content of the Macpherson Report and suggest that we as researchers need to develop a critical self-awareness of the limitations of our research agendas in addressing phenomena that are addressed in the report, such as racism within institutional settings and racist violence.
The Macpherson Report: A View from Greater Manchester
Authors: Ray Larry , Smith David , Wastell Liz
Published: March 2010

These comments arising from the Macpherson Report are made in the light of our research on racist violence in Greater Manchester. This study, funded by the ESRC as part of the Violence Research Programme, is still in progress and our findings at this stage are tentative. The focus of the study is mainly on the perpetrators of racist violence, but we have also obtained material on the response of the police and other agencies to racist attacks and harassment.
War and the Public Intellectual: Cosmopolitanism and Anti-Cosmopolitanism in the Kosovo Debate in Germany
Authors: Scott Alan
Published: March 2010

NATO's intervention in Kosovo dramatically highlighted the differences and disagreements between cosmopolitans and their critics. This article offers a critically summary of the arguments of both camps (and various positions within them) as they unfolded in the German media, and particularly in the broadsheet press, during the NATO bombing campaign. An attempt is made to fill in the broader context by pointing out some differences between the debates in Britain and those in Germany. While the implications and possible weaknesses of the cosmopolitan position is the main focus, the role of public intellectuals the media is also discussed.
A View from Hong Kong: Chinese Representations of War, Violence and American Imperialism
Authors: Goodwin John , Hills Katharine
Published: March 2010

In this article we reflect on our experiences in Hong Kong after the bombing by NATO forces of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999. We focus on the responses to this action contained within Hong Kong's English language press and reflect on the emergent themes. The themes are, Business as Usual in a Global Marketplace and Civilised versus Barbaric: Representations of Good and Evil. On a broad level these themes encapsulate the perceptions that China and Western nations have about each other's society and culture. On a deeper level, through these themes, we reveal the inherent contradictions between the ongoing economic interdependence of China and the West on the one hand, and China's quest for political independence through its reaffirmation of what it is to be Chinese on the other.
Deportations and Discursive Displacements
Authors: Linden R. Ruth
Published: March 2010

This article begins a conversation about the consequences of deploying the Holocaust as a metaphor for specific instances of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It explores the rhetorical linkage between the war in Kosovo and the Holocaust, an analogy that looms large in discourse in the United States. I use the term “discursive displacement” to describe the process of signifying events in Kosovo with the metaphor of the Holocaust. This metaphor can both enlarge and constrain the production of knowledge. The use of metaphors is fundamental to the process of making meanings. Nevertheless, by disrupting the “transfer” of meanings from the Holocaust to Kosovo, my aim is to expand our understanding of the persistence and specificity of ethnic cleansing and genocide in our own time.
The Kosovan War, 1998-99: Transformations of State, War and Genocide in the Global Revolution
Authors: Shaw Martin
Published: March 2010

This paper outlines an analysis of the Kosovan war of 1998-99 in the light of historical-sociological perspectives on the contemporary state and on war and genocide. It argues that Kosova poses new challenges which threaten to relegitimate war as a means of politics, after the earlier implication of total war with genocide, unless alternative forms of international intervention are developed.
Realtime Interviewing Using the World Wide Web
Authors: Chen Peter , Hinton S.M.
Published: March 2010

This paper outlines the adaptation of in-depth interviewing using World Wide Web-based interviewing software between the interviewer and their subject. Through a structured, realtime interviewing process the researcher is able to use the Internet to facilitate communication, recording interviews directly to a file without incurring the costs associated with traditional face-to-face or telephone interviews. The benefits of this approach are the ability of the researcher to conduct inexpensive interviewing over distances and elimination of transcription costs from the research process, allowing the researcher to undertake a wider range of interviews than may be possible on a limited budget. The interview method has problems associated with the depth of material available from this approach, the loss of paralinguistic cues and the limited size of the available sample, limitations that must be accounted for by any researcher considering using the approach.
Cultivation and Comprehension: How Genetic Modification Irreversibly Alters the Human Engagement with Nature
Authors: Harvey Mark
Published: March 2010

Genetic engineering is placed in the context of a history of transformations of the relations between ‘cultivated nature’ and ‘naturally occurring nature’. It is argued that genetic modification is a bio-socio-economic process, producing new diversity within cultivated nature. Viewing bio- science and technology as ‘socially embedded’, it argues that different trajectories of their development have both the much trumpeted negative possibilities of ecological disaster and a positive potential of revolutionising both the culture of food and eco-sustainability.
Role as an Interactional Device and Resource in Multidisciplinary Team Meetings
Authors: Housley William
Published: March 2010

During the course of this paper the approaches of Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis are used to investigate and explore team members talk within multidisciplinary social/care team meetings. The paper explores the situated character of role within team meetings and considers the various methods through which team member roles are accomplished, negotiated, contested and used as a resource in the everyday business of making decisions, exchanging information and allocating work within multidisciplinary social/care team meetings. Consequently, traditional conceptualisations of role are respecified in terms of situated action.