bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Security, surveillance and geographical patterns at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg
Authors: Fonio Chiara , Pisapia Giovanni
Published: May 2014

This paper analyses the 2010 FIFA World Cup that took place in South Africa by focusing on both security and surveillance dynamics and spatial implications in the city of Johannesburg. While securitisation dynamics and socio‐political legacies have been explored by a substantial body of literature, the activities of the law‐enforcement agencies in a specific urban setting, distinctive geographical patterns and aspects of security governance in South Africa seem to be more fragmented. In this contribution we argue that the tournament represents an important shift in FIFA security governance, namely a shift from reactive patterns of security provisions to more proactive policing approaches. Additionally, we shed light on power dynamics and on trends of securitisation of the urban space, such as the reliance on technology‐based policing which resulted in the implementation of surveillance tools. Symbolic implications and spatial patterns are also discussed with an emphasis on either facility developments or on controversial event‐driven projects. Overall, we contend that despite delivering a safe tournament and reducing crime rates, further investigation is needed to assess surveillance technologies both from a cost‐benefit analysis and from socio‐ethical implications, i.e. the stigmatisation of certain social groups. However, we also argue that inclusionary aspects in relation to event‐driven impositions should be taken into account in the literature on mega‐events in the global South.
The ‘caring experience’: Testing the psychometric properties of the Caring Efficacy Scale
Authors: Reid Carol , Courtney Mary , Anderson Debra , Hurst Cameron
Published: May 2014

The purpose of the study was to undertake rigorous psychometric testing of the Caring Efficacy Scale in a sample of Registered Nurses. A cross‐sectional survey of 2000 registered nurses was undertaken. The Caring Efficacy Scale was utilized to inform the psychometric properties of the selected items of the Caring Efficacy Scale. Cronbach's Alpha identified reliability of the data. Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were undertaken to validate the factors. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the development of two factors; Confidence to Care and Doubts and Concerns. The Caring Efficacy Scale has undergone rigorous psychometric testing, affording evidence of internal consistency and goodness‐of‐fit indices within satisfactory ranges. The Caring Efficacy Scale is valid for use in an Australian population of registered nurses. The scale can be used as a subscale or total score reflective of self‐efficacy in nursing. This scale may assist nursing educators to predict levels of caring efficacy.
The Politics of Socialisation: Recruitment and Training for Journalism
Authors: Boyd-Barrett Oliver
Published: May 2014

The paper demonstrates that the provision of formal training in journalism, as possibly in any other industry or occupation, is not solely determined by a specific range of ‘necessary’ skills. On the contrary, politico-cultural factors may be equally, if not more, important. The paper finds the ‘professionalisation’ hypothesis insufficient, however, as an explanation for the emergence of a national system of compulsory training. It notes that the character of training has been greatly influenced by the requirements of a specific sector of the industry, on which, significantly, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) has been heavily dependent for financial support and legitimacy. Ambiguity in this sector's approach to graduate trainees created a vacuum which was one factor that encouraged the development of university and polytechnic based journalism and communications courses. More fundamentally, potential competition for authority in training has developed from the establishment of an Industrial Training Board for Printing and Publishing (PPITB) with statutory responsibility for training in journalism. These developments inspired survival/adaptation responses from the NCTJ, including the formulation of a broader structural and financial base, a more positive attitude towards graduate training, a wider range of functions and a reappraisal of alliances. These in turn have had consequences for training content. Analyses of training in terms of ‘socialisation’ or ‘professionalisation’ which fail to take into account such aspects of industrial structure and political rivalry may be misleading.
Technology is Society Made Durable
Authors: Latour Bruno
Published: May 2014

Is it possible to devise a set of concepts that could replace the technology/society divide? This set of new concepts - association and substitution - might help to rephrase some of the traditional questions of social order and especially that of the durability of domination of power. However, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range. By reconstructing networks it is argued that a full description of power and domination may be obtained.
Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility
Authors: Callon Michel
Published: May 2014

This paper explores the heterogeneous processes of social and technical change, and in particular the dynamics of techno-economic networks. It starts by considering the way in which actors and intermediaries are constituted and define one another within such networks in the course of translation. It then explores, first the way in which parts of such heterogeneous networks converge to create unified spaces linking incommensurable elements, and second how some of these links achieve longevity and tend to shape future processes of translation.
Power, Discretion and Strategy
Authors: Law John
Published: May 2014

This essay starts with a brief review of some of the main approaches to power, and identifies four: ‘power to’, ‘power over’, ‘power/storage’ and ‘power discretion’. It argues that these are all viable, but that they should be linked to a fifth — that of ‘power/effects' — with its stress on the continued performance of social relations. But how are such relations stabilised? It is argued, in answer to this question, that social relations are never purely social in character: rather they are heterogeneous, being embodied in a series of corporeal, textual, natural and technical materials. Finally, certain strategies for ordering these relations and their power effects are examined for the case of a formal organisation, and it is argued that such strategies are always, and necessarily, discursively impure.
Is a Theory of Caste Still Possible?
Authors: Quigley Declan
Published: May 2014

A theory of caste must offer a way of ordering the facts in such a way that it does not diminish the significance of some or ignore others. It must also be comparative. Caste organisation is found in some parts of South Asia but not all. Equally, structural parallels may be found in many other parts of the world and one should not therefore assume that the defining characteristics of caste are unique to Hindu communities or to the ideology of Brahmanism. What is needed is a theory which explains why all of the traits associated with caste are found together where and when they are, whether in South Asia or elsewhere.

Various theories of caste are reviewed in this chapter before coming to the conclusion that one of these makes much more sense of the historical and ethnographic evidence than the others. Most theories depict castes as arranged in a ladder-like vertical order. Sociologists have tended to emphasise this ‘stratification’, regarding the ideological and ritual manifestations of caste, such as the pervasive concern with purity and impurity, as epiphenomenal. Anthropologists have generally avoided this error but have faced other intractable problems. Some see caste as a recent colonial artefact, others as an ancient indigenous category. Many are heavily influenced by the ideological reductionism of Dumont's theory of Hindu society. On the other hand, Dumont's analysis raises so many problems that some have attempted to retreat from theory and restrict their studies to ethnographic description.

The argument here is that caste results from an uneasy stalemate between the pull of localised lineage organisation and the forces of political, ritual and economic centralisation encapsulated in monarchical institutions. Caste systems are the product of a certain degree of centralisation which involve the organisation of ritual and other services around the king and dominant lineages. The central institution is (as Hocart suggested) the monarchy, and not (as Dumont suggested) the Brahman priesthood. The removal of Hindu kings in India with the advent of colonialism does not negate this thesis, for it is a specifically western view of kingship which allows for only one monarch within a territory. Kingship (and the configurations of castes associated with it) was always reproduced at the court of lesser chiefs, and is still replicated today in the households of members of dominant castes.
Caste, Democracy and the Politics of Community Formation in India
Authors: Mitra Subrata K.
Published: May 2014

This chapter examines debates about the survival of caste in India today. It argues that caste is an institution which has both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ aspects, both ‘primordial’ and instrumental dimensions as, indeed, it probably always had. Mitra rejects the view of modernisation theorists, and of secular Indian intellectuals, who consider that caste is just a hangover from a discredited past. Arguing in favour of an instrumentalist, rather than essentialist, view of caste, he suggests that castes may have a useful role in the formation of identity and, as such, may help in the formation of the nation and state. Castes are resources that actors use to promote their own interests. Caste consciousness destroys those very aspects of the caste system which the essentialist view presented as immutable. The continuation of an essentialist perception of caste serves only to drive a wedge between the state and society. It gives rise to the stigma which prevents the law, bureaucracy and media from doing those things that would help transform castes into social organisations available for the creation of a plural and multi-cultural nation. Mitra develops his argument by focusing on three empirical areas: competitive politics, positive discrimination and the market economy.
Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan: ‘Caste’, Kinship and Gender in a Marginalised Society
Authors: Unnithan Maya
Published: May 2014

Anthropologists have often contrasted ‘caste’ and ‘tribe’ as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg ‘castes' are based on hierarchy, ‘tribal’ society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of ‘caste’ is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not always reflect the social categories which are central to the organisation of people's lives at the local level.

The Girasias (generally held to be a ‘tribe’ by others) live in Rajasthan in proximity to the Rajputs (generally held to be a ‘caste’; Girasias themselves claim to be a branch of the Rajput caste). On many points the way in which a group categorises itself does not correspond with the way in which it is categorised by members of other groups. In practice the Girasias share many social, economic and religious institutions with the other ‘caste’ communities in the region as also with the ‘tribal Bhils. This does not mean that these groups are indistinguishable, but ‘Rajput’ and ‘Bhil’ stereotypes were used within the Girasia group to express differences, identifications and evaluations. However the tribe/caste distinction and the corresponding division of labour between anthropologists and sociologists in India is thereby called into question.

To the Girasias, patrilineal kinship and territory play a central role in their sense of ‘caste’ identity, unlike other communities (the Rajputs and Bhils are exceptions) for whom caste is a more dispersed, agnatic and affinal group. Descent is crucial. Although their kinship ideology emphasises a sense of separation rather than hierarchy, Girasia kin divisions present members with equal opportunities to be unequal. Lineal kinship provides the paradigm for talking about all relationships whether or not based on actual biological ties. Equally, gender provides an idiom for the construction of difference. Descent groups are differentiated according to the evaluation of groups from which they have been able to obtain wives. Both Girasias and outsiders use the attire and the behaviour of women and perceived gender roles to distinguish between themselves. Despite the local complexity of Girasia kinship and gender relations which cannot be expressed in the language of caste and tribe, outsiders (other castes, classes, government officials, academics) continue to regard the Girasias as tribal as a result of the politics of caste and gender at the local, regional and national levels.
Caste without a System. A Study of South Indian Harijans
Authors: Deliège Robert
Published: May 2014

According to Dumont, caste can be understood as the institutionalisation of hierarchy, and the principle of hierarchy permeates all relations within Indian society. So understood, caste ideology is uniform throughout the society. This point has been contested by several ethnographers, especially those working among untouchables whom they often described as more ‘egalitarian’. This chapter aims to discuss the concepts of hierarchy and equality among the Paraiyar caste in a Tamil Nadu village. It will show that in spite of a basic acceptance of the value of caste, the Paraiyar espouse a strongly egalitarian ethic so far as relations among themselves are concerned; while there are forms of differentiation within the village, these cannot be conceived according to a hierarchical model. There is a general resistance to any form of internal leadership or domination, to which constant disputes, jealousies and accusations of theft bear witness. Gender roles are not as sharply demarcated as is generally expected in the subcontinent and the relations between affines are not conceived hierarchically.

Although hierarchy can be taken as an intellectual device to grasp the foundations of Indian society, it cannot account for all the social relations within that society, which require theorisation of a different kind. It is a mistake to think that people are either egalitarian or hierarchical.
Caste, Religion and other Identities
Authors: Searle-Chatterjee Mary
Published: May 2014

Religion is one of the many principles of social identification in India. It is becoming increasingly important – although, very often, what appears to be mobilisation on a religious basis can just as adequately, indeed more satisfactorily, be described in terms of caste, class or regional affiliations. Vested interests may encourage the reification of religions, and academics overseas, especially in Religious Studies departments, may, unwittingly, provide them support. This chapter examines the link between caste and religion, particularly in the case of the very lowest status groups. It suggests that both caste and religion mean very different things at different levels of the hierarchy. It then proceeds to look at the distinctive characteristics of religious identities in India. The discussion is related to wider debates about ethnic and racial identities and issues. Should class or interest group membership and allegiances be prioritised over other cultural identities, whether ascribed or acquired? It is argued that it is mistaken to reduce any one of these to another. Searle-Chatterjee draws on a range of historical and sociological/anthropological literature and also makes use of her own research in Varanasi (Banaras).
Caste — A Personal Perspective
Authors: Shukra(pseudonym) A.
Published: May 2014

The author, a member of the Dalit caste of Chamars, describes and analyses his own experience of caste. He recalls that a sense of his own low caste identity was impressed upon him at a very early age, especially at school. Yet the practice of the high castes was not always consistent and inflexible – a low caste person who has influence or whose skills are sought after might be offered hypocritical respect. In any case the high caste view of the low castes is not internalised by the latter, especially those who have been influenced by the modern Dalit movement. Caste consciousness and behaviour pervades all communities in India in some form; it is not a monopoly of Hindus.

When the author came to Britain at an early age he was initially more concerned by the effects of racism, but soon found that castism was as strong among Indians living in Britain as in India. This is not always made explicit, but most Asian organisations are in fact caste-based. If anything, this castism is stronger than it was in the early days of Indian settlement in Britain when migrants were more inclined to share facilities with each other. Even those who did not practise caste openly effectively support the institution by marginalising the issue of caste intellectually and politically. The only explanatory model which can make sense of the contradictions in Indian society is a model of groups with conflicting interests which however survives because of the capacity of the thin cement of Brahminism to hide the rifts in the structure.
From Practice to Culture on Usenet
Authors: Baym Nancy K.
Published: May 2014

Usenet distributes thousands of topically-oriented discussion groups, reaching millions of readers world-wide. Newsgroup participants often create distinctive sub-cultures, which have been all but ignored in scholarly work on computer networks and computer-mediated communication. I illustrate how Usenet discourse can operate as a culture-creating force, and how practice theory can be used to approach Usenet cultures, with a deep analysis of one message in the group ‘rec.arts.tv.soaps.’ This group, which discusses television soap operas, is one of the most prolific on Usenet. The use of a single message demonstrates the potential of all Usenet talk as a locus of cultural meaning. The specific claims I make about such meanings in rec.arts.tv.soaps are grounded in my ethnographic research on this group over the last two years.
Changing Documents/Documenting Changes: Using Computers for Collaborative Writing over Distance
Authors: Beck Eevi E.
Published: May 2014

This chapter presents data from a case study of two academic authors writing together across great geographic distance, using telephones and computers connected over an international network. Not only the document being written but also the process itself was continuously changing, with the authors making creative use of the technology available to them. The information they offered each other concerned not only changes in the document, but also the authors' individual context of work. Rules and agreements were open to reinterpretation. The context sensitive interpretation of agreements facilitated a highly flexible process. The observations have implications of how collaboration is conceptualized in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and for what kinds of computer systems would be best suited to support this kind of distributed work.

Respondent's comment introducing new section in manuscript draft: This section is an experiment. Bits of it may get broken up, reworded and put somewhere else. I'm making some strong claims here that we've not really discussed, and you might disagree violently!

Articulation work amounts to the following: First, the meshing of the often numerous tasks, clusters of tasks, and segments of the total arc. Second, the meshing of efforts of various unit-workers (individuals, departments, etc.). Third, the meshing of actors with their various types of work and implicated tasks. (Strauss, 1985)
Making Space: A Comparison of Mathematical Work in School and Professional Design Practices
Authors: Hall Rogers , Stevens Reed
Published: May 2014

Research accounts of mathematical and scientific competence play a central role in ongoing efforts to reorganize education. At the same time, new technologies change the character of work in settings where these competencies are learned and used. Two contemporary research programs—(1) cognitive science studies of expert versus novice skill and (2) interactional studies of scientific and technical practice—produce sharply diverging accounts of what competence is and how it develops. Cognitive science has been broadly accepted as a template for educational change, while relevant interactional perspectives have had little impact. We propose a synthetic approach that draws on both programs, illustrated with a comparative study of mathematical practices in design work. Starting with scenes in which groups of designers collaborate to make space for others, we restore material and social aspects of their work settings in an exploration of discipline-specific forms of competence. Our continuing project is to reassemble competence in terms of: (a) people's local representational practices, (b) their trajectories of participation within and across institutional settings, and (c) their capacity for managing social relations of accountability.

Experts' schemata contain a great deal of procedural knowledge, with explicit conditions for applicability. Novices' schemata may be characterized as containing sufficiently elaborate declarative knowledge about the physical configurations of a potential problem, but lacking abstracted solution methods. (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, 1981:151).

Rule 7. Before attributing any special quality to the mind or to the method of people, let us examine first the many ways through which inscriptions are gathered, combined, tied together and sent back. Only if there is something unexplained once the networks have been studied shall we start to speak of cognitive factors. (Latour, 1987:258).
Contextualization, Cognitive Flexibility, and Hypertext: The Convergence of Interpretive Theory, Cognitive Psychology, and Advanced Information Technologies
Authors: Jones Robert Alun , Spiro Rand J.
Published: May 2014

Contextualization—particularly as exemplified in the history of social and political theory—has been the predominant theme in intellectual historiography for the last quarter of a century. In particular, pragmatists like Quentin Skinner and Richard Rorty have encouraged us to view the text as having as many meanings as there are contexts within which the text might be placed, and the contexts themselves as reflecting the special interests and purposes of the interpreter. Meanwhile, scholars in the humanities have been relatively slow to apply advanced information technologies to the problem of interpreting such texts; but the emergence of more powerful hypertext systems has led writers like George Landow and Jay Bolter to suggest a convergence between this technology and our understanding of the problems of interpretation. Still more recently, work based on cognitive flexibility theory suggests that there are good reasons to believe that people actually can learn and understand certain kinds of texts better through the use of these systems. In sum, there appears to be a convergence between cognitive psychology, interpretive theory, and advanced information technologies.
Constructing Easiness—Historical Perspectives on Work, Computerization, and Women
Authors: Markussen Randi
Published: May 2014

The assertion that technologies have made life easier and consequently better, often lurks in how we evaluate technologies. It implies an idea of history linked to modernity with its idea of progress. With my point of departure in the concepts of space of experience and horizon of expectation, I try to develop another understanding of history and a reassessment of how we evaluate technologies. Horizons of expectation of information technologies and developmental work are described and examined in the light of its impact on women's work, and how we envision power and authority. Finally, possibilities and dilemmas in women's lives within this reconceptualization is stressed and the conditions under which women may change their lives.

Nothing says that the present reduces to presence. Why, in the transition from future to past, should the present not be the time of initiative—that is, the time when the weight of history that has already been made is deposited, suspended, and interrupted, and when the dream of history yet to be made is transposed into a responsible decision?

Therefore it is within the dimension of acting (and suffering, which is its corollary) that thought about history will bring together its perspectives, within the horizon of the idea of an imperfect mediation. (Ricoeur, 1988:208)
‘Pulling down’ Books vs. ‘Pulling Up’ Files: Textual Databanks and the Changing Culture of Classical Scholarship
Authors: Ruhleder Karen
Published: May 2014

The culture of classical scholarship is changing as traditional paper-based materials are being repackaged in electronic form. This paper investigates the changes effected by a Greek textual databank, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG). The TLG changes the textual landscape, making available to scholars texts previously accessible with difficulty—or not at all. At the same time, it changes the traditional relationship between scholar and text. ‘Knowing’ a text is replaced by knowing how to construct search algorithms. Critical notes, repositories of centuries of expertise, are decoupled from the source materials. And new forms of technical expertise are becoming necessary in order to exploit domain expertise. The questions raised by classicists' use of textual databanks concern all communities which move from ‘pulling down’ books to ‘pulling up’ files.

A technology gives threefold shape to work; it gives form to the everyday experience of work; it defines the concepts with which we think about experience; and it imposes control upon the social relations of work. (Lyman, 1984).
The Visual Culture of Engineers
Authors: Henderson Kathryn
Published: May 2014

This chapter defines and illustrates the visual culture of engineers as situated in practice, delineating the components of engineers' visual culture and its relationship to tacit knowledge. A historical account traces the development of drafting conventions in the West, discussing how engineering designers' daily practices have constructed a visual culture not necessarily compatible with the assumptions built into computer-graphics design. The visual literacy which engineers develop in practice is described along with levels of encoding in engineering drawings. Parallels are drawn between these encoding structures and those found in language and artworks in order to explain how visual representations function as boundary objects and conscription devices and why visual representations are such a powerful tool.
Cross-Classroom Collaboration in Global Learning Circles
Authors: Riel Margaret
Published: May 2014

Computer-mediated-communication makes it possible for teachers and students to work cooperatively with their peers around the world. This process helps students realize the diversity of world views and the role of language in organizing experience. It provides for teachers an extensive educational resource. This chapter describes one form of network learning—cross-classroom collaboration and a specific model for accomplishing this activity—Learning Circles.
How Societies Remember the Past
Authors: Urry John
Published: May 2014

It is argued that how societies remember the past should be a key element of social theory. The social sciences should direct attention to time, tradition, and memory. Some implications of developing such notions for heritage are examined. In particular, it is suggested that the implications of heritage are ambiguous and contradictory, especially in the light of arguments about ‘travelling cultures’ and ‘detraditionalization.’ The social practices involved in ‘reminiscence’ are briefly elaborated.
Museums as Contested Sites of Remembrance: The Enola Gay Affair
Authors: Zolberg Vera L.
Published: May 2014

In recent years, controversies concerning the construction of displays of historical events have turned attention to the role of these public sitings. Although virtually any location to which access is relatively unrestricted may give rise to disputes, museums in particular have become foci of these debates. Their prominence is not surprising, since they are institutions in which a nation's qualities are ‘written’ or ‘shown.’ In this chapter I turn my attention to an important polemic in which two nations are involved: the United States and Japan. The subject is how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to be represented by a museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It allows me to examine more deeply the interactions of groups representing divergent interests within the United States, in the context of global relations with a relative equal, rather than a dominated subject. In the process, I analyze the role of the museum as an institution involved in the construction of national narratives in two countries, the political controversies unveiled, and the lost opportunities for innovation in the museum's relationship to its public as politicians intrude upon professions.
Decoding the Visitor's Gaze: Rethinking Museum Visiting
Authors: Fyfe Gordon , Ross Max
Published: May 2014

This chapter reports preliminary findings from visitor research being executed by one of the authors in a conurbation of the English Midlands. The fieldwork consists of fifteen in-depth interviews administered at a random sample of households and with a total of circa 35 subjects. The report places the research design in the theoretical contexts of class, culture and locality, presents data from three interviews and provides a detailed analysis of one interview. The data suggest:

(1) that local museums are mediators between identity and structure; (2) that museum meanings are diversely determined in relation to the class trajectories of subjects; (3) that museum visiting is to be understood as a social relationship rather than as an attribute of individuals and (4) that subjects readily conceptualize locality and identity through the visual vocabulary of museums and heritage sites.
The Utopics of Social Ordering – Stonehenge as a Museum without Walls
Authors: Hetherington Kevin
Published: May 2014

This chapter takes up Malraux's discussion of the museum without walls and asks the question ‘how might we think of the space of such a “museum”?’ To answer this question the chapter draws on Foucault's analysis of heterotopia together with Marin's analysis of utopics. My aim is to show that the museum has always been a site of otherness that expresses a utopic practice that comes to shape a vision of the ordering of the social. Having made this argument in relation to the ‘classical’ museum, I then turn to the space of the museum without walls and suggest that it is also heterotopic but, in relation to particular sites, characterized by many different utopics that make the meaning of such a space uncertain, ambivalent and ultimately not representable in any unified way. To illustrate this I use the example of Stonehenge as a museum without walls. It is an impossible, unrepre-sentable space but one that also means a great deal to many different groups of people. Stonehenge is imbued with a myriad of different utopics all of which express different visions of the ordering of the social that are often expressed through forms of resistance to ways in which society, through the prism of such a site, is seen to be currently ordered.

What monstrous place is this? ( Tess of the D'Urbervilles.)
Maintaining Boundaries, or ‘Mainstreaming’ Black History in a White Museum
Authors: Gable Eric
Published: May 2014

In this chapter, I explore ethnographically how enduring notions of racial ‘identity’ continue to make it unlikely that an ongoing attempt by America's largest outdoor living-history museum – Colonial Williamsburg – to tell stories about race relations in the antebellum era will be pedagogically effective. I focus on pedagogic practice among Colonial Williamsburg's ‘frontline’ because, while the professional historians ostensibly set historiographical policy and monitor historiographical product at Colonial Williamsburg, it is ultimately the dozens of guides who tell Williamburg's story to the visiting public. Moreover, I focus on the way guides talk about a particularly revealing topic – miscegenation – because it is a generally accepted argument among historians of antebellum America that the history of laws against miscegenation (which were codified in the eighteenth century), coupled with the history of their systematic violation, is at the root of the invention of distinct racial categories. To tell this story of ‘kinship denied’ at Colonial Williamsburg would have meant that a largely white audience and a mostly white ‘frontline’ would have had to rethink the category of race itself in ways perhaps more threatening to their ‘identities’ than to their ostensibly ‘black’ peers. In this chapter, I suggest that the way miscegenation remained a resisted topic at Colonial Williamsburg, reinforces, at the level of vernacular historiography, the very dichotomizing thinking about racial categories that the topic should have called into question.
A Trojan Horse at the Tate: Theorizing the Museum as Agency and Structure
Authors: Fyfe Gordon
Published: May 2014

It is argued that sociology lacks an adequate conceptualization of the museum/society relationship. It is further argued (1) that the museum is an agency of classification; (2) that it is a relationship of cultural interdependence and (3) that museums have an internal relationship to modernization. The institution of the museum is shown to arise out of the indeterminacies of modernization. A dispute in the early history of London's Tate Gallery is explored as it illuminates that institution's organization of the contradictions of modernization. Pace Bourdieu and Elias, a key contradiction is seen to arise from a differentiation of the field of power and the cultural field. It is argued, against essentialist accounts of museums, that the Tate produced its point of view through the medium of this contradiction.
Consumption and Class Analysis
Authors: Crompton Rosemary
Published: May 2014

The growing significance of ‘consumption’ is one of the factors which has contributed to sociological debates relating to the ‘end of class’. In this chapter, the different strands of consumption-related critiques are identified, and their implications explored. It is argued that one of the most prominent disputes in the field—Saunders on ‘consumption classes’—in fact engaged with but one strand of ‘class analysis’, the ‘employment-aggregate’ approach. Subsequently, the chapter explores discussions relating to the impact of consumption growth and developments on class processes, particularly those arguments concerning the significance of the experience of employment for the development of (‘class’) identities. It is suggested that recent changes in the structuring and organization of employment might, indeed, have significant consequences for the shaping of identities.
Consuming Schooling: Choice, Commodity, Gift and Systems of Exchange
Authors: Allatt Patricia
Published: May 2014

Schooling is a relational good, its consumption founded in social reciprocities. A qualitative study of the purchase and use of schooling by three middle class families challenges the view of identity formation as a project of individual self-realization. Traversing the public domain of the quasi-market of education and the private domain of the family, schooling switches from commodity to gift, entering the associated systems of commodity exchange and moral reciprocities. The tailoring to parental ends of the education offered by schools, and the co-labour of consumption within the household in the form of homework, shaped young people's identity, colonized and reproduced the family.
Expelling Future Threats: Some Observations on the Magical World of Vitamins
Authors: Falk Pasi
Published: May 2014

The chapter focuses on the consumption motives and marketing strategies of a specific category of contemporary magical substances, that is, the expanding range of vitamin (and mineral) products. The consumption of these products—located ambiguously in the demarcation of ‘medicine’ and ‘nutrition’ (symptomatically also characterized as ‘protective foods’)—has increased very dramatically in the Western world during the last two decades. The trend is most articulated among the educated middle classes whose diets are hardly characterized by nutritional deficiencies. Thus the grounds for the consumption boom must lie elsewhere, indicating other kind of motivational factors. On the other hand, even though the marketing strategies of these products cannot be conceived of as the manipulative force causing the increase in consumption, the advertising arguments promoting the use of vitamin products may be analysed as (implicit) reflections and interpretations of the actual motivational factors.

The analysis of these advertising arguments—related to the historical roots of nineteenth century patent medicine advertising—acts as a starting point for the interpretation of the motivational factors of consumption (of these products) then contextualized in the changing meaning structure of ‘food’—broken down into four dimensions: fuel, poison, medicine and (oral) ‘pleasurable’ (corresponding to the German term Genussmittel)—as it has evolved from early twentieth century to the present configuration. As it appears, the tendency manifests a shift in the meaning of ‘food’ giving an ever more emphasized role to the duality of medicine/poison. This tendency is expressed not only in the ‘nutritional scientific’ discourse—especially in its mass mediated versions—but also within two other related (and more recent) discursive lines: ‘environmental’ and ‘fitness & beauty’ discourses, as I have named them.

The interesting point is, as I am arguing in this chapter, that the motivational disposition towards the use of vitamin products fits well with the behavioural patterns outlined by these three discursive lines. Whether these products are used as substitutes or supplements, their specific magical character appears to lie in their future orientation and specifically in their supposed efficiency in keeping the evils to come afar—in the last instance, postponing not only ageing but death itself. In this respect the use of vitamin products resembles the more traditional case of talismans and amulets protecting against the evil eye ( mat occhio) etc.

Who wants to live forever …

Freddie Mercury ( Queen)
‘Bastard’ Chicken or Ghormeh-Sabzi? Iranian Women Guarding the Health of the Migrant Family
Authors: Harbottle Lynn
Published: May 2014

Based on ethnographic data, derived from Iranian migrants, in central England, this chapter examines women's domestic food-work, from a health perspective, and considers how ethnic identity may be variably performed through specific food consumption practices. ‘Bastard chicken’ and ‘ ghormeh-sabzi’ serve as metaphors, representing British (perceived to be under-developed) and Iranian (highly elaborated) cuisines, and as vehicles allowing play around the notions of positive and harmful incorporation. I contend that, through the selective application of sophisticated Iranian cooking techniques, these women are able to positively transform the (inherently dangerous) food they serve to their families, to ensure their good health and maintain their identities.
The Consumption View of Self: Extension, Exchange and Identity
Authors: Munro Rolland
Published: May 2014

This paper explores self as a site of consumption. Arguing that most views of self are caught in a production metaphor, the paper goes on to suggest that the limitations to Mary Douglas's theory of consumption lies in its lack of theorizing in terms of consumption of self. The paper then examines the notions of extension and exchange as they have been elaborated by Marilyn Strathern. Pointing out that there can be no ‘return’ from extension to a core self, merely exchange to another configuration, the paper illustrates how appropriation of artefacts makes possible performance on a scale.

When the ‘inner’ life of a person which is opposed to the externality of the social life is exalted, when the individual is called upon to return to himself, in order to become emancipated from pressure, briefly, when the ‘social I’ is characterized as the ‘superficial I’, as opposed to the ‘profound V … a flagrant error of analysis is committed.
Social Class, Consumption and the Influence of Bourdieu: Some Critical Issues
Authors: Longhurst Brian , Savage Mike
Published: May 2014

Bourdieu's work has been an important point of departure for recent analyses of the relationship between social class and consumption practices. This chapter takes stock of Bourdieu's influence and explores some problems which have become apparent—often in spite of Bourdieu's own hopes and general views. We point to the way that Bourdieu's influence has led to an approach to consumption which focuses on the consumption practices of specific occupational classes and on examining variations in consumption practice between such occupational groups. We argue that it this approach has a series of problems and suggest the need to broaden analyses of consumption to consider issues of ‘everyday life’, sociation, and social networks.
After Ant: Complexity, Naming and Topology
Authors: Law John
Published: May 2014

What is a theory? Or, more broadly, what is a good way of addressing intellectual problems? This paper explores the tension central to the notion of an ‘actor’ - ‘network’ which is an intentionally oxymoronic term that combines—and elides the distinction between—structure and agency. It then notes that this tension has been lost as ‘actor-network’ has been converted into a smooth and consistent ‘theory’ that has been (too) simply and easily displaced, criticised or applied. It recalls another term important to the actor-network approach—that of translation— which is another term in tension, since (the play of words works best in the romance languages) to translate is to also betray ( traductore, tradition). It is suggested that in social theory simplicity should not displace the complexities of tension. The chapter concludes by exploring a series of metaphors for grappling with tensions rather than wishing these away, and in particular considers the importance of topological complexity, and the notion of fractionality.

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,

We shall have what to do after firing. But today,

Today we have naming of parts. Japonica

Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,

And today we have naming of parts.'

(Henry Reed, Lessons of the War: 1)
Perpetuum Mobile: Substance, Force and the Sociology of Translation
Authors: Brown Steven D. , Capdevila Rose
Published: May 2014

Going after means taking up a position with regard to something and the active pursuit of that same thing. It is the critical move par excellence, but also an act of appropriation. This essay suspends the urge to go after in preference for an exploration of the trajectory of that body of texts known as the sociology of translation. The figure of the perpetuum mobile is put into circulation through these texts in order to trace some of their more unusual and unfamiliar connections. These include a whole series of parallels with seventeenth century classical philosophy and with nineteenth century ‘social energetics’. Connections are drawn out by using three ‘test signals’, which are sent on through the ANT canon: substance, force and time. Pivotal to each is the sense of how very different events and apparently diverse territories can be brought into contiguity, or folded up together. This contiguity needs to be performed rather than described, placed in translation rather than simply presented. The chapter concludes by tracing a way from the strange folds of ANT to the equally peculiar forms of early Psychology.
From Blindness to Blindness: Museums, Heterogeneity and the Subject
Authors: Hetherington Kevin
Published: May 2014

This chapter critically engages with the idea of heterogeneity that has been important to actor-network theory. By looking at the history of the museum and of the kind of art associated with it at different points in time, the chapter shows how what we understand as heterogeneity has changed over time. The history of the ordering and displaying role of the museum reveals different responses to an idea of heterogeneity and to consequential conceptualizations not only of vision and agency but also of subject-object relations. The idea of heterogeneity is caught up with these changing relations between subject and object and with the spatial configuration through which they are constituted. The museum is an important historical site through which such changing relations and changing understandings of heterogeneity can be analysed.
Who Pays? Can We Pay Them Back?
Authors: Lee Nick , Stenner Paul
Published: May 2014

This chapter is about a very old question that is thrown up again in discussion related to ANT. Do orders have necessary limits to what can belong to them? It is possible to read ANT as containing or demanding a moral commitment to the inclusion of the disenfranchised. It can often seem to be in the business of giving credit where credit is due, spreading recognition to even the most unexpected quarters. To sustain itself such a morality would depend on the possibility of infinite inclusion. By identifying this picture of ‘belonging-by-assemblage’ and its traditional counterpart ‘belonging-by-banishment’ and by finding both at play within ANT, the paper argues that ANT is an ethical rather than a moral enterprise, bringing the unanswered question of the nature of belonging to bear across domains, rather than approaching each domain with a ‘cookie-cutter’ moral formula. The disturbing ‘unsecuring’ of belonging that ANT involves continues within the philosophical tradition ANT trades on and contributes to in the form of an abiding controversy over the place of the natural world.
What is Intellectual Property After?
Authors: Strathern Marilyn
Published: May 2014

This chapter takes as its starting point ANT's success in overcoming descriptive resistance to dealing even-handedly with persons, things, artefacts and so forth together. It points to a situation which attempts even-handedness, resource transfer in the wake in the Biodiversity Convention, while at the same time re-inventing the very divide between Technology and Society which ANT has sought to demolish. The same may be said of procedures of recompense, and the chapter considers issues in intellectual property rights as they have been extended to the compensation-sensitive milieu of Papua New Guinea: what is intended to balance out interests creates new social divisions. It thus raises questions about processes of social differentiation. It is also intended to show the applicability of ANT models to the practical understanding of what otherwise would just seem too heterogeneous a collection of materials.