bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Narrating Ambivalence of Maternal Responsibility
Authors: Sevón Eija
Published: March 2010

Early motherhood and caring for the infant involve a moral ambiguity that is related to the questions of responsibility and vulnerability. By means of the ethics of care, motherhood can be understood as belonging to the moral domain, as relational, and as linked with everyday social situations. The culturally dominant narratives of ‘good mothering’ easily naturalise and normatise maternal agency. This study illustrates the process of adopting responsibility for the infant and the moral ambivalence that is inscribed in early maternal care. The data consist of four interview sessions with each of seven first-time mothers conducted during pregnancy and the first post-natal year. The interviews concentrated on events, relationships, routines, thoughts and feelings related to the mothers’ daily caring for the baby. The women talked about their experiences drawing on two different narratives. The narrative of desirable responsibility unfolded the positive aspects of caring and responsibility for the baby. By means of this narrative, the women were able to give coherence to their lives as new mothers and to narrate the pleasure they felt in taking responsibility for their baby. In contrast, the narrative of maternal vulnerability showed the shadow side of maternal care focusing on the mothers’ tiredness and distress. This narrative embodied ‘moral monitoring’ and ‘epistemological struggles’ between the dominant cultural narratives and the mothers’ personal narratives. The study shows that early mothering is morally laden in two different ways simultaneously. Mothering itself is a moral disposition and practice characterised by ambivalence. The cultural narratives of ‘good mothering’ play a dual role in this process: they tempt women into pursuing intensive mothering, but at the same time they create an elusive moral imperative.
Diversity in Uniform? - Gender and Sexuality within the Berlin Police Force
Authors: Dudek Sonja M.
Published: March 2010

This article examines the significance of gender and sexuality within the German uniformed police. For a long time the police was regarded to be the classic domain of men, but since some years the police actively tries to employ more heterogeneous staff. These efforts result in a clear change of personnel: more and more women are working in the police. It is the aim of this article to firstly examine in which historical contexts gender and sexuality have been relevant categories within the police organisation. Secondly gender and sexuality in organisational theory, especially considering criticism of feminist organizational theory on classical concepts are discussed. Thirdly theories on micropolitical negotiations, processes of managing gender and sexuality are introduced and connected to the police. In the following part of this article two interview examples are presented and analysed, in which the significance of sexuality and gender today are discussed by female police officers.
Adulthood: The Contemporary Redefinition of a Social Category
Authors: Blatterer Harry
Published: March 2010

Social trends such as delayed or forfeited family formation, postponed home leaving and allegedly infantilising leisure practices are often marshalled in support of a long standing social scientific as well as popular assumption: successive generations take longer to reach adulthood. This article argues that this ‘delayed adulthood thesis’ is based on an anachronistic model of adulthood and goes on to suggest an alternative conception. Some original interview material with individuals in their late twenties as well as the notion of social recognition are utilized in this process. It is suggested that the very practices that serve as evidence for the delayed adulthood thesis are in fact productive of new, emerging modalities of adulthood that are commensurate with changed and changing social realities.
Textual Interaction as Sexual Interaction: Sexuality And/in the Online Interview
Authors: Beusch Danny
Published: March 2010

In this article, I draw from my research into the users of a Nazi fetish Internet site to examine the potential sexualisation of the online interview encounter by informants and the implications for ethical research practice. Firstly, I consider how the process of talking about, and confessing, sex can be erotically charged. Moreover, since many of my participants were heavily invested in sadomasochistic sex, with the majority self-identifying as sexually submissive, I had to recognise that the online interview encounter, facilitated by the invisibility of the researcher and the researched, extended subject positions to these men that paralleled their erotic interests. Finally, further dilemmas arose because of the ‘unknowness’ and physical invisibility conferred by cyberspace since this potentially influenced the (mis)framing of the interview by some participants.
Power, Professionalism and Organisational Transformation
Authors: May T. , Buck M.
Published: March 2010

Utilising data drawn from a study of a social service organisation, this article aims to understand the relationship between the rationale of organisational transformations and the professional status of social workers. It contains an examination of the original aims of Community Care legislation, its translation by management into processes of re-structuring and alterations in job specification, as well as the perspectives of those at the front-line of the organisation. This enables a theoretical consideration of organisational transformation and power and their relationship to the identity of social workers.
Caring and Sleep Disruption among Women in Italy
Authors: Bianchera Emanuela , Arber Sara
Published: March 2010

Drawing on qualitative research with 27 Italian women aged between 40 and 80 years, this article examines how family structure, gender role expectations and caring roles impact on women's sleep at different points in their life course. Care work shapes sleep quality and duration for the majority of these women. High levels of sleep disturbance were found among women who cared for older frail or disabled relatives. Women caring for young children and adult children living at home also experience decreased sleep quality. When informal care is unsupported, very demanding and stress provoking, sleep disturbance is greater, with women experiencing insomnia, frequent awakenings and light sleep. The article discusses the implications of inadequate welfare provision in Italy, which increases women's unpaid domestic caring work resulting in adverse effects on sleep quality and their overall well being.
Inequality within the Family: Cases of Selective Parents in Post-War Hong Kong
Authors: Wong Yi-Lee
Published: March 2010

While members of the same family are assumed to share similar mobility chances, this paper seeks to answer the following puzzle: why do only some children of the same family attain a level of education considered to be socially desirable whereas their siblings do not? The essence of an answer lies in the fact that the same parents could play rather dissimilar roles in the education of their different children. Using part of qualitative data collected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997, this paper focuses on what selective parents did for their children's education. The data illustrated that in deciding what they would and could do for each of their children's education, parents responded to their children's academic ability, resource availability, and ideology. The educational attainments of children of the same family could be very diverse not merely because of children's different academic performances but because of the deliberate decisions of their parents in formulating strategies for basic survival or for advancement. The same parents could be seen as enhancing the education of their sons and/or younger children at the expense of the education of their daughters and/or elder children. This suggests that mobility is of an interdependent nature and, in turn, leads me to argue that the mobility of members of the same family should be considered together and not in isolation, and to support the stance that the family, rather than an individual, should be the unit of analysis in mobility studies.
Reconstructing “Positive” Nationalism: Evidence from Norway and Sweden
Authors: Hjerm M.
Published: March 2010

This article sets out to compare nationalism or nationalist sentiment in the two neighboring countries of Norway and Sweden, since it has been claimed that nationalism differs both with respect to the degree of nationalism and the connotations it has in these two countries. In spite of the claimed differences between the two countries, this article shows that Norwegians and Swedes have to a similar extent nationalist sentiments and that xenophobia and protectionism follow in the footsteps of such attitudes in both the examined countries, indicating the negative sides of nationalism. Moreover, the two countries also show similar patterns regarding which groups in society that are most inclined to show nationalist sentiments.
Interpreting Compliance and Resistance to Medical Dominance in Women's Accounts of Their Pregnancies
Authors: Westfall Rachel , Benoit Cecilia
Published: March 2010

The dominant discourse of ‘risk’ underlies the medical surveillance of pregnant women. This article draws upon interview data from a purposeful sample of twenty-seven childbearing women, focusing on the tensions and negotiations that take place for these women between the informal, everyday experiences of childbearing and the formal boundaries of organised medical/midwifery care. Through such techniques as narrative reconstruction, rationalisation, and resistance and compromise, our respondents were active agents in interpreting and shaping their reproductive experiences. Yet, their experiences were invariably framed within the dominant discourse of medicine, pointing to its relevance even for women choosing alternative models of maternity care.
A Typology of Oppositional Knowledge: Democracy and the U.S. Peace Movement
Authors: Coy Patrick G. , Woehrle Lynne M. , Maney Gregory M.
Published: March 2010

Institutionally privileged political discourses not only legitimate the policy agendas of power-holders, but also de-legitimate dissent. Oppositional discourses are social movement responses to these cultural obstacles to mass mobilisation. Integrating discourse analysis and framing theory, we argue that the production of oppositional knowledge constitutes a long-term, counter-hegemonic project that connects macro-level discourses with meso and micro-level efforts at political persuasion, mobilisation, and change. Drawing examples from statements issued by U.S. peace movement organisations (PMOs) over fifteen years, we map the production of oppositional discourses across five conflict periods. Using qualitative data analysis and both inductive and deductive theorising, we develop a typology of the U.S. peace movement's discourses on democracy. We show that four forms of oppositional knowledge were generated by PMOs to facilitate policy dialogue and accountability. Through their statements, peace movement organisations crafted a shared conception of democracy that is antithetical to military intervention abroad and political repression at home.
Reflexivity in Research Practice: Informed Consent with Children at School and at Home
Authors: Davies Hayley
Published: March 2010

Informed consent is a key consideration in ethical research, particularly research conducted with children. Devising an approach to and obtaining informed consent is a complex task involving multiple considerations. The examples used in this paper are derived from a study investigating how children constitute family members and close relationships. The paper is divided into two sections. The first section suggests that researchers should take a reflexive approach to their professional research practice and addresses how a researcher's professional location determines their particular ethical approach. Consideration is given to how the researcher's particular ethical approach can be achieved in consultation with academic thought and research ethics guidelines, which often offer contradictory advice on important ethical issues. The second section of the paper addresses how researchers negotiate their approach to informed consent in particular research contexts which offer challenges to the researcher's thinking about research participants or chosen procedures for obtaining and maintaining that informed consent is upheld. The paper concludes by arguing that the researcher can incorporate academic thought and aspects of the research ethics guidelines in an approach to informed consent that simultaneously values the research participants and the ethical practices operating in the research setting. Such an approach involves careful negotiation and consideration of the interests of all stakeholders in the research process.
‘I Is; Therefore I Am’: The Census as Practice of Double Identification
Authors: Ruppert Evelyn S.
Published: March 2010

I examine practices of modern census making with a specific focus on Canadian censuses of population from 1911-1951. My analysis builds on the work of two recent and related streams of research in the social sciences. One draws from Foucault's writings on biopower and post-Foucauldian governmentality studies. It examines the census as a political technology that produces a specific knowledge or political arithmetic (statistics) of the population, so that its forces and strengths can be acted upon by various state authorities. The census is thus understood as a field for the administration of the state. The other focuses on how censuses are socially constructed, on the ‘making’ of censuses as opposed to the ‘taking’ of censuses and the use of census data as ‘evidence’. These studies document how the interests and political influence of various actors shape census making. The census is thus understood as a particular way of defining, collecting and organising social observations about individuals and not a simple reflection of an empirically existing reality. While the two streams of research have usefully challenged the facticity of census data, they have tended to reinforce a division between the real and the constructed. For if census data is not ‘real’ but a particular construction then what exactly does it represent? I contend that censuses are part of myriad identification practices that have come to produce subjects who are able to recognise and identify themselves in relation to the categories constructed and circulated by the census. It is through processes of double identification (state-citizen) that census categories come into existence, become facts and can then in turn not only be measured, analysed and assembled (objectification) but also be identified with (subjectification). The presence of such double identification makes an ostensible division between facticity and representation artificial.
Participatory Theatre as a Research Methodology: Identity, Performance and Social Action among Refugees
Authors: Kaptani Erene , Yuval-Davis Nira
Published: March 2010

The paper is based on the ESRC research project: ‘Identity, Performance and Social Action: Community Theatre Among Refugees’ which is part of the research programme on ‘Identities and Social Action’. After describing the project, the paper examines the methodological specificities and different stages of Playback and Forum Theatre. The latter includes image work, character building, scenes and interventions. It argues that overall participatory theatre, techniques as sociological research methods, provide different kinds of data and information than other methods – embodied, dialogical and illustrative. The paper ends by examining the circumstances in which the use of these techniques as research methodology are be beneficial. It also calls for an overall wider use of these techniques in sociological research, especially to study narratives of identity of marginalised groups, as well as to illustrate perceptions and experiences of social positionings and power relations in and outside community groupings. Using participatory theatre as a research tool, therefore, can be considered as one form of action research.
My Family and Other Animals: Pets as Kin
Authors: Charles Nickie , Davies Charlotte Aull
Published: March 2010

The title of this paper gives a family-like character to animals and an animal-like character to the idea of family. It emphasises the close, family and friend-like relationships that can exist between human beings and the animals who share their domestic space. This type of relationship between humans and their pets emerged during a study of families and kinship and in this paper we draw on 193 in-depth interviews conducted in four contrasting areas of a South Wales city. Although our interview schedules did not explicitly ask about animals, a significant proportion of our interviewees spontaneously included their pets as part of their kinship networks. There were two points during the interview when the significance of pets became apparent: when interviewees were asked who counted as family and when they were asked to complete a network diagram. In studies of kinship it has been said that pets are substitutes for children, providing emotional satisfaction. Here we explore some of the other ways in which animals are constructed as kin and discuss whether such constructions confound the (socially constructed) boundary between nature and culture.
The Stylisation of Internet Life?: Predictors of Internet Leisure Patterns Using Digital Inequality and Status Group Perspectives
Authors: Graham Roderick
Published: March 2010

This research addresses the question: What are the predictors of internet leisure patterns? With the barriers to internet access receding the question can be asked: Whether or not social groups are beginning to distinguish themselves through different types of internet activities? This research will focus on the domain of internet leisure and entertainment within the United States population. Internet leisure is measured in this study by playing games, doing hobbies, reading, watching videos and listening to music. Predictors are drawn from a digital inequality and a Weberian status group perspective. Binary logistic regression models are run on a nationally representative survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project (N = 2013). This research suggests that: (1) both digital inequality and status group perspectives tend to work together to explain all internet activities, but a status group perspective provides more explanation for leisure patterns, (2) internet leisure is best conceptualised as a form of popular culture with minorities and people of low socioeconomic status consuming leisure at higher rates.
Language, Gender and Citizenship: Obstacles in the Path to Learning English for Bangladeshi Women in London's East End
Authors: Ahmed Nilufar
Published: March 2010

A key element of the Government's citizenship strategy is the requirement that all immigrants have a basic command of English. The lack of English speaking skills has been identified as a contributory factor to much of the social unrest amongst different communities in the UK. It has been argued that the ability to speak English will allow immigrants to integrate better, create more cohesive communities and reduce segregation. This paper will question the emphasis placed on language proficiency in reducing segregation and discuss issues around language and citizenship by exploring the experiences of Bangladeshi women living in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Drawing on qualitative interviews it will argue that while the ability to speak English may indeed enhance elements of women's lives and allow them to engage more actively in the community, there may be an over-emphasis on its role in reducing segregation. The paper also argues that learning English is not simply a matter of personal choice, multiple cultural and gendered factors intersect to sometimes limit individual's options. Within the Bangladeshi community, women's voices are the least heard, their opinions are rarely sought and it is usually the men from the community who speak on behalf of the women. This paper will show how whilst Asian men were denouncing policies to encourage learning English, women expressed a strong desire to be able to speak English, yet identified a range of obstacles preventing them from being able to learn. It is suggested that more attention needs to be paid to women's needs to help facilitate their participation in the community and aid them to achieve full citizenship status. This is turn can enable women to help create more cohesive communities.
Ageing and the Limiting Conditions of the Body
Authors: Gilleard Chris , Higgs Paul
Published: March 2010

The twentieth century has seen a remarkable shift in thinking about old age. For increasing numbers of people reaching retirement there are numerous competing and contradictory messages about how age and ageing are viewed in contemporary society. The lack of any simple linear relationship between chronological age and physiological fitness and the evident variability with which physical ageing expresses itself challenges a determining biological foundation for old age. Structured dependency theory suggests that much of what we accept as ‘ageing’ arises from social practices rather than physiological ageing. More recently there has been a growing reaction to this position, particularly to some of its resource implications. Several writers have begun to seek once more to place a limit around ageing whilst claiming to restore a social meaning to the final stage of life. Others have challenged the emphasis upon a biomedical view of old age and sought a return to a greater acceptance of ‘finitude’. At the very same time there is a renewed vigour in modernist claims to ‘put ageing into reverse’ as popular medical and self-help literature offer to make the promise of rejuvenation a reality. Biologists themselves have begun to question the determinacy of a genetically fixed lifespan. The appearance, disappearance and re-appearance of the body in gerontology parallel evolving post- War social policies toward health and disability. Debates around the limits of the ageing body illustrate the powerful links between gerontology, culture and contemporary social theory.
Global Attentiveness and the Sociological Ear
Authors: Back Les
Published: March 2010

This paper argues for the training of a global attentiveness that reconfigures the epistemic apparatus of sociology, to admit not only the legacy of empire but also an appreciation of how the dynamics of the British social formation are intimately tied to imperial and postcolonial networks. It argues not for provincialising British sociology and its modes of thought but for rendering explicit the implication near at hand and the postcolonial elsewhere. Sociological knowledge as a consequence needs to challenge what it dismisses as unthinkable - be it the history of empire in its own modern formation or the contemporary turn to the sacred and otherworldly - in order to extend its imagination to a truly global scale.
Narrative Foundations of Knowing: Towards a New Perspective in the Sociology of Knowledge
Authors: Borisenkova Anna
Published: March 2010

There has been a tendency in social science to apply narrative inquiry ways of thinking and working to sociological research. Narratives are present either in theoretical schemes or in methodology. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the contribution made by narrative to social epistemology. Firstly, this is done through the explication of an explanatory potential of the concept of narrative and its ability to transform the analysis of fundamental sociological objects, such as human experience, actions, and communication. Secondly, the paper highlights three points involved in a narrative basis to scientific knowledge: discipline's biography as a narrative; narrative as a representation of social phenomena; and narrative as a kind of logic, embedded in the process of sociological explanation. Through a consideration of Charles Tilly's, Paul Ricoeur's, and Max Weber's arguments the problem of applying narrative inquiry to the investigation of large-scale phenomena is set. Apart from some insights, interpretative explanations, and illustrations, the paper provides critical arguments concerning the limitations of the narrative inquiry with respect to social epistemology.
The Origins of Modern Nationalism in the North Atlantic Interaction Sphere
Authors: Hearn Jonathan
Published: March 2010

This article challenges the standard narrative (e.g. Gellner) regarding the origins of modern nationalism in Europe, and Benedict Anderson's contrary suggestion that it first took shape in creole America, arguing instead that the formation of modern nationalism needs to be understood as a transatlantic process, in keeping with recent research on Atlantic history. More specifically, the North Atlantic dynamic of imperial competition between Britain and France, that led to the American and French Revolutions, is seen as the crucible of modern state formation, and it is argued that the North Atlantic needs to be understood not simply as a geographic space, but as a distinctive sphere of social and ideological interaction, given the centrality of sea-going during this period. It was this complex social environment, centred on a long18th century, that most provoked new imaginings of national community. Toward this end the article articulates the analytic concept of the ‘interaction sphere’. With this it picks up on Charles Tilly's key concerns with how best to analyse large historical processes, and his emphasis on political competition and social interaction in explaining social change.
What a Difference a Death Makes: Protest, Policing and the Press at the G20
Authors: Rosie Michael , Gorringe Hugo
Published: March 2010

The casual observer of the controversy over policing at April 2009's G20 summit in London might have been forgiven for imagining that Britain's media serves as a bulwark against the abuse of power, fearlessly illuminating and condemning injustice. The publication of video footage and eye-witness accounts to heavy-handed protest policing has certainly raised the profile of this issue and led, concretely, to formal investigation of both individual police officers and to policing strategies more broadly. In this paper we examine the policing of protest, and in particular ‘anti-systemic’ protest, but also examine the role of the newspaper media in the interplay between police and protest. We argue that the media has often fomented and ignored the very ‘abuses’ they are now so eager to condemn. The key difference between coverage of the 2009 G20 summit and past such events, we contend, is the tragic death of an innocent bystander which has shifted the way in which the media has framed events.
Revisiting the 2001 Riots: New Labour and the Rise of ‘Colour Blind Racism’
Authors: Rhodes James
Published: March 2010

Following the Civil Rights legislation enacted in the 1960s in the United States, the notion of ‘colourblind’ racism has emerged within sociological literature. It has been used as a theoretical tool to explain the continuing presence of racism and racialised inequalities within a society where its significance in determining social location is increasingly disavowed. The use of the term has been restricted to those describing the politics of racism in America. However, this paper will consider the applicability of ‘colourblind racism’ to the UK context. The 2001 riots marked an important watershed in ‘race relations’ in Britain. They have been widely cited as marking the point at which New Labour retreated from the celebration of diversity in pursuit of a more monocultural, more ‘cohesive’ society. Through an analysis of the governmental response to the events of summer 2001 it will be suggested that notions of ‘colourblind’ racism can offer interesting insights into the development of the politics of ‘race’ in Britain. Drawing on Bonilla-Silva's (2006) elucidation of the key features of this dominant form of racism in the US, the extent to which these same factors guided New Labour's response will be considered. It will be argued that while it is important to recognize the different patterns of racial formation in the US and the UK, the government reaction to the 2001 riots demonstrates a broad adherence to the key tenets of colourblind racism. This is evident in Labour's failure to effectively engage with racism or the persistence of racial inequality.
Narratives of Health Protection in Families with a Late-Onset Kidney Disease: Re-Defining Governmentality and Responsibility for Health in the Era of the ‘New’ Genetics
Authors: Brindle Lucy
Published: March 2010

Genetic medical technologies have increased the possibilities for detecting future illness in those who appear healthy and asymptomatic. These developments broaden the scope of medicine, complicating distinctions between health, illness and disease. Genetic counselling practice extends health promotion seeking to ‘inform’ individuals of their own risks so that they can minimise possible negative implications for their own lives (Lupton 1995). An extension of disease prevention has been associated with a shift in health such that health is no longer a given but has to be achieved by individuals. While post-structuralist accounts have positioned health promotion as part of an increasing self-surveillance of health, they have rarely based these accounts on empirical studies of individuals’ experiences. This paper explores how ‘early’ diagnosis positions people as ‘at-risk’. Findings inform narratives of social change centred on the individualisation of health, the extension of self-surveillance and the blurring of boundaries between health and disease. Narrative accounts from interviews and observations of clinical consultations with 18 adults who had been told that they had inherited a late onset, degenerative kidney disease (Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease) are used to explore how individuals discursively achieve health and appropriate health protection. This analysis challenges the idea that knowledge of genetic aetiology will reduce individual responsibility for health. Rather than a grand shift to a continuum of health and the disappearance of ‘old’ binaries, these participants appear to use the health/disease dualism to re-position themselves with respect to risk on a moment-by-moment basis.
Beyond the Nation-State: National Identity and Citizenship in a Multicultural Society - A Response to Rex
Authors: Delanty Gerard
Published: March 2010

The crisis of national identity in Western Europe is related to the rise of a new nationalism which operates at many different levels, ranging from extreme xenophobic forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism. Underlying the new nationalism in general is more a hostility against immigrants than against other nations; it is motivated less by notions of cultural superiority than by the implications multiculturalism has for the welfare state, which is being attacked by neo- liberal agendas. As a cultural discourse, the new nationalism is a product of social fragmentation. Therefore the most important challenge facing the democratic multi- cultural state in the context of European integration is to find ways of preserving the link between social citizenship and multiculturalism. Without a firm basis in social citizenship, multiculturalism will suffer continued attacks from nationalism, feeding off social insecurity.
Life Course Data Collection: Qualitative Interviewing using the Life Grid
Authors: Parry Odette , Thompson Carolyn , Fowkes Gerry
Published: March 2010

The life grid, has recently been acclaimed as a accurate method for collecting retrospective data from elderly respondents. Accounts of using this method, which are based upon quantitative studies, however, have not adequately captured the dynamics of grid interviewing. This is, we suggest, because it is much easier to describe technical aspects of a research method than it is to convey how that method works in practice. In this article we set out to portray some of these more ‘indeterminate’ aspects of the life grid interviewing, drawing on our own experiences of using this method in an qualitative study of lifecourse patterns of smoking behaviour among elderly respondents who have a smoking related illness. Focussing upon interaction between researcher and respondent the article explores the reconstruction of the life course as a mutual endeavour and the implications of this for the interview structure and data collection among this respondent group.
Policing's Dark Secret: The Career Paths of Ethnic Minority Officers
Authors: Fielding Nigel
Published: March 2010

The article responds to the Macpherson Inquiry into the police investigation of the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence by assessing the prospects for the recruitment and advancement of ethnic minority officers in British police forces. It notes the central importance under the common law of a police force which reflects the norms and standards of the community, and traces the relative impact on police/public relations of attempts to change police practice by policy and by statute. It highlights aspects of police culture which have obstructed the career advancement of both female and ethnic minority officers and compares the British experience with that in the U.S.A. A parallel is drawn between the ‘threshold’ analyses of the recruitment and advancement of female officers as a means to change the police organisation and the conditions under which ethnic minority officers could challenge racialism within the police. The article closes by considering the importance of career progression of those ethnic minority officers who have been recruited, and notes a puzzling lack of research into their career pathways.
The Rape of the Nation: Women Narrativising Genocide
Authors: Lentin Ronit
Published: March 2010

In this article I will firstly argue that genocide and wars are gendered but also often feminised via the positioning of women not only as sexual trophies exchangeable between male enemies, not only as markers of collective boundaries, but also as the symbolic representations of national and ethnic collectivities. I will then interrogate the centrality of rape as a component of ethno-sexual identities and an instrument of war, focusing on the difficulties we have ëas womení but also as social scientists, to theorise wartime rape. Finally I will propose that creating a forum for women war victims to narrativise their traumatic experiences is a vital feminist strategy of beginning to close the gap between genocide and gender and between trauma and the discourses available to narrate it.
Memory, Trauma and Genocidal Nationalism
Authors: Ray Larry
Published: March 2010

Nationalism poses several analytical problems for sociology, since it stands at the intersection of familiar binary conceptual contrasts. It further has the capacity to appear alternatively democratic and violent. This paper examines the conditions for violent nationalism, with particular reference to the Kosovo conflict. It argues that the conditions for potentially genocidal nationalism lie in the apparently routine rituals through which ‘nations’ are remembered and constructed. Violent nationalism may appear where the transmission of collective identities is infused with mourning and traumatic memory. However, the presence of such forms of memory is not sufficient in themselves to provoke violent nationalism. These are unleashed in the context of state crisis where former loyalties are replaced with highly affective commitment to rectification of imagined historical wrongs.
They Made a Desert and Called it Peace
Authors: Drake Mike
Published: March 2010

This paper addresses the social theorisation of war to the current conflict in the Balkans. It takes its terms of analysis from attempts to develop a sociology of war on the basis of the classic theories of Clausewitz and Jomini, from theories of postmodern war, from Baudrillard's commentary on the Gulf War, and from an extended critical application of recent work by Mary Kaldor on the new mode of warfare.

I seek to avoid the blackmail of for-or-against and its loaded ideological positions by undertaking analysis through an exposition of the techniques, rationalities, economies, and social relations of organized violence constituting the current condition of warfare. By working through the complexity of these factors, rather than constructing simple oppositions, the method of critical analysis employed here enables us to explain how and why it is that NATO has failed to engage its primary objectives. The paper is thus able to confront the question not of whether NATO should have intervened in Kosovo, but of whether its campaign did or even could intervene in any real sense.

The events in Kosovo are the contestation of war itself, and NATO's failure to recognise this has also been its failure to instrumentalise its violence in direct engagement with its military objectives, leading to circular self-justification in terms of achieving its own operational preconditions. The essay explores multiple dimensions of this misengagement, showing how the failure of NATO's air campaign to engage with the realities of ethnic cleansing illustrates the virtuality of its strategy and policy. The paper concludes by drawing some implications for contemporary projects of global order.
‘Whatever you Say Say Nothing’: An Ethnographic Encounter in Northern Ireland and its Sequel
Authors: Finlay Andrew
Published: March 2010

When strangers in Northern Ireland meet, they draw upon a variety of cues in an attempt to ascertain each other's religio-political identity and, depending on the outcome, enter into what Burton (1978) terms ‘systematically distorted’ or ‘pseudo-communication’. After Burton, the process has come to be known as Telling. The article discusses how Telling manifested itself in an interview which the author conducted nearly 15 years ago. This experience is used to suggest that Telling raises issues for ethnographic and interview-based research that go well beyond the familiar problem of ‘reactive effects’, to stress the importance of reflexivity as a means of dealing with these issues, and to discuss the difficulties of reflexivity in the context of a cultural reticence which has developed as a way of managing the sectarian alienation arising from a national conflict. The article discusses various forms of reflexivity, and concludes that ‘analytical reflexivity’, based on a politics of location or practice of positioning, offers a potential way forward.
Women in Low Status Part-Time Jobs: A Class and Gender Analysis
Authors: Warren Tracey
Published: March 2010

Why, given all the problems associated with part-time employment in Britain, do women work part-time at all? Does the answer to this question lie in gender-based explanations which focus on womenís caring responsibilities? This paper addresses these issues by focusing on the relative experiences of the largest group of part-timers, women working in low status occupations. It is concluded that a gender-informed analysis of womenís part-time employment is clearly vital, but an awareness of further dimensions of social inequality is required if we are to understand diversity amongst part-timers. Relative to full-timers, part-timers are similar in their life-cycle positions, their marital status and motherhood status. However, incorporating a class analysis shows that part-timers in lower status jobs stand apart in that they are disproportionately likely to have been brought up in working class households and, as adults, they are more likely to be living in very low waged households with partners who are also in low paid manual occupations. It is concluded that women go into the lowest status part-time jobs in specific social contexts and, as a result, we cannot lump together into one unified group, women working part-time in manual and higher status occupations, and then talk sensibly about part-time work and its impact on women. It is essential to examine the interaction of gender and class inequalities to better understand these womenís working lives.
Statistics as Organizational Products
Authors: Thomas Ray
Published: March 2010

The paper argues that statistics should be seen as organizational products and that growth in the range and variety of statistics testifies to growth in the power of organizations. The paper emphasises the importance of identifying the functions of statistical systems, and recommends a genealogical approach to help identify the unwitting testimony given by the assumptions and motivations associated with the categorizations and data creation procedures used in the production of statistics. The paper examines the motivations, assumptions, and functions associated with statistical systems involving the Census of Population, the British National Food Survey, economic management, and unemployment. The discussion focuses on the evidence these case studies provide on the role of statistics in society and of the influence of organizational meanings on society.
The Use of Diaries in Sociological Research on Health Experience
Authors: Elliott H.
Published: March 2010

Diaries have been relatively neglected as a sociological research method. This paper highlights the value of diary research, drawing on the literature on auto/biographies and health service research as well as a qualitative study of need and demand for primary health care, which used diaries and linked in-depth interviews.

In particular, data from the study are used to illustrate the role of the ‘diary-interview’ method in offering a means to ‘observe’ behaviour which is inaccessible to participant observation. Five key advantages of the diary-interview are discussed, namely the potential of the ‘diary-interview’ method to accommodate different response modes; the extent to which the method captured diarists’ own priorities; the importance of the research process in illuminating the contexts within which helpseeking took place; the role of diaries as both a record of and reflection on the experience of illness and the value of the diary-interview method as a means of understanding what is ‘taken for granted’ in accounts of health and illness.
Electronic Commerce and the Sociology of Money
Authors: Singh Supriya
Published: March 2010

There is seemingly little connection between conversations about electronic commerce at an OECD workshop in San Francisco and talk of ritual cash payments at a Maori funeral in New Zealand. Yet money is at the centre of both conversations. There is a hesitant acceptance in regional policy dialogues that the cultural meanings of money have to be taken into account before any consensus is possible on issues of electronic commerce. Recent sociological work on money is also questioning the duality of the market and society. In the last five years, there has also been interesting sociological work showing how social relations and cultural values shape different kinds of market, domestic and personal monies. It is also revealing the cultural distinctiveness of the media and forms of transfers. Sociologists of money, particularly in the United Kingdom, have addressed the management and control of money in the household and how these relate to social welfare payments. Sociologists are also addressing the use and non-use of electronic money in the home, relating it to social inclusion and exclusion. Policy makers and sociologists of money have areas of common interest. However, sociologists are mostly absent from this policy debate on electronic commerce. The challenge for sociologists is to first connect the new information and communication technologies to changes in the medium, form, meaning and relationships of money. We can then begin to forge a language that can address issues of electronic commerce and culture.
Health Experiences of Elderly People in an Outer London Area
Authors: Ong B. N. , Jordan K.
Published: March 2010

This paper addresses the use of a combined quantitative and qualitative methodology to assess the needs of elderly people within an outer London area. The study was in two stages; firstly, a postal survey of people aged 65 and over using the health profile tool, the Short Form-36 (SF-36), alongside a demographic questionnaire. This was followed by a small number of qualitative interviews on a subset of people who scored at the worst end of the SF-36. These interviews followed themes arising from answers to the SF-36 survey.

The SF-36 was able to pick up inequalities in health within the elderly population; with increasing age, even amongst the elderly, being an important factor in worsening SF-36 scores. Locality also appeared to influence the scoring although this was less conclusive.

The qualitative interviews were able to extract more information and greater understanding of the health of the elderly. Whilst the SF-36 could detect problems on a number of important dimensions such as functional status and well-being, the qualitative interviews addressed individual experiences of ill-health and other issues, such as environmental factors, which affected the health of an individual.

The mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies gave a broader understanding of the health experience of elderly people to a greater extent than either could on its own. It is important for health policy to address the needs of populations whilst also accommodating individual needs.
‘“Money for nothing”?: Understanding Giving to Beggars’
Authors: McIntosh Ian , Erskine Angus
Published: March 2010

This article explores the nature of the begging encounter. It does this through an investigation of people's attitudes towards, and experiences of, being approached by people begging. The data are derived from interviews with people who work in the centre of Edinburgh and are regularly involved in begging encounters. The begging encounter is often a problematic one and we argue that this is, in part, because of the ambiguous nature of the interaction. The nature of the giving involved is frequently unclear and quite unlike other monetary interactions that we are normally involved in. Moral considerations regarding how ‘real’ or ‘genuine’ beggars are became crucial when deciding to give or not. Ambivalence and contradiction were common characteristics of understandings of, and attitudes towards, those who beg.
From Critical Thought to Emancipatory Action: Contradictory Research Goals?
Authors: Humphries B.
Published: March 2010

This article results from reading Lather's Getting Smart (1991) and Hammersley's The Politics of Social Research (1995). The theme is the debates between ‘traditional’ research approaches and ‘emancipatory’ research approaches. It is argued that these debates are based on stereotypical views which obscure important characteristics held in common, and both require to be interrogated. The article examines two of these characteristics, appeals to a metanarrative of emancipation and the will to power, and considers the implications of the privileging of scientific knowledge over other forms of knowledge. It concludes by considering the possibilities for a praxis-oriented research which may lead to possibilities for emancipatory action.
Incestuous Fields: Management Research, Emotion and Data Analysis
Authors: Perriton Linda
Published: March 2010

Many managers are turning to universities in order to gain post-experience post-graduate qualifications in management - both to supplement their experience in career terms and to broaden their understanding of their practice. The design of such programmes encourage manager/researchers to undertake research studies in their own organisations - exposing these researchers to issues connected to researching amongst at least a partially known sample. This paper argues that manager/researchers are poorly served by the lack of discussion about the effect of researching in these ‘incestuous fields’. The paper opens up some areas of debate around this issue and concludes by suggesting the basis of conversations that supervisors and students could have around this feature of management research.