bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Interaction of Gender, Class and Place in Women's Experience: A Discussion Based in Focus Group Research
Authors: Callaghan Gill
Published: March 2010

There has been considerable debate about the relative significance of class and gender as factors structuring women's lives. This article reports focus group research which reflects upon that relationship. It argues that we must also understand the significance of place if we are to make sense of the ways in which women's domestic and working lives are shaped and their action in response to structural change.

The research is situated in an old industrial city which has experienced very fundamental processes of restructuring. Changes in the nature of work, the move from full to part time, from permanent, skilled manual to casual semi and unskilled work has been reflected in the gendered restructuring of the workforce and a considerable rise in male unemployment.

The article reports focus group work with women at mother and toddler groups. These groups were important as a way of gaining access to women who were at a particular point in the lifestage when the dominant concerns might be expected to be domestic ones. Mother and toddler groups are also locality based allowing the significance of place in people's discussions to be understood.

The groups discussed experiences of work and domestic relations which expressed identifications and differences based in class, gender and place. While the effects of restructuring were universally recognised as bringing change, women identified differences in the nature and pace of change based on the interaction of structural forces.
Que Reste-T-Il Des Héritiers Et De La Reproduction (1964-1971) Aujourd'hui? Questions, Méthodes, Concepts Et Réception D'une Sociologie De L'éducation
Authors: Passeron Jean-Claude
Published: March 2010

I have tried to recreate here some historiographical information taken from my teaching notes, from research documents from the 1960s and, in particular, from simple recollections of discussions with other researchers. There are also contained here recollections of readings of works and reviews from this period and also recollections of encounters with audiences (university or otherwise) during public debates. I am therefore working within the context of the questions that J-L Robert asked in his introduction at the Study Day on “Concepts developed between 1945 and 1975”, as well as within a context of approaches which are intended to be scientific in terms of their methodologies, questions, aims, sources and conclusions. But I am also working within the context of follow-up work spanning two decades on “the diffusion and appropriation of concepts” which essentially focussed on the sociology of education and culture. I am therefore responding to many points of fact asked by J-M Chapoulie in his introduction or of which he asked for my memories. However, I will not recall here my personal relationship with Bourdieu during our dozen or so years of close collaboration, in which a sociology of education was developed which we broadly shared and which remained so, despite our epistemological differences of opinion after 1972, into which I gave an insight in a recent article.
Gender Transformations in Higher Education
Authors:   The WASS Collective, Bell Amy , Hawkins Lucy , Kelleher Lorraine , Lambert Cath , Lexmond Jennifer , Lyle Samantha , Nordin Astrid , Parker Andrew , Perrier Maud , Rayment Juliet
Published: March 2010

This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action. The research focuses on the activities and opinions of students belonging to an anti-sexist organisation within one UK university, who are engaged in campaigns to raise awareness about the damaging effects of gender and sexual inequalities, as well as promoting the popular appeal of contemporary feminisms. Locating the voices and research findings of the students themselves at the centre of the discussion, the paper is produced collaboratively between students and teachers who are involved in both the activist and research elements of this project. The paper also argues for (and provides evidence of) the transformative potential of alternative and critical forms of student engagement and student/ staff collaboration in relation to gender informed academic activism.
Reflexivity and Researching National Identity
Authors: Mann Robin
Published: March 2010

This article focuses on the reflexive dynamics of interviewing in the context of a recent qualitative investigation of ethnic majority views of national identity in England. There is now an established literature which specifies the routine mobilisations of national identity through the course of everyday social interaction. Discourse studies also have been centrally concerned with the interview-as-topic and there is considerable work here on ethnic and racial categorizations within the interview context. Taking such work as its departure point, this article will illustrate how and why the interviewer also matters in talking about national identity. While the role of the interviewer is increasingly acknowledged in qualitative research, there has been little attempt to consider this particular methodological dilemma in nationalism research. In highlighting this problem, this article argues in favour of a more reflexive approach to the study of nationalism and national identity, one which brings to bear the researchers’ own unwitting assumptions and involvement.
‘Is it Real Food?’ Who Benefits from Globalisation in Tanzania and India?
Authors: Caplan Pat
Published: March 2010

Almost twenty years ago, the French anthropologist Claude Fischler wrote: ‘To identify a food, one has to “think” it, to understand its place in the world and therefore understand the world.’ For several decades I have been carrying out research among peasant cultivators on the East African coast (since 1965) and among the middle classes in Chennai (formerly Madras), South India (since 1974). During those periods, there have been marked changes in food consumption patterns in both areas. Recent research on local views of modernities in Tanzania suggests that food is an important way for people to conceptualise some of the dis-orders which have arisen as a result of current neo-liberal policies. In Chennai, on the other hand, my most recent research suggests that the consumption of ‘modern’ food is welcomed by the middle classes, especially by younger people, as being associated with global cosmopolitanism. In both areas, however, as might be expected, much depends on context and positionality and thus multiple and sometimes competing voices can be heard. In this paper, I examine local responses to changing food consumption patterns in order to understand local knowledge of food and the world.
What's [Yet] to be Seen? Re-Using Qualitative Data
Authors: Silva Elizabeth B.
Published: March 2010

This paper considers current debates about re-using qualitative research data by reflecting on its implications for the nature of social science knowledge created in this process and the ways in which the disclosure of researchers’ practices are linked with the making of professional academic careers. It examines a research project using two different approaches – a ‘virtual’ and a ‘classic’ ethnography – to argue that issues concerned with re-use of data depend on the methods employed and the overall processes of investigation. The paper argues for an appreciation of the contexts involved in the generation of research material which takes into account both the development of the study and related fieldwork processes as well as the academic context in which knowledge is produced, particularly those involved in the construction of academic selves and professional careers, which are part of a wider situation bearing upon scientific enquiry.
Unpacking Professional Trust – Dimensions of Trust in Swedish Auditors’ Client Relations
Authors: Larsson Bengt
Published: March 2010

This paper studies client trust in professionals, theoretically and empirically. The theoretical elaboration, founded on general sociological theories of trust, aims to distinguish different dimensions of trust – personal, impersonal, and process trust – and to explicate the stabilizing identities and control mechanisms on which they are based: persons, roles, programs and values. The empirical case study concerns what aspects of trust, and what expectations and controls, are most important for Swedish auditors when it comes to building and maintaining client trust. The analysis is based on data from a postal inquiry survey in 2003. It shows that practicing auditors experience the personal dimension of trust as primary, the processual as secondary, and the impersonal as tertiary. The study thus confirms the importance of personal trust between auditor and client, stabilized by the professional's individual character and conduct, but points also to the fact that the institutionalization of distrust in professional roles, programs and values is central for building personal as well as impersonal trust. The institutionalized roles, programs and values of the profession ensure that a minimum of trust from the market and the client is present before personal trust is established.
Embarrassment as a Key Emotion in Young People Talking about Sexual Health
Authors: van Teijlingen Edwin , Reid Jennifer , Shucksmith Janet , Harris Fiona , Philip Kate , Imamura Mari , Tucker Janet , Penney Gillian
Published: March 2010

This paper highlights embarrassment as one of the often-ignored emotions of young people when it comes to discussing issues around sexual health. There have been many sexual health studies on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of young people over the past two decades, but emotional aspects have been largely ignored, despite a growing literature in the sociology of emotion.

A qualitative approach was adopted in the form of focus group discussions, which included questions on sex education, sexual health campaigns and formal and informal sources of sexual health information and advice. Focus groups were conducted in secondary schools in and around Edinburgh and Aberdeen as part of a four-year evaluation study of a Scottish Demonstration Project on young people's sexual health: ‘Healthy Respect’.

We conclude that is it important for policy makers and sexual health promoters to understand young people's notions of embarrassment. Not only are there elements of sex education that (some) young people perceive as embarrassing, they also sense embarrassment in those people providing them with sex education. Young people reported that both professionals (e.g. teachers and doctors) and their parents could be embarrassed about raising the topic of sexual health. Moreover, as one of the goals of sex education is to ensure an open and non-embarrassing attitude towards sex and sexuality, there is still a major gap between the aspirations of health educators and policy makers and the ways that young people experience such education.
Gender Life Course Transitions from the Nuclear Family in England and Wales 1981-2001
Authors: Ware Lawrence , Maconachie Moira , Williams Malcolm , Chandler Joan , Dodgeon Brian
Published: March 2010

In recent years there has been much political debate in the popular media about the fate of the nuclear family in the UK. Very little work has been done, using population data, to actually demonstrate the decline, or indeed continuance of this type of household formation. In this paper we use Office for National Statistics (ONS) longitudinal census data, from England and Wales, to explore the formation, dissolution and continuance of the nuclear family household over a twenty year period (1981- 2001). Our findings indicate a continuing importance of this household arrangement, however routes into and trajectories from nuclear family households take different forms for men and women across the life course.
Theorising Sleep Practices and Later Life: Moving to Sheltered Housing
Authors: Fairhurst Eileen
Published: March 2010

This paper re-analyses data from a study of older people and sheltered housing which combined textual analysis of professional discourse with interviews. There were only two references salient to ‘sleep’ in that paper and I offered no analytic comment upon them. At that time, then, sleep as a sociologically interesting topic, was, for me a taken for granted matter. It is that taken for grantedness that is examined here. On being invited to contribute to this special issue, I went back to the original data and interrogated it for ‘sleep’. I realised that, with this different concern, the texts and interviews contained much more about the ‘doing’ of sleep in later life than I had appreciated, especially where, when and how sleeping practices occur. Sleeping ‘upstairs’ or ‘downstairs’, in a single- or double-bed and on which side of the bed were all matters of relevance when older people were considering a move to sheltered housing. Older people's own sleeping practices are contrasted with those offered in texts produced by architects designing sheltered housing. The paper concludes by considering the methodological implications of re-analysing research materials for emerging sociological topics and by giving pointers to future research on sleep practices in later life.
Is Social Mobility an Echo of Educational Mobility? Parents’ Educations and Occupations and Their Children's Occupational Attainment
Authors: Lampard Richard
Published: March 2010

Quantitative studies of occupational attainment and intergenerational social mobility have often devoted little attention to the roles of parental education and educational inheritance. Informed by the ideas of authors who see class reproduction as reflecting more than occupations and economic resources (including Devine, Savage and Crompton), this paper assesses the importance of parents’ educations, and considers the relevance of education to class analysis and class reproduction processes.

Logistic regressions using British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data establish the relative importance of parents’ educations and parents’ occupational classes as determinants of children's attainment of service class occupations. These multivariate analyses reiterate the salience of mother's class, but also show that mother's education has an independent impact. However, this is more limited if both parents can be assigned to classes. The only difference between daughters and sons that is found in the impact of parental characteristics is a weaker impact of father's class on daughter's occupational attainment than on son's occupational attainment. For both daughters and sons, mother's education and mother's class have an impact.

The relationship between parents’ and children's educations accounts for relatively little of the relationship between parents’ and children's occupational classes. Hence intergenerational class mobility patterns do not simply echo intergenerational educational mobility patterns. However, an examination of the direct and indirect effects of parents’ educations and classes on children's occupational attainment shows parental education to play a substantial role in the intergenerational transmission of advantage, and indicates that part (but not all) of the relationship between class origin and occupational attainment can be explained in terms of the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital. In contrast, a substantial part of the indirect effect of parental class via children's qualifications does not reflect parental education. Hence the conversion of parental economic resources into children's educational credentials also appears important.
Gender Roles and Women's Sleep in Mid and Later Life: A Quantitative Approach
Authors: Arber Sara , Hislop Jenny , Bote Marcos , Meadows Robert
Published: March 2010

Women in mid and later life report particularly poor quality sleep. This article suggests a sociologically-informed quantitative approach to teasing out the impact of women's roles and relationships on their sleep, while also taking into account women's socio-economic characteristics and health status. This was accomplished through analysis of the UK Women's Sleep Survey 2003, based on self-completion questionnaires from a national sample of 1445 women aged over 40.

The article assesses the ways in which three central aspects of women's gender roles: the night-time behaviours of their partners, night-time behaviours of their children, and night-time worries – impact on women's sleep, while also considering how disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances and poor health may compromise women's sleep. Using bivariate analysis followed by hierarchical multiple regression models, we examine the relative importance of different aspects of women's gender roles. The key factors implicated in the poor sleep quality of midlife and older women are their partner's snoring, night-time worries and concerns, poor health status (especially experiencing pain at night), disadvantaged socio-economic status (especially having lower educational qualifications) and for women with children, their children coming home late at night.
Selling My Queer Soul or Queerying Quantitative Research?
Authors: Browne Kath
Published: March 2010

Sexualities research is increasingly gaining prominence within, and outside, of academia. This paper will use queer understandings to explore the contingent (re)formation of quantitative data, particularly those that seek to gain insights into Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans populations and lifestyles. I use queer critiques to explore the creation and normalising impulses of quantitative sexualities research and argue that research that addresses ‘deviant’/other/(homo)sexualities brings categories (mainly lesbian and gay) into being. Using three key research events from a large scale quantitative research study of 7,212 respondents, ‘Do it with Pride’, the paper examines the (re)formation of quantitative research between researchers, respondents and the questionnaire. In particular the paper: reveals the contingency of research design by discussing the exclusion of the term ‘queer’ from the research design, and then questions categories of sexualities as fixed variables by examining; the piloting of a non-normative gender question, and the re-coding of sexuality categories in the analysis phase. This points to the (re)creation of research categories that are not simply instruments of measurements but are actively engaged in the (re)construction of sexualities (including but not limited to sexualities research) within normative frames. The paper finishes by taking this queer critique in a different direction juxtaposing the apparently stable products of quantitative research (questionnaires and reports) with an examination of the transgressive potentials of queer moments in (re)making such research.
How Middle-Class Parents Help their Children Obtain an Advantaged Qualification: A Study of Strategies of Teachers and Managers for their Children's Education in Hong Kong before the 1997 Handover
Authors: Wong Yi-Lee
Published: March 2010

It is well-documented for most industrial-capitalist societies that despite educational expansion, class differentials in educational attainment persist. This paper seeks to understand mechanisms maintaining the class differentials by examining how two groups of middle-class parents – teachers and managers – help their children obtain an advantaged qualification. Qualitative data were collected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997. Given a changing employment structure, teachers and managers anticipated that their children would need at least a bachelor's degree in order not to become disadvantaged in the future labour market and therefore used economic, cultural, and social resources to enable their children to obtain such a qualification. However, despite their strategies, whether respondents will succeed in achieving that remains uncertain. In addition, the evidence also indicated that their strategies could be counter-productive. This points to a need for researching into possible negative impacts of strategies of middle-class parents on their children's academic performance and emotion. As Hong Kong is then under the Chinese rule after the 1997 handover, this study documenting strategies of middle-class parents for their children's education under the British rule could serve as a reference for future comparisons.
Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater: Towards a Sociology of the Human-Animal Abuse ‘Link’?
Authors: Taylor Nik , Signal Tania
Published: March 2010

The prevalence of animals in society, and recognition of the multiplicity of roles they play in human social life, has invoked significant interest from certain subsections of the social sciences. However, research in this area, to date, tends to be at an empirical and inherently psychological level. It is the contention of the current article that we need to redress this imbalance if we are to create a legitimate space wherein sociology can be used to investigate human-animal relations/interactions. In order to achieve this, an examination of the foundations of sociological thought is needed. This is explored in the current article through the use of one substantive, highly topical, subject in human-animal studies: the human-animal abuse ‘link.’
Finding the Way to the End of the Rainbow: A Researcher's Insight Investigating British Older Gay Men's Lives
Authors: Lee Adrian
Published: March 2010

This paper draws on exploratory research examining the sexual and ageing identities of gay men in England and the way in which these affect welfare needs and service use experiences. In this case, the focus is not upon the research findings per se, but on the research methods used to elucidate them. The author theorises about the ways in which the qualitative interviewing that took place was influenced by his age, homosexuality, and gender during the interaction with older gay men. The conclusions are that the shared gender and sexual orientation (although not without their differences) were crucial to the successful completion of the research and in trying to ensure participants felt valued and empowered. Therefore, it is asserted from this that increasingly reflexive research is paramount to the development of qualitative methodologies and gerontology, to ensure the academe is inclusive of diverse identities and that its research stands up to rigorous scrutiny.
‘I don't think that does leave you, because it's about where you come from’: Exploring Class in the Classroom
Authors: Kirk John
Published: March 2010

This article examines a teacher identity through the context of class background and habitus. It considers the significance of class transition, probing how a teacher's working-class history informs and helps define the emergence and consolidation of a teacher identity – to shape what is called here a particular ‘teacherly self.’ It explores some of the difficulties the working-class actor may experience on entering a largely middle-class profession. This transitional experience has generally gone by the term upward mobility, but the word mobility, with its largely favourable connotations of positive movement, is substituted for the notion of transition, which suggests a more complex and complicated process. The article shows how a working-class background informs class practice; in particular, how a class structure of feeling shapes attitudes and approaches to working-class pupils and their needs. By using oral history methods and aspects of narrative theory, the article seeks to underline how the continued significance of class finds complex expression in British culture.
‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Terrorism, Conflict and (O)ther Discursive Formations
Authors: Talbot Steven
Published: March 2010

Research into terrorism has traditionally examined the relationship between terrorist activity and a variety of economic, religious, and geopolitical issues associated with modernity and globalisation, in an attempt to understand and explain this global phenomenon. This paper extends this inquiry further by exploring the extent to which the construction of Self and Other dichotomies are used as instruments for domination, self actualisation, and mobilisation within discourses of terrorism and security.

The paper proposes that issues of Otherness are a vital and often missing component in understanding terrorism and counter-terrorist activity. In doing so, it argues that the construction of ‘polarised collective identities’ which accentuate perceived (cultural) differences between terrorists and their intended targets (and their respective host nations) play an integral role in shaping how we identify and respond to emerging threats. Furthermore, it is suggested that the construction and maintenance of these identities not only has a tendency to homogenise populations, but also creates antagonistic and conflict-orientated relationships resistant to resolution.
Divided Spaces - Divided School: An Exploration of the Spatial Relations of Social Division
Authors: David Byrne , Tim Rogers
Published: March 2010

Recent actions by Labour politicians have highlighted the degree of differentiation among UK state secondary schools. This article uses data describing the characteristics of schools and the academic achievements of the children attending them to generate a typology. This is related to recent sociological discussion dealing with the increasing saliency of ‘cultural capital’ and the way in which families manage educational access as a way of maximizing the lifechances of their own children. The school data set is related to Census derived descriptions of catchment areas and the consequent patterns are examined in order to explore the educational dimension of ‘the divided city’. The whole system of schools in space is considered as a far from equilibrium autopoetic system and the language of complexity theory is applied to it in order to see whether a description in terms of specieation and fitness landscapes illuminates our understanding.
From Institutional Racism to Community Cohesion: The Changing Nature of Racial Discourse in Britain
Authors: Pilkington Andrew
Published: March 2010

It is imperative that an appropriate balance is reached between three key principles: equality, diversity and social cohesion. In many countries across the world, however, there is a discernible move away from a concern for equality and diversity as the problem of order looms larger. I shall focus here on Britain in presenting my central thesis that there is a very real danger that a new nationalist discourse centred on community cohesion and integration is trouncing any duties on us to promote racial equality and respect cultural diversity. The paper comprises three sections. I shall firstly identify a radical hour when there was for the first time official recognition that institutional racism existed in British society and some urgency that this needed to be combated. I shall secondly highlight the fragility of such progressiveness and identify threats from the changing nature of racial discourse since 2001. Here, I shall highlight in particular how the prominence given to institutional racism, with the publication of the Macpherson report, was remarkably short lived and how multiculturalism has come under increasing attack, not least because of its purported threat to social cohesion. I shall finally offer some tentative proposals for a more positive way forward.
Caricaturing and Categorising in Processes of Argument
Authors: Romm N.
Published: March 2010

Charges of caricature have been levelled recently by contributors to this journal in the course of their conducting debates about epistemological questions. The argument developed here is that these charges themselves express different epistemological positions. In exploring these differences, I indicate my preference for seeing the term ‘caricature’ as a symbolic device pleading for experimentation with alternative avenues of argument, rather than as a representational device referring to ‘the fact’ that someone has misread some text. Concerning my own categorising of these epistemological differences, I suggest that in the course of debate (including processes of categorisation) one cannot avoid expressing certain preferences, but that the fragile grounding of these preferences should be acknowledged.
The Material Presence of Absence: A Dialogue between Museums and Cemeteries
Authors: Meyer Morgan , Woodthorpe Kate
Published: March 2010

This is an exploratory paper that aims to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in two particular spaces in society: the museum and the cemetery. Using empirical evidence from two research projects, the paper considers similarities and differences between the two sites, which are further explored through theoretical ideas about the social life of things and the agency of absence. Examining the materiality of these spaces, the paper addresses the role of objects in these two spaces and their respective associations with death, either through the dead themselves or the representation of those who have once lived. In particular, it explores the ‘presence of absence’ through three key points: its spatiality, its materiality, and its agency. Museums and cemeteries are, in this sense, directly comparable, as both spaces are shaped by and built upon the practice of making the absent present. Called ‘heterotopic’ by Foucault (1986) in that they are layered with multiple meanings, this paper will also argue for an understanding of museums and cemeteries as being able to transcend absence. Underpinning this is the belief that there remains much scope for future connections to be made between these two sites, theoretically, politically and practically.
Gender Variations in the Nature of Undeclared Work: Evidence from Ukraine
Authors: Williams Colin C. , Round John
Published: March 2010

In recent years, a small but growing tributary of thought has begun to re-theorise the gendered nature of undeclared work by transcending the conventional ‘thin’ depiction of undeclared work as profit-motivated market-like exchange and constructing ‘thicker’ representations that recognise the presence of multifarious work relations and motives in this sphere. Given the paucity of empirical accounts that have sought to develop a nuanced theorisation of the gender variations in undeclared work based on such thicker readings, the aim of this paper is to report a study of the gendering of undeclared work in the post-socialist society of Ukraine. Analysing data collected from 600 face-to-face interviews conducted during late 2005 and early 2006 that unravel the work relations and motives involved when men and women engage in undeclared work in Ukraine, the finding is that whilst over two-thirds (68 per cent) of men's undeclared work in this post-socialist society is composed of various types of profit-motivated market-like work, nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of women's undeclared work is undertaken for friends, neighbours and kin under work relations more akin to unpaid mutual aid and for rationales other than purely financial gain. The consequent argument is that representing undeclared work in conventional ‘thin’ terms as profit-motivated market-like endeavour depicts such work more through the lens of men's lived practices rather than women's experiences. The paper therefore concludes by calling not only for a re-theorisation of undeclared work and its gendered nature in a wider range of societies and regions of the world but also for a critical evaluation of the validity of depicting monetary transactions as always market-like and profit-motivated.
Seeking Sanctuary: Exploring the Changing Postcolonial and Racialised Politics of Belonging in East London
Authors: Sinha Shamser
Published: March 2010

This paper explores the changing postcolonial and racialised politics of belonging in East London. In particular it draws on research with multi-sector professionals and 15 to 18 year old young separated migrants. Separated from parents, these teenagers include those who had applied for asylum and were living under social services care as ‘unaccompanied’ and those living with their extended family. It also includes separated migrants wanting sanctuary, but who had insecure immigration status because their asylum claim had failed, or because they had not yet applied for asylum and had no other visa status. The research focuses on healthcare issues and the broader life-situations of young separated migrants as a way to examine the changing politics of belonging in East London. Features of this politics include a rise in popularity of the Far Right, the impact of immigration and healthcare legislation and practice, and racial hostility. As well as looking at this, there is an exploration of resistance to this racialised political context by teenagers and certain professionals, and the struggle for a convivial multiculture that is a feature of their resistance. The argument here is that the changing racialised politics of belonging in East London: (1) show how underdevelopment, geo-political and postcolonial forces contribute to shaping local experiences of racism (2) sometimes involves, rather than aggressively targets, British citizens from NCWP (New Commonwealth and Pakistani) backgrounds and their descendants, as skin colour becomes less of an articulated symbol of ‘otherness’ than immigration status (3) therefore excludes ‘new migrants’ and especially those seeking sanctuary, such as the young people in this paper, from belonging (4) faces local resistance. However resistance to this politics might be better informed by a greater understanding of how postcolonialism shapes local racism and militates against a convivial multiculture, with sociology playing a role in accomplishing this
Naming the Other: Power, Politeness and the Inflation of Euphemisms
Authors: Valentine James
Published: March 2010

This paper draws on Japanese, British and other material for a comparative analysis of name-calling. Naming the other is a means of identification, helping to establish definitions of self. Definitional power is socially distributed: the power of the mainstream is orchestrated by expert classifications of marginality that disparage others, often in the form of euphemisms. It is argued that the demand for euphemisms is generated by etiquette, modernist ideology and the power of protest. Cases are examined where euphemisms are dispensable or too troublesome, and where conversely it becomes necessary to coin further cultivated euphemisms in an inflationary manner. Euphemisms are disputed in power struggles of linguistic rectitude, involving accusations of political correctness. In terminological conflict, the power of the other to resist, subvert or escape naming must be recognised, yet unequal definitional resources render celebrations of postmodernism premature: dominant designations can effect the containment and denial of being.
Senses of Gender
Authors: Lim Jason , Browne Kath
Published: March 2010

This paper explores the testimony of trans respondents to Count Me In Too (a participatory action research project that examined LGBT lives in Brighton and Hove), and this analysis occasions the development of innovative concepts for thinking about understandings and experiences of trans phenomena and gender. The analysis starts by exploring the diversity of trans identities before considering evidence of how health services pathologise trans experiences. These analyses not only call into question mind/body dualisms within contemporary gender schema, but also challenge the continued reliance on a sex/gender dichotomy – both in public institutions and in academic theorising – making a definitive distinction between transsexualism and transgenderism difficult to sustain. To do justice to the complexity of the respondents’ testimony, we advance the concept of a ‘sense of gender’ – a sense that belongs to the body, but that is not the same as its fleshy materiality – as one register in which gender is lived, experienced and felt. This sense of gender becomes expressed in relation to a sense of dissonance (sometimes articulated through the ‘wrong body discourse’) among the various elements that compose the body, its sex and its gender, such that the ‘body’ experiences an inability to be ‘consistent’ in ways that are usually taken for granted. The paper suggests that further work needs to be undertaken to explore how the concept of ‘senses of gender’ can be applied to a broader rethinking of the relationship between gender and the body.
Transforming Masculinist Political Cultures? Doing Politics in New Political Institutions
Authors: Jones Stephanie , Charles Nickie , Davies Charlotte Aull
Published: March 2010

In the devolved legislative assemblies of Scotland and Wales the proportion of women representatives is approaching parity. This is in marked contrast to Westminster where one in five MPs are women. In this paper we explore the extent to which the masculinist political cultures characterising established political institutions are being reproduced in the National Assembly for Wales or whether its different gendering, both in the numbers of women representatives and in terms of its institutional framework, is associated with a more feminised political and organisational culture. Drawing on interviews with half the Assembly Members, women and men, we show that the political style of the Assembly differs from that of Westminster and that Assembly Members perceive it as being more consensual and as embodying a less aggressive and macho way of doing politics. AMs relate this difference to the gender parity amongst Assembly Members, to the institutional arrangements which have an ‘absolute duty’ to promote equality embedded in them, and to the desire to develop a different way of doing politics. We suggest that the ability to do politics in a more feminised and consensual way relates not only to the presence of a significant proportion of women representatives, but also to the nature of the institution and the way in which differently gendered processes and practices are embedded within it. Differently gendered political institutions can develop a more feminised political culture which provides an alternative to the masculinist political culture characterising the political domain.
Reflections on Interviewing Women MPs
Authors: Puwar N.
Published: March 2010

This paper reflects on the recent experience of interviewing women MPs. The research process is analyzed in terms of the micro-politics of the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Relevant methodological debates from two areas of sociology which are rarely brought together have been incorporated. Elite Studies and Gender Studies. Both of these fields have discussed the politics of space within the process of interviewing. However, the research experience of interviewing female MPs does not neatly fit in with the descriptions of interviewing to be found in either of these fields. This paper will discuss how the experience meets, criss-crosses and contradicts research reflections that are to be found in both of the above fields. So at times my experience echoed Ann Oakley's description of interviewing women as a cosy, friendly and sisterly exchange of information (Oakley, 1982: p. 55). Whilst at other times I could relate to Stephen Ball's description of interviews with MPs as ‘…events of struggle, as a complex interplay of dominance/resistance and chaos/freedom.’ (Ball, 1994: p. 113). Often the same interview shifted between these two types of scenarios. After a short introduction to the debates on space and power within Elite Studies and Gender Studies this paper will go on to detail some of the complexities of interviewing women MPs for a feminist project.
The Credit Crunch and the High Street: ‘Coming like a Ghost Town’
Authors: Yuill Chris
Published: March 2010

Drawing on primary visual data and secondary sources this rapid response piece speculates on the changes to the British high street as a consequence of the credit crunch. The changes are much more profound than simply the loss of a place to shop. For both individuals and wider society the changes to the British high street carry implications for issues of self-identity, social contacts and social exclusion.
The Credit Crunch: Neo-Liberalism, Financialisation and the Gekkoisation of Society
Authors: Bone John D.
Published: March 2010

This paper offers a broad overview and analysis of some of the main causes and consequences of the current economic crisis. While attempting to flag up some of the key continuities between the conditions contributing to the current crisis and those that produced the ‘great crash’ of 1929, it is argued that the ‘credit crunch’ must be understood in broad historical context. Specifically, it is suggested that the turn to neo-liberal economics in the late 1970's, principally in the UK and US, restored many of the structures and socio-economic characteristics that were prevalent in the 1920's, inevitably producing a highly similar outcome. Overall, it is argued that the (re)financialisation of the economy, the deregulation of markets, together with the cultivation of a culture of rampant individualism and acquisition, pervading the markets and wider society, have coalesced to sow the seeds of reckless profit seeking that have led to the current crisis. Moreover, given that latter, it is suggested that the current upheaval is as much a reflection of social and cultural decay as it is a failure of economic governance.
New Divisions of Labour?: Comparative Thoughts on the Current Recession
Authors: Crow Graham , Hatton Peter , Lyon Dawn , Strangleman Tim
Published: March 2010

This article argues that it is useful to compare the current recession with that which occurred three decades ago. Drawing on research undertaken at that time by Ray Pahl, it is suggested that four questions are once again revealing in the study of the current economic downturn: ‘How have we come to be where we are currently?’, ‘Who gets what?’, ‘How do we know what we claim to know?’, and ‘What sorts of lessons can be drawn to inform thinking about the future?’ The usefulness of asking these questions is discussed, even though the answers must await further research.
Modes of Individualisation at Cemeteries
Authors: Vanderstraeten Raf
Published: March 2010

Permanent individual gravemarkers were established as social norm for large populations in the nineteenth century. These markers typically display a range of matters-of-fact about the dead: name, age or dates of birth and death, family status, social position, profession, religion, etc. They also include symbolic figurations, which communicate in a more implicit way how the survivors remember their dead. Against this background, this paper analyses gravemarkers and graveyards as material witnesses of changing social and cultural sensibilities. It explores the kinds of changes which took place in European regions with a predominantly Catholic population.
Problems, Crises, Events and Social Change: Theory and Illustrations
Authors: Nathanson Constance A.
Published: March 2010

This paper proposes a theory-based approach to the understanding of social change and illustrates that theory with examples from the history and politics of public health. Based in large part on the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (see in particular his Islands of History published in (1985) William Sewell Jr. has proposed an ‘eventful sociology.’ In this work ‘event’ is a term of art meaning occurrences in human affairs that result in social change. Sewell's approach and that of Charles Tilly are in many respects complementary, a major difference being Sewell's far greater emphasis on meaning and interpretation by engaged actors as essential to understanding of how historical processes unfold. In this paper I further elaborate Sahlins’ and Sewell's ideas, first by showing their connection with concepts that may be more familiar to sociologists and, second, by examining the contingent character of social change. Drawing on my own research on the history of public health, I argue that the transformation of ‘happenings’ into events and of events into meaningful social change are highly contingent on the social and political context within which these events occur. More generally, I hope to show that ‘eventful’ sociology is an exciting and productive approach to sociological analysis.
Modernity Coloniality and Visibility: The Politics of Time
Authors: Vázquez Rolando
Published: March 2010

This paper presents the problem of the mediation between modernity and coloniality; and it explores the usefulness of the question of time to address this mediation. How can we think the simulation of modernity together with the oblivion of coloniality?

The text brings the critique of time to the centre of the modernity/ coloniality debate. It shows that chronology, chronological narratives are at the heart of the modern/ colonial systems of oppression; and that the movements of resistance against ‘hegemonic globalization’ are not only questioning the material structures of oppression, but also the universality of the modern idea of time. It is an invitation to think about the politics of time that are at play in modernity/ coloniality.

Here, the modernity/ coloniality tandem is seen as the institution of a politics of time that is geared towards the production of specific economic and political practices oriented to sever the oppressed from their past, their memory. The ensuing temporal discrimination makes invisible all that does not belong to modern temporality. Under this light, it is possible to see how the practices of resistance to the modernity/ coloniality project embody a different politics of time, one that rescues memory as a site of struggle, one that involves the possibility of inhabiting and rescuing the past. These practices of resistance are thus seen as fights against temporal discrimination: fights against invisibility.

By addressing the imposition of modern time we can better understand the widespread injustice and violence of modernity/ coloniality. Furthermore, the question of time can help us to bridge the gap between the simulacra of modernity and the oblivion of coloniality.
Illness Narratives Revisited: The Failure of Narrative Reductionism
Authors: Atkinson Paul
Published: March 2010

The argument uses the proliferating research literature on ‘illness narratives’ to make a more general analytic point about the proper treatment of narratives and life-stories by social scientists. It is suggested that, notwithstanding earlier commentary and criticism, and despite the sophistication of authors such as Mishler, too many narrative-based studies fall far short of a thoroughly analytic approach to such spoken actions. Too often narratives are celebrated as the means for analysts to gain access to personal experience, to the subjective or private aspects of illness. It is argued that we still need analytic strategies that treat illness (or any) narratives as speech acts, based on socially shared resources.