/pdf/becoming-an-ex-the-process-of-role-exit-4po4p377ta.pdf

Becoming an EX: The Process of Role Exit

In line with a more reflexive approach in social science, particularly amongst ethnographers, authors increasingly report not just what they have found from a piece of research but how they have gone about doing it. Using a similar style this article considers the importance of pilot work in undertaking qualitative and ethnographic studies, prior to researcher immersion in the ‘field’. It offers an account of the author’s experiences of ‘cold’and total immersion in a fieldwork setting and uses a contrasting example of a funded and carefully developed pilot study using a variety of methods, in order to highlight the benefits of pilot work. In doing so it suggests that while pilots are not new to ethnographers they are under-discussed and to some extent under-utilized, perhaps as a consequence of methodological allegiances and a tendency to link pilots with more positivist approaches in social science. The article suggests that while pilots can be used to refine research instruments such as questionnaires and interview schedules they have greater use still in ethnographic approaches to data collection in foreshadowing research problems and questions, in highlighting gaps and wastage in data collection, and in considering broader and highly significant issues such as research validity, ethics, representation and researcher health and safety.

Navigating the waves: the usefulness of a pilot in qualitative research

For modern social theory, as well as for many ordinary people, religious identities have been a problem. Just what does it really mean to claim a Jewish or Christian identity? To think of oneself as Presbyterian or Baptist? What do we know of that new church down the road that simply calls itself “Fellowship Church”? And do any of those things have anything to do with how we might expect someone to perform their duties as a citizen or a worker? As modern people have loosened their ties to the families and places that (perhaps) formerly enveloped them in a cocoon of faith (or at least surrounded them with a predictable round of religious activity), they can choose how and whether to be religious, including choosing how central religion will be in their lives. Religious practices and affiliations change over a complicated lifetime, and the array of religious groups in a voluntary society shifts in equally complex ways. If religious identity ever was a given, it certainly is no longer. In his influential work on religion and personal autonomy, Philip Hammond posits that, given the mobility and complexity of the modern situation, individual religious identities are of various sorts – either ascribed (collectivity-based) or achieved (individual) and either primary (a core or “master” role) or secondary (Hammond 1988). In the premodern situation, religion was presumably collective and core. In the modern situation, taking up a collective, core religious identity is a matter of (exceptional) choice, not determinism.

Handbook of the Sociology of Religion: Religious Identities and Religious Institutions

Changes in U.S. immigration laws in the past four decades have had far-reaching consequences for American religion. Even though the majority of the new immigrants are Christian (Warner and Wittner 1998; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000b), the practices, symbols, languages, sounds, and smells that accompany the ethnically and racially diverse forms of practicing Christianity, brought by immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, India, Africa, and elsewhere challenge the various European practices of Christianity that have predominated in the United States since its founding. As Maffy-Kipp (1997) argues, rather than immigrants “de-Christianizing” religion in America, they have, in fact, “de-Europeanized” American Christianity. In addition, the new immigrants have brought religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Vodou, and Rastafarianism, that were unfamiliar to Americans prior to the mid-1960s. Today many American neighborhoods are dotted with temples, mosques, shrines, storefront churches, Christian churches with foreign names, guadwaras, and botannicas. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT The “new immigrants” refer to those who entered the United States after the passage of the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965. The abolition of the country-of-origin quotas established in 1924, and the dramatic increase in immigration visas provided to people from Asia and Latin America, in particular, significantly altered the racial and ethnic backgrounds of immigrants. For example, the number of Asian immigrants living in the United States rose from about 150,000 in the 1950s to more than 2.7 million in the 1980s, while the number of European immigrants fell by more than one-third.

Religion and the new immigrants

Religion is a critical construct for understanding contemporary social life. It illuminates the everyday experiences and practices of many individuals; is a significant component of diverse institutional processes including politics, gender relations, and socioeconomic inequality; and plays a vital role in public culture and social change. This handbook showcases current research and thinking in the sociology of religion. The contributors, all active writers and researchers in the area, provide original chapters focusing on select aspects of their own engagement with the field. Aimed at students and scholars who want to know more about the sociology of religion, this handbook also provides a resource for sociologists in general by integrating broader questions of sociology (e.g., demography, ethnicity, life course, inequality, political sociology) into the analysis of religion. Broadly inclusive of traditional research topics (modernity, secularization, politics) as well as newer interests (feminism, spirituality, faith-based community action), this handbook illustrates the validity of diverse theoretical perspectives and research designs to understanding the multilayered nature of religion as a sociological phenomenon.

/pdf/handbook-of-the-sociology-of-religion-4wlqgk7cwk.pdf

Handbook of the sociology of religion

The overall oppressive effect on women's rights of religious fundamentalism has been well documented in the literature. When looking at women's resistance to fundamentalism, it is important to examine not only organized efforts but individual women's agency in subverting or co-opting these movements toward their own ends. Using a series of narratives, the authors discuss four strategies used by Iranian women to negotiate the patriarchal practices of Islamic fundamentalism. These women crafted agency by responding to the demands of family and state through collaboration, acquiescence, co-optation, and subversion. Their narratives of agency show how some women negotiated the economic hardship and gender oppression brought on by the Iranian revolution and how these negotiations affected women's options when filtered through the rhetoric of Islamic fundamentalism. The purpose of the article is to contribute further to the feminist discourse that has moved beyond victimization narratives.

WOMEN'S AGENCY AND HOUSEHOLD DIPLOMACY: Negotiating Fundamentalism

Epiphany, a turning point in one's life related to "life experiences that radically alter and shape the meanings persons give to themselves and their life projects" (Denzin, 1989, p. 14), came for the author in the final stages of completing her dissertation. She had claimed in her dissertation proposal that she was going "to document the daily interactions of staff and residents at a halfway house for ex-offenders," implying she would present a "realist tale" characterized by objectivity, focus on the commonplace, "native" perspective, and researcher omnipotence (Van Maanen, 1988). As the field tale began unfolding, the author realized such an "epistemological stunt" was impossible. She wrote to her dissertation chair that her methods section might be "a little too subjective, or, given my theoretical leanings ... more existentialist than I realized." Eventually, this methods section became the author's dissertation about "becoming involved." The following narrative represents a reflexive version of that...

Caring, Information Control, and Emotionality: Fieldwork Trade-Offs

In this presidential address given at the Unity 2000 Meeting held in Bethesda, Maryland, I briefly identify and define various types of “applied side sociologists.” My objective was twofold. First, I wanted to express my appreciation for the necessity of organizational cooperation. Second, I wanted to demonstrate that diversity among practitioners and by association representative organizations is a strength not a weakness. I conclude by identifying six collaborative paths these representative organizations could take to promote unity.

Search for unity: Will the real practicing sociologist please stand up?

The application of sociological knowledge, including theory, methods, and skills, has been identified as sociological practice.  Within the field of sociological practice there are two distinct types of practice - clinical and applied (Clark and Fritz 1986).  In the United States (U.S.) the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS) certifies these sociological practitioners at the master’s or doctoral level. The process involves an evaluation by previously certified peers and includes the submission of a portfolio and the completion of a demonstration in which applicants showcase their action-oriented work. Certification is not state licensure. The credentialing of sociological practitioners in the U.S. and internationally can serve as a model for sociological practitioners globally - applied, clinical, and engaged public.

Melodye Lehnerer

Papers

WOMEN'S AGENCY AND HOUSEHOLD DIPLOMACY: Negotiating Fundamentalism

Caring, Information Control, and Emotionality: Fieldwork Trade-Offs

Search for unity: Will the real practicing sociologist please stand up?

Certification