Showing papers in "British Journal of Sociology in 2012"

'The whole is always smaller than its parts': a digital test of Gabriel Tardes' monads.

Abstract: In this paper we argue that the new availability of digital data sets allows one to revisit Gabriel Tarde's (1843?1904) social theory that entirely dispensed with using notions such as individual or society. Our argument is that when it was impossible, cumbersome or simply slow to assemble and to navigate through the masses of information on particular items, it made sense to treat data about social connections by defining two levels: one for the element, the other for the aggregates. But once we have the experience of following individuals through their connections (which is often the case with profiles) it might be more rewarding to begin navigating datasets without making the distinction between the level of individual component and that of aggregated structure. It becomes possible to give some credibility to Tarde's strange notion of ?monads?. We claim that it is just this sort of navigational practice that is now made possible by digitally available databases and that such a practice could modify social theory if we could visualize this new type of exploration in a coherent way.

The logic of strategic ignorance.

Abstract: Ignorance and knowledge are often thought of as opposite phenomena. Knowledge is seen as a source of power, and ignorance as a barrier to consolidating authority in political and corporate arenas. This article disputes this, exploring the ways that ignorance serves as a productive asset, helping individuals and institutions to command resources, deny liability in the aftermath of crises, and to assert expertise in the face of unpredictable outcomes. Through a focus on the Food and Drug Administration's licensing of Ketek, an antibiotic drug manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis and linked to liver failure, I suggest that in drug regulation, different actors, from physicians to regulators to manufacturers, often battle over who can attest to the least knowledge of the efficacy and safety of different drugs - a finding that raises new insights about the value of ignorance as an organizational resource.

Struggles for value: value practices, injustice, judgment, affect and the idea of class.

Abstract: This paper is about the struggle for value by those who live intensified devaluation in the new conditions of legitimation and self-formation, by which the self is required to repeatedly reveal its value through its accrual and investment in economic, symbolic, social and cultural capitals. It explores how this value struggle is experienced: felt affectively, known and spoken through discourses of injustice. Drawing on a small research project, which uses the British New Labour government’s Respect Agenda as an evocative device to provoke discussion, the paper details how those positioned as already marginal to the dominant symbolic, presented as ‘useless’ subjects rather than ‘subjects of value’ of the nation, generate alternative ways for making value. It examines how the experience of injustice generates affective responses expressed as ‘ugly-feelings’. The conversion of these ‘ugly feelings’ into articulations of ‘just-talk’ reveals how different understandings of value, of what matters and what counts, come into effect and circulate alongside the dominant symbolic. The issue that most angered working-class respondents is how they are positioned, judged, blamed and held responsible for an inheritance over which they have no control, ‘an accident of birth’. They were acutely aware of how they were constantly judged and de-legitimated and how practices such as selfishness and greed were legitimate for others. Showing how they refuse to authorize those they consider lacking in value but with authority and in a position to judge, the paper demonstrates how class relations are lived through a struggle, not only against economic limitation but a struggle against unjustifiable judgment and authority and for dignified relationality. The paper reveals a struggle at the very core of ontology, demonstrating how the denigrated defend and make their lives liveable; an issue at the heart of current austerity politics which may have increased significance for the future.

Fans, homophobia and masculinities in association football: evidence of a more inclusive environment

Abstract: This article draws on 3,500 responses from fans and professionals involved in association football (soccer) to an anonymous online survey posted from June 2010 to October 2010 regarding their views towards gay footballers. The overall findings are that, contrary to assumptions of homophobia, there is evidence of rapidly decreasing homophobia within the culture of football fandom. The results advance inclusive masculinity theory with 93 per cent of fans of all ages stating that there is no place for homophobia within football. Fans blame agents and clubs for the lack of openness and challenge football's governing organizations to oppose the culture of secrecy surrounding gay players and to provide a more inclusive environment to support players who want to come out.

Citizenship, immigration, and the European social project: rights and obligations of individuality

Abstract: As envisioned by T.H. Marshall, social citizenship was a corrective to the injustices caused by the capitalist market. Entitlements and protections guaranteed by the welfare state would prevent social and economic exclusions that civil and political rights, on their own, simply could not. Such protections consequently would ensure social cohesion and solidarity, as well as a productive economy and market. European welfare states successfully followed this formula for the most part of the post-World War II period, however the last couple of decades witnessed significant changes. For one, the very meaning of 'work' and 'worker' on which the welfare state is based has changed - flexibility, risk, and precariousness have become defining elements of working life. The welfare state itself has gone through a transformation as well, increasingly moving away from a system of 'passive benefits' to 'social investment' in human capital. These developments are coupled with an emphasis on education in 'active citizenship', which envisions participatory individuals who are adaptable in an increasingly globalized society, and ready to contribute at local, national and transnational levels. The emergent European social project draws on a re-alignment between these strands: work, social investment, and active participation. In this article, I consider the implications of this project for immigrant populations in Europe in particular and for the conceptions of citizenship and human rights in general. In contrast to the recent commentary on the neoliberal turn and the return of nation-state centered citizenship projects in Europe, I emphasize the broader trends in the post-World War II period that indicate a significant shift in the very foundations of good citizenship and social justice. The new social project transpires a citizenship model that privileges individuality and its transformative capacity as a collective good. Thus, while expanding the boundaries and forms of participation in society, this project at the same time burdens the individual, rather than the state, with the obligation of ensuring social cohesion and solidarity, disadvantaging not only non-European migrants but also the 'lesser' Europeans. The new social project brings into focus the relationship between universalistic individual rights and their effective exercise. I conclude that rather than treating human rights and citizenship as a dichotomy we should pay attention to their entangled practice in order to understand the contingent accomplishments and possible expansions of citizenship in Europe.

Class, gender and time poverty: a time-use analysis of British workers’ free time resources

Abstract: Free time, that is, the time that remains at one's own discretion after conducting daily work and personal care activities, has been previously recognized as a ‘primary good’ and an important welfare resource that provides opportunities for participation in social life and leisure. However, recent years have witnessed an increasing preoccupation with the phenomenon of time poverty, drawing attention to the distribution of free time and its relationship to structural and family circumstances. In this article we propose a novel approach to the measurement of time poverty and document its occurrence amongst British workers. In line with previous literature, a conceptualization of time poverty as a relative lack of free time resources vis-a-vis other members of the community is adopted. However, unlike previous empirical studies, we investigate the differential configuration of time poverty on weekdays and weekend days, alongside indicators of the quality of free time, taking into account insights from theoretical and empirical work within the field of the sociology of time. Our analysis of the 2000 UK Time Use Survey highlights class and gender inequalities that have been missed by previous measurement approaches and demonstrates that, overall, working women experience multiple and more severe free time constraints, which may constitute an additional barrier for their leisure and social participation.

The relationship between education and levels of trust and tolerance in Europe

Abstract: In this article we explore the relationship between education and levels of trust and tolerance in Europe. More specifically we assess whether the relationship between years of schooling and the extent to which individuals trust others in their communities and are tolerant towards immigrants varies across European countries and attempt to identify possible sources of these variations. Findings based on data from the first three rounds of the European Social Survey indicate that the association between education and levels of trust and tolerance varies significantly across countries and that a major source of this variation lies in the way in which individuals react to the level of diversity in the country where they live.

Why different countries manage death differently: A comparative analysis of modern urban societies

Abstract: The sociology of death, dying and bereavement tends to take as its implicit frame either the nation state or a homogenous modernity. Between-nation differences in the management of death and dying are either ignored or untheorized. This article seeks to identify the factors that can explain both similarities and differences in the management of death between different modern western nations. Structural factors which affect all modern nations include urbanization and the division of labour leading to the dominance of professionals, migration, rationality and bureaucracy, information technology and the risk society. How these sociologically familiar structural features are responded to, however, depends on national histories, institutions and cultures. Historically, key transitional periods to modernity, different in different nations, necessitated particular institutional responses in the management of dying and dead bodies. Culturally, key factors include individualism versus collectivism, religion, secularization, boundary regulation, and expressivism. Global flows of death practices depend significantly on subjugated nations' perceptions of colonialism, neo-colonialism and modernity, which can lead to a dominant power's death practices being either imitated or rejected.

The politics of concepts: family and its (putative) replacements

Abstract: The central concern of this paper is that there has been a move within British sociology to subsume (or sometimes, even replace) the concept of ‘family’ within ideas about personal life, intimacy and kinship. It calls attention to what will be lost sight of by this conceptual move: an understanding of the collective whole beyond the aggregation of individuals; the creation of lacunae that will be (partially) filled by other disciplines; and engagement with policy developments and professional practices that focus on ‘family’ as a core, institutionalised, idea. While repudiating the necessity (and indeed, pointing out the dangers) of providing any definitive answer to definitions of ‘family’, the paper calls for critical reflection on the implications of these conceptual moves.

Problematizing contemporary men/masculinities theorizing: the contribution of Raewyn Connell and conceptual-terminological tensions today.

Abstract: Critical studies of men and masculinities (CSMM) have burgeoned in recent times. For this reason, it seems to me a useful moment to reflect on what I see as some tensions, even contradictions, in these studies. In keeping with Chantal Mouffe's espousal of the advantages of agonism rather than consensus, I suggest that heterogeneous theoretical directions in scholarship attending to men/masculinities are by no means to be discouraged. However, the various theoretical tools employed in this scholarship may be incommensurable and thus produce a certain inconsistency or even incoherence. In this context, I suggest that in order to more clearly articulate current theoretical/terminological debates it is important to undertake analysis of key conceptual distinctions and widely used terms, such as notions of structure and patriarchy, gender identities/masculinities/men, hegemony and hegemonic masculinity, and relations between gender and sexuality, amongst others. The aim here is not to produce or require homogeneity in studies of men/masculinities but rather to provide an opportunity to consider the epistemological frameworks which inform the political intentions and goals of this sphere of scholarship.

Mapping the global football field: a sociological model of transnational forces within the world game.

Abstract: This paper provides a sociological model of the key transnational political and economic forces that are shaping the 'global football field'. The model draws upon, and significantly extends, the theory of the 'global field' developed previously by Robertson. The model features four quadrants, each of which contains a dominant operating principle, an 'elemental reference point', and an 'elemental theme'. The quadrants contain, first, neo-liberalism, associated with the individual and elite football clubs; second, neo-mercantilism, associated with nation-states and national football systems; third, international relations, associated with international governing bodies; and fourth, global civil society, associated with diverse institutions that pursue human development and/or social justice. We examine some of the interactions and tensions between the major institutional and ideological forces across the four quadrants. We conclude by examining how the weakest quadrant, featuring global civil society, may gain greater prominence within football. In broad terms, we argue that our four-fold model may be utilized to map and to examine other substantive research fields with reference to globalization.

Community organization moderates the effect of alcohol outlet density on violence.

Abstract: There is growing evidence from multiple disciplines that alcohol outlet density is associated with community levels of assault. Based on the theoretical and empirical literatures on social organization and crime, we tested the hypothesis that the association between alcohol outlet density and neighbourhood violence rates is moderated by social organization. Using geocoded police data on assaults, geocoded data on the location of alcohol outlets, and controlling for several structural factors thought to be associated with violence rates, we tested this hypothesis employing negative binomial regression with our sample of 298 block groups in Cincinnati. Our results revealed direct effects of alcohol outlet density and social organization on assault density, and these effects held for different outlet types (i.e., off-premise, bars, restaurants) and levels of harm (i.e., simple and aggravated assaults). More importantly, we found that the strength of the outlet-assault association was significantly weaker in more socially organized communities. Subsequent analyses by level of organization revealed no effects of alcohol outlet density on aggravated assaults in organized block groups, but significant effects in disorganized block groups. We found no association between social (dis)organization and outlet density. These results clarify the community-level relationship between alcohol outlets and violence and have important implications for municipal-level alcohol policies.

Planning for the worst: risk, uncertainty and the Olympic Games

Abstract: Security for the Olympic Games has become undeniably visible in recent years. A certain degree of this visibility became unavoidable after the 1972 Munich Olympics when military personnel and hardware became standard elements of Olympic security. Yet, this visibility is qualitatively different today in that it is often deliberately fashioned for public consumption. This article argues that this expressive dimension of security at the Games provides a window into wider issues of how authorities 'show' that they can deliver on the promise of maximum security under conditions of radical uncertainty. The latter sections of this article examine three ways in which this promise is extended: the discursive work of managers of unease, the staging of highly stylized demonstration projects, and the fabrication of fantasy documents. We focus on how officials emphasize that they have contemplated and planned for all possible security threats, especially catastrophic threats and worst-case scenarios. Actually planning for these events is epistemologically and practically impossible, but saying and showing that authorities are 'planning for the worst' are discursive ways of transforming uncertainty into apparently manageable risks that are independent of the functional activities they describe. As such, our analysis provides insights into the much broader issue of how authorities sustain the appearance of maximum security in order to maintain rhetorical control over what are deemed to be highly uncertain and insecure situations. Such performances may paradoxically amplify uncertainty, thus recreating the conditions that foster the ongoing securitization of everyday life.

'Our struggles are bigger than the World Cup': civic activism, state-society relations and the socio-political legacies of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Abstract: South Africa's hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup saw a large number of public demonstrations, strikes and other forms of civic campaigning. World Cup activism was both preceded and followed by extensive and intensifying public unrest and industrial action that in the period before the tournament, threatened to derail the event. This paper assesses the motivations, forms and implications of the activism during South Africa's staging of the FIFA finals and interprets them against the larger context of shifting state-society relations in the country. There are two purposes to the analysis. First, to explore the underlying internal social forces that gave shape to the protests at the time, and the possible influence of the exogenous politics of mega-event social mobilization. Second, the implications and outcomes of these dynamics for longer term socio-political processes in the country are considered. The activism displayed many of the features of the politics of contestation of sport mega-events today. Importantly, however, the activism stemmed from a particular systemic dynamic and reflected changing relations in the post-apartheid political community. Therefore, while the World Cup was used as a strategic opportunity by many advocacy groups, it was one that rather fleetingly and ambivalently presented an additional platform to such groups in an otherwise on-going set of political battles. Rather than a strong case study of sport's transformative capacity, the civic campaigning during South Africa's World Cup demonstrates the way a sport mega-event can be used as a strategic entry point by civil society groups in their engagement with the state, although this can occur with greater or lesser success.

The bid, the lead-up, the event and the legacy: global cultural politics and hosting the Olympics

Abstract: Hosting mega sport events, especially the Olympics, demands an extensive engagement with global civil society given the voluntary, highly mediated exposure of host cities and nations to the world. The philosophy of Olympism requires ethical authority in demonstrating 'fitness' to host the Games, so demanding intensive strategic image management. Offensive and defensive mobilization of image-dependent 'species of power' in the field of sport (in a Bourdieusian sense) in conducting 'wars of position and movement' (following Gramsci) within global civil society are, then, crucial features of competitive manoeuvres around staging major sport events. The main empirical focus of this article is on the case of the Sydney 2000 ('Millennial') Games, in illustrating the socio-political dynamics of bidding and hosting in the context of a major civil societal matter of concern - Australia's continuing failure to achieve reconciliation with, and equality for, its indigenous peoples. Ironically, though, it was in the domain of human rights that Sydney had an advantage over its closest competitor in the 1993 bidding process - China. The strategies deployed to secure the consent of Australian Aborigines to the Games are addressed in analysing the means by which the Sydney 2000 Games avoided major disruption and international criticism. A second, briefer case analysis is then presented of the disputation concerning Beijing's successful bid for the 2008 Olympics, which saw them influentially described by one (US) political activist as the 'Genocide Games' and the subject of international protests surrounding the Torch Relay. It is concluded that the contrasting levels of public, mediated discord in these two Olympiads in which human rights were key issues related, significantly though not exclusively, to the Chinese authorities' difficulties in 'winning consent' through strategic incorporation of the most conspicuous, non-state oppositional forces within Western-dominated global civil society in its most immediate, unruly, and mediatized form.

Human rights and the Beijing Olympics: imagined global community and the transnational public sphere.

Abstract: The Olympic Games are increasingly used by non-governmental organizations to demand transnational forms of accountability from public authorities. This article assesses the effectiveness of transnational public opinion surrounding the Beijing 2008 Olympics, when the pressure of Western public opinion was exerted upon the government of the world's most populous non-Western nation to improve its human rights record. Utilizing the concepts of ‘imagined global community’ and ‘transnational public sphere’, it finds that the Olympic Games had helped to call into existence a transnational public that ran up against the obstacle posed by the incomplete formation of supra-national forms of governance. The International Olympic Committee, a non-governmental organization, was a weak substitute. Because of the strong desire of Chinese people to take part in transnational deliberations, the article concludes with optimism about the potential of transnational public spheres that include Chinese people to develop toward more effective forms of transnational governance. But the IOC must strengthen the voice of its non-Western members, and Western interlocutors, including the media, must accept their share of the responsibility for creating the conditions for egalitarian dialogue.

The regeneration games: purity and security in the Olympic city.

Abstract: This paper examines the wider social impacts of hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games and its ‘legacy’ ambitions in East London, emphasizing securitization as an inbuilt feature of the urban regeneration project. Drawing on extensive original empirical research, the paper analyses the modalities of Olympic safety and security practices within the Olympic Park itself and their wider impact, while also connecting this research to theorization and debates in urban sociology and criminology. In this complex setting, a raft of formal and informal, often subtle, regulatory mechanisms have emerged, especially as visions of social ordering focused on ‘cleansing’ and ‘purifying’ have ‘leaked out’ from the hyper-securitized ‘sterilized’ environment of the Olympic Park and become embedded within the Olympic neighbourhood. In such complex circumstances, applying Douglas' (1966) work on purity and danger to the spatial realm provides a key conceptual framework to understand the form and impact of such processes. The imposition of order can be seen to not only perform ‘cleansing’ functions, but also articulate multiple symbolic, expressive and instrumental roles.

Object-oriented sociology and organizing in the face of emergency: Bruno Latour, Graham Harman and the material turn.

Abstract: This paper explores the material turn in sociology and the tools it provides for understanding organizational problems highlighted by the Royal Commission into the 2009 'Black Saturday' bushfires during which 173 people died in the Australian State of Victoria. Often inspired by Bruno Latour's material-semiotic sociology of associations, organization scholars employing these tools focus on the messy details of organization otherwise overlooked by approaches assuming a macroscopic frame of analysis. In Latour's approach no object is reducible to something else - such as nature, the social, or atoms - it is instead a stabilized set of relations. A Latourian approach allows us to highlight how the Royal Commission and macroscopic models of organizing do unwitting damage to their objects of inquiry by purifying the 'natural' from the 'social'. Performative elements in their schemas are mistaken for descriptive ones. However, a long standing critique of this approach claims that it becomes its own form of reduction, to nothing but relations. Graham Harman, in his object-oriented philosophy develops this critique by showing that a 'relationist' metaphysics cannot properly accommodate the capacity of 'objects' to cause or mediate surprises. Through our case of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, we argue that a purely relational model of objects loosens a productive tension between the structural and ephemeral that drives sociological analysis. By drawing on elements of Harman's ontology of objects we argue that it is necessary for material-semiotic sociology to retain a central place for the emergence of sociological objects.

Devalued, deskilled and diversified: explaining the proliferation of the strip industry in the UK

Abstract: This paper looks beyond the debates that focus on the objectification of the female body to examine the question as to why strip clubs have proliferated and found a permanent place in the night-time economy in the UK. Using empirical qualitative and quantitative data from the largest study into the strip industry in the UK to date, we challenge the common assumption that 'demand' is responsible for the rise in erotic dance. Instead, we argue that the proliferation of strip clubs is largely due to the internal economic structures of the industry which have developed partly in response to the financial crisis beginning in 2008. First, we argue that clubs profit from individual dancers through an exploitative system of fees and fines, rendering a strip club business a low cost investment with high returns and little risk to club owners. Second, we note that the last decade has seen diversification of the industry accompanied by deskilling and devaluing of dancing and dancers' labour. Third, we demonstrate that despite the negative effects of these changes on workers, there has been an expansion of the industry as the ability to make profit, even during a financial crisis was ensured through the transferral of risk to workers. Overall, we suggest that far from proliferating as a response to demand, the industry has maintained its market presence due to its ability to establish highly financially exploitation employment relationships with dancers at a time of economic fragility.

Olympic and world sport: making transnational society?

Abstract: This paper introduces the special issue of the British Journal of Sociology on the subject of the transnational aspects of Olympic and world sport. The special issue is underpinned by the perspective that because sport provides a space for the forging of transnational connections and global consciousness, it is increasingly significant within contemporary processes of globalization and the making of transnational society. In this article, we examine in turn eight social scientific themes or problems that are prominent within the special issue: globalization, glocalization, neo-liberal ideologies and policies, transnational society, securitization, global civil society, transnational/global public sphere, and fantasy/imagination. We conclude by highlighting five 'circles' of future research inquiry within world sport that should be explored by social scientists.

Who do you think they were? How family historians make sense of social position and inequality in the past

Abstract: How do social comparisons over time shape perceptions of inequality? In thinking about subjective inequality, it is important to ask which social comparisons matter in establishing people�€™s sense of relative social position and wider inequalities. These issues are discussed by drawing on a qualitative study of popular genealogy, which examines how people make sense of social position in the past, and explores how social change affects people�€™s sense of social hierarchies. The gaze of family history promotes certain sorts of social comparisons, between �€˜then and now�€™, and between immediate kin, which can flatten the sense of social hierarchies. However, the ability to determine social position also depends on the quality of information available, and how different practical engagements facilitate �€˜sideways�€™ comparisons between contemporaries, affording different fields of vision on relative inequalities. On this evidence, when exploring subjective inequality it is necessary to examine when and how people engage in social comparison as part of everyday practical activities.

Analysing responses to climate change through the lens of reflexivity.

Abstract: Sociologists are increasingly directing attention toward social responses to climate change. As is true of any new field of inquiry, theoretical frameworks guiding the research to date have room for improvement. One advance could be achieved through closer engagement with Reflexivity Theory, particularly the work of Margaret Archer, who asks just how individuals come to give attention to certain problems, and formulate responses to them. Individuals vary significantly in regard to their understanding of and concern for anthropogenic climate change, and these standpoints in turn influence commitment to mitigation and adaptation. The emergent social interactions among all such agents in turn influence the morphogenetic trajectories through which social structures will evolve, but the role of ‘meta-reflexives’ is particularly crucial. Identifying pathways of individual climate change reflexivity can make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the potential for and nature of collective responses. In this paper, I explore climate change reflexivity, with particular attention to climate change meta-reflexives, through a qualitative analysis of personal interviews with residents of two small communities in Alberta, Canada. Applying Reflexivity Theory to this context articulates dimensions of reflexive processing not elaborated in current theoretical treatments, including future outlook and comfort with uncertainty, among others.

Commodifying migration: excluding migrants in Europe's emerging social model.

Abstract: Modes of social inclusion and the dominant ways of perceiving related issues of social justice are in a state of transformation in contemporary Western societies. Traditional features of the European social model are called into question by a neoliberal logic that favours market solutions to manage social inclusion. As Yasemin Soysal convincingly argues, this transformation affects the very core of citizenship rights which in the postwar perspective of TH Marshall, were meant to promote a more cohesive and just society. Soysal claims that in the current neoliberal climate, social policies are guided by the principle of ‘individuality’ (understood as the imperative to ‘invest’ into individuals’ marketable capabilities) rather than the traditional notion of redistributive social justice. According to her interpretation, the nascent social model in Europe paves the way for the gradual withering away of rights of citizens as primarily granted through the status of communal membership. Built on this diagnosis, Soysal’s article poses the question regarding how this transformation affects migrants. Already under regular circumstances, migration is associated with a heightened sense of uncertainty especially within the labour market: Moving from one country to another often constitutes challenges pertaining to the recognition of qualifications, learning the codes of the labour market, finding a new supportive social network, etc. In hindsight, one could argue that the relatively robust welfare state and low levels of unemployment in the 1960s–70 period were instrumental in promoting the social inclusion of the postwar ‘guest worker’ migrants. And beyond relatively generous social policies at the time, work-based forms of (union-supported) solidarity helped to link the demand for successful social inclusion and citizens’ rights to the regulative idea of redistributive social justice. Yet, this situation has changed dramatically: Manifestly, the neoliberal adjustment of labour market relations and social policy perspectives has called into question this traditional mode of inclusion. In particular the less

Identities in the third space? Solidity, elasticity and resilience amongst young British Pakistani Muslims.

Abstract: Over the last decade the issue of identity has been prevalent in discussions about British Muslims, with the events of 9/11 serving as a touchstone for media debates about religious, national and cultural affiliations. The 7/7 terrorist attacks in the UK led to young British Pakistanis being subjected to intense public and institutional scrutiny and wider political concerns being expressed about the failure of multiculturalism. Young British Pakistanis have thus had to negotiate and maintain their identities in an environment in which they have been defined as a threat to national security whilst simultaneously being pressurized to align with ‘core British values’. Within this context, we convey the findings of a qualitative study involving British Pakistanis living in the North-west of England. In presenting the experiences and perspectives of participants, three interconnected processes salient to the maintenance of identity are delineated: solidity, elasticity and resilience. Having unpacked these processes, we draw upon Bhabha's third space thesis to explore the political potentiality of and the limits to hybridic identities.

War-making and sense-making: Some technical reflections on an instance of 'friendly fire'

Abstract: In this paper we analyse a 'friendly fire' incident from the second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner's inquest in 2007. Focusing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draws on and links ethnomethodological studies of work, research into 'normal' accidents, disasters and risks, and recent ethnographies of the military. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the accounts offered after the event by the military and civilian inquiries should be treated less as competing descriptions than different ways of problematizing particular aspects of the military-political 'machineries' the pilots' actions were enmeshed within. Language: en

Football's coming home?: Digital reterritorialization, contradictions in the transnational coverage of sport and the sociology of alternative football broadcasts.

Abstract: This article critically utilizes the work of Manuel Castells to discuss the issue of parallel imported broadcasts (specifically including live-streams) in football. This is of crucial importance to sport because the English Premier League is premised upon the sale of television rights broadcasts to domestic and overseas markets, and yet cheaper alternative broadcasts endanger the price of such rights. Evidence is drawn from qualitative fieldwork and library/Internet sources to explore the practices of supporters and the politics involved in the generation of alternative broadcasts. This enables us to clarify the core sociological themes of ‘milieu of innovation’ and ‘locale’ within today's digitally networked global society.

Environmental protest in New Zealand (1997–2010)

Abstract: Protest actions are an important indicator of public concern, raising awareness and highlighting perceived failings in administrative practices. With increasing prominence of environmental challenges there has been a move for states to incorporate stakeholders, potentially reducing the need for such confrontational actions. This article uses protest event analysis and case comparison to examine the scale and character of environmental protest actions in New Zealand from 1997-2010. This period was one of relative socio-economic stability, coupled with growing awareness of environmental challenges. The article considers the relative level of action of grassroots groups and more formalized NGOs, asking which issues generated protest actions and which factors contributed to environmental campaign outcomes. The findings suggest that, although protest actions can strengthen campaigns, the outcomes ultimately remain heavily dependent on the priorities of the state.

Self-interest and the theory of action.

Abstract: The concept of self-interest remains underdeveloped in sociology although central to economics. Recent methodological and social trends render sociological indifference to the concept untenable. The term has enjoyed historical predominance in the West since the sixteenth century. While it is seen in modern economics as a singular motivating force, Adam Smith regarded self-interest in economic action as necessarily moderated by sympathy. In addition to its problematic economic conceptualization self-interest has an experiential basis in unequal power relations. An alternative to the concept of self-interest is presented by Amartya Sen in his account of commitment; its inconsistencies, however, render Sen's statement unsatisfactory. Differences between present and future interests indicate that the distinction between self-interested and other-interested action is not sustainable.

The post-nationalization of immigrant rights: a theory in search of evidence.

Abstract: In her contribution to this issue, Yasemin Soysal makes a brave stand for her theory of post-national rights, even in the face of changed circumstances. Originally (Soysal 1994), the theory was designed to account for the extension of all kinds of civic and social rights to immigrants in Western Europe, in spite of the fact that most immigrants had not naturalized to become citizens, not least because European immigration countries were not always keen on making immigrants into nationals. Extending the world-cultural institutional perspective of John Meyer and his associates (e.g., 1997) to the realm of immigrant rights, Soysal placed this apparent anomaly in the context of the spread of supranational human rights discourses in the postwar period, pushed forward by the mobilization of non-governmental organizations, and backed by international treaties and supranational forms of governance. Through a combination of self-commitment to these international human rights norms, pressure by national and supranational immigrant and human rights organizations, and if necessary binding rulings of supranational courts, Soysal argued, nation-states had come to embrace, sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly, a highly universalist and individualized notion of rights, leading to a strong decoupling of rights from national citizenship, which, in her words, had become ‘in terms of its translation into rights and privileges . . . no longer a significant construction’ (Soysal 1998: 208).

Culture, state and varieties of capitalism: a comparative study of life insurance markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Abstract: This article examines the interplay between local culture, the state, and economic actors' agency in producing variation across markets. I adopt a political-cultural approach to examining why life insurance has been far more popular in Taiwan than Hong Kong, despite the presence of a cultural taboo on the topic of premature death in both societies. Based on interview data and documentary references, the findings reveal that as an independent state, the Taiwanese government heavily protected domestic insurance firms during their emergence. These domestic firms adopted a market-share approach by re-defining the concept of life insurance to accommodate the local cultural taboo. The colonial Hong Kong government, on the other hand, adopted laissez-faire policies that essentially favoured foreign insurance firms. When faced with the tension between local adaptation and the profitability of the business, these foreign firms chose the latter. Their reluctance to accommodate local cultures, however, resulted in a smaller market. I argue that state actions mediate who the dominant economic players are and that the nature of the dominant players affects the extent of localization. Specifically, the presence of competitive domestic players alongside transnational corporations is more likely to produce varieties of capitalism.