Showing papers in "Sociology in 2018"

Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation:

Abstract: The paper argues that everyday bordering has become a major technology of control of both social diversity and discourses on diversity, in a way that threatens the convivial co-existence of pluralist societies, especially in metropolitan cities, as well as reconstructs everyday citizenship. The article begins with an outline of a theoretical and methodological framework, which explores bordering, the politics of belonging and a situated intersectional perspective for the study of the everyday. It then analyses the shift in focus of recent UK immigration legislation from the external, territorial border to the internal border, incorporating technologies of everyday bordering in which ordinary citizens are demanded to become either border-guards and/or suspected illegitimate border crossers. We illustrate our argument in the area of employment examining the impact of the requirements of the immigration legislation from the situated gazes of professional border officers, employers and employees in their bordering encounters.

The Feeling of Numbers: Emotions in Everyday Engagements with Data and Their Visualisation:

Abstract: This paper highlights the role that emotions play in engagements with data and their visualisation To date, the relationship between data and emotions has rarely been noted, in part because data studies have not attended to everyday engagements with data We draw on an empirical study to show a wide range of emotional engagements with diverse aspects of data and their visualisation, and so demonstrate the importance of emotions as vital components of making sense of data We nuance the argument that regimes of datafication, in which numbers, metrics and statistics dominate, are characterised by a renewed faith in objectivity and rationality, arguing that in datafied times, it is not only numbers but also the feeling of numbers that is important We build on the sociology of a) emotions and b) the everyday to do this, and in so doing, we contribute to the development of a sociology of data

Materially Constituting a Sustainable Food Transition: The Case of Vegan Eating Practice:

Abstract: Informed by several intellectual turns and sub-areas of sociology this article explores veganism as a practice and argues that its nascent social normalisation can be partly explained by specific modes of material work with food performed by vegan practitioners. Based primarily on interview data with UK-based vegans the research identifies four modes of material constitution – material substitution, new food exploration, food creativity and taste transition – which are of particular importance in strengthening links between the elements of the practice. The article argues that these are significant for offering an explanation for the recent growth of vegan practitioners in UK society and that they are also of value to the broader endeavour of understanding sustainable food transitions and intervening for more sustainable food policies.

A Sociology of Nothing: Understanding the Unmarked:

Abstract: Nothing is a sociologically neglected terrain, comprising negatively defined phenomena, such as non-identification, non-participation and non-presence. Nevertheless, these symbolic social objects are created and managed through meaningful social interaction. Nothing is accomplished either by active commission (doing/being a non-something) or by passive omission (not-doing/not-being something). I explore these dichotomous forms through four dimensions of negative social space: non-identity; inactivity; absence; and silence. Paradoxically, nothing is always productive of something: other symbolic objects come into being through the apprehension of phantoms, imaginaries, replacements and alternatives, which generate further constitutive meanings. A sociological analysis illuminates these processes, revealing how much nothing matters.

Creating Undocumented EU Migrants through Welfare: A Conceptualization of Undeserving and Precarious Citizenship.

Abstract: Following the financial and economic crisis, welfare policies across the EU are increasingly becoming instruments for limiting the mobility of certain EU migrants. In this article, we focus on EU c...

Figures of crisis: the delineation of (un)deserving refugees in the German media

Abstract: This article examines how borders are discursively reproduced in representations of the ‘refugee crisis’ in the German media. Based on an extensive content and discourse analysis of German press re...

Guanxi as Social Exchange: Emotions, Power and Corruption:

Abstract: After reviewing social exchange theory and identifying emotions as key to exchange relations the article introduces Chinese guanxi as a form of gift exchange, elsewhere treated in terms of its network attributes. The obligatory nature of exchange, noted by Mauss and extensively discussed by Blau, is explained through ‘social sentiments’ that substantiate assurance in exchange. The emotions-complexes renqing and ganqing, basic to guanxi, are outlined. Social esteem as a consequence of participation in exchange distinguishes the latter from bribery, in which coercion predominates. The article advances sociological understanding in these and associated ways by regarding exchange and guanxi as arenas of emotion practices.

‘To Try and Gain an Advantage for My Team’: Homophobic and Homosexually Themed Chanting among English Football Fans:

Abstract: Association football (soccer) fans are becoming increasingly liberal in their attitudes towards homosexuality. However, the continued presence of homosexually themed chanting – normally interpreted as evidence of homophobia by footballing authorities – has received little academic attention. Through 30 semi-structured interviews with 30 male football fans of various English football clubs, this article uses McCormack’s model of homosexually themed language to investigate the prevalence, triggers and interpretation of this chanting. It highlights that, despite unanimous acceptance of homosexuality, all but five participants engaged in homosexually themed chanting. This was predominantly facilitated by the nature of sporting competition and matches involving rival clubs. Alongside a variety of perceived weaknesses, fans interpreted these chants as a way of attempting to benefit one’s team. Accordingly, this research highlights a discursive gap between fans’ inclusive attitudes and their practice of chanting...

Speed-Up Society? Evidence from the UK 2000 and 2015 Time Use Diary Surveys:

Abstract: Using time diary evidence on change in the frequency and distribution of activities from UK time diary data over the 15 years from the turn of the 21st century, we assess whether the thesis of ‘the...

The Social Ordering of an Everyday Practice: The Case of Laundry

Abstract: Sociological contributions to debates surrounding sustainable consumption have presented strong critiques of methodological individualism and technological determinism. Drawing from a range of soci...

Does Unequal Housework Lead to Divorce? Evidence from Sweden:

Abstract: The lack of couple-level data hinders direct exploration of how inconsistencies in couples’ housework reports structure their relationship quality. We address this limitation by applying Swedish da...

Fertile Connections: Thinking across Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Parenting Culture Studies:

Abstract: While studies of ‘parenting culture’ and ‘assisted reproductive technologies’ are now well-established areas of social science scholarship, so far, the potential connections between the two fields have not been significantly explored. Responding to calls for a more ‘processual’ approach to studying reproduction in order to make clearer contributions to sociological theory more broadly, we begin a dialogue between these mutually relevant bodies of literature, highlighting connections and crosscutting findings. We focus on four interlinked themes – Reflexivity, Gender, Expertise and Stratification – and promote a more holistic approach to understanding how children are conceived and cared for within the current ‘Euro-American’ reproductive landscape. By way of conclusion, we draw attention to the contemporary context of ‘anxious reproduction’ and propose directions for future research.

Against Modern Football: Mobilising Protest Movements in Social Media

Abstract: Recent debates in sociology consider how Internet communications might catalyse leaderless, open-ended, affective social movements that broaden support and bypass traditional institutional channels to create change. We extend this work into the field of leisure and lifestyle politics with an empirical study of Internet-mediated protest movement, Stand Against Modern Football. We explain how social media facilitate communications that transcend longstanding rivalries, and engender shared affective frames that unite diverse groups against corporate logics. In examining grassroots organisation, communication and protest actions that span online and urban locations, we discover sustained interconnectedness with traditional social movements, political parties, the media and the corporate targets of protests. Finally, we suggest that Internet-based social movements establish stable forms of organisation and leadership at these networked intersections in order to advance instrumental programmes of change.

Experience as Evidence: The Dialogic Construction of Health Professional Knowledge through Patient Involvement:

Abstract: This article investigates how healthcare professionals articulate the relationship between patient experience and ‘evidence’, creating hybrid forms of knowledge. We propose a Bakhtinian dialogical framework to theorise this process. Drawing on ethnographic work from patient involvement initiatives in England, we show how patient experiences are re-articulated by professionals who add their own intentions and accents in a dialogical process which incorporates diverse forms of knowledge and the conflicting demands of healthcare services. In this process, patient experiences become useful epistemic commodities, helping professionals to respond to workplace pressures by abstracting experiences from patients’ biographies, instrumentalising experiences and privileging ‘disembodied’ forms of involvement. Understanding knowledge as relational and hybrid helps move beyond the assumption that there is a clear dichotomy between ‘objective science’ and ‘subjective experience’. This article illuminates how new knowledge is produced when professionals engage with ‘lay’ patient knowledge, and helps inform the sociology of knowledge production more widely.

Lay Perceptions of Inequality and Social Structure

Abstract: Lay perceptions of social structure and economic distribution have a particular salience in the current era of widening inequalities which has characterised Britain since the 1980s. Research into subjective beliefs has generated puzzles: people underestimate the extent of inequalities, see themselves as being situated ‘near the middle’ irrespective of their objective position, and allegedly hold an a-social view of the underpinnings of socio-economic inequalities. This article presents a new qualitative analysis of lay perceptions of inequality. It does so with a particular focus on context, biographical experience and social change. The qualitative and temporal perspectives reveal that people are more sophisticated analysts of social process, and of their own situatedness within the wider social structure, than often thought. This has implications for sociological understanding but also holds relevance for renewing political options for intervention. Additionally, the evidence offers insights into lived ...

Anti-immigration discourses in Hungary during the ‘crisis’ year: the Orbán government’s ‘National Consultation’ campaign of 2015

Abstract: This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Hungarian government’s National Consultation campaign on ‘immigration and terrorism’ in early 2015. The analysis draws on a discourse-historical approach to illuminate how the language and contents of the consultation draw on the discursive and political repertoires of the post-2010 Orban governments and how, at the same time, they are underpinned by particular elements in the history of migration and diversity in Hungary. The consultation framed immigration as both an economic and security threat and conflated asylum seekers, economic migrants and terrorists, as well as regular and irregular migration. Nevertheless, these discourses would later feed into the government’s response to the large number of asylum seekers who entered the country in the summer of 2015 and would be used to legitimize the actions subsequently taken to tackle what would internationally come to be defined as a ‘crisis’.

Hysteresis : understanding the housing aspirations gap

Abstract: Drawing on qualitative research on housing aspirations in Scotland, the objectives of this article are threefold. Firstly, this article will contextualise the subject of housing aspirations within ...

Policing Research and the Rise of the 'Evidence-Base': Police Officer and Staff Understandings of Research, its Implementation and 'What Works'

Abstract: Despite the pitfalls identified in previous critiques of the evidence-based practice movement in education, health, medicine and social care, recent years have witnessed its spread to the realm of policing. This article considers the rise of evidence-based policy and practice as a dominant discourse in policing in the UK, and the implications this has for social scientists conducting research in this area, and for police officers and staff. Social scientists conducting research with police must consider organisational factors impacting upon police work, as well as the wider political agendas which constrain it – in this case, the ways in which the adoption of evidence-based policing and the related ‘gold standard’ used to evaluate research act as a ‘technology of power’ to shape the nature of policing/research. The discussion draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with police officers and staff from police forces in England.

Beyond Crisis Talk: Interrogating Migration and Crises in Europe:

Abstract: Commencing with some recent examples drawn from Anglophone media, this introductory article reflects on the multiple ways in which crisis and migration have been interconnected over the last decade...

Navigating the Central Mediterranean in a Time of ‘Crisis’: Disentangling Migration Governance and Migrant Journeys:

Abstract: From 2014 to the end of 2016, over 450,000 people crossed from North Africa towards Italy via the Central Mediterranean route. The number of people recorded as dead or missing in the same stretch o...

A contested crisis: policy narratives and empirical evidence on border deaths in the Mediterranean

Abstract: Death and suffering of migrants at Europe’s Mediterranean Sea border has become one of the defining moral and political issues of our time. While humanitarian organizations argue that deaths result...

Who Is Doing the Housework in Multicultural Britain

Abstract: There is an extensive literature on the domestic division of labour within married and cohabiting couples and its relationship to gender equality within the household and the labour market. Most UK research focuses on the white majority population or is ethnicity ‘blind’, effectively ignoring potentially significant intersections between gender, ethnicity, socio-economic position and domestic labour. Quantitative empirical research on the domestic division of labour across ethnic groups has not been possible due to a lack of data that enables disaggregation by ethnic group. We address this gap using data from a nationally representative panel survey, Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study containing sufficient sample sizes of ethnic minority groups for meaningful comparisons. We find significant variations in patterns of domestic labour by ethnic group, gender, education and employment status after controlling for individual and household characteristics.

‘Crisis’ and Migration in Poland: Discursive Shifts, Anti-Pluralism and the Politicisation of Exclusion:

Abstract: This essay illustrates the extent to which crisis has had an impact on public perceptions and discourses of contemporary migration in Poland. We focus on the actual moment of the ‘coming together’ ...

On (not) speaking English:colonial legacies in language requirements for British citizenship

Abstract: This article examines the colonial legacies shaping current language requirements for immigrants applying for settlement or citizenship in Britain. The article argues that common sense understandin...

Into the Interstices: Everyday Practices of Refugees and Their Supporters in Europe’s Migration ‘Crisis’

Abstract: This article investigates the interconnections between migration to Europe for asylum and the multiple ‘crises’ of the border regime that have occurred in recent decades. Drawing on 22 months of et...

Class, culture and culinary tastes: cultural distinctions and social class divisions in contemporary Norway.

Abstract: In this article we analyse class cultures by mapping out differences in ‘original taste’; that is, respondents’ classed preferences for food and drink. By employing Multiple Correspondence Analysis, we produce a relational model of tastes. Using three indicators of social class – occupational class, income and education – we find clear class divisions. The upper and middle classes exhibit diverse and what are typically regarded as ‘healthy’ tastes; this contrasts with the more restricted and what are typically regarded as ‘less healthy’ tastes found among the working classes. Our findings challenge ongoing debates within cultural stratification research where it has become almost usual to demonstrate that the contemporary upper and middle classes exhibit playful tastes for the ‘cosmopolitan’ and the ‘exotic’. We find that upper- and middle-class households also enjoy very traditional foodstuffs. We argue that this illustrates a need for a relational understanding of taste: even the consumption of the trad...

Drifters, Party Boys and Incumbents: The Life Patterns of Male Street-based Sex Workers:

Abstract: This article is based on a qualitative study of male street-based prostitution. It suggests that the street-based sector is more varied, with sellers adopting a wider range of working practices, th...

Ambivalent Mobilities and Survival Strategies of Moroccan and Bangladeshi Families in Italy in Times of Crisis

Abstract: This article investigates the link between the economic crisis and migrant family reunification with a focus on mobility strategies of reunited families. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Morocca...

‘Endurance Work’: Embodiment and the Mind–Body Nexus in the Physical Culture of High-Altitude Mountaineering:

Abstract: The 2015 Nepal earthquake and avalanche on Mount Everest generated one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in modern times, bringing to media attention the physical-cultural world of high-altitude climbing. Contributing to the current sociological concern with embodiment, here we investigate the lived experience and social ‘production’ of endurance in this sociologically under-researched physical-cultural world. Via a phenomenological-sociological framework, we analyse endurance as cognitively, corporeally and interactionally lived and communicated, in the form of ‘endurance work’. Data emanate from in-depth interviews with 18 high-altitude mountaineers, 10 of whom experienced the 2015 avalanche. The article responds to Shilling’s call to address an important lacuna identified in sociological work: the need to investigate the embodied importance of cognition in the incorporation of culture. The concept of endurance work provides a powerful exemplar of this cognitive–corporeal nexus at work as a physical-culturally shaped, embodied practice and mode-of-thinking in the social world of high-altitude climbing.

Towards a Sociology of Institutional Transparency: Openness, Deception and the Problem of Public Trust:

Abstract: Transparency has become the watchword of 21st-century liberal democracies. It refers to a project of opening up the state by providing online access to public sector data. This article puts forward...