Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2003"

Twenty-first century dis-ease? Habitual reflexivity or the reflexive habitus

Abstract: While certain theorists have suggested that identity is increasingly reflexive, such accounts are arguably problematised by Bourdieu's concept of habitus, which – in pointing to the 'embeddedness' of our dispositions and tastes – suggests that identity may be less susceptible to reflexive intervention than theorists such as Giddens have implied. This paper does not dispute this so much as suggest that, for increasing numbers of contemporary individuals, reflexivity itself may have become habitual, and that for those possessing a flexible or reflexive habitus, processes of self-refashioning may be 'second nature' rather than difficult to achieve. The paper concludes by examining some of the wider implications of this argument, in relation not only to identity projects, but also to fashion and consumption, patterns of exclusion, and forms of alienation or estrangement, the latter part of this section suggesting that those displaying a reflexive habitus, whilst at a potential advantage in certain respects, may also face considerable difficulties simply 'being themselves'. 'I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions. Did I do this myself? You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job. There's a self-conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat. Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it's not that you're pretending to be someone else. You're pretending to be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing.' (DeLillo, 1997: 103)

Embodying the environment in everyday life practices.

Abstract: This paper suggests ways in which ‘the environment’ needs to be reconfigured so that it better resonates with how people are experiencing politics, nature and everyday life. Through empirical research on environmental concerns and everyday practices, this paper sketches a framework through which the values associated with contemporary environmentalism might be developed in a more reflexive relationship to wider transformations in society. In particular, the research critically evaluates the standard storyline of a ‘global nature’ under threat and in need of collective action by a global imagined community. In contrast to rhetorics of the global environment, this paper explores ways in which the environment is being embodied, valued and experienced in an array of social practices. The paper further outlines the significance of such embodied practices as significant yet undervalued points of connection for wider, global environmental issues.

Rural Communities and Well-Being: A Good Place to Grow Up?

Abstract: This study looks at young people's accounts of life in communities in rural northern Scotland, and considers in what ways affective and social aspects of community are bound up with well-being, over and above young people's concerns for the future, rural youth transitions, and out-migration. Interviews were held with 15–18 year-olds in four study areas (16 groups, N=60+) and a parallel survey of 11–16 year-olds was conducted in eight study areas (N=2400+). Themes to emerge from the interviews included: opportunities locally, the future and staying on, as well as local amenities and services; but older teenagers also spoke at length about their social lives, family and social networks, and their community, both as close-knit and caring and as intrusive and controlling. Rural communities were seen as good places in childhood, but not necessarily for young people. In parallel with that, the survey data paints a picture where feelings of support, control, autonomy, and attachment were all associated with emotional well-being. Importantly, links between emotional well-being and practical, material concerns were outweighed by positive identifications of community as close-knit and caring; and equally, by negative identifications as intrusive and constraining, where the latter was felt more strongly by young women. Certainly, beliefs about future employment and educational opportunities were also linked to well-being, but that was over and above, and independently of, affective and social aspects of community life. Additionally, migration intentions were also bound up with sense of self and well-being, and with feelings about community life; and links between thoughts about leaving and community life as controlling and constraining were, yet again, felt more strongly by young women. Thus, gender was a key dimension affecting young people's feelings about their communities with significant implications for well-being, and out-migration. The study illustrates the importance of understanding the experiences young people have of growing up in rural areas, and how they evaluate those experiences: particularly, how life in rural communities matters for young people's well-being; and especially, for young women.

Low expectations, sexual attitudes and knowledge: explaining teenage pregnancy and fertility in English communities. Insights from qualitative research

Abstract: In the UK, youthful pregnancy and parenthood is considered an important social and health problem and is the focus of current government intervention. Contemporary policy approaches depict early unplanned pregnancy as a consequence of relative deprivation and a lack of opportunity, leading to ‘low expectations’ among youth, and as the result of sexual ‘mixed messages’ or poor knowledge about contraception. This small scale, qualitative study explores how well these explanations accord with accounts of pregnancy and motherhood provided by young mothers and Teenage Pregnancy Local Co-ordinators in diverse English localities. The results suggest that structural factors may be more important in explaining early pregnancy than those relating to sexual attitudes and knowledge. The tension between the idea of early motherhood as problematic, or even pathological, and early motherhood as rational is also considered.

A (macro) sociology of fear

Abstract: A proper sociological approach to fear is of both empirical and theoretical significance in understanding late modern society. Normally fear has been explored psychologically, as one of the emotions, but recently a sociology of emotions has begun to emerge. Furthermore, there have also been attempts to examine fear macro-scopically, arguing for the existence of a distinctive ‘culture of fear’ in contemporary societies. Furedi's argument to this effect is explored here, suggesting the need for a more systematic theorising of fear in its social contexts. Via an analysis of the elementary characteristics of fear, a model is constructed of the ‘parameters of fear’. This model serves as a guide to the classes of phenomena within which fear is constituted and negotiated. It is also used to further examine the virtues and failings of ‘culture of fear’ approaches to fearfulness in modern societies.

Power and the Production of Subjects: A Genealogy of the New Man and the New Lad:

Abstract: Producing knowledge about men is big business. Where once men represented the invisible, unmarked norm of human existence and experience, today they are hyper-visible as a gendered group, with academics, marketing executives, journalists and others devoting considerable attention to masculinity or masculinities. In the past, forms of masculinity were studied only if they were regarded as a problem, with predictable classed and racialized pictures emerging and frequent moral panics about male youth and the 'dangerous classes'. Since the mid-1980s, however, masculinity in its own right has become a key focus of interest and interrogation as analysts queue up to explore and document shifts in men's values, tastes, aspirations, feelings, beliefs and behaviour. A whole army of cultural commentators now devotes its time and resources to identifying or picking over 'emerging trends' and to analysing, classifying, measuring and monitoring contemporary masculinities. This process, as I shall argue, is not merely a descriptive one, but involves careful selections, exclusions and 'ontological gerrymandering' (Woolgar and Pawluch, 1985) in order to create persuasive accounts about new and changing forms of masculinity. Central to these accounts (whether produced by retail analysts, magazine editors or academics) is the production of new masculine subjects: the 'new father' and the 'superwaif\", 'black macho' and 'soft lad', the 'new boy' and 'modern romantic'<-these are just some of the terms that have been used over the last decade to capture the apparently novel ways in which contemporary manhood is lived. Some of these new masculine subjects disappear quickly, leaving little trace. The 'new boy' and 'modern romantic', although generating many column inches of discussion and analysis, were ephemeral constructions who scarcely had a life outside fashion spreads, and were not widely taken up as ways of representing men's experience. Other subjects, though no less constructed, appear more solid and are certainly more long-lasting. The figure of the 'new father' is a case in point. Born out of the need for social scientists, retail analysts, market

Moving to ‘our’ common ground – a critical examination of community cohesion discourse in twenty-first century Britain

Abstract: The paper focuses on the discourses, recommendations and programmes for facilitating community cohesion in the UK as recorded on the pages of an archive of documents such as: The Community Cohesion...

Social explanation and socialization: on Bourdieu and the structure, disposition, practice scheme

Abstract: The standard narrative of the sociology of education accounts for the perpetuation of relative differentials in class access to education by a structure-disposition-practice scheme in which the central explanatory weight is carried by properties of socialized agents. The dominant scheme of this kind is now that inspired by Bourdieu. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to interrogate the competence of socialization in sociological explanations of social events and processes. The argument adopts a position of scientific and critical realism, and it is suggested that a realist sociology might find in Bourdieu's approach, notwithstanding specific theoretical and conceptual weaknesses, a framework strong enough to sustain the multilevel explanations of inequality/difference necessary in the sociology of education.

Performing Facts: Finding a Way over Scotland's Mountains:

Abstract: There is too much ‘mountain timetable’ these days . . . what I want is a paper—in which I can hear the roaring of the torrent, and see the snows and the brown heather and the clouds flying athwart the blue above the rocky peaks—something that will set my pulses beating; and conjure up dear old Scotland; and what is of no particular interest are some of these papers; all miles and fact and minutes, and endless dissection of the unhappy points of the compass. To me these are really little more interesting than an architect’s specification for building a dry stane dyke.

Everyday incivility: towards a benchmark

Abstract: Commonplace incivility is a topic of longstanding interest within social theory, perhaps best exemplified by Goffman's studies of the interaction order. Nevertheless we know very little about its distribution and expression in everyday life. Current empirical work is dominated by criminological agendas. These tend to focus on more serious and illegal activities rather than minor deviant acts that are simply inconsiderate or rude. The paper reports findings from a focus group study conducted in Melbourne, Australia that set out to benchmark everyday incivilities. The results suggest that perpetrators of incivility have a surprisingly broad social distribution as does the range of locales that might be characterised as 'high risk'. Turning to the work of Putnam and Wolfe, we call for a research focus on low-level incivilities as key symptoms of the state of civic virtue and the strength of moral ties within civil society. Drawing on Virilio, Bauman and Durkheim, it is suggested that the experience of incivility is underpinned by the growth of freedom and movement in contemporary urban settings, and has ambivalent implications that not only invoke boundary maintenance and retreatism, but also offer the possibility for boundary expansion and tolerance of difference.

Locating difference: class, ‘race’ and gender, and the shaping of social inequalities

Abstract: The current interest in difference has arisen in part because of its importance in recent recognition claims, and in part because of a belief that as a concept it can illuminate social diversity. Debates here have stressed the importance of the symbolic in the construction of social relations and social diversity, and have highlighted the relational underpinnings of diversity. In this paper we seek to take forward aspects of such an analysis by examining some issues in the shaping of difference and inequalities in the domains of gender, class and ‘race’. It is our argument that we can gain insights in these domains by better describing and theorising the mutuality of value and material social relations. The paper argues that issues of identity and difference need to be more firmly located within relational accounts of social practice, and in the nature of claims (to recognition and resources) which emerge out of different social locations. By exploring issues of difference in debates on class, gender and ‘race’, we argue that relational accounts must be placed within a perspective that also emphasises the content and patterned nature of (highly differentiated) social relations.

‘Playing’ Doctors and Nurses? Competing Discourses of Gender, Power and Identity in the British National Health Service:

Abstract: This paper adopts a feminist poststructuralist approach to demonstrate the ambiguities and complexities which exist in the relationship between work and subject. Recent studies in organizational sociology have argued that the discourses of work, and changing working cultures, have had a powerful effect on the production of subjectivities. New forms of working behaviour have been constructed as desirable, which often draw on personal qualities such as gender. This paper draws on research conducted with doctors and nurses in the British National Health Service to reveal the ambiguities which exist in the ways in which individuals position themselves in relation to these discourses. The discourses of work and organization are constantly mediated through, and destabilised by, the intertextuality that exists with competing discourses such as those of professionalism, gender, home and performance. Although organizational discourses are clearly powerful in the construction and performance of subjectivities, the interplay between discourses means that these are constantly destabilised and undermined.

Truly embodied sociology: marrying the social and the biological?

Abstract: This paper explores the relation between sociology and biology through an examination of issues relating to the sociology of the body, emotion and health. Arguments for a ‘biological’, and yet social, body are considered before developing a critique of work on the sociology of the biological body. It is argued that there are a number of difficulties with this latter project. Writers working in this area can be seen to have used rather emotional ploys to advance their promotion of a more ‘biologised’, or ‘material-corporeal’, account of the body, emotion and health. In addition though these writers eschew reductionist, naturalist, and dualist arguments, they nevertheless draw on studies that have some or all of these characteristics. Finally a variety of epistemological and methodological difficulties inherent in physiological analysis and in ‘interviewing’ the body are explored. It is concluded that we still remain near the ‘starting point’ of a sociology of the body that interrelates biology and sociology.

Sex, booze and fags: masculinity, style and men's magazines

Abstract: Men's magazines are, it seems, all about sex, booze and fags. A cursory glance at the newsagent shelves stacking magazines for men reveals a raft of blatant front cover images of scantily clad young women and headlining of articles concerning sex or alcohol-induced practical jokes. Images of cigarette smoking are also common, whilst male homosexuality is either rarely or poorly represented. In addition, New Lad, in contrast with New Man, is often deeply concerned not to appear 'faggy' or effeminate and the tobacco, alcohol and sex industries are well represented in terms of the advertising space they occupy. My concern here is to unpack this situation and demonstrate that contemporary men's magazines often invoke issues of lifestyle and sexuality, particularly as they relate to masculinity. Much of this also centres, I will assert, on their uneasy relationship to matters of men's fashion and style. The meteoric rise of the new so-called 'men's magazines' in the UK has also created much interest in academic as well as media circles (Edwards, 1997; Mort, 1996; Nixon, 1996). The fact of their growth is pretty much without contention. As measured in terms of circulation through annual Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) studies and readership figures through National Readership Surveys (NRS), the market for men's magazines in the UK has grown from a mere four titles in 1990, each with a circulation of well under 100,000, to currently at least a dozen titles, depending on one's definition of a 'men's magazine', with top sellers such as FHM (For Him Magazine) hitting circulation figures of 500,000 (Beynon, 2000). In addition, only two titles-Arena launched in 1986 and GQ launched in 1988---existed at all in the I980s. The accuracy of such figures, particularly those related to readerships, are open to question but the overall expansion of this particular market has been undeniable. Further evidence for this expansion is provided in the overall diversification of the market for men's magazines and its increasing tendency to sub-niche within its own niche. For example, Arena, FHM, loaded and Maxim now all produce related fashion titles of their own whilst GQ and FH M have also spawned their own health and fitness magazines. The market has also tended to sub-divide into health-oriented titles such as Men's Health and Men's Fitness, up-market glossies such as GQ, Esquire and Arena, and the slightly more down-

Introduction: Masculinity and men's Lifestyle Magazines:

Abstract: In 1994, a new magazine burst onto an unsuspecting market in Britain. It was brash, funny and sometimes surreal; it was tongue-in-cheek sexist; it celebrated working-class culture, male camaraderie and above all, masculinity. It deliberately presented itself as a challenge to the existing construction of the feministfriendly, sensitive narcissist known as 'new man' embodied in the fashion-based publications founded in the 1980s such as Arena, Esquire and GQ, which were (according to one of its founding editors) by this time 'laughably out of touch' (Southwell, 1998). It was described by the same editor as 'an anti-men's magazine' (Southwell, 1998: 17); its brand of masculinity was quickly dubbed 'new lad' by the media; it was called loaded:

Change and continuity in youth transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western sociology†

Abstract: This paper argues that the evidence from research among young people in post-communist countries vindicates and should consolidate confidence in the Western sociology of youth's conventional transi...

Lifestyle Sport Magazines and the Discourses of Sporting Masculinity

Abstract: It is widely claimed that in late capitalist societies, such as Great Britain, there has been a shift in emphasis away from 'production' to a more fragmented social order, one where culture and consumption have central roles (Jameson, 1991; Lash and Urry, 1987; Hall and Jacques, 1989; Giddens, 1991). In this context the cultural industries and, particularly, new consumer and leisure activities play a more prominent role (Featherstone, 1991: 164). It has been asserted that these sites of consumption offer a potentially broader and more differentiated range of masculine identities from those traditional discourses and practices produced around work or career (Mort, 1988; Nixon, 1996; Edwards, 1997). As has now been well documented, the emergence and explosion of men's fashion and style magazines in the mid 1980s such as GQ, Arena and Cosmo Man, are linked to these wider debates about masculine identities being increasingly centred on and around leisure consumption practices (Nixon, 1996; Edwards, 1997; Mort, 1988; Mort, 1996).The 'New Man' was the ubiquitous media-driven label that embodied these 'caring and sharing' middle-class, white male consumers for whom, it was argued, a narcissistic concern with the body and fashion played a more central role in their sense of self (Craik, 1994: 249). Then the 'New Lad' emerged as a reaction to the 'New Man', a phenomenon centred around football, indie pop music and male 'general interest' or 'lifestyle' magazines such as loaded. FHM and Maxim (see Edwards, 1997; Craik, 1994). Within this context of the centrality of leisure consumption practices in masculine cultures and identities, sport plays an important role. Historically, sport as a physical practice has been so closely identified with men, that it has become one of the key signifiers of masculinity in many western societies. Connell (1995: 54) goes so far as to claim that sport has become 'the leading definer' of masculinity in western culture. However, sport is increasingly experienced as a consumed 'leisure lifestyle', thus the meaning of masculinity is fought over in the playing, spectating and consumption of sport (Tomlinson, 2001; Boyle and Haynes, 2000). One just has to consider the changing nature of football fandom

Self‐starters, can‐doers and mobile phoneys: situations vacant columns and the personality culture in employment

Abstract: This paper speculates on the significance of an apparent increase in the use of personality language in job advertisements in situations vacant columns. The findings of my study appear to reflect b...

A pedigree of the consuming male: masculinity, consumption and the American ‘leisure class’

Abstract: 'Esquire means simply Mister-the man of the middle class. Once it was the fashion to call him Babbitt, and to think of him as a wheelhorse with no interests outside of business. That's very outmoded thinking, however. For today, he represents the New Leisure Class'. (Arnold Gingrich, The Art of Living and the New Leisure Class', promotional pamphlet for the launch of Esquire magazine, 1933, cited in Arnold Gingrich, Nothing But People: The Early Days at Esquire-A Personal History, 1928-1958, New York: Crown, 1971: 102-3).

A passionate pursuit: foxhunting as performance

Abstract: Early in the morning a farmer, dressed in dull green and brown work clothes, a dog at his side, leaves his house and walks quietly along a hedgerow towards a wood. At the edge of the wood he takes two cartridges from his pocket and puts them into his shot gun. He removes the safety catch. With the gun ready he continues slowly and quietly along the edge of the wood—an unobtrusive presence in the landscape. All of his senses alert, his eyes scan the near distance. He is not interested in the occasional pheasant that flaps out of the trees and into the field, nor the rabbits feeding along the hedgerows. His aim, if his aim is true, is to shoot one of the local foxes that might turn their attention to his poultry or lambs.

The rise and fall of the fact/value distinction

Abstract: The paper addresses the problem of the conceptualisation of morality in sociology. The traditional sociological conception of morality was based upon the acceptance of a fact/value dichotomy, imply...

No effeminates please: a corpus‐based analysis of masculinity via personal adverts in Gay News/Times 1973–2000

Abstract: Magazines aimed solely at either gay or heterosexual men can often share more similarities than differences. Both tend to include features based on health, fashion, exercise, consumer goods and sex, an ironic, irreverent style of writing is frequently applied, and they often use attractive semi-clothed male models in advertising or other features. However, for gay men such images can playa dual role. As with heterosexual men, they present aspirational ideals of consumption, grooming, fitness and masculinity which invite the reader to identify with, reject or compare himself to, but gay men may also find the same representations of masculinity to be sexually desirable. The depiction of 'ideal' or new masculinities in gay lifestyle magazines is therefore doubly compelling for the target audience-object cathexis (the desire to possess) merges with object identification (the desire to become). One of the most significant differences between magazines that are aimed at heterosexual men and those marketed towards gay men is that the latter are likely to include a section for personal adverts, allowing its readership to engage socially, romantically or sexually with each other. In the West, the personal advert represents a quest for a romantic partner or perfect mate (Nair, 1992) with partner selection being anticipated via descriptions of the self, other and desired relationship (Erfurt, 1985). Personal columns are a kind of 'colony text' (Hoey, 1986) made up of numerous separate entries which may be categorized in different ways, (eg, men seeking women vs. women seeking men) although the meaning of each entry is not affected by the order in which they appear. The personal advert is a minimalist genre (Nair, 1992), often with non-essential items such as function words being omitted (Bruthiaux, 1994). They tend to have an informal. spoken style, often featuring lexical vagueness (Crystal and Davy,

Reading Men's Lifestyle Magazines: Cultural Power and the Information Society:

Abstract: This chapter is based on an inter-disciplinary research project that investigated the social significance of the recent commercial success of men's 'lifestyle' magazines. The project included an analysis of the visual and verbal content of a range of magazines (including loaded, FHM, Maxim, Men's Health and several other titles), interviews with editorial staff at the magazines and focus group discussions with 15-20 groups of men (and a smaller number of women).' The project aimed to explore what the commercial success of these magazines had to say about changing constructions of masculinity in the 1990s. In this chapter we aim to provide an assessment of the place of men's 'lifestyle' magazines within the information society, casting our analysis in terms of the concept of cultural power. We focus on the economic and cultural significance of the magazines and try to draw out some lessons for those who are seeking to develop a more political response to the magazines. Our analysis is considerably strengthened in this regard by our attempt to capture the public forms of talk that are available to magazine consumers, forms of talk which are significantly drawn upon in the focus group discussions. We aim to provide an analysis of the magazines which focuses upon their ability to make money and to encode popular subjectivities. When we began this project there was very little academic interest in men's magazines, apart from some work by Frank Mort (1988, 1996), Sean Nixon (1993, 1996, 1997) and Tim Edwards (1997). There was, of course, a wellestablished feminist literature on women's magazines including important work by Angela McRobbie (1978, 1991), Janice Winship (1978, 1987), Janice Radway (1987), Joke Hermes (1995) and others. The feminist literature highlighted the contradictory nature of women's magazines (especially for feminist readers). Many women described their guilty pleasure in reading the magazines, enjoying them as a source of entertainment and distraction but conscious, too, that the magazines perpetuated dubious ideas about romantic love, compulsory heterosexuality and other patriarchal values. These ideas of ambivalence and contradiction fit well with our own search for alternative ways of theorizing cultural power that avoid outmoded ideas of dominance and resistance (cf. Stevenson

Working at a marginal 'career': the case of UK social science contract researchers

Abstract: Contract researchers constitute a significant occupational group within the UK higher education system, and the products of their labour are crucial to the research profile of the institutions in which they work and to the sector as a whole. Given the ‘marginality’ of the contract researcher role, with its attendant insecurities and inferior employment conditions in comparison with ‘permanent’ faculty, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively few individuals manage to sustain any continuity of employment resembling a career path. The fact that some researchers do succeed in achieving this is therefore worthy of investigation. This paper examines and charts some of the ways in which contract researchers manage their everyday work routines and construct a presentation of self in order to maximise opportunities for ‘staying in the game’.

Youth and the environmental movement‐symbolic inclusions and exclusions

Abstract: The present study set out to use qualitative interviews in an effort to understand why young people from highly educated groups, especially from ‘non-productive’ sectors of the economy (public serv...

Ambiguous masculinities: heroism and anti‐heroism in the men's lifestyle magazine

Abstract: The focus of this chapter, like many within this book, is upon the identification of an emergent manifestation of masculinity celebrated within and around men's lifestyle magazines and popularly dubbed, 'new lad' (see introduction and other contributions: this volume). The particular approach I wish to adopt here, however, is a discursive one, one that engages in close detail with the workings and strategies of the language of the text. The discourse of men's lifestyle magazines operates through both textual representation and a more dialogic direct address to its (largely) male readers to shore up a certain social group identity in which dominant cultural ideals of masculinity are nurtured and perpetuated. However, whilst the ubiquitous nature of mass media creates the potential for more dominant, hegemonic constructions of gender, commentators on popular culture are frequently able to locate sites of ambiguity within what are frequently fluid, transient and unstable genres. The discussion developed within this chapter, and supported by close textual analysis, will focus on a particular site of tension or ambiguity prevalent in much of the features writing. This tension exists between first, a traditional masculinity within which attributes such as physicality, violence, autonomy and silence are celebrated and, second, a more ironic, humorous, anti-heroic and self-deprecating masculinity. In the course of my discussion I shall debate whether such ambiguity reflects an unwitting schizophrenia at the heart of magazine masculinity, or whether it has a more deliberate and strategic function. In addition, the chapter seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of a linguistic approach within a socio-cultural study and demonstrate how close analysis of the ruptures, contradictions and ambiguities of the text can be revealing of what, at first glance, appears to be a more confident, homogenous and uncomplicated version of gender.