Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2010"
TL;DR: The authors report on a study of mediatised public discourses on nationhood, citizenship, and gender in Britain, and analyses the ways in which these accounts may be utilised in the cultivation of particular kinds of social identities.
Abstract: This article reports on a study of mediatised public discourses on nationhood, citizenship, and gender in Britain, and analyses the ways in which these accounts may be utilised in the cultivation of particular kinds of social identities. We distinguish our approach at the outset from other lines of inquiry to report on a macro level exploration of an event in which these value discourses were operative, namely the national the press reaction to the former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's 2006 comments on the Muslim face-veil or niqab. The article traces and analyses the interactions and intersections of completing but overlapping accounts of nationhood, citizenship, and characterisations of the role of Muslim women. It identifies interdependent clusters of responses that illustrate the ways in which the niqab is a ‘contested signifier’ in contemporary social and political life, and the ways in which nationhood, citizenship, and gender feature prominently in its signification.
121 citations
TL;DR: The concept of living apart together is increasingly recognised and accepted as a specific way of being in a couple as discussed by the authors. But it is not always suitable for all couples, and it is difficult for some people.
Abstract: ‘Living apart together’ – that is being in an intimate relationship with a partner who lives somewhere else – is increasingly recognised and accepted as a specific way of being in a couple. On the ...
111 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the ways in which individuals living in different national contexts value the ideal of a dual earner/dual carer couple at the expense of the male breadwinner model.
Abstract: Drawing on the vast literature concerned with the cultural aspects of gender, this article explores the ways in which individuals living in different national contexts value the ideal of a dual earner/dual carer couple at the expense of the male breadwinner model. Via a comparison of fifteen European countries included in the Family and Gender Roles module of the 2002 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), three attitudinal patterns were identified: the unequal sharing that portrays a male breadwinner norm, the familistic unequal that also endorses a gender-segregated arrangement though with a greater wish for men's involvement in housework and childcare, and the dual earner/dual carer model, which, despite covering nearly 40 per cent of respondents, is very unequally distributed across countries. It is proposed that societal gender cultures are of major importance to an understanding of cross-national variations in attitudes and their relationship with the real forms of gender division of labour. The connection between couples' attitudes and practices is thus examined in order to assess the extent to which support for the dual earner/dual carer model encourages couples to engage in more equal sharing of paid and unpaid work. Findings reveal the importance of the normative dimension insofar as the impact of attitudes on practices seems to depend on the historical pathways of gender cultures and the ways in which they underpin welfare policies and female employment.
103 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the value of privacy as perceived by pupils and the extent to which this is undermined or eradicated by the presence of CCTV cameras in British secondary schools.
Abstract: CCTV is widely acknowledged to be ubiquitous in British urban areas. It is therefore not surprising that its use has seeped into institutions such as the school. As such it is important, perhaps more than ever, to be able to attribute an inherent value to privacy and demonstrate that its infringement facilitated by the burgeoning of technological surveillance practices could have potentially serious consequences for society. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in three secondary schools in the United Kingdom, this paper examines the value of privacy as perceived by pupils and the extent to which this is undermined or eradicated by the presence of CCTV cameras.
80 citations
TL;DR: This article examined worker-client relationships in hairstyling and found that self-employed stylists are highly dependent on clients, rely on deep-acting, enact favours, and are prone to emotional breaking points when they fail to realize their "congealed service".
Abstract: This article examines worker-client relationships in hairstyling. Data are drawn from interviews with 15 hourly-paid and 32 self-employed hairstylists and a self-administered survey. Relations of employment are found to be central to the deployment of emotional labour. Self-employed owner-operators are highly dependent on clients, rely on deep-acting, enact favours, and are prone to emotional breaking points when they fail to realise their ‘congealed service’. In contrast, hourly-paid stylists perform surface acting, resist unpaid favours and experience fewer breaking points. Methodologically this article demonstrates the importance of comparative employment relations analysis (CERA) for exposing the relationship between employment structures and labour process experiences.
80 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the relationship between cultural socialisation, educational attainment and intergenerational social mobility and found that cultural transmission has a positive effect on the prevention of downward mobility among service class children.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between cultural socialisation, educational attainment and intergenerational social mobility. Picking up on debates about the transmission of cultural capital and social advantage, we use data from the Taking Part Survey of England to analyse how far socialisation into cultural activities and encouragement play a role in educational attainment, intergenerational mobility and in the reproduction of class. This survey has unprecedented data on whether respondents had been taken to museums/art galleries, theatre/dance/classical music performances, sites of historic interest, and libraries when they were growing up. This is buttressed by information on how much parents or other adults encouraged the respondents to read books or to be creatively active in different domains of the arts, literature and music. Using these rich measures of childhood socialisation, we can show that part of the effect of parental class on educational attainment is due to the transmission of this kind of cultural capital. Moreover, this transmission also has a direct effect on the level of educational attainment. In a similar fashion, respondents who have experienced a higher intensity of cultural socialisation are more likely to be upwardly mobile, and likewise, cultural transmission has a positive effect on the prevention of downward mobility among service class children. These results are discussed in the light of current issues in British mobility research and its treatment of cultural aspects of class and mobility.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the economic and social research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council(AHRC) respectively.
Abstract: Research supported by the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
65 citations
TL;DR: The principles of an engineering approach to biology are analysed and it is shown how pressures for engineerability, commodifi cation and standardization are all pulling in the same direction: towards a reconstruction of nature which is instrumentalizable and utilizable for the authors' purposes.
Abstract: Synthetic biology is a new scientifi c fi eld which literally aspires to construct nature, by building living things ‘from scratch’. Because of this approach, it challenges our ideas about what we should think of as ‘natural’. An important aspect of how we understand ‘natural’ rests on what we oppose it to (see Keller, 2008a). In synthetic biology the main dichotomy is between the natural and the artifi cial. But other oppositions also become relevant: particularly those between the natural and the social, and the natural and the invented. In what follows, I start with a brief description of synthetic biology and how it distinguishes itself from previous biotechnologies. I analyse the principles of an engineering approach to biology and show how these principles lead to aspirations amongst synthetic biologists to eliminate or reduce biological complexity in their synthetic creations. While some synthetic biologists want to ‘improve’ on nature (ie to make it easier to engineer), others want to replace certain natural phenomena with ‘unnatural’ alternatives. However, sceptics and critics argue that these blatant attempts to reduce complexity will not work, and that nature’s contingency will not be successfully eliminated. I then connect my discussion of synthetic biology to theoretical work by Paul Rabinow and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger on earlier biotechnologies, and discuss their analyses of the imposition of ‘society’ on ‘nature’ that we have seen in previous attempts to re-write and engineer biological systems. I go on to contextualize our understanding of synthetic biology and its construction of nature by considering model organisms and intellectual property, both of which attempt to impose uniform properties of natural entities, and which have the potential to move their objects out of the realm of the natural and into the realm of the artifi cial. In the conclusions I show how pressures for engineerability, commodifi cation and standardization are all pulling in the same direction: towards a reconstruction of nature which is instrumentalizable and utilizable for our purposes. These pressures could have profound consequences for the kinds of living things that are brought into the world by synthetic biology.
61 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that gay men can rely on work friends for different forms of support in helping them to negotiate and sustain a viable sense of self, and that the affirmational support received from work friends is important not only for validating participants' sexual identities, but also identities of class and parenthood.
Abstract: Research shows that friendships are among the most important sources of support for gay men. Despite insights into how friends can be significant providers of emotional, practical and affirmational support, particularly when gay men ‘come out’ or experience discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, scholars have rarely considered the role of work friends in supporting gay men in the workplace. This is remarkable given that work organisations remain challenging arenas for sexual minority employees to fashion a meaningful sense of self. Drawing on in-depth interview data with twenty-eight gay men employed in the UK, this article argues that gay men can rely on work friends for different forms of support in helping them to negotiate and sustain a viable sense of self. The findings show how the gender and sexuality of organisation influences which men and women are available as work friends, and the types of support they might give. Also, the affirmational support received from work friends is important not only for validating participants' sexual identities, but also identities of class and parenthood. The study aims to complicate stereotypes of men's workplace friendships as sources of support used largely for advancing careers and personal gain.
60 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families, and found that race and the recognition of difference play important roles in sibling relationships and in family life.
Abstract: ‘Mixed’ people comprise one of the fastest growing populations in Britain today, and their growth refutes the idea that there exist distinct, ‘natural’ races among people in multiethnic societies, such as Britain. In recent years, a large body of scholarship, both in the US and Britain, has begun to investigate the diverse social experiences and racial identifications of mixed people. In this article, I investigate the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families. What role do race and the recognition of difference play in sibling relationships and in family life more generally? I draw upon a small number of cases to illustrate the diverse ways in which understandings of race, ethnicity, and religion are (or are not) regarded as important in these families. I also consider whether there are group differences in terms of how disparate types of mixed siblings may perceive pressures to identify in particular ways.
52 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that educational achievement in Western societies is related to family background, and that people who have completed university degrees experience the impor-ture of family background in their educational achievement.
Abstract: It is well documented that educational achievement in Western societies is related to family background. Yet we know less about how people who have completed university degrees experience the impor...
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic study of corridors in a large university building, originally built to house local government in the early 20th century, was carried out, focusing on the mobilisation of the corridors in daily, sometimes momentary rearrangements of meaning in an organisation.
Abstract: This paper is based on an ethnographic study of corridors in a large university building, originally built to house local government in the early 20th century. By attending to their huge physical presence in the everyday culture of an institution, the paper shows how corridors matter. Too often invoked as iconic, intangible metaphors, the presence of corridors as cultural materials can be forgotten. Conversely, as incidental – or even detrimental – remnants of past design trends, they are perceived parts of a divisive, hierarchical organisation of space. As the open-plan office, indoor street, forum and atrium displace them in a new design for ‘openness’, the study focuses on the mobilisation of corridors in the daily, sometimes momentary re-arrangements of meaning in an organisation. In conclusion, I discuss how the new architecture of ‘openness’ might be reconfigured through mobile understandings of everyday ‘openings’ and ‘closings’.
TL;DR: In many European countries, cohabitation has become a prevailing practice as mentioned in this paper and Norway is one of the countries leading this trend; co-habitation before marriage is the norm and a majority of couples beco...
Abstract: In many European countries, cohabitation has become a prevailing practice. Norway is one of the countries leading this trend; cohabitation before marriage is the norm and a majority of couples beco...
TL;DR: This article used findings from an ESRC funded project on language and identity in the narratives of Polish people to challenge a narrow approach to language in debates about integration, arguing that decisions about learning languages are influenced by wider concerns of self and other identification rather then simply being issues of instrumental need.
Abstract: In this article I use findings from an ESRC funded project on language and identity in the narratives of Polish people to challenge a narrow approach to language in debates about integration. I argue that decisions about learning languages are influenced by wider concerns of self and other identification rather then simply being issues of instrumental need. I show how research participants viewed speaking Polish as an important part of being Polish, that is, of their identity. They recognised that changing the language they spoke involved questioning the way they presented themselves and how they related to others. I discuss how language was used to differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘others’, including in terms of values and the ways in which these perceptions of difference influenced social interactions.
TL;DR: The authors explored the involvement of H.G. Wells in the early institutional development of sociology in Britain and argued that if sociology embraced the more utopian method of the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, it would inform a greater range of social alternatives for confronting ecological and economic crises.
Abstract: This article explores the involvement of H.G. Wells in the early institutional development of sociology in Britain. It addresses Wells's aspiration to a Chair of Sociology as the context for his claim that that ‘the creation of utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology’, and the implications of a hundred years of suppression of utopianism and normativity within the discipline. It argues that Wells was substantially right, and that if sociology embraced the more utopian method of the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, it would inform a greater range of social alternatives for confronting ecological and economic crises.
TL;DR: This article analyzed and challenged the categories of dependency and independence as they feature in discourses on care for older people in two countries, Austria and the UK, using critical discourse analysis of newspaper extracts and transcripts of focus group discussions.
Abstract: This article analyses and challenges the categories of dependency and independence as they feature in discourses on care for older people in two countries, Austria and the UK. Using critical discourse analysis of newspaper extracts and transcripts of focus group discussions, I demonstrate how independence and self-sufficiency are constructed as ideals for human existence. Being dependent, on the other hand, is seen as the expression of an inferior state of life. Three possible challenges to the ideal of independence in the literature on care are then discussed. The paper shows how, through their focus on empowerment, mutuality and reciprocity, they each reproduce aspects of dependency as anathema to contemporary ideas of personhood, to fall short of a fruitful critical intervention into orthodox discourses on older people and care. In contrast, this article argues for embracing a notion of dependency built upon new conceptualizations of the body, of relating and of the conditions of a good life.
TL;DR: By analysing the Arts Council England survey of 13,300 respondents in 2001-2004, the authors take snapshots of the space of cultural consumption and map its social stratification. Mirroring a redrawn image of...
Abstract: By analysing the Arts Council England survey of 13,300 respondents in 2001–2004 I take snapshots of the space of cultural consumption and map its social stratification. Mirroring a redrawn image of...
TL;DR: The authors explored the ways in which boundaries are dissolved and reproduced in everyday food practices within and between families, and suggested that food is an important medium for symbolic and material boundary work in home based childcare.
Abstract: This article is about family day care and the reproduction of identity at the intersection of public and private domains. It uses mealtimes as a lens to elucidate the social relations which popular fictive kinship ideologies at once suggest and obscure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with childminders in an inner London borough, the paper explores some of the ways in which boundaries – principally of class and ethnicity – are dissolved and reproduced in everyday food practices within and between families. The paper suggests that food is an important medium for symbolic and material boundary work in home based childcare. Describing a continuum from incorporation to segregation, the paper suggests that the ‘objective’ description of home based childcare (as asymmetrical) and the subjective representation (as family like) are not mutually exclusive, but mutually constitutive, constructions.
TL;DR: This article examined the processes and mechanisms in the accumulation of social capital within the family and the immediate community to demonstrate how three sets of interpersonal relationships (parent-child, child-child and between co-ethnic peers) facilitate educational aspirations among a group that has traditionally been portrayed as underachieving.
Abstract: Drawing on research with the Pakistani Muslim ‘community’ in inner-city Bradford, West Yorkshire, this paper critically engages with relevant debates on social capital and educational aspirations. It examines the processes and mechanisms in the accumulation of social capital within the family and the immediate community, to demonstrate how three sets of interpersonal relationships (parent-child, child–child and between co-ethnic peers) facilitate educational aspirations among a group that has traditionally been portrayed as under-achieving.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Sociological Review, which is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com
Abstract: This a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Sociological Review. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Blackwell. The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss lifestyle migration, such as the temporary or permanent movement of European citizens to coastal areas in Southern Europe, widely responds to the freedom of movement that EU citizenship provides to...
Abstract: Lifestyle migration, such as the temporary or permanent movement of European citizens to coastal areas in Southern Europe, widely responds to the freedom of movement that EU citizenship provides to...
TL;DR: Men's attitudes are as relevant as women's to understanding fertility behaviour as discussed by the authors, however, fertility behaviour can only be understood in the context of a package of changes in gender relations and family life.
Abstract: Attitude survey and interview data are mobilised to address neglect of men's contribution to low fertility and wider social change in families and relationships. Men's attitudes are as relevant as women's to understanding fertility behaviour. However, fertility behaviour can only be understood in the context of a package of changes in gender relations and family life. Data from a random sample of men aged 18–49 surveyed in the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey 2005/06 are combined with in-depth interviews conducted in 2007 with 75 men aged 25–44 identified through the Scottish Household Survey as not living in co-resident partnership arrangements. Both datasets encompass the age span conventionally associated with having children and men who were the potential partners of women delaying a first child until their 30s. They allow consideration of the impact of social contact with parents and children on men's fertility intentions and how the role of provider features in men's views about parenting. The interviews focus on men who have fallen out of, or have not entered, co-resident partnerships and examine the relationship between partnering and parenting. In combination the data suggest how men act as a complementary or contradictory downward drag on women's fertility and that their role has been underestimated in understanding the package of family change of which low fertility is a part.
TL;DR: In this article, a critical examination of the category "lone mother" is presented, which tends to be viewed as an identity category by both lay people and social scientists, and this in turn leads to the category becoming reified, while the socially constructed nature of it remains hidden.
Abstract: This paper offers a critical examination of the category ‘lone mother’, which tends to be viewed as an identity category by both ‘lay’ people and social scientists. This in turn leads to the category ‘lone mother’ becoming reified, while the socially constructed nature of it remains hidden. The aim of this paper is to find a way of analyzing the lives of lone mothers without making totalizing claims about these women as individuals, but at the same time without depoliticizing the category ‘lone mother’. I argue that adopting Young's (1995), concept of ‘serial collectivity’ in the study of lone motherhood would enable social scientists to avoid positing that ‘lone motherhood’ is a unified category or the basis of self-understanding, while at the same time being able to make pragmatic political claims regarding the inequalities that lone mothers face. Furthermore, this paper argues for studying ‘lone motherhood’ as a category of practice, focusing on how the category is defined, by whom, and to what ends, a...
TL;DR: The authors explore sociological studies of language as one form of epistemic shift that would enable researchers to apprehend the circulation of power as expressed in routine relations of privilege, as well as apprehend the porous social relations introduced through media old and new.
Abstract: If scholars accept that all knowledge is socially constructed, and historically situated, we must also understand social research methodologies as historically produced social formations that circumscribe as well as produce culturally specific forms of knowledge. In this article I examine some of the ways in which an underlying 19th century philosophy of science constrains the ability of contemporary researchers to examine 21st century cultural complexities. In particular, I discuss how the notion of evidence derived from the physical sciences prevents social sciences from examining a range of phenomena such as routine relations of privilege and contemporary media. Taking up the argument that social sciences need social epistemologies, I explore sociological studies of language as one form of epistemic shift that would enable researchers to apprehend the circulation of power as expressed in routine relations of privilege, as well as apprehend the porous social relations introduced through media old and new.
TL;DR: Li et al. as discussed by the authors surveyed 1,017 rural female migrants in Guangdong factories and found that participants supported filial piety but rejected other aspects of traditional society, instead emphasizing values such as personal ability that contribute to success in modern society.
Abstract: The Chinese communist party dissolved powerful local clans into modular individuals loyal to the central state and easily mobilized for government projects. Now migrants must redefine home and family for an era where government safety nets are no longer reliable and mobility yields economic returns. We discuss female migrant factory worker's attitudes towards home and traditional and modern values and implications for themselves and family who remain behind. Methods: We surveyed 1,017 rural female migrants in Guangdong factories. Measures included the General Health Questionnaire 20 and the Chinese Individual Traditional and Modern Values Scale, as well as other relevant attitudes. Results: Participants supported filial piety but rejected other aspects of traditional society, instead emphasizing values such as personal ability that contribute to success in modern society. These value judgments did not vary with duration of residence in the city. Participants did not sever ties with home or assimilate into urban culture. A case study illustrates contradictions involved in combining mobility, individualism and devotion to distant family. Conclusion: Rural migrants unable to change their legal place of residence maintain psychological and economic ties with their former homes even if they plan not to return.
TL;DR: The authors traces the process by which the British residents of the Lot, a department in rural France, develop a deeper understanding of their new surroundings, while their initial perceptions of the landscape as providing a beautiful view and a backdrop to their everyday lives prompted their migration, once they are living in the French countryside these perceptions subtly change in response to their experiences of life there.
Abstract: This paper traces the process by which the British residents of the Lot, a department in rural France, develop a deeper understanding of their new surroundings. While their initial perceptions of the landscape as providing a beautiful view and a backdrop to their everyday lives prompted their migration, once they are living in the French countryside these perceptions subtly change in response to their experiences of life there. As I argue, it is not simply the case that their initial impressions are replaced with the knowledge gained from their embodied experiences. Indeed, it becomes clear that their idealizations of rural living continue to frame, partially, their understandings of how really to live in rural France; through valorization and imitation of the lives and practices of their French neighbours my respondents lay claim to local belonging. The paper thus demonstrates the ways that imaginings and experience coalesce in the production of a continually renewed understanding of their new location.
TL;DR: The authors argue that genomics frames "nature" ambivalently in ways that are both faithful to and undermining of Enlightenment understandings of nature, and argue that this point signals a distinction within the posthumanist terrain between transhumanism and critical posthumanism.
Abstract: This chapter sets out arguments and histories of posthumanisms to use their tensions as a way to think about ‘nature’ in genomics. I argue that genomics frames ‘nature’ ambivalently in ways that are both faithful to and undermining of Enlightenment understandings of nature. New biotechnological innovations and their associated imaginaries have become the scene for much speculation on the ontological status of the ‘human’. Genomics is paradoxical for the human (and humanism) since on the one hand the human genome project professed to reveal the ‘human’, but, simultaneously, prior assumptions about a notion of human nature appear increasingly fragile in the face of genomic visions of human ‘enhancement’. Yet it would be a considerable mistake to assume that these material incursions upon both ‘nature’ and bodily fl esh have been the prime reason why the ‘human’ has been called into question. I contend that this point signals a distinction within the posthumanist terrain – which is both historical and political – between transhumanism and critical posthumanism. Whilst neither of these terms, as we shall see, encompass a wholly coherent set of ideas and certainly feature differences of note within their terrain, the intention here is to examine their distinction as a useful way to think how ‘nature’ is conceptualized in genomics. We should be careful from the outset when thinking about ‘genomics and nature’ not to settle into a notion of ‘nature’ as somehow separate from ‘culture’ or the ‘human’. I use the term genomics broadly not merely to refer to sequencing projects but also to include related fi elds such as comparative genomics, metagenomics and hybrid embryos. The various constellations of posthumanist thought are invested in rethinking the ‘human’ albeit in different ways. I shall argue that transhumanism is generally faithful to Enlightenment understandings of ‘nature’ in dualist terms, whilst the critical posthuman project generally attempts to unravel dualistic ontology. The term ‘humanism’ itself has various meanings during different historical periods but is characterized by moral ambivalence as both a supposed foundation for human freedom from oppression and superstition as well as a partial and exclusionary discourse. My specifi c deployment here, common to the overlapping fi elds of critical posthumanism and animal studies, is of human-
TL;DR: The British public view asylum-seekers in generally negative terms as mentioned in this paper. Yet whilst there are an abundance of reports and opinion polls that measure levels of hostility in order to fuel political ‘debat...
Abstract: The British public view asylum-seekers in generally negative terms. Yet whilst there are an abundance of reports and opinion polls that measure levels of hostility in order to fuel political ‘debat...
TL;DR: In this article, a feminist analytics part of the newness of the current period too, focusing on some of the specifi cifi factors of the process of change it is concerned with is discussed.
Abstract: Globalization theory sees the processes of change it is concerned with as distinctively new, with a feminist analytics part of the newness of the current period too, focusing on some of the specifi...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated Romanians' immigration to Canada after the fall of the communist regime, focusing on the case of applicants under the "skilled workers and professionals" category.
Abstract: This paper investigates Romanians' immigration to Canada after the fall of the communist regime, focusing on the case of applicants under the ‘skilled workers and professionals’ category. The empir...