Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2011"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the often simplistic dichotomy of bonding and bridging capital needs to be re-appraised and instead offer an alternative way of thinking about these social ties.
Abstract: Within migration studies literature there is a tendency to assume that migrants have ready access to kin and friendship networks which facilitate the migration and settling processes. Through tight bonds of trust and reciprocity, these networks are considered to be sources of social capital, providing a counter-balance to the disadvantages that migrants may encounter in the destination society. This paper argues that more attention is needed to the ways in which migrants access, maintain and construct different types of networks, in varied social locations, with diverse people.
I suggest that the often simplistic dichotomy of bonding and bridging capital needs to be re-appraised and instead offer an alternative way of thinking about these social ties. The distinction between them tends to be understood on the basis of the ethnicity of the people involved – bonding involves close ties with ‘people like us’ while bridging involves links beyond ‘group cleavages’. Insufficient attention has been paid to the actual resources flowing between these ties or the kinds of relationship developing between the actors involved. The nature of these social networks may be better understood by focusing on the relationship between the actors, their relative social location, and their available and realisable resources. Data from a qualitative study of Polish migrants in London is used to illustrate this approach.
365 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that most of the theories we have for understanding the connections between personhood and value reproduce and legitimate the normative, hinging our theoretical imaginary to the dominant symbolic, making proper personhood an exclusive resource predicated on constitution by exclusion; where limits define the norm, the margins the centre and the improper the proper.
Abstract: Theories of the good and proper self (the governmental normative subject, be it a reflexive, enterprising, individualising, rational, prosthetic, possessed self) or even the self produced in conditions not of its own making, such as Bourdieu’s habitus, all rely on ideas about self-interest, investment and/or ‘playing the game’. As people are increasingly expected to publicly legitimate themselves as good and worthy subjects and as capital increasingly enters the spaces of intimacy and bio-politics, we need to consider the limits of our theoretical imaginaries for understanding the value production necessary to the performance of personhood. Specifically, most of the theories we have for understanding the connections between personhood and value reproduce and legitimate the normative, hinging our theoretical imaginary to the dominant symbolic, making proper personhood an exclusive resource predicated on constitution by exclusion; where limits define the norm, the margins the centre and the improper the proper. How then can we understand how people who are excluded from the possibilities of accruing and attaching value to themselves, who are positioned outside of the dominant symbolic as the constitutional limit for the proper self or as the zero limit to culture, develop value/s? Drawing upon three different empirical research projects the paper builds on my previous critique of the self as a classed concept to develop a different perspective on value. It argues that an analysis of autonomist working class sociality offers us ways to imagine personhood and person value that are often imperceptible to the bourgeois gaze.
268 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the pragmatist contribution of John Dewey provides a particularly useful resource with which to engage with the subject of valuation, and the usefulness of a pragmatic stance in the understanding of financial valuation today.
Abstract: The sociological understanding of valuation often starts with an idea of value as something that something has by virtue of how people consider it (that is, it is socially constructed, a convention, a social representation, a projection). At some point, however, analysis also often draws a contrast between this sort of appraisal and some other type of value that the thing may have as a result of its own condition (what it costs, how it is made, with what kind of labour, money and materials, what it is worth in relation to objective standards and fundamental metrics). Dissatisfaction with this binary approach has been expressed in various quarters, but the pragmatist contribution of John Dewey provides a particularly useful resource with which to engage with the subject. This article reviews some aspects of this dissatisfaction, with a focus on the pragmatist idea of valuation considered as an action. I discuss this idea in relation to financial valuation, referring in particular to early pedagogical materials on corporation finance elaborated in the context of the professionalization of business administration. Finally I elaborate on the usefulness of a pragmatist stance in the understanding of financial valuation today.
171 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how social capital aids in post-disaster community recovery and redevelopment, and examines the role of social capital in postdisaster recovery and reuse. But their work focused on social capital and post-Disaster recovery has tended to focus on social...
Abstract: This paper examines how social capital aids in post-disaster community recovery and redevelopment. While previous studies on social capital and post-disaster recovery have tended to focus on social...
140 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a figurational methodological approach is proposed to illuminate contemporary discussions of the relationship between theory and data, and the relationship among theory and the data, including multilevel analysis, multi-level analysis, process-produced data, longitudinal research, and methods of historical research.
Abstract: This paper suggests that Norbert Elias's conception of process-oriented methodology consists of four stages: (1) explicating the researcher's theoretical and personal perspectivity; (2) reconstructing the figuration's rules and social structure using standardized data; (3) analysing the individual's placement within, perception of and ability to change the figuration, using open-ended data, and; (4) exploring the figuration's sociogenesis, using process-produced data. Having explicated this figurational methodological approach we will demonstrate how it can be used to illuminate contemporary discussions of: (a) the relationship between theory and data; (b) mixed methods research; (c) multi-level analysis; (d) process-produced data; (e) longitudinal research; and (f) methods of historical research.
126 citations
TL;DR: This article used Bourdieu's theory of habitus to explain the different food and eating practices undertaken by families with young teenagers, and found that everyday behaviours are still bounded by distinctions of taste according to social position.
Abstract: Drawing on two qualitative studies which looked at diet, weight and health from a social class perspective, we use Bourdieu's theory of habitus to help explain the different food and eating practices undertaken by families with young teenagers. Whilst the families displayed considerable reflexivity when making decisions about what to eat on a daily basis, the analysis highlighted that everyday behaviours are still bounded by distinctions of taste, according to social position. The paper includes an examination of the relationships between different forms of capital and whether form or functionality is prioritised within families. We show the importance of temporal frameworks when interpreting classed food and eating practices.
120 citations
TL;DR: Plasticity as recombination becomes not only a radical challenge to determinist assumptions about the brain-body in Western thought, it becomes also a forceful element of its own regeneration and actualization.
Abstract: Every epoch has its brain. The embodied brain seems to be today at the forefront of attempts to establish post-positivistic approaches in social science and social theory as well as non-reductionist conceptions of the brain and body in neuroscience, developmental science and psychology. But embodiment not only challenges prevalent epistemic and cultural assumptions in these disciplines; it also opens avenues for exploring the plasticity and the emergent epigenetic nature of the brain and body. Plasticity occupies the brain-body imaginary of today's epoch. At the heart of the imaginary of plasticity lies the possibility of recombining brain-body matter and understanding the making of ecologically dependent morphologies in a non-determinist manner. But plasticity as recombination becomes not only a radical challenge to determinist assumptions about the brain-body in Western thought, it becomes also a forceful element of its own regeneration and actualization.
64 citations
63 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore Foucault's work from the period around 1967-9 on the non-relation to consider how he engaged with the question of seeing/saying that Deleuze identifies as a key problematic in his work.
Abstract: Foucault's work on the museum is partial and fragmentary but provides an interesting opportunity through which to explore issues of power, subjectivity and imagination. Following a discussion of Deleuze's reading of Foucault and his introduction of the issue of diagram as a way of understanding the discursive and visual operation of power, the paper explores some of Foucault's work from the period around 1967–9 on the non-relation to consider how he engaged with the question of seeing/saying that Deleuze identifies as a key problematic in his work. Through analysis of Foucault's discussions of the themes of the outside, heterotopia and the work of the painter Manet, in the context of the museum, the paper explores how power operating through the diagram of the museum allows us to understand the space of imagination as one in which subjectivity is constituted.
58 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Latour's philosophy of social science demands an absolute abandonment of theory in all its forms, proposing instead to simply ‘go on describing' and employing versions of common sense explanation and pragmatic-constructivist theory to make ends meet.
Abstract: An important philosopher and anthropologist of science, Bruno Latour has recently outlined an ambitious programme for a new sociological empiricism, in continuation of his actor-network-theory (ANT). Interrogating issues of description, explanation and theoretical interpretation in this ‘sociology of associations’, we argue that certain internal tensions are manifest. While Latour's philosophy of social science demands an absolute abandonment of theory in all its forms, proposing instead to simply ‘go on describing’, he is in practice employing versions of common sense explanation and pragmatic-constructivist theory to make ends meet. The core of this tension, we claim, can be located in Latour's meta-theoretical commitments, in effect obscuring important ways in which human subjects employ things, effects and symbols beyond their simple, ‘empirical’ existence. To illustrate these claims, we deploy the example of how morality works in social life, and coin the term quasi-actant, in allusion to the Latourian actant, to better understand such processes. Our overall criticism of ANT is immanent, aiming at the re-introduction of what we dub ‘virtual theory’ into Latourian empiricism, thus further strengthening what remains one of the most promising contemporary attempts to reinvigorate the sociological enterprise.
58 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites, conducted in 2000, is presented.
Abstract: This paper offers an analysis of social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites, conducted in 2000. Separating between objectified, institutionalised, embodied and inherited social capital, we argue in favor of a Bourdieu-inspired approach, which necessitates an analysis of the relations between social capital and the other forms of capital. In order to explore these relations, and also patterns of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the field, we use specific multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical cluster analysis. This allows us to combine the description of network relations with a more finegrained analysis of capital structures. Firstly, we find that the level of institutionalised social capital varies from one fraction of the Norwegian elite to another. Political parties and business leaders are the most connected to other sectors, while church leaders are the least connected. Secondly, the range of networks established through previous work experiences is related to field seniority. The global volume of institutionalised social capital is, however, related to the opposition between political/organisational positions and judicial/military positions. Thirdly, the figurations of highest endogamy are situated in the religious field, and to a lesser extent, in the scientific fields, and in the police and the judicial sector. Finally, the 'core of the core' is defined by actors who are strongly interconnected inside what is called "the tripartite system", with a high level of multipositionality and intersectorial connections. The paper concludes by emphasising the need to examine the familial and historical dimensions of various social capital accumulation patterns, capital compositions and conversion strategies, claiming that this will help us to better understand the long term formation of stable elite positions and elite dynasties.
TL;DR: The Fordist economy was marked by what David Stark calls a Parsonian Compromise in which economic value and other values were clearly separated, in theory as well as in practice as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Fordist economy was marked by what David Stark calls a Parsonian Compromise in which economic value and other values were clearly separated, in theory as well as in practice. Today this is chan...
TL;DR: The authors argue that male customers, familiar with the norms of consumer culture, assess the erotic, aesthetic and emotional labours performed by female workers to make judgements of service quality which suggests that the feminised "good worker" is defined as professional when they disguise the market transaction.
Abstract: This paper argues that sociologists interested in service work in consumer culture should pay attention to customers' understandings and accounts of their experience and participation in service encounters. It takes the market for sex as a case study and counters the neglect of customers within the study of service work by analysing customer service reviews of paid-for sex published on a UK website, Punternet. It argues that male customers, familiar with the norms of consumer culture, assess the erotic, aesthetic and emotional labours performed by female workers to make judgements of service quality which suggests that the feminised ‘good worker’ is defined as professional when they disguise the market transaction.
TL;DR: A simple phrase takes its meaning from a given context, and already makes its appeal to another one in which it will be understood; but, of course, to be understood it has to transform the context as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A simple phrase takes its meaning from a given context, and already makes its appeal to another one in which it will be understood; but, of course, to be understood it has to transform the context ...
TL;DR: The role of statistics and mathematics in market calculation of life insurance is both less and more than it seems as mentioned in this paper, and this is manifest in the history of industrial life assurance, an industry with a phenomenally successful track record in the mass enrolment of consumers.
Abstract: Drawing upon the historical relationship between statistics, probabilistic reasoning and life insurance, the article argues that mathematical calculation played a necessary but limited role in making markets for life insurance. Insuring publics have been fairly consistently cautious in the use of probabilistic and statistical reasoning to inform investment in life insurance. In this they follow a pattern set by early insurance companies who themselves were slow to alter their commercial practices in line with emerging knowledge. I examine some of the reasons for this glacial pace and some of the ambiguities on which statistical ‘certainties’ were built as part of an argument that the role of statistics and mathematics in market calculation is both less and more than it seems. This is manifest in the history of industrial life assurance, an industry with a phenomenally successful track record in the mass enrolment of consumers. Unlike their predecessors, industrial companies disdained swamping their target markets with probabilistic arguments in favour of a very different sort of argument that, nevertheless, carried a trace of statistical thinking with it. This trace came in the form of ‘good, average men’, the agents who became industrial insurance’s core marketing device and who translated the essentials of a statistically informed product into a more palatable, more calculable form.
TL;DR: The authors examines the work that measures and values do in policy in the context of an epochal change in the relations between knowledge and policy in Australia and tells a story of successive attem
Abstract: This paper examines the work that measures and values do in policy in the context of an epochal change in the relations between knowledge and policy in Australia I tell a story of successive attem
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that despite what we might like to think about the subtle nuances involved in peer review judgments, a fairly astonishing 83% of the variance in outcomes can be predicted by some fairly simple "shadow metrics": quality of journals in the submission, research income per capita and scale of research activity.
Abstract: The performative co-construction of academic life through myriad metrics is now a global phenomenon as indicated by the plethora of university research or journal ranking systems and the publication of ‘league’ tables based on them. If these metrics are seen as actively constituting the social world, can an analysis of this ‘naturally occurring’ data reveal how these new technologies of value and measure are recursively defining the practices and subjects of university life? Planning an RAE 2008 submission in Sociology required anticipation of how a panel of 16 peers would evaluate 39 institutions by weighted, relative worth of: aggregated data from 1,267 individuals who, between them cited a total of 3,729 ‘outputs’; the detailed narrative and statistical data on the research environment; and a narrative account of academic ‘esteem’. This data provided such institutional variables as postgraduate student numbers, sources of student funding, and research income from various sources. To evaluate the ‘quality of outputs various measures of the ‘impact’ and/or ‘influence’ of journals, as developed from the Thomson-Reuters Journal Citation Reports, was linked to the data. An exploratory modeling exercise using these variables to predict RAE 2008 revealed that despite what we might like to think about the subtle nuances involved in peer review judgments, it turns out that a fairly astonishing 83% of the variance in outcomes can be predicted by some fairly simple ‘shadow metrics’: quality of journals in the submission, research income per capita and scale of research activity. We conclude that measuring the value of sociology involves multiple mutual constructions of reality within which ever more nuanced data assemblages are increasingly implicated and that analysis of this data can make explicit some of the parameters of enactment within which we operate in the contemporary academy.
TL;DR: The authors explored the concept of the social imaginary as a means for understanding how bodies and worlds interact in the production of therapeutic spaces, through an engagement with Foucault's writing on subjectivation and Spinoza's theory of knowledge and the imagination.
Abstract: This paper explores the concept of the social imaginary as a means for understanding how bodies and worlds interact in the production of therapeutic spaces. The ‘body that imagines’ is discussed through an engagement with Foucault's writing on subjectivation and Spinoza's theory of knowledge and the imagination. This focus on the ‘body that imagines’ allows a consideration of social imaginaries as processual and collective entities, and reveals how imaginaries are worked on and through, and invested in affectively by bodies. Two case studies consider the employment and negotiation of social imaginaries in constituting a relation to the self through the embodied experience of walking along a coastal footpath. These imaginaries contribute to a therapeutic framing of specific assemblages of bodies and landscapes. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the subject's capacity to work with and through imaginaries is central to both the production of meaningful space and a politics and ethics of the self.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies and study the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real-time computing ma cation.
Abstract: This study addresses the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies. Specifically, the article studies the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real time computing ma ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that Emile Durkheim's sociology contains within it a theory of society and religion as a form of embodied intoxication that is implicit in his writings on effervescent assembles.
Abstract: In this paper we argue that Emile Durkheim's sociology contains within it a theory of society and religion as a form of embodied intoxication that is implicit in his writings on effervescent assemb...
TL;DR: This article argued that the organization of the contemporary world is beyond both social facts and social meaning and that questions of measure and value should not and cannot be assigned to the sociological past.
Abstract: Issues of measure and value and the relations between the two have inhabited the heartland of sociology since its inception. This continues to be the case even as many commentaries on the current state of the discipline position sociology as occupying a space beyond such concerns. Thus, while many of the texts now recognized as constituting the sociological canon wrestled with questions of how and if sociology could be defi ned by its abilities to measure, record and document aspects of the social, and of how and if such measurements might be entangled with values, much contemporary sociological commentary appears to foreclose these questions by proposing that the organization of the contemporary world is beyond both social facts and social meaning (Law, 2004; Law and Urry, 2004). But it is the contention of this Special Issue that questions of measure and value should not and cannot be assigned to the sociological past. This is so not least because while the contemporary world may not be organized and ordered via a separation of reality and representation, facts and values, the concrete and the abstract, and is not straightforwardly amenable to either the methods of positivism or constructionism, it is also one in which there is a proliferation of information, data, calculative and other research instruments, measurements and valuations. The explosion in the production and circulation of information and data, including its archiving and manipulation, and the role of search engines, data mining systems, sensing systems, logging software and tracking and tagging devices has been noted by a number of writers (see, for example, Terranova, 2004; Thrift, 2008), but of particular signifi cance for sociology is that much of this data is described as ‘social’ data, sometimes but not only produced in social media. In short, there is an ongoing expansion of the social by way of techniques of mediation, measurement and valuation. Commercial organizations, for example, now routinely produce customer and user profi les by assembling information on tastes, preferences, ‘likes’, ratings and lifestyles, which in turn are manipulated with powerful research tools for a range of purposes. Indeed, armed with such data, commercial organizations – rather than sociologists – are now held by some to be at the cutting edge of social analysis, defi ning, for
TL;DR: The meetingization of society as a central aspect of civilizing processes is the theme of this article as mentioned in this paper, which refers to a long-term social process: as larger numbers of people become mutually dependent over larger areas and/or differences in power decrease between people, an increased number of problems needs to be solved through talking and decision-making in meetings which require an everincreasingly precise, more equal and more embracing regulation of impulses and short-lived affects.
Abstract: The meetingization of society as a central aspect of civilizing processes is the theme of this article. This term refers to a long-term social process: as larger numbers of people become mutually dependent over larger areas and/or differences in power decrease between people, an increased number of problems needs to be solved through talking and decision-making in meetings which require an ever-increasingly precise, more equal and more embracing regulation of impulses and short-lived affects. This ‘compulsion to meet’ is less well developed when the networks of mutual dependence are smaller and less stable, and/or the balances of power are more unequal.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors start from the standpoint that academic freedom is a necessary precondition to sociological imagination that challenges and defies the status quo, and chart the genealogy of universities from academically free, but socially exclusive, institutions to their present state, using the history of higher education in the UK as a case study to consider the prospects for universities and academics within them to contribute to a vibrant and sustainable defiant sociological research imagination.
Abstract: This paper starts from the standpoint that academic freedom is a necessary precondition to sociological imagination that challenges and defies the status quo. In the introduction, we consider the legacy of sociology as praxis – intended not merely to understand, but to change the world. We then move on to conceptualise academic freedom as requiring formal, infrastructural and psychic freedoms. We then chart the genealogy of universities from academically free, but socially exclusive, institutions to their present state, using the history of higher education in the UK as a case study to consider the prospects for universities and academics within them to contribute to a vibrant and sustainable defiant sociological research imagination and the consequences of their failure to do so. We finish with a manifesto for the reinvigorating of a defiant sociological imagination building on the radical traditions we have referred to above.
TL;DR: This article explored local interpretations of English and Englishness using qualitative interviews with white majority interviewees in three locations in England, and found that Englishness is defined by the majority of interviewees as:
Abstract: Who, or what, is English? Drawing on qualitative interviews with white majority interviewees in three locations in England, this article explores local interpretations of English and Englishness. T...
TL;DR: In his theory of civilizing processes Elias drew attention, albeit obliquely, to the interweaving connections between ecological, biological, social and psychological processes operating at a variable level.
Abstract: In his theory of civilizing processes Elias drew attention, albeit obliquely, to the interweaving connections between ecological, biological, social and psychological processes operating at a varie...
TL;DR: Rath et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the personal life of gay and lesbian people and of heterosexual spouses and found substantial, but not unambiguous, improvement in terms of equality, openness and diversity over the period.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a fundamental problem with individualisation theories – the assumption that contemporary personal lives are radically new and different from those in the past. This is a particularly important issue for individualisation theories because they essentially depend on the idea of epochal, even revolutionary, historical change. Empirically, I examine the experience of personal life in Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s (where a number of excellent sources exist) and compare it with today. Looking first at the personal life of gay and lesbian people, and of heterosexual spouses, I find substantial, but not unambiguous, ‘improvement’ – in terms of equality, openness and diversity – over the period. But this improvement does not necessarily mean transformation in how people think about their personal lives and how they ought to conduct them. The paper goes on, therefore, to examine ‘tradition’ and ‘individualisation’ through the lens of ideas around extra-marital sex and divorce. Rath...
TL;DR: Based on an analysis of manners books in four Western countries since 1890, the authors describes how "civilizing processes" have continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and describes how 'civilising processes' have continued.
Abstract: Based on an analysis of manners books in four Western countries since 1890, this paper describes how ‘civilizing processes’ have continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The paper first...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors return to C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination to make an argument about the crisis of sociological method and theory today, and argue that innovative conceptual work must lie at the heart of future sociological thinking if it is to move beyond the parallel traps of what Mills calls abstracted empiricism and grand theory.
Abstract: This paper returns to C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination to make an argument about the crisis of sociological method and theory today. Mills' famous text opens with a stinging critique of abstracted empiricism and grand theory on the grounds that they fetishize either methods or concepts. It is argued that Mills' critique can be applied to current sociological practices and thinking. The first part of this paper centres on questions of method, and reads between Mills' critique of abstracted empiricism and a recent debate over what Mike Savage and Roger Burrows call the ‘coming crisis of empirical sociology’. In the light of this, it is argued that two crises currently haunt empirical sociology: a crisis of imagination and measurement. The second part of the paper then moves to the analysis of what Mills calls ‘grand theory’. Here, two parallel crises are identified: a generational crisis within social theory that is tied in turn to what might be called a crisis of the concept. The conclusion of the paper returns to Mills in order to rethink his vision of the promise or value of sociology. It is argued that innovative conceptual work must lie at the heart of future sociological thinking if it is to move beyond the parallel traps of what Mills calls abstracted empiricism and grand theory.
TL;DR: This article explored the complex relationship between religious and national identities in Britain, using data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes Survey and found that Christians have cultural significance for national identity primarily as a proxy for ethnic identity.
Abstract: The relationship between religion and national identity is a contested topic in public debates about cultural diversity and immigration. In sample surveys only a minority the British population identify themselves as belonging to a Christian religion, and far fewer practise their faith. Nevertheless, nearly a quarter of the population think it is important to be Christian to be truly British. This study explores the complex relationships between religious and national identities in Britain, using data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes Survey. Three different forms of national identity were identified through factor analysis: civic-symbolic, cultural-aesthetic and ethnic national identity. Ethnic national identity is the only dimension of national identity that is positively associated with thinking it is important to be Christian to be British. While churchgoing Christians are more likely to feel national in response to secular cultural symbols, they are less likely to associate religion with nationality than those with a nominal Christian affiliation. The results indicate that Christianity has cultural significance for national identity primarily as a proxy for ethnic identity.
TL;DR: For many women, the most fundamental reasoning in their decision to breastfeed to full term is that it simply ‘feels right in their heart,’ as revealed in the accounts and practices of the people we work with.
Abstract: This article makes a contribution to discussions around ‘affect’ in the social sciences (Clough and Halley, 2007; Connolly, 1999; Massumi, 2002). It emerges from a research project involving a network of mothers – in London – who breastfeed their children to ‘full term’. Typically, this would be up to the age of three or four, though ranged, in this case, to between one and eight years old. For many women, the most fundamental reasoning in their decision to breastfeed to ‘full term’ is that it simply ‘feels right.’ The article therefore explores anthropological approaches to the ‘feelings’ that embodied experiences generate, as revealed in the accounts and practices of the people we work with (whether at the physiological, emotional or moral levels). It considers various means of describing the feelings experienced by women during of long-term breastfeeding – such as ‘hormones’, ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’– but ultimately argues for a theoretical framework of ‘affect’ to incorporate best the combined physiological and moral aspects of ‘doing what feels right in my heart,’ so critical to women's perceptions of themselves as mothers.