Showing papers in "The Sociological Review in 2014"
TL;DR: One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials as discussed by the authors, and it is often suggested that this growth is somehow...
Abstract: One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials. It is often suggested that this growth is somehow...
255 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is suggested that the current problematization of planetary boundary conditions might be indicative of the emergence of a new kind of geologic politics that is as concerned with the temporal dynamics and changes of state in Earth systems as it is with more conventional political issues revolving around territories and nation state boundaries.
Abstract: Recently, earth scientists have been discussing the idea of the ‘Anthropocene’ – a new geologic epoch defined by human geological agency. In its concern with the crossing of thresholds in Earth systems and the shift into whole new systemic states, the Anthropocene thesis might be viewed as the positing of a disaster to end all disasters. As well as looking at some of the motivations behind the Anthropocene concept, this article explores possible responses to the idea from critical social thought. It is suggested that the current problematization of planetary ‘boundary conditions’ might be taken as indicative of the emergence of a new kind of ‘geologic politics’ that is as concerned with the temporal dynamics and changes of state in Earth systems as it is with more conventional political issues revolving around territories and nation state boundaries: a geo-politics that also raises questions about practical experimentation with Earth processes.
152 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as the authors have known them.
Abstract: In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of bio...
149 citations
TL;DR: This paper takes a holistic approach to violence, extending the definition from that commonly in use to encompass domestic violence and sexual violence, and operationalizes that definition by using data from the latest sweep of the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Abstract: Sociological and criminological views of domestic and gender-based violence generally either dismiss it as not worthy of consideration, or focus on specific groups of offenders and victims (male youth gangs, partner violence victims). In this paper, we take a holistic approach to violence, extending the definition from that commonly in use to encompass domestic violence and sexual violence. We operationalize that definition by using data from the latest sweep of the Crime Survey for England and Wales. By so doing, we identify that violence is currently under-measured and ubiquitous; that it is gendered, and that other forms of violence (family violence, acquaintance violence against women) are equally of concern. We argue that violence studies are an important form of activity for sociologists.
83 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse the temporal politics of economic disaster associated with prospective oil exploration in the African Atlantic island state of Sao Tome and Principe (STP) and call this politics the "not yet" of disaster.
Abstract: Here, I analyse the temporal politics of economic disaster associated with prospective oil exploration in the African Atlantic island state of Sao Tome and Principe (STP). I call this politics the ‘not yet’ of disaster – a temporality in which future disaster has effects in the present. The theories and practices of social scientists, global policy institutions, and advocacy groups have contributed to an ontology of oil as a disastrous matter that may cause a ‘resource curse’. Focusing on STP's anticipated oil resources, I ask what political forms, objects and effects are generated by what some consider a disaster in the making. I trace the role of anticipation as a specific temporal disposition, particularly among Santomean state officials and members of civil society, which substitutes fresh certainties and uncertainties about what oil might bring. These include suspicions and uncertainties regarding the operations of anticipation itself. Suspicion, I suggest, is not the target of anticipation but implicated in its practice and may even call it into doubt, thus redirecting anticipation against itself.
81 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the recent interest in disasters is not because there are more disasters, but because of two recent developments within the social sciences: first, a focus on rupture rather than on continuity and second, a focusing on materiality.
Abstract: What is the relationship between politics and disasters and how does this relate to the recent boom in disaster studies? The introduction to this volume argues that the recent interest in disasters is not because there are more disasters, but because of two recent developments within the social sciences: first, a focus on rupture rather than on continuity and second, a focus on materiality. Disasters are the intersection of these changes. Disasters are ruptures of society and thus inherently political. They provide a particular kind of rupture, one which does not simply affect values and norms, but the material backup of society and its material infrastructure. From this starting point, the article discusses two movements of how to relate disasters and politics: disasters as producing politics and politics as producing disasters. The former begins with disasters and considers how they acquire the power to recompose the world. Disasters from this point of view not only produce politics, but a particular kind of (cosmo-)politics that deals with how humans relate to technology and nature. The latter begins with politics and considers how politics produces disasters. Here, as for example in preparedness, risk assessment and state of exception, politics is the productive force and disasters become means to legitimate, produce and arrive at certain politics.
66 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the body has always known war, and that it is to the corporeal that we can turn in an attempt to develop a language to better speak of its myriad violences and its socially generative force.
Abstract: While sociology has historically not been a good interlocutor of war, this paper argues that the body has always known war, and that it is to the corporeal that we can turn in an attempt to develop a language to better speak of its myriad violences and its socially generative force. It argues that war is a crucible of social change that is prosecuted, lived and reproduced via the occupation and transformation of myriad bodies in numerous ways from exhilaration to mutilation. War and militarism need to be traced and analysed in terms of their fundamental, diverse and often brutal modes of embodied experience and apprehension. This paper thus invites sociology to extend its imaginative horizon to rethink the crucial and enduring social institution of war as a broad array of fundamentally embodied experiences, practices and regimes.
62 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the history of how the status and authority of media institutions over the past century have been entangled with wider claims about social knowledge and the order of societies, and discussed the relationship between media institutions and social knowledge.
Abstract: This lecture reviews the history of how the status and authority of media institutions over the past century have been entangled with wider claims about social knowledge and the order of societies....
58 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative study of young women located in further education and contemplating their futures under New Labour, locating how the political rhetoric of aspiration gets institutionalized within school practices; how it intersects with maternal expectations and practices of involvement; and how these are lived and managed by subjects located in different positions in class-inflected social space.
Abstract: This paper engages with the subjective experience of ‘doing’ aspiration, teasing out the psychic and social costs that accompany this as a classed process. It draws on a qualitative study of young women located in further education and contemplating their futures under New Labour, locating how the political rhetoric of aspiration gets institutionalized within school practices; how it intersects with maternal expectations and practices of involvement; and how these are lived and managed by subjects located in different positions in class-inflected social space. In attending to the tangled web of institutional, intergenerational and affective practices which shape young women's aspirations, the paper seeks to interrupt the celebratory and simplistic rhetoric of aspiration that characterizes the contemporary socio-political register of neoliberalism. As these ideals become further entrenched by the current Coalition government, there is an even greater urgency for such sociological enquiries.
56 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that violence and democracy may be mutually constitutive in countries of the global South, with their particular histories of violence, power, inequality and contestation.
Abstract: Violence and democracy are generally treated as antithetical. However, this article argues for the concept of violent democracy using the South African case to explore the ways in which violence and democracy may be mutually constitutive in countries of the global South, with their particular histories of violence, power, inequality and contestation. The article draws on research into intra-elite conflict and violence, as well as subaltern collective violence, to demonstrate the ways in which democratic institutions generate and shape violent practices, while violence in turn limits the access and rights promised by democracy. The article explores violence and elections, violence within organizations, political assassination, and the subversion of the state institutions of the rule of law to show how democratic institutions generate and shape violence, and violence in turn restricts and undermines the workings of democracy – which at the same time provides mechanisms for constraining and challenging viole...
53 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose to study protest camps as a distinct new field of research in social movement studies and develop a research approach based on the analysis of infrastructures used to make protest camps.
Abstract: Recently protest camps have emerged around the world as a highly visible form of protest. Part and parcel of new social movement activism for over 40 years, they are important sites and catalysts for identity creation, expression, political contention and incubators for social change. While research has punctually addressed individual camps, there is lack of comparative and comprehensive research that links historic and contemporary protest camps as a unique area of interdisciplinary study. Research on the phenomenon to date has remained punctual and case based. This paper proposes to study protest camps as a distinct new field of research in social movement studies. Existing literature is critically reviewed and framed in three thematic clusters of spatiality, affect and autonomy. On the basis of this review the paper develops a research approach based on the analysis of infrastructures used to make protest camps. We contest that an infrastructural analysis highlights protest camps as a unique organizational form and transcends the limits of case-based research while respecting the varying contexts and trajectories of protest camps.
TL;DR: In this paper, practice has become a topic of increasing empirical and conceptual concern within sociology and neighbouring fields, and it can refer to a location or it can be referred to action.
Abstract: Practice has become a topic of increasing empirical and conceptual concern within sociology and neighbouring fields. ‘Practice’ can refer to a location or it can refer to action. It is possible to ...
TL;DR: Using data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) from 1995 to 2005, this paper examined the nature of the allocation of savings, investments and debts between heterosexual couple members, how these v...
Abstract: Using data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) from 1995 to 2005 we examine the nature of the allocation of savings, investments and debts between heterosexual couple members, how these v...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present two characterizations of deviance from an ethopolitical imaginary of financial citizenship: irresponsibility and incapability, and explore the nature of the state sponsored normalization of indebtedness and the stigmatization of overindebtedness as a corollary of ‘delinquent' dispositions and dependencies.
Abstract: While personal debt has been the subject of intense research activity over the past decade, in particular from think tanks and government bodies, it remains relatively undertheorized and neglected in general by the social sciences. This article offers a novel theoretical frame for the analysis of personal debt – and personal overindebtedness in particular – by highlighting the construction of deviance from financial behavioural normativities. Using Nikolas Rose's concept of ‘ethopolitics’ to describe the relocation of government from questions of rational administration to those of everyday morality and ethics, this article presents two characterizations of deviance from an ethopolitical imaginary of financial citizenship: irresponsibility and incapability. From this framework, the article explores the nature of the state sponsored normalization of indebtedness and the stigmatization of overindebtedness as a corollary of ‘delinquent’ dispositions and dependencies. This article suggests that UK government policy concerning financial responsibility has been shaped by an ethopolitical imaginary of financial citizenship which is based upon a skewed understanding of structure and agency which has its parallel in the attribution of unemployment to ‘worklessness’.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how the Big Fat Gypsy Weddings series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses.
Abstract: An intriguing shift in the public interest of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller minorities has been the rise of the ‘Gypsy’ reality TV star in shows across Europe (‘Gypsy’ is the word most often used in popular media culture). The latest phenomenon to hit the UK has been the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (Firecracker Films, Channel 4, 2010–2013), a flamboyant production that has garnered both huge audience shares and fierce criticism, with commentators berating its narrow, sensationalist focus. Drawing on both specialized literature on Roma minorities and current sociological debates on reality TV formats, this article raises questions about how the politics of the ‘demotic turn’ of such formats (as noted by Turner in 2004) can lean towards the demonic through emphasizing such groups as spectacular, extraordinary and above all, negatively different. Furthermore, this article shows how the series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses. Whilst the series claims to be a unique insight into a marginalized community, this close analysis discusses the wider politics within which it is embedded and how such representations can both popularize and undermine marginalized or minority groups.
TL;DR: This article examined factors driving the agentic practices of young women who are privately educated and found that these different internal conversations lead to the emergence of differing projects of the self, expressed through practices that by their very nature of being committed to self-directed progress can be understood as being agentic.
Abstract: This paper examines factors driving the agentic practices of young women who are privately educated. The analysis informing this paper comes from a three-year study, in which 91 young women aged 15–19 years were interviewed. Four private schools in one area of middle England participated in the research, and over half of the young women were re-interviewed 12–18 months later. Our starting point is the degree to which particular orientations within families are aligned to those being promoted within the various private schools in our study. The affective experiences of alignment but also of disorientation within and between the family and the school, drive significant forms of internal conversation (Archer, 2003). In this paper we examine two kinds of internal conversations found within our study – one that is assured and optimistic, and another, which is more fractured. These different internal conversations lead to the emergence of differing projects of the self, expressed through practices that by their very nature of being committed to self-directed progress can be understood as being agentic. The consequences of these different projects of the self suggest that the reproduction of class privilege cannot be taken for granted – but is always provisional and contested, even among those who are privately educated.
TL;DR: The authors examine the intersections between a general commitment to education and learning and the moral and ethical dimensions of the work ethic under contemporary capitalism, and suggest that commitment to a learning ethic, to the unreserved power of learning and education, may reiterate a moral commitment to the personal characteristics that define the work-ethics under capitalism.
Abstract: In this paper I examine the intersections between a general commitment to education and learning and the moral and ethical dimensions of the work ethic under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on Kathi Weeks' (2011) recent exploration of the work ethic in The Problem with Work, I suggest there is a relationship between the form and function of the work ethic- and what I term the ‘learning ethic’. I suggest that commitment to a learning ethic, to the unreserved power of learning and education- may reiterate a moral commitment to the personal characteristics that define the work ethic under capitalism. As a consequence, consideration of the form and function of these moral character ideals in the continuation of unequal social relations across educational and workspaces, become obfuscated by a generalized celebration of learning, education and self-work.
TL;DR: This paper explored issues of intersubjectivity in the representation of gap year experiences, in terms of tacit consensus, moral boundary-drawing and reflexivity prompted by dialogue, and provided a critique of the individualized responsibility placed on young people to make the right choices.
Abstract: Gap years are often put forward as an opportunity to engage in individualized, reflexive, identity work. In contrast to this position, I draw upon a qualitative analysis of young people's travel blogs to highlight the tendency for gap year narratives to stick to standard scripts. Four key narratives frame gap years, which centre on making the most of time to do something worthwhile. I explore issues of intersubjectivity in the representation of gap year experiences, in terms of tacit consensus, moral boundary-drawing and reflexivity prompted by dialogue. Considering intersubjectivity in such accounts can add to our understanding of critical reflection in self-development strategies without resorting to the voluntarism of a reflexive model of identity. It also provides a critique of the individualized responsibility placed on young people to make the right choices.
TL;DR: In this article, a critical appraisal of the classical approaches to the phenomenon of violence, showing how despite their considerable differences, they are not necessarily contradictory, is presented, with particular attention to the limits of symbolic interactionism.
Abstract: Violence has been a central preoccupation for political and social scientists, and this paper begins with a critical appraisal of the classical approaches to the phenomenon of violence, showing how despite their considerable differences, they are not necessarily contradictory. Via engagement with the recent work of Randall Collins, the paper pays particular attention to the limits of symbolic interactionism. The paper then places the subject central to sociological analysis, showing how it is possible to avoid the determinism of classical sociology by exploring the meaning of violence for the subjects who use it, and how these meanings relate to the processes of subjectivation and desubjectivation.
TL;DR: In this paper, an analytical framework for connecting these levels through a critical appropriation of Scheff's theory of the shame-rage cycle is proposed, which is based on published research and media accounts from participants.
Abstract: The sociology of violence is an emerging field but one in which there remains a tension between structural explanations and phenomenological-situational ones that focus on the micro conditions of violence. This article proposes an analytical framework for connecting these levels through a critical appropriation of Scheff's theory of the shame-rage cycle. It argues that while shame is a significant condition for violent action, Scheff does not have a theory of violence in itself but treats the connections between shame-rage and violence as largely self-evident. While emotions such as shame have agental properties, as Scheff and others argue, these need to be situated within structural and cultural conditions that are likely to evoke shame. Moreover, to develop Scheff's approach further, violence needs to be understood as being communicative and invoking normative justifications, which mediate the effects of shame-rage. This analysis is developed with reference to recent instances of collective disorder, especially the English riots in August 2011, which is based on published research and media accounts from participants. The acquisition of consumer goods through ‘looting’ was public performance in spaces where a ‘moral holiday’ permitted a brief revaluation of the social order. Through this example the article shows how an underlying configuration of inequality, exclusion and shame coalesced into events in which the violence was a form of performative communication. This articulated ‘ugly feelings’ that invoked normative justification for participation, at least at the time of the disturbances. The discussion provides an integrated account of structural-emotional conditions for violence combined with the dynamics of situated actions within particular spaces. It aims to do two things – to provide a framework for analysing the structural and affective bases for violence and to offer a nuanced understanding of ‘violence’ with reference to public disorder.
TL;DR: The authors discusses the emergence of a formula of government that can be called neoliberal communitarianism, which is a paradoxical governmental strategy that combines a focus on 'individual responsibility', 'community' and a "selectively tough state'.
Abstract: This article discusses the emergence, in the field of crime and safety, of a formula of government that can be called neoliberal communitarianism. This is a paradoxical governmental strategy that combines a focus on 'individual responsibility', 'community' and a 'selectively tough state'. The discussion is based on the Foucaultian triangle of strategy, political programmes and techniques. The substance of this application consists of a discussion of recent Dutch political programmes and techniques in crime and safety policies. The discussion includes the local case of Rotterdam, a city at times regarded as a 'policy laboratory'. Specifically, the role that notions of citizenship and community play in crime and safety policies is analysed. We hereby point at two different manifestations of responsibilization - repressive responsibilization and facilitative responsibilization - aimed at two governmentally differentiated populations. In addition, we describe how neoliberal communitarianism entails the selective exclusion of subjects imagined as 'high risk'. Because the government of crime tells us much about the government of 'society', neoliberal communitarianism is a useful concept to grasp contemporary changes in government in the Netherlands and in other European countries. Language: en
TL;DR: The authors argue that the experience of trauma, when set against a particular cultural background, can act to create a subjectivity characterized by a deep commitment to physical violence, and that guilt and shame play a crucial role in the creation of this subjectivity.
Abstract: This paper draws together elements of cultural sociology and theoretical psychoanalysis in order to address the creation and enactment of a particular form of violent subjectivity. Its primary concern is the experience of traumatic events and prolonged periods of insecurity during childhood. The paper argues that the experience of trauma, when set against a particular cultural background, can act to create a subjectivity characterized by a deep commitment to physical violence. The principal original contribution of this paper is to claim that guilt and shame play a crucial role in the creation of this violent subjectivity, and that these affects are, for the most part, unconscious.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse how shelters act as a form of concrete governmentality and how they decompose preparedness by falling out of use, and highlight three transformations of preparedness that shelters trigger.
Abstract: This article analyzes how shelters act as a form of concrete governmentality. Shelters, like other forms of preparedness, are political acts in the absence of a disaster. They are materializations and visualizations of risk calculations. Shelters as a type of concrete governmentality pose the question of how to build something that lasts and resists, and remains relevant both when the object that is being resisted keeps changing and when the very act of building intervenes so publicly in the life of the restless surrounding population. Comparing shelters in India, Switzerland and the UK, we highlight three transformations of preparedness that shelters trigger. First we analyse how shelters compose preparedness by changing the relationship between the state and its citizens. Rather than simply limiting risk or introducing ‘safety’, the building of shelters poses questions about who needs protection and why and, as we will show, this can generate controversy. Second, we analyse how shelters decompose preparedness by falling out of use. Third, we focus on struggles to recompose preparedness: Changing ideas about disasters thus lead to shelters being suddenly out of place, or needing to adapt.
TL;DR: In the face of injustice, inequality and violence emerging from globalization processes, the last decade has seen a resurgence of cosmopolitanism in the West as mentioned in this paper, and it has been called the ‘Cosmopolitanism is back.
Abstract: ‘Cosmopolitanism is back’, proclaimed David Harvey presciently in 2000 (Harvey, 2000: 529). In the face of injustice, inequality and violence emerging from globalization processes, the last decade ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss Pierre Bourdieu's views on ethics and normative evaluations, and argue that people hold ethical stances, yet seek to show that these stances are un-uniform.
Abstract: This article critically discusses Pierre Bourdieu's views on ethics and normative evaluations. Bourdieu acknowledged that people hold ethical stances, yet sought to show that these stances are – un...
TL;DR: The case of PRE Talca and Talca con Tod@s, two post-disaster participatory experiments that unfolded in Talca, Chile, is considered in this article.
Abstract: This article examines how specific political arrangements are articulated to govern disasters. I suggest that disasters give rise to political experiments in which uncertainties are sensed, ordered and managed. I argue, however, that when the world is uncanny and indeterminacies are excessive and radically vital, the search for stability is messier than experimental politics might assume. Drawing on the cases of PRE Talca and Talca con Tod@s, two post-disaster participatory experiments that unfolded in Talca, Chile, I call atmospheres of indagation the expanded and enhanced political experimentalism unearthed by disasters. Of indagation because the inquiry was meticulous, open and agonically needed. And atmosphere because this indagation unfolded under the form of an overarching, multiform and ambiguous ambience in which everything could be explored, scrutinized and contested – including the experiments themselves. More concretely, I describe how these two experiments, via different participatory technologies, enacted different versions of Talca. But I attempt to show, as well, how PRE Talca and Talca con Tod@s were configured by openly contesting the principles and assumptions of each other. The result was a highly complex topological arrangement in which political publicness was expanded and re-articulated, thus defying conventional understandings on political experiments.
TL;DR: The authors employ empirical analysis on working life coaching in order to offer a complimentary perspective on debates concerning individualization and class, instead of viewing individualizatio-... and propose an empirical analysis of working life co-training.
Abstract: This article employs empirical analysis on working life coaching in order to offer a complimentary perspective on debates concerning individualization and class. Instead of viewing individualizatio...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from 100 young female survivors of suicidal attempts in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, arguing that the period around first marriage is a time of particular trauma to women.
Abstract: Self-burning and self-immolation are forms of self-harm found across the Eastern Mediterranean region and South and Central Asia. The majority of those choosing these methods of self-harm are young women. Using data from 100 young female survivors of suicidal attempts in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, this article analyses the phenomenon in the context of a life-course progression arguing that the period around first marriage is a time of particular trauma to women. We suggest that self-burning should be understood as a communicative act with an indigenous semiology which functions as an expression of subordinated agency within a male-dominated society, in which marriage is a major source of conflict between generations and genders.
TL;DR: In this article, the notion of a temporal landscape of shoes within which their scope for interrupting life course temporalities can be explored is explored, including the retrieval of an earlier identity through the purchase of styles previously worn; the deferral of later life by rejecting comfortable shoes that might symbolically reposition someone as ‘old’; the release of former age-based identities and the embracing of freedom from a felt need to wear impractical or painful shoes; the appropriation or reconfiguring of the past as a contemporary resource through the wearing of vintage/hand-me-
Abstract: This empirically grounded article draws on an ESRC-funded project on footwear, identity and transition to offer new understandings of how a linear model of the life course may, in practice, be disrupted, subverted or reconfigured Combining the insights of material culture and life course studies, it develops the notion of a temporal landscape of shoes within which their scope for interrupting life course temporalities can be explored In particular, it identifies four temporal strategies made possible through the symbolic efficacy of footwear: the retrieval of an earlier identity through the purchase of styles previously worn; the deferral of later life by rejecting comfortable shoes that might symbolically reposition someone as ‘old’; the release of former age-based identities and the embracing of freedom from a felt need to wear impractical or painful shoes; the appropriation or reconfiguring of the past as a contemporary resource through the wearing of vintage/hand-me-down shoes
TL;DR: A pertinent question in contemporary Europe is whether the children of immigrants will reproduce the gender-complementary practices and ideals of the immigrant generation as mentioned in this paper, which often include stron...
Abstract: A pertinent question in contemporary Europe is whether the children of immigrants will reproduce the gender-complementary practices and ideals of the immigrant generation, which often include stron...