The self in selfies—Conceptualizing the selfie-coordination of marginalized youth with sociology of engagements

This article develops a theory of selfies as reflexive practices of self-coordination. Building on pragmatist sociology of engagements, I conceptualize selfies as digital practices of coordinating with the self in formats that are recognizable for others. This framework allows approaching the self as an act of coordination, simultaneously shaped by, and equipped to subvert the cultural conditions of how we ought to be. As these conditions are increasingly enforced and negotiated in the socio-technological arrangements of digital platforms, the article proposes an approach for making sense of selfies as key contemporary tools of self-making. Based on ethnographic work among activists with marginalizing experiences, I ask how the self is coordinated in the activists' selfies. I identify four ways of coordinating with the self in selfies: the self in a plan, the self in exploration, the affirmed self, and the self as public critique. The article contributes to our understanding on how practices of self-making evolve in an increasingly visual-digital society, and provides an approach for conceptualising the self as plural. By approaching the selfie as different formats of relating to the self, the framework proposed accounts for the possibility of multiple selves now afforded by digital technologies and enables analysing their politicizing potential.     

Experiences from Pagan women: A closer look at croning rituals

In this qualitative study I explore how Pagan women conceptualize aging, more specifically social aging, through the ritual process of being a Pagan and becoming a Crone. The central question of this research revolves around how older women who identify as Pagan experience, understand, and conceptualize their social aging and their role as aging women in American society. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and explore the meaning of aging for women identifying as Pagan. Major emergent themes within the data demonstrate that the croning ritual, a central aspect of Paganism, affirms these women in their process of aging. These women, through the ritual of croning, are able to understand their aging as celebration, maintain a positive sense of self while aging, and reclaim visibility as aging women. These women were able to embed their experiences of aging within a unique and specific cultural framework, a spiritual and foundational framework cultivating a spiritual connection with nature.     

Un/gendering Social Selves: How Nonbinary People Navigate and Experience a Binarily Gendered World

Based on in‐depth interviews, we explore how people who do not identify exclusively or consistently as either women or men (i.e., nonbinary people) navigate a culture that bifurcates people into women or men. Using an interactionist approach, we first analyze how interviewees employ discourse (e.g., names, identity labels, and pronouns) and the body (e.g., expressions, decoration, and transformation) to present themselves as nonbinary, which we conceptualize as ungendering social selves. Second, we examine the emotional benefits (e.g., authenticity, pride, liberation) and burdens (e.g., fear, rejection, exhaustion) of ungendering. Third, we uncover the emotional, social, and structural conditions under which our nonbinary‐identified participants sometimes present themselves as binarily gendered, which we conceptualize as gendering social selves. We conclude with discussing empirical and theoretical contributions.     

Fostering social capital in an international multi-stakeholder issue network

Scholars have theorized that public relations contributes to societies and communities by bringing attention to pressing public issues and fostering social capital in civil society networks. However, the extant research has studied civil society networks of NGOs, donors, and the media in transitional countries. This study extends the public relations model of civil society in two ways. First, it broadens the scope to an international context. Second, it draws from the multi-stakeholder issue network perspective to conceptualize a civil society network as a space where stakeholders of an issue mix their interests as they collectively address a pressing public issue. The literature on international and multi-stakeholder networks suggest that the international scope and the mixing of interests across sectors may restrict the production of social capital. The results from the social network analysis suggests that the mixing of interests across sectoral and geopolitical boundaries did not restrict the production of social capital. Rather, the patterns of the relationships among those on the core and those on the periphery of the network restricted the production of social capital. Such finding demonstrates how public relations’ functions like relationship building can have profound influences on social capital and civil society networks. The implications for public relations theorizing and research are discussed.     

Authenticity as a form of worth

Scholarly engagement with authenticity has been revitalized by recent efforts to theorize the value-ladenness of authenticity claims. Yet, these approaches are restricted by the lack of available conceptual tools necessary to explain variations in the meaning of authenticity between different cultural forms and social groups. In this paper, I draw from Boltanski and Thevenot’s pragmatic hermeneutics to develop an approach to authenticity in popular culture that conceptualizes it as a form of worth. I apply this new model to an analysis of the meanings of authenticity found in the discourse of fans of indie music and country music. I find that in the indie genre, authenticity involves an inspirational form of worth; in the country genre, it involves a domestic form of worth. I trace these differences back to the matched relationship between the primary groups of fans of each genre and the genres themselves that led both sides to find an interest in these types of authenticity. I conclude by sketching the relevance of this approach for explaining overarching concerns for authenticity in late modern societies.     

Walk the Walk but Don't Talk the Talk: The Strategic Use of Color‐Blind Ideology in an Interracial Social Movement Organization

In this study, I examine the strategies interracial organizations use in the twenty‐first century, where color‐blind ideology dominates. Much theoretical work on racism examines how it has evolved during different historical periods, but this work does not address how these changing forms of racism affect social movement organizations, particularly those on the left. While the literature on color‐blind ideology has examined how it is expressed by African Americans and European Americans separately, my work investigates how color‐blind ideology operates when European Americans and people of color are working together in the same organizational setting. Studies of social movements have examined how organizational culture affects strategies but have neglected how external racist culture and color‐blind ideology impacts organizational strategies. Findings from 3 years of ethnographic data collected on an interracial social movement organization and its corresponding coalition suggest that activists in interracial organizations use racism evasiveness strategically to maintain solidarity. I conceptualize racism evasiveness as the action resulting from color‐blind ideology within a larger system of racism. While activists perceive advantages to these strategies, there are also long‐term negative consequences. Without explicitly naming and addressing racism, progressive organizations may be limited in their ability to challenge systemic racism.     

The Enactment and Appraisal of Authenticity in a Skid Row Therapeutic Community

This article describes the enactment and appraisal of authenticity in a skid row therapeutic community for the treatment of substance problems. Commitment to recovery was a basic requirement of participation in treatment, but it was widely assumed among program participants that many of their peers merely feigned commitment to recovery in order to remain sheltered. As a result, the enactment and appraisal of authentic commitment to recovery became a central organizing feature of therapeutic practice in the program. I first describe how the program's demand that participants engage in authentic self-disclosure bore on the treatment experienced by homeless residents of skid row. I then outline local techniques employed by program members for enacting and appraising authentic commitment to recovery through progressive stages of the treatment process. I conclude with a discussion of how this analysis deepens our understanding of the enactment and appraisal of authenticity throughout social life and a critique of Hochschild's influential constructionist formulation of the relationship between emotion management and personal authenticity.     

ESS presidential address, 1995—invisible differences: On the management of children in postindustrial society

Drawing on data gathered through qualitative techniques, I suggest that the management of problems faced by children with a specific invisible neurological difference, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, teaches us about problematic areas of postindustrial society. I pay particular attention to how members of the children's and parents' separate moral universes assign stigma and to such behavioral-management techniques as patterned scheduling and “super-momming.” The problematic areas of contemporary life that I identify include the call for social conformity in the face of an ostensible demand for flexible social arrangements. Presidential Address delivered to Eastern Sociological Society, Philadelphia, PA, April 1, 1995.     

Becoming “People of Faith:” Personal Moral Authenticity in the Cultural Practices of a Faith-Based Social Justice Movement

Interactive cultural practices such as songs and storytelling are key to contemporary social movement organizing because they can attenuate the challenges of social difference by expanding participants’ understandings of self and community. Yet the precise cultural dynamics through which such practices become effective are not well understood. Using the case of a large faith-based community organizing coalition, I show that practices focused on personal moral authenticity are especially effective in fostering alignment between social movement goals and individuals’ pre-existing moral commitments. I define personal moral authenticity as the ambition to develop, enact, and perform a moral identity that is “true” to an enduring internal self, and validate that identity through interactions with others. This is an effective basis for organizing practices because it spans the various cultures of commitment that prevail in different racial and religious subgroups and gives individuals a personal stake in social change projects. In highlighting how it animates practices in faith-based community organizing, one of the most robust fields of grassroots civic activity in the United States, this article illuminates an important part of the cultural dynamics underlying much contemporary social change work, and specifies how religion contributes to progressive social change efforts amid ongoing religious disaffiliation.     

The Interactional Construction of Social Authenticity: “Real” Identities and Intergroup Relations in a Transylvania Internet Forum

Authenticity has become an increasingly salient topic within various interactional traditions, including conversational and discourse analysis, discursive psychology, interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and symbolic interactionism. However, there has been remarkably little cross‐fertilization of ideas and concepts. In this study, we consider the relevance of the interactional sociolinguistic concept of relationality for symbolic interactionist theories of authenticity. We first disambiguate two forms of authenticity that are commonly studied but not clearly differentiated in symbolic interactionist research—self‐authenticity, which emphasizes selves, and social authenticity, which emphasizes social identities. We then argue that relationality and its three pairs of interactional tactics—verification and denaturalization, adequation and distinction, and authorization and illegitimation—are particularly useful in conceptualizing social authenticity. We draw on data from an interethnic internet forum to show how members of two ethnic groups, Hungarian and Romanian, employ these relational tactics to authenticate their own ethnicity as the rightful inheritors of a place‐based Transylvanian identity, and to limit the other ethnicity's similar identity work. We then clarify the significance of social authenticity for the interactional study of category‐based identities by widening our discussion to other contestations over social identities in everyday life.     

SHOPFLOOR CULTURES: The Idioculture of Production in Operational Meteorology

Each workplace operates within a cultural context in which local features of interaction influence how employees conceptualize their workplace self. Building on small-group research, I argue that understanding these idiocultures as action arenas helps to specify how group knowledge, practices, and beliefs are expressed and affect occupational identity. To demonstrate the power of microcultures, I analyzed local offices of the National Weather Service (NWS) through ethnographic methods. I focused on the Chicago office, demonstrating how its culture, which emphasizes autonomy and resistance to authority, shapes the staff's images of scientific practice and the contours of being a scientist. The culture is revealed in their joking relations as well as in other office traditions. I then compared this culture with that of Flowerland, a spin-up office established in the 1990s. These two offices use their cultures to differentiate themselves, creating distinct work practices. As all work groups have local cultures, giving greater attention to small-group dynamics helps us understand how workers define themselves, how cultures differ, and how the effects of these differences shape the experience of work.     

Coming Out of the Coffin: Life‐Self and Death‐Self in Six Feet Under

This article discusses how the dominant approach to life and death as binary structures in American society influences the social construction of the self. Through the analysis of the television series Six Feet Under, we identify two types of selves: a “life‐self” and a “death‐self.” Questioning this binary, we offer the concept of “transitory movements” to suggest instead that a “waltzing” movement between life and death endows the self with meaning and stands at the core of the self‐work of agents. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis for scholarship on the self and on the sociology of death.     

Going to the Crackhouse: Critical Space as a Form of Resistance in Total Institutions and Everyday Life

This article explores the extent to which organizational identity claims and the formal organization of social control influence how actors in a total institution conceptualize their “real” selves. The setting for this case study is Project Rehabilitate Women, a drug treatment program serving incarcerated female offenders. Using Goffman's analysis of the total institution as a guide, I explore the importance of “secondary adjustments” for self-definition. This analysis will show that the capacity of residents to distance themselves from the label of “addict” is contingent on the formal structure of social control. I will argue that, in the absence of traditional distancing strategies, residents construct “critical space” as an alternative means to subvert institutional control mechanisms and to creatively acquire the resources necessary to articulate definitions of self that are distinct from staff constructions. It is clear that resistance, whether temporary or sustained, successful or failed, is central to how subordinates maintain their sense of self in an environment committed to radical self-transformation.     

Helping Women and Protecting the Self: The Challenge of Emotional Labor in an Abortion Clinic

One of the central problems in the performance of emotional labor at work revolves around how workers balance the needs of the job with those of the self. Drawing on data collected through participant observation and from in-depth, loosely structured interviews with nine clinic employees, this study analyzes how one group of abortion clinic workers negotiated the difficulties associated with emotional labor in ways that allowed them to achieve this balance. More specifically, we examine the interactive processes by which workers categorized patients into distinct types and developed specific strategies, along a continuum from investment to detachment, that enabled them to cope effectively with each type of patient. The implications of these strategies for understanding the connections between self, emotion, and authenticity are also discussed.     

The Best of the Brightest: Definitions of the Ideal Self Among Prize-Winning Students

This paper documents and explains characteristics of the ideal self rewarded by the American educational system as defined and projected by high school students who have been selected as Presidential Scholars in a national academic competition sponsored by the Department of Education and a White House Commission. Drawing on analysis of competition essays written by 119 Presidential Scholars and interviews conducted with 19 of them, we identify how these students implicitly and explicitly define the ideal self and what they do to demonstrate that they embody the characteristics of the self they perceive as rewarded by the American educational system. The data show that morality is the most salient dimension of the ideal self displayed by Scholars, and that they define it in terms of self-actualization, authenticity, and interpersonal morality; that Scholars present negative or ambivalent views concerning the importance of socioeconomic status; and that culture as a dimension of the ideal self is highlighted only by a subset of Scholars. In general, their displayed definitions of the ideal self are individualist in content but highly institutionalized in form. We explain our findings by the cultural repertoires that are made available to students and by their life experience and the broader structural characteristics of American society that lead them to draw on specific repertoires.     

Organizational Culture in Civic Associations in Russia

The organizational culture of nonprofit organizations is affected by the context in which they are embedded. Based on a qualitative study of local civic associations in Novosibirsk, Russia, this article illustrates how nonprofit organizational culture has been shaped by historical and contemporary social and cultural conditions. The fluid situation for civil society in Russia has generated varied organizational culture across nonprofits. Interview data reveal different value orientations, distinct group identities, and different images of the ideal civic association: as a social establishment, as an outlet for self-expression, as a network of experts, or as a social startup. This resulting diversity of organizational culture has implications for the potential for partnerships among nonprofits, between nonprofits and government, between nonprofits and businesses, and also for the organizational survival of nonprofits in this setting.     

'Laying a foundation of fact': Fabianism and the information society thesis

This article explores affinities between postindustrialism and modes of thinking characteristic of the Fabian Society, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. In the hands of Daniel Bell and others, the information society thesis postulates the coming of a postindustrial society marked by the centrality of information and knowledge. While caveats abound in Bell's version, the thesis has been generally optimistic in outlook, portraying postindustrial society as an advanced level of social development. Interestingly, the Fabian Society, a British-based organization highly influential in the twentieth-century project of social democracy, also emphasized information in its advocacy of social progress: 'laying a foundation of fact', according to one commentator, was a key ingredient of the Fabian approach. Texts by thinkers such as Sidney Webb and H.G. Wells suggest that 'informationalism', a commitment to information in an original sense of hard facts and figures, must indeed be construed as the essence of Fabianism, as that which distinguishes the Fabians from more metaphysical or emotional expressions of socialism. The article traces the link between information-powered politics and the largely successful practice of social engineering in Britain. However, social engineering can, and in the case of some Fabians did, degenerate into a technocratic and even totalitarian mindset. Critiques of Fabianism are therefore also acknowledged here, including those claiming that the Fabian preoccupation with data-gathering and filing, its 'proceduralism', actually constituted a major weakness. However, given its noble informational ideal, Fabianism can, the article concludes, illuminate contemporary information society problems. The Fabian tradition contains suggestive materials on such topical themes as fair access to information, the role of facts in progressive politics, and the prospects for an international institutional order.     

OUT OF UTOPIA:

An important segment of writings on postindustrialization is distinctly utopian in stressing the greater mastery and control made possible by recent innovations in information technology. The utopian theme underscores the technical outcomes of innovations and highlights their benefits for ameliorating social problems. By contrast, our work suggests that many of the social problems in contemporary society are a consequence of recent innovations in information technology. We argue that postindustrial theorists are correct in stressing mastery over certain technical problems but incorrect in slighting the destabilizing effect innovations have on organizations and the markets in which these organizations participate. These destabilizing effects complicate organizational strategies by increasing market risk and uncertainty. Since most organizations are risk aversive, social problems are created as organizations externalize their costs and pass along risk to other, more dependent actors. Illustrations from two institutions, politics and the economy, indicate that many postindustrial innovations are associated with heightened competition as well as greater risk and uncertainty across the institutional order. We conclude that postindustrial technology introduces no net gain in man aging the complexities of the social world. Risk and control are both integral to technological innovation and constitute the paradox of postindustrialization.     

The State of the Network: Radical Anxiety,Real Paranoia and Quantum Culture

In this article, the author proposes to explore the state of the contemporary network society through an analysis of the human effects of the conditions of globalisation, fast capitalism, postmodern warfare and quantum culture. In the first section of the article, the author considers the problem of social relations in the global network society and, in particular, examines the effect of radical anxiety on self—other communication. Following this section, which turns off a consideration of the violence of fast capitalism, the author focuses on the relationship between the science of immunology, paranoia and postmodern warfare. Here, in the second section of the article, the author shows how the radical anxiety that plagues those who inhabit the lightning‐fast network resolves itself in paranoid reaction formations that make productive self—other relations more or less impossible. Finally, the author explores potential solutions to the problem of self—other violence in the network and concludes with a discussion of the stumbling‐block to the invention of a more humane social and political form of globalisation, neo‐liberal/neoconservative quantum culture.     

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare,Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter‐century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of “bureaucratic field” to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the “disciplinary society,” David Garland’s account of the “culture of control,” and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of “individual responsibility.” This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.