Saving the Savior

This article begins with an autobiographical reflection about what sociology has meant to me as an Iranian intellectual. Sociology has enabled me to think critically about my country's politics and culture, appreciating its strengths without overlooking its unjust and injurious aspects. That experience shapes my answer to the question “Saving Sociology?” If there is anything in sociology that I would like to save–in both senses “to keep” and “to rescue”—it is sociology as a critical, reflective discipline, a discipline that not only studies society but also contributes to its change. As the contemporary world moves toward a “global” society, we are increasingly facing the dilemmas of multiculturalism. Sociologists often investigate other societies or (like myself) look back at their own from a spatial and cultural distance. This situation has created a dilemma for many scholars: Should we criticize problems stemming from “indigenous” beliefs and practices of other societies? Cultural relativism argues that different cultures provide indigenous answers to their social problems that should be judged in their own context. While this approach correctly encourages us to avoid ethnocentrism, it has led to inaction towards the suffering of oppressed groups. Reflecting on the relativist approach to sexual dominance, I question some cultural relativist assumptions. Discussing how “indigenous” responses to male domination in many cases disguise and protect that domination, I will challenge the “localist” approach of relativism and argue for a universalist approach.     

How Creative Contributions Emerge Over the Lifespan

The starting point for this article is, What are the hegemonic models of man and woman that educational practices are orientated toward in gypsy communities (models that are often in conflict with mainstream schooling institution's models of socialization)? We do not find the collectivism/individualism approach for explaining socialization in minority cultures helpful, for it can lead us to misunderstand the continuous process of change through which communities challenge existing power relations and thereby change society. The alternative proposed here is the analysis of the role of multivoicedness in the process of cultural change, hybridation, and resistance. A set of conversations with members of a Spanish gypsy community give us a “text” where multiple voices contribute, showing a mixed culture where “traditional” voices are in a constant dialogue with “modern” voices. Minority culture cannot be interpreted as a “traditional” culture, for minority culture includes voices of the hegemonic culture in various different forms and provokes hybridation as differentiation, creating a complex framework for children's socialization.     

Talking About Culture With Internationally Adoptive Parents: An Anthropological Perspective

Parents who adopt internationally are commonly implored to expose their children to their “birth cultures.” While this celebration of origins is praiseworthy, the approach to “culture” that it typically involves is arguably problematic. This article discusses what anthropologists mean by culture and how this differs from the way culture is treated in international adoption. It then considers what medical anthropologists have learned through decades of evolving discussions about how to teach “cultural competency” to health care providers and suggests that the insights from these debates can be applied to encourage a more nuanced approach to “cultural competency” among adoptive parents.     

Resource or Obstacle?: Classed Reports of Student–Faculty Relations

This article explores the relationship between undergraduate students’ class‐based cultural capital and their facility in developing relationships with faculty. Based on in‐depth interviews with 44 students at an elite university, this study reveals that lower‐ and middle‐class students tended to inadvertently opt out of this key relational opportunity. Compared with upper‐class students, who predominantly reported an “appreciative ease” orientation toward faculty, students from lower‐class origins tended to approach faculty with “hesitant appreciation” and middle‐class students with “critical suspicion.” These orientations or interaction styles of nonelite students were obstacles to the potential benefits of student–faculty relationships. These findings suggest that scholars and policy makers should pay attention not only to the experiences of lower‐class students, but also to the challenges confronting middle‐class students at highly selective universities.     

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so‐called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety‐ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three‐dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non‐consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid‐2002, however, a resource‐intensive, government‐sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being‐in‐the‐world.     

Understanding the Alteration and Decline of a Music Scene: Observations from Rave Culture1

The sociological study of scenes—music and otherwise—has flourished in the latter twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries. Most research has documented a scene’s origins or its “evolution” into mainstream culture. Fewer studies have systematically addressed what leads to a scene’s alteration and decline, although many scholars have partially addressed it in authenticity studies anchored in the Frankfurt School’s claims about culture and economics. Are culture industries sufficient in explaining music scene transformation? The present article attempts to explain the cultural transformation of the Philadelphia rave scene and to articulate its relevance for other kinds of social worlds. Using a multimethod ethnographic approach, I show that five forces (generational schism, commercialization, cultural otherness/deviance and self destruction, social control, and genre‐based scene fragmentation) help explain the alteration and decline of the rave scene from its high point in the mid to late 1990s to its diminished and fragmented state presently. In describing these forces, I hope to move beyond culture industry narratives toward a broader explanation of cultural change, one that is lacking not only in music scene studies, but also in literatures on many other kinds of social worlds.     

Signifyin' Cinema: Rudy Ray Moore and the Quality of Badness

This article engages the limits of both film and race studies in their approach to heterogeneous and “low” forms of African American cultural production through an analysis of the films of Rudy Ray Moore. While Moore’s films have been almost entirely overlooked in both film studies and black studies, they were extremely popular among black youth of the 1970s and have exerted a powerful influence on today’s hardcore hip hop artists (and their understanding of how to turn black market entrepreneurship into global enterprise). The theory of “signifying”, advanced most rigorously by black literary theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr, helps explain how and why Moore has slipped through various critical nets — and grounds a claim for why we should take “bad” black film seriously. Close film and context analysis illustrates how Moore’s low‐budget films “signify” on Hollywood and the system of expectancies that go with putatively “good” filmmaking and reveals the extent to which they constitute a hybrid cultural and multimedia practice. As vehicles designed to elaborate on the badman of black folklore, Moore’s films contribute to the long history and rich language of “toasting” in African American oral culture and music. As such, far from being emblematic of black filmmaking’s impoverished relationship to mainstream cinema (as a cinema manqué), these films constitute vital precursors to the hip hop music video.     

A shift in Western development agency thinking? The case for second best

This review essay illustrates a turn in Western development agency thinking in two recent publications intended for development agencies and African “reformers,” by authors with long careers in Western development institutions. Both publications explicitly reject – at least for the short to medium term – a comprehensive “good governance” approach to development. Subsequently, a publication entitled Violence and Social Orders, authored by three American scholars with an interest in the role of institutions in historical change, is reviewed since it is a crucial influence in the consolidation of this turn in thinking. This new Western approach is more restrained in its ambition to introduce new governance institutions in the developing world. This implies that it is prepared to tolerate what it considers to be imperfections in both the state and the market, viewing these as a second best result (in the short to medium term) in exchange for greater chances of realising positive development outcomes over the long term.     

The Political Economy of “Food Security” and Trade: Uneven and Combined Dependency

This article critiques the notion of food security through trade promoted by suprastate organizations like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. We use and refine the food‐regime perspective to contest this unwritten rule of the neoliberal food regime. Rather than “mutual dependency” in food between “North” and “South,” as argued by Philip McMichael, however, we show that food dependency has been stronger on basic foods in developing countries, while advanced capitalist countries' dependency has been mostly on luxury foods. Also, the more that developing countries become dependent on food imports and exports, the more they will be importing the “world food price” for the relevant commodities. Food‐price inflation will more adversely affect their working classes, which spend larger shares of their household budgets on food. Our empirical focus is on food dependency in emerging nations—Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Turkey—in comparison with long‐standing agricultural exporting powerhouses, the United States and Canada. Using longitudinal data from FAOSTAT, we show that food security in the neoliberal food regime can best be characterized as “uneven and combined dependency.”     

Cultural journalism—Journalism about culture

This article is an introduction to “cultural journalism,” a specialised type of professional journalism that covers and debates the broad field of arts and culture. The article points to some of the research traditions that have engaged with the news media's coverage of arts and culture and inspired contemporary cultural journalism research, among them cultural sociology and the sociology of journalism. Furthermore, the article outlines the institutional roles and epistemology of cultural journalism, which in several respects differ from dominating normative conceptions of Western journalism. At the same time, the article shows that contemporary journalism shares many similarities with the approaches found in culural journalism, such as interpretation, emotionality, and subjectivity. Finally, the article points to important future paths for cultural journalism research, including comparative perspectives and the political dimensions and potentialities of cultural journalism.     

Fashion as consumer entrepreneurship: Emergent risk culture,social network markets,and the launch of Vogue in China

China has a reputation as an economy based on utility: the large‐scale manufacture of low‐priced goods. But useful values like functionality, fitness for purpose and efficiency are only part of the story. More important are what Veblen called “honorific” values, arguably the driving force of development, change and value in any economy. To understand the Chinese economy therefore, it is not sufficient to point to its utilitarian aspect. Honorific status‐competition is a more fundamental driver than utilitarian cost‐competition. We argue that “social network markets” are the expression of these honorific values, relationships and connections that structure and coordinate individual choices. This paper explores how such markets are developing in China in the area of fashion and fashion media. These, we argue, are an expression of “risk culture” for high‐end entrepreneurial consumers and producers alike, providing a stimulus to dynamic innovation in the arena of personal taste and comportment, as part of an international cultural system based on constant change. We examine the launch of Vogue China in 2005, and China's reception as a fashion player among the international editions of Vogue, as an expression of a “decisive moment” in the integration of China into an international social network market based on honorific values.     

Transcultural Differentiation: A Model For Therapy With Ethno‐culturally Diverse Families

This article evolved out of the writer's experience of being an immigrant, a systemic thinker, and a therapist involved in working with individuals and families from many different cultures. It proposes a model of ‘transcultural differentiation’, drawing on Western notions of separation‐individuation (Mahler) and differentiation of self (Bowen), but arguing that these concepts may have equivalents within non‐Western philosophies (e.g. Indian cultural beliefs). The model suggests that families co‐existing with both a culture of origin and an adoptive culture must inevitably change, and that in this process, they necessarily evolve into entities which transcend both culture of origin and adoptive culture. Implications for therapy are explored; in particular, it is argued that the therapist's awareness of, and sensitivity to, the transcultural experience may be more crucial than whether or not she/he shares the client's culture of origin.     

Creating Culturally Responsive Family Therapy Models and Research: Introducing the Use of Responsive Evaluation as a Method

Models of marriage and family therapy (MFT) typically reflect Western values and norms, and although cultural adaptations are made, many models/frameworks continue to be inappropriate or inadequate for use with non‐Western cultures. Worldwide, therapists are examining ways of using MFT models in a culturally sensitive manner, especially when working with clients who are seen as having minority status or perceived as “other” by the dominant group. This essay suggests the use of responsive evaluation as a theoretically consistent methodology for creating and evaluating culturally responsive therapies. This approach rigorously evaluates each unique client/therapist context, culture, power, needs, and beliefs. We describe responsive evaluation and discuss how each component addresses the research needs of examining culturally responsive family therapies. A case illustration is offered delineating the process of conducting culturally responsive therapy with a Cambodian sample using solution‐focused and narrative therapy.     

Global Norms vs. Global Actors: International Politics,Muslim Identity,and Support for Shariʿa

Many scholars argue that local cultures are an impediment to the diffusion of “global” norms. Others point out that local populations domesticate global cultural elements by integrating them into preexisting cultures, generating hybridized systems. In the current study, I argue that local cultures are not necessarily impediments to cultural change and hybridization is only one aspect of cultural domestication. Instead, I find that individuals attribute global norms to local cultural objects as a means for disassociating putatively universal norms from the powerful actors that dominate international politics. I illustrate this process using the case of support for shari?a (sometimes called Islamic law) in majority‐Muslim countries. Results of multimethod analyses show that with the exception of attitudes about gender roles and sexuality, Muslims who support implementing shari?a do not systematically object to many so‐called global norms; in fact, they may express more enthusiasm about democracy, tolerance for people of other religions, optimism about scientific advances, and concern for environmental preservation than those who oppose implementing shari?a. Likewise, many Muslims assert their full participation in global society on terms not dictated by Western actors by repackaging ostensibly universal norms as components of the unambiguously local shari?a.     

And Some of Us Are Braver: Stress and Coping Among African American Women

African American women fulfill many roles within their family and community. Most notably, these women are often defined by their “strength” and rarely seen as “vulnerable.” Many African American women demonstrate strength as they struggle to maintain employment, raise children, and nurture spouses and extended family, but these same women are at risk for a higher rate of health and emotional problems. In this article, the authors use relational cultural, stress and coping, and lifespan theories, along with Black feminist thought to discuss the interlocking effects of race, gender, and class regarding the psychological well-being of African American women 18 to 55 years old. We conclude with a discussion of research, practice, and teaching implications.     

Urbanised soundtracks: youth popular culture in the African city

This article interrogates the participation of youth in constructing and defining the African urban landscape. It seeks to examine youth popular culture and performance practices that combine indigenous sound aesthetics with enactments of cultural memory to construct the urban landscape of Botswana. Particularly, the article examines youth cultural and expressive forms such as hip-hop and Kwaito musical genres, popularised traditional music, and the satirical dramatic impersonations of radio personality Dignash Morapedi. These performances elaborate African syncretic formations that underscore the power of African popular culture to integrate, reinvigorate, and transform various social spaces and identities. Urban youths use these performance forms to demonstrate how innovative practices could be used to interrogate social realities such as unemployment, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Using the notion of “urban noise,” the article teases out a strategy of critique that articulates the various ways that the youth acoustically construct, produce, and navigate the African city.     

Still a “Stalled Revolution”? Work/Family Experiences,Hegemonic Masculinity,and Moving Toward Gender Equality

Hochschild described the “stalled revolution” in the late 1980s: women made great gains in labor force opportunities, particularly in stereotypically “masculine” fields, yet men did not move comparably into “feminine” roles. This article examines the current “stalls” in the gender equality movement regarding gendered experiences at work and home, including occupations, the gender wage gap, career trajectories, and the division of household labor. This article also discusses efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution. Pop culture solutions on the individual‐level and academic research on structural/cultural barriers often focus on women's access to historically “masculine” roles (e.g. representation in STEM fields). There is far less emphasis on men's involvement in historically “feminine” roles. Gender scholars examine hegemonic masculinity as the narrowly constrained expectations for men's “appropriate” behavior. While efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution focus largely on expanding women's opportunities, this article addresses why the gender revolution will remain incomplete and “stalled” without redefining hegemonic masculinity. Cross‐national research demonstrates that changing views of masculinity are critical for greater gender equality at work and home.     

Thinking and Working Politically: Learning from practice. Overview to Special Issue

Over the last 15 years, a set of ideas now referred to as “thinking and working politically” (TWP) has coalesced into a “second orthodoxy” about how to take context into account when implementing development interventions. This approach stresses the importance of obtaining a better understanding of the local context (“thinking politically”) in order to support local actors to bring about sustainable developmental change (“working politically”). However, the evidence base to justify this new approach remains thin, despite a growing number of programmes which purport to be implementing it. Officials in development agencies struggle with putting it into practice and it is unclear how TWP differs—or not—from similar approaches, such as Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) and Doing Development Differently (DDD). This Special Issue sheds light on what TWP means in practice by examining a set of initiatives undertaken by both development partners and government departments in Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, China and India. This overview article outlines, in brief, each of the Special Issue's four papers and then draws out five lessons—for funders and for practitioners—from across all the papers. Our five lessons are: (1) the fundamental importance of undertaking political economy analysis (PEA) to adapt programmes to their contexts; (2) the importance of having a realistic level of ambition for interventions; (3) the need to support local ownership—not just “agreement ownership” (between a donor agency and government) or local “management ownership” of the programme, but critically “driver ownership” by generating trust with the key local actors driving change; (4) the need for a more effective set of tools for measuring results in complex programmes that attempt to achieve improvements in long‐run governance; and, (5) that although the political economy of donors is often seen as a barrier to applying TWP, the articles show how much can be done with a TWP approach if the analysis takes into account the political economy of donors as well as that of the local context. We conclude with a set of operational recommendations for donors and implementors, as well as suggestions of avenues for further research.     

In the Mind of the Beholder: Evaluation of Coping Styles of Immigrant Parents

The issue of coping with cultural transition, as in the case of immigration, has been the focus of extensive investigation in many domains. There is some diversity among scholars as to the relationship between change, stress, risk and well-being. Children, in particular, are regarded at risk since they experience parental stress and are exposed to two sometimes conflicting socializing systems. Consequently, parental modes of coping with “acculturation stress” are considered major factors in predicting immigrant children’s well-being. This article challenges existing views of a linear relation between parental coping and child well-being, suggesting that there is a great complexity and many variables that affect both parental coping strategies related to immigration and the definition of risk. We suggest that child development is affected by parental values and ideologies which form the “Adaptive Adult” image of the culture in which the children are raised. Immigrant parents confronted with a foreign Adaptive Adult image held by the socializing agents of the host culture may adopt one of the several different copying styles. The article describes three most common coping styles labelled by metaphores from the animal world: the traditional “uni-cultural” style which promotes conservation is represented by the Kangaroo strategy; the “culturally-disoriented” style which calls for rapid assimilation of children is represented by the Cuckoo metaphor; and the “bi-cultural” style, based on a meditative approach, is illustrated by the Chameleon’s ability to change its colour to blend in with the environment. Representatives of four professional sectors who are in daily contact with immigrant families, including educators, social workers, educational psychologists and paediatricians, were presented with three typical coping strategies and were asked to express their opinions regarding the adaptive and risk values of each coping style. By applying a qualitative research approach, results indicate that there are variations in the way the various stakeholders (parents and socializing agents) perceive basic concepts such as adaptation, risk and well-being. Consequently, their evaluations of the different parental coping styles vary, suggesting that it is all "in the mind of the beholder".     

Dichotomy of development aid’s ambition and neoliberal imperatives: A case‐study of private‐sector development in Bangladesh

Development in the twenty‐first century (“neo‐liberalism”) is a tool and its success and sustainability depend on how this tool is applied on a specific grounded reality. This article investigates how this modernization process continually co‐creates globalized Bangladesh through private sector development. While this field report highlights the challenges development aid donors can face in Bangladesh’s post‐colonial culture, it also unveils the dichotomous traction between globalization and inequality as well as the friction poverty reduction, through private sector development, can generate in impoverished countries. Finally, this report attempts to reconsider the ways in which the aid development ambitions of equality and liberty can find a workable balance with the neo‐liberal Imperative for private sector development. This article calls for improving quality control to generate greater impact of development aid resources in developing private sectors.