Toward a Sociology of “Security”

Security as a phenomenon has come to occupy increasing social energy and thus merits sociological attention. But the question of how to go about studying “security” is somewhat vexing, because the concept of “security” is both highly polysemous (Ranasinghe 2013) and one that can potentially be located within a wide spectrum of social sites, ranging from the feelings of individuals to the practices of states. I suggest that we must first clarify what we are talking about when we talk about “security.” Here, I present several ideas for fully articulating the concept.     

“Shifting the Power”: Youth Activists’ Narrative Reframing of the Immigrant Rights Movement

This article explores collective efforts by undocumented youth activists to use storytelling to reframe the debates around immigration reform and discursively position themselves as the rightful leaders of a movement that had been dominated by adult citizen‐advocates. Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork, 37 in‐depth interviews, and hundreds of pages of movement documents, I show how youth activists in the United States worked together to develop stories that: (1) drew into question the legitimacy of adult citizen‐advocates to speak on issues of immigration and (2) cast undocumented immigrant youth as the proper authorities on these matters. I argue that through collective storytelling and character work, the activists were able to subvert adult citizen authority and construct themselves as powerful, new collective actors in the contemporary immigrant rights movement. I conclude by discussing some of the practical implications and limitations of using narrative reframing strategies to advance the social change agendas of marginalized movement factions.     

“Sensory Ordering” in Nurses' Clinical Decision‐Making: Making Visible Senses,Sensing, and “Sensory Work” in the Hospital

The objective of this article is to present a study on the constitutive role of senses in clinical decision‐making. The methodology is based on a series of focus groups with nurses in various hospital departments. Based on a narrative approach, our study examines “sensory work” in clinical decision‐making in order to reveal its specificity in the clinical work of nurses. Nurses shared stories—in focus groups—about the influence of senses in clinical decision‐making. The analysis of clinical narratives helped to identify various situations revealing the “sensory work” that underlines clinical decision‐making. We put the emphasis on the spectrum of sensory activities and the interactions occurring during a clinical decision‐making. One specific contribution of our study is to make visible the “sensory ordering” at work as constituted by interactions between nurses during a clinical assessment.     

“Just a Typical Teenager”: The Social Ecology of “Normal Adolescence”—Insights from Diabetes Care

In Western society “normal adolescence” is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of “normal adolescence” derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contradictions inherent in the social order at this stage of the life‐course. While helping us to comprehend sociologically the ecological niche in which “normal adolescence” is sustained, this analysis raises questions about the persistence of this discourse for social action.     

What's in a Name? Causes and Consequences of Labelling Minorities as “National” or “Migrant”: Roma in Italy and Spain

This article analyses how Roma are represented in official policy narratives in Italy and Spain by comparing the four cycles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in the two countries. By tracing the representations that the Italian and Spanish governments hold (and make) about the Roma, I sketch out the different categories that EU‐ropean countries recur to as organizing principles to “other” underprivileged minorities. Based on the tailored‐approaches in which both Italy and Spain engage in framing Roma as either a “national” minority or not, I suggest that constructing or “producing” a minority in our imagined communities as characterized by national, cultural, social or migrant characteristics relies more on political expediency than on objective analytical categories.     

From “Swinging Hard” to “Rocking Out”: Classification of Style and the Creation of Identity in the World of Drumming

This article takes a social constructionist approach to the study of a seldom considered subculture—the “world” of drumming. I describe this subculture from both the “etic” and “emic” perspectives, showing how drummers and drumming are perceived and experienced by the musicians themselves (insiders) as well as the “outside” public. The main focus is on the drummers' intersubjective “mental maps” of their world, specifically exploring how they create musical and personal identities by adhering to a rigid classification scheme surrounding “styles” of drumming. I demonstrate how drummers use drumming equipment, personal appearance, education, and “purist” attitudes to separate styles of drumming and to construct distinct social selves. Of special interest is how drummers are cognitively socialized into “thought communities” which teach and reinforce attitudinal and behavioral norms. I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of applying my analytical framework to other worlds of music and art, as well as some forms of occupational and avocational specialization.     

“Road Warriors” on “Hair-Tragger Highways”: Cultural Resources and the Media's Construction of the 1987 Freeway Shootings Problem*

Media constructions of social problems usually rework the claims of activists and other primary claimsmakers. However, the news media acted as primary claims-makers in discovering and reporting the 1987 Los Angeles freeway violence problem. The press drew upon cultural resources in constructing this problem, applying a conventional template for social problems stories and using familiar imagery to depict freeway shootings. The social organization of claimsmaking, as well as contingencies in the histories of individual campaigns, affect the choice of cultural resources used to construct social problems.     

Uncovering a Hidden “I” in Contemporary Urban Ethnography

Considerations of the self in ethnography have taken on various forms, including reportage of how the researcher gained access to a field site as well as achieved rapport with those who were the focus of study. I contend here that there exists a less well‐recognized form of selfhood in ethnography that pertains to the moral self of the ethnographer. This self reflects the sociopolitical or aesthetic orientation taken by the ethnographer of the problem that has framed the research endeavor resulting in the ethnographic product. Through assessments of the work of some ethnographers, including myself, who study people in social categories in which the ethnographer holds membership, this essay explores that dimension of the ethnographer's moral self.     

The Turn from “What” to “How”: Garfinkel's Reach Beyond Description

John Heritage described Harold Garfinkel's central question as “how do social actors come to know, and know in common what they are doing and the circumstances in which they are doing it.” The case of Agnes illuminates the methods by which members produce intelligible actions and recognizable—even “natural”—gender orderliness. With this central interest as a starting point, this article offers some observations about transgender women in prison and their creative adaptation to life behind bars.     

Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign

Dove, a popular beauty brand, impressed some in the advertising world with its unique “Campaign for Real Beauty” and made others cringe. But little is known about how real women respond. “Real” beauty according to Dove means various shapes and sizes—flaws and all—and is the key to rebranding, rebuilding women's self‐esteem, and redefining beauty standards. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with sixteen Canadian women and guided by social semiotics and dramaturgy, I examine Dove's presentation of beauty and women's reactions to it from a “beauty as performance” frame. This study examines processes of interpretation and finds that expressing beauty, the self, and a public image inextricably requires elements of performance.     

“Scissors,Please”: The Practical Accomplishment of Surgical Work in the Operating Theater

The focus of this article is on professional activity in the operating theater. We explore how surgeons and nurses organize their activities, how social interaction is used to help structure and define situations, and how differentials in knowledge are constructed and oriented to. We utilize some ideas and concepts from symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis to analyze small clips of audio‐ and video‐recorded interaction. Focusing on how surgeons and nurses request, provide, and apply surgical instruments, the analysis shows how surgical work is accomplished through talk and bodily conduct. We conclude that, examined in detail, the social interaction between surgeons and nurses is analytically inseparable from the “technical” demands of their work.     

“The Spider Is Alive”: Reassessing Becker's Theory of Artistic Conventions through Southern Italian Music

Howard Becker wrote that art is constructed, and understood, according to conventions. However, Becker does not adequately explain how artists negotiate historical circumstances affecting their work. Using the southern Italian phenomenon of tarantism and its music, I address how contemporary musicians employ conventions to transform sounds with deviant connotations. The alteration of musical conventions reflects material social conditions in the Salento region and provides insight into the formation of a Salentinian cultural movement's ideology. By accounting for how social groups contend with history, I argue that sociologists must reconsider the theory of artistic conventions.     

“Midwife to Myself”: Birth Narratives among Women Choosing Unassisted Homebirth*

Most pregnant women in the United States today choose a normative physician‐guided pregnancy followed by a medically managed hospital birth. Some, however, choose the care of a midwife during pregnancy and birth, whether in the hospital or, more rarely, at home. Despite growing research on both these paths, a third option chosen by some women has rarely been studied: a planned birth at home with neither a doctor nor a midwife assisting. In this article, I examine the stories told by women in this under‐researched population to consider how they make and explain this highly unusual choice. Analysis of online birth stories and in‐depth interviews with women who planned and had an unassisted homebirth reveal ways in which these women rely on competing discourses of midwifery and medicine to craft a unique sense of agency in birth.     

Constructing “Social Change” through Philanthropy: Boundary Framing and the Articulation of Vocabularies of Motives for Social Movement Participation*

I embrace Mills's (1940) conception of motives to offer new insight into an old question: why do people join social movements? I draw upon ethnographic research at the Crossroads Fund, a “social change” foundation, to illustrate that actors simultaneously articulate two vocabularies of motives for movement participation: an instrumental vocabulary about dire, yet solvable, problems and an expressive vocabulary about collective identity. This interpretive work is done during boundary framing, which refers to efforts by movements to create in-group/out-group distinctions. I argue that the goal-directed actions movements take to advance social change are shaped by participants' identity claims. Moreover, it is significant that Crossroads constructs its actions and identity as social movement activism, rather than philanthropy. This definitional work suggests that analyzing the category social movements is problematic unless researchers study how activists attempt to situate themselves within this category. Hence, methodologically attending to organizations' constructions of movement status can theoretically inform research which essentially takes social movements as a given, in exploring their structural components.     

Considering Alternate Sources of Role Identity: Childless Parents and Their Animal “Kids”

Identity theory posits that role identity is negotiated between human social actors and is based in broader cultural expectations about how particular statuses should be performed. I argue that the formation of role identity in actors can also occur in relationship to nonhuman actors, if they are perceived as minded. Depending on context and human perception, identity can be formed as a result of interaction and developing “theory of mind” with nonhuman animals, directly implicating the animal. Using in‐depth interviews of childless and childfree companion animal owners, I demonstrate the existence of a parent identity in childless participants that would not otherwise be present were it not for interaction with the animal “child.” This identity is confirmed in participant narratives describing substantial behavioral output aligned with the U.S. cultural ideal of “parent.” Likewise, I find that significant others provide external support for the enactment of this role identity, allowing participants to verify self‐in‐situation. Overall, my analysis emphasizes the importance of considering nonhuman sources as occupying counterstatus positions in the formation of role identity while highlighting how these relationships affect interaction in the childfree and childless home, thus expanding scholarly understanding about both identity formation and emerging family types.     

“As Far as They Knew I Came from France”: Stigma,Passing, and Not Speaking about the Holocaust

Today we recognize that storytelling plays an important role in helping survivors of traumatic episodes such as sexual abuse, military combat, or genocide refashion a sense of self and “work through” their traumatic experiences. But before the Holocaust was named and widely acknowledged and the diagnosis of post‐traumatic stress had emerged, survivors of Hitler's genocidal policies struggled to tell their stories in a world that did not particularly wish to hear them. While most accounts of Holocaust survivors’ postwar experiences focus on themes of redemption, adjustment, and integration, my analysis of interviews with Holocaust survivors suggests during their first two decades living in the United States they were often silenced by individuals they encountered. I use Goffman's analysis of stigma to document how and why this silencing occurred, and with what consequences, providing an account of the interactions survivors had with family members, neighbors and acquaintances, and the strategies of identity management that survivors devised.     

Between “Families in Trouble” and “Children at Risk”: Historicising “Troubled Family” Policy in England since 1945

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in 2011 has thrown into sharp relief how governments develop policies and practices to intervene in the lives of so‐called ‘troubled families’. Commentators were quick to make comparisons with historic efforts to rehabilitate ‘problem families’ in the post‐war period. However, beyond discursive similarities, there are also marked continuities in how family policies have been developed and implemented. This review narrates the rise, fall and rise of concern about ‘problem’ and ‘troubled’ families in England in the context of anxieties about child and family welfare, and the appropriate response of the state.     

“Those foreigners ruin everything here”: Interactional functions of ethnic labelling among pupils in the Netherlands

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of ethnic labelling practices by examining their interactional functions among secondary school pupils in Venlo, the Netherlands. Pupils with migration backgrounds often labelled themselves and others “Turk,” “Moroccan,” or “foreigner,” and labelled others “Dutch.” The paper highlights that ethnic labelling can be understood not only as identity construction, but also as interactional work. I build on membership categorization analysis (MCA), complemented by conversation analysis (CA), to analyse how pupils’ use of ethnic labels evoked an expert role which altered interactants’ power positions; and how, often, pupils engaged in jocular mockery with ethnic labels and in that way mitigated the effects of exclusionary and stigmatizing discourses about people with migration backgrounds. Finally, I argue that pupils’ labelling practices had locally occasioned meanings and functions, but that they ultimately reflect wider‐spread systems of categorization and marginalization of people with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands.     

“You Know,Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant”: Religion and Transnational Migration

The purpose of this article is to summarize what we know about the role that religion plays in transnational migration and to outline a strategy for further research in this area. While migration scholars now generally acknowledge the salience of migrants' economic, social, and political transnational activities, we have largely overlooked the ways in which religious identities and practices also enable migrants to sustain memberships in multiple locations. My goals in this article are threefold. First, I provide a brief overview of related bodies of work on global, diasporic and immigrant religion and differentiate them from studies of migrants' transnational religious practices. Second, I selectively summarize what we have learned about the role of religion in transnational migration from prior research. Finally, I propose an approach to future research on these questions.¹