Suburban ethnicities: Home as the site of interethnic conviviality and racism

This article explores the ways in which the white working-class residents of a suburban English town reflect on their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbors. Its focus is on how everyday constructions of home become sites for the intermingling of discourses of intercultural conviviality and racism. My contention is that the idea of home has not yet been given the detailed critical attention that it deserves in the sociological literature on everyday manifestations of multiculturalism, conviviality, and racism. My supposition is that a special focus on the idea of home as the site of conviviality offers a productive avenue to analyze how intercultural relationships are formed and how the norms of neighborliness are thought to break down, opening a space for commonplace racialized and racist stereotypes to take hold. The idea of home is central to the rhythm and landscape of the English suburbs. It conjures up the idea of a uniform and aspirational white space. Drawing on this imaginary of home, I shall trace how “white working class” “English,” “Scottish,” and “Anglo-Italian” residents’ everyday constructions of home become embroiled with their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbors.     

黑格尔法哲学中的“等级”概念

通过黑格尔在《法哲学原理》中对“等级”的相关论述阐明了“等级”概念的具体含义。黑格尔在精神发展内在逻辑的结构框架下论述了等级理论，展现出理性的机巧。市民社会孕育分化出来的殊多等级由于在理念和现实上的缺陷，必须被纳入政治国家这一更高阶段，实现现实的自由。逻辑和现实的距离终未使伟大人物黑格尔的社会政治理想现实化。     

Homosexual Discretion and Good Taste: Two Rules That Govern Homosexual Sociability Space in Santiago de Chile

Homosexual sociability space in Santiago is not socially homogenous. Beyond non-heterosexual identities segmentation (gay, lesbian, queer, BDSM, etc.), the present article proposes a reflection observing certain social distinctions or differences that come into play to create a hierarchy among gay and lesbian individuals within that space. Using a qualitative approximation, we analyze the discourse of homosexual men and women about ways to display homosexuality in different places in the city, as well as some sociability practices used in homosexual venues. The resulting social hierarchy is understood through two central subjective rules: discretion and good taste, dynamic mechanisms that perpetuate the distance among groups within the same sociability space, and to some extent reproduce the city’s class structure. Given that material means to privatize and sophisticate homosexual expression are unequally distributed in Santiago, the resulting differentiated social networks end up configuring the visibility strategies of homosexual identity played out in the city in the last years.     

Modeling of Discrete HNBUE Class with Hypothesis Testing Application

A new model is proposed to test whether an equipment whose life is measured in discrete time units fails due to uncontrollable chance factors alone against the alternatives that it degrades over time in the sense of discrete HNBUE (harmonic new better than used in expectation) aging. The test is shown to be consistent and the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic has been obtained. The critical points and the power of the test against various alternatives from discrete HNBUE class have been studied by means of simulation. Finally, the test is applied to a discrete reliability data to examine the performance.     

Varieties of political support in emerging democracies: A cross-national analysis

Political support is a multidimensional construct encompassing evaluations of political leaders and institutions (specific support) as well as adherence to basic regime principles (diffuse support). Scholars have traditionally assumed that diffuse and specific support are driven by different forces and evolve largely independently. Prior empirical work, however, has struggled to untangle the two support dimensions and focused predominantly on cross-national differences, ignoring their dynamics. This paper develops an analytical and empirical approach to examine the levels and dynamic interplay of both support dimensions and estimate their determinants, applying it to South American democracies between 1996 and 2015. Contrary to received wisdom, we show that both dimensions are quite volatile and closely linked in this region. In particular, negative economic shocks not only undermine support for government actors, but also fuel democratic disenchantment. Nonetheless, while regime support is rather fickle in South America, it can be ultimately resistant to performance fluctuations.     

铁路站前框架式挡土型高架结构规划设计

连接铁路客站落客平台和周边道路的高架结构以梁式桥居多，宁杭高铁湖州站的站前北接线高架由于道路线形、建设工期、与客站地块衔接等原因，部分区段采用框架式挡土型结构。采用框架结构初步拟合、路面基层二次找坡、道路面层修正的三步骤方法拟合道路线形；采用箱涵式挡土墙为管线及人员检修预留空间，同时在挡土墙内底填充素混凝土以满足挡墙稳定性要求；在挡土墙的外侧顺道路方向设置钢筋混凝土墙体，增加结构的侧向刚度、改善结构受力；在结构与高填土路基段的交界区域，设置了搭板缓解路面差异沉降，并设置伸缩缝改善车辆行驶的平顺性。可为类似工程提供参考。     

‘Car Talk’: automobility and Chinese international students in Michigan

The apparent conspicuous consumption of luxury vehicles by Chinese international students attending a public Michigan University provides an opportunity to examine the convergence of different ideas about automobility. Upwardly mobile Chinese families send their children to Michigan, a state with a tradition of auto-production, for educational opportunities not available in China. The resulting ‘car talk’ of local residents about Chinese students and their cars speaks to broader anxieties about Michigan’s shifting relationship to the global economy. However, the paper focuses on the meanings of auto-owning created by Chinese students who make decisions about the purchase and use of their autos within a social world oriented primarily to other Chinese students and societal ideas about auto-owning circulating among friends, family and society in China. For Chinese students, car owning encompasses meanings of status, safety and sociability that are created within the context of study abroad.     

Violence in the name of god? A framing processes approach to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Since summer 2014, the insurgent group ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) has become a major concern for international politics and global security due to its rapid territorial gains, violent operations and the propagation of Salafi-jihadist ideology. This study aims to enhance the academic understanding of ISIS by demystifying the ideological reasoning behind its use of violence. It therefore investigates the link between structural factors that served ISIS’s evolution, its ideological outlook and the significance of this ideology to legitimize violent action. As its theoretical basis, the study employs framing processes within the study of social movements. Methodologically, discursive frame analysis serves to explore the relation of ISIS’s ideology to structural events and experiences to better understand how the group justifies violence. Therefore, the study draws on audio speeches and issues of the magazines Dabiq and Dar al-Islam published by ISIS, which are examined on the rhetoric of othering, collective identity and justifying violence. It is argued that ISIS constructs a collective action frame which creates a social reality that bestows the group with a rationale for action. ISIS’s ideology, based on Islamic symbolism, presents an interpretative lens which assigns meaning to the structural environment of ISIS’s emergence. In this context, violence is justified as a necessity to defend Islam and as an obligation for the true Muslim believer. The discussion concludes that ISIS’s ideology legitimizes the very existence of the group and conceals its mundane struggle for power, territory and wealth through reference to divine authority.     

Interlopers in class: A duoethnography of working‐class women academics

This article introduces the concept of the interloper for examining classed and gendered dislocation. Focusing on academia, which we view as a classed and gendered field, we draw on Bourdieu and feminist standpoint theory to account for how we, as women of working‐class origin, have experienced ‘breaches' through which we have come to understand ourselves in classed and gendered terms. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, we also reflect on how understandings of class are context‐specific. We employ a duoethnographic method which emphasizes the value of subjective experiences for organizational and social analyses. The article shows how the concept of the interloper may shed light on the dynamic, relational character of constructions of class and gender; the maintenance work that is performed; and how a sense of permanent inbetweenness characterizes our ongoing movement between the fields of the family and academia.