From a ‘sort of Muslim’ to ‘proud to be Alevi’: the Alevi religion and identity project combatting the negative identity among second-generation Alevis in the UK

ABSTRACT

This article explains how the negative identity of second-generation Alevi-Kurds in the UK has been transmitted intergenerationally, linked to their history of persecuted exclusion in Turkey and to the transnational settlement of Alevi migrants in the UK, and how this sense of marginalization and invisibility in the receiving country can be addressed. Education is identified as a starting point for the underachievement and disaffection of Alevi pupils, which can lead them into more serious trouble and descent into the rainbow underclass. In the quest to tackle this identity issue, a unique collaborative action research project was set up between an Alevi community centre, local schools and a university to develop the world’s first Alevi lessons as part of the compulsory Religious Education curriculum in British schools. The Alevi Religion and Identity Project is described and evaluated in terms of its outcomes, especially its contribution towards a more positive Alevi identity as a reflection of a vibrant community.     

Imagined interactions,family money management patterns and coalitions,and attitudes toward money and credit

This study explores the imagined interactions college students have with their parents about money and credit, their attitudes toward credit and money, the ways they say their parents deal with financial decisions, and the communication coalitions regarding finances they perceive existing within their family. Students’ imagined interaction pleasantness is greatest when parents jointly form a plan for paying off credit card debt and lowest when parents argue. When family coalitions exist, students report more frequent imagined interactions. Imagined interaction frequency and pleasantness are related to credit and money attitudes.

'Clinton faces nation': a case study in the construction of focus group data as public opinion

This paper analyses the way in which a particular newspaper report constructs ‘public opinion’ based on data from small‐scale qualitative research. Using as a case study a report of a focus group discussion of Clinton's grand jury testimony, we show how these data are ‘worked up’ as representative, generalisable, and valid. By capitalising on the advantages of focus group data, while attending to and countering their disadvantages, the newspaper report is able to suggest that the views of ten people in San Francisco offer an authoritative indication of public opinion about Clinton across the USA. Finally, we sketch out some of the implications of this case study in relation to the construction of facticity more generally.     

Civic Spaces: Mexican Hometown Associations and Immigrant Participation

The study of civic participation and social capital in the United States has, until recently, been silent on the role of immigrant-serving organizations. There is a new line of scholarship, which indicates that ethnic organizations are generally disadvantaged in relation to White mainstream organizations on factors such as resources and political visibility. Our fieldwork on Mexican hometown associations (HTAs) in Los Angeles shows that transnational associations are even more disadvantaged than ethnic organizations that primarily serve the native born. However, this marginality leaves some counterintuitive advantages, namely the creation of safe spaces where undocumented immigrants, recent immigrants, and those with limited English proficiency can get involved in civic and political activities. We explore the extent to which these dynamics vary by gender and immigrant generation, and over time as Mexican hometown associations increasingly turn their attention to political issues in the United States.     

Globalization: Myths and Realities1

Abstract The current decline of the developmentalist paradigm, and its view of the rural as increasingly residual, revitalizes rural sociology. The blossoming of studies of rurality and ecology is paralleled by the growing currency of globalization as an object of analysis. This is more than a coincidence—in fact, globalization crystallizes local diversity. The two phenomena go hand in hand. But each needs to be understood as an historical construct; that is, they need to be problematized. In problematizing “globalization,” I argue that it must be understood as a post-developmentalist construct. The postwar goal of national development, institutionalized in the international Bretton Woods regime, has run its course—dramatized by the assault on developmentalist states and institutions in the monetarist regime established under the auspices of the 1980s debt crisis. The nationally oriented institutions of the developmentalist era are now being replaced by globally oriented institutions under the legitimizing cloak of efficiency and financial credibility. Related to this trend, producing communities scramble to reposition themselves either through finding niches in a new global economy or through resistance to global pressures. Either way, there is a new emphasis on defining the local. This article explores the conjunction of global and local definition.