“Behind Every Great Man…”: The Male Marriage Wage Premium Examined Qualitatively

Studies across diverse national contexts reliably show that married men earn more than unmarried men, but the mechanisms responsible for this are still disputed. This article explores the male marriage wage premium from a new perspective, using longitudinal qualitative data from Russia (N = 94). Qualitative research is particularly suited to identifying underlying processes and, by analyzing men's accounts of the influence of their marital trajectories on their work, the authors were able to reexamine existing hypotheses and develop new ones. They propose 4 mechanisms that they hypothesize can influence men's work motivation and performance: premarital planning, 2 distinct “breadwinner” effects using expectancy and self determination theory, and monitoring by wives. They integrate these mechanisms within gender theory, arguing that the treatment aspect of the male marriage wage premium is an outcome of the “coproduction” of masculinity within marriage. Their recontextualization of existing theory also enables them to reveal weaknesses in the specialization hypothesis.     

Economic growth,labour flexibilization and employment quality in Colombia, 2002–11

Over the period 2002–11, the Colombian labour market saw a marked improvement in employment opportunities, accompanied by an increase in nonstandard forms of employment. The authors look at how this affected employment quality, using a composite index based on Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA). They observe a small but widespread improvement in employment quality – mainly for self‐employed women – brought about by higher earnings, increased social protection and less time‐related underemployment. However, a considerable “quality deficit” remains, which calls for policies to strengthen labour market institutions and stimulate productivity and investment.     

Representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the Discourse of Lafcadio Hearn Studies

The purpose of this article is to analyze representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the discourse of research on Lafcadio Hearn (“Hearn studies”) from pre‐war Japan. The nature and construction of nationality will be analyzed by examining where the representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” intersected. During the 1900s, researchers in the field of Hearn studies recognized that “Japan” lacked—and thus sought—a universality similar to what existed in “the West.” The tone of the discourse shifted during the 1910s through 1920s however, and what came to be emphasized was “Japan's” peculiarity. By the 1930s through 1940s, “Japan” aimed to show to “the West” a new universality that was different from what existed in Europe and America. Yet simultaneously, in order to legitimize its representation of its self, “Japan” portrayed “the Periphery” as an object that was both excluded and absorbed or appropriated into that image. On the one hand, “Japan” received and internalized the Orientalist viewpoint of “the West.” In fact, “Japan” was always conscious of its self‐image as something to display to “the West.” On the other hand, in order to create that self‐portrayal, both a representation of “the Periphery” and a reflection from that same “Periphery” were essential. While representations of “Japan” were produced, reproduced, and reinforced through interactions with “the West” and “the Periphery,” the intersecting behavior of these three entities also points to a residual ambiguity in “Japan's” nationality. By analyzing the discourse in Hearn studies, this paper reveals how the interaction between “Japan” and the two others of “the West” and “the Periphery” helped construct and destabilize its nationality.     

“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 ABOUT THE CHILDREN?” The Psychological and Social Well‐Being of Multiracial Adolescents

We used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the social and psychological well-being of multiracial adolescents. Using two different measures of multiracial identity, we investigated the ways in which these adolescents compare to their monoracial counterparts on five outcomes: depression, seriously considering suicide, feeling socially accepted, feeling close to others at school, and participating in extracurricular activities. We found that multiracial adolescents as a group experience some negative outcomes compared to white adolescents, but that this finding is driven by negative outcomes for those with American Indian and white heritage. We found no consistent evidence, however, that multiracial adolescents as a group face more difficulty in adolescence than members of other racial and ethnic minority groups. The results were similar, whether the multiracial population is defined by self-identification or by their parents' racial identifications.     

Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work”

Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary‐work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.     

“NEW” STRUCTURAL POVERTY?

Proponents of the new structural poverty thesis contend that "overly generous" meanstested transfer payments increase poverty by encouraging female headship and welfare dependency. Skeptics of this view concede that transfer programs have serious faults, but argue that their overall effect is to reduce poverty. Focusing on states' Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) programs, this article examines how well these competing hypotheses account for changes in poverty since 1960. AFDC contributed to the substantial poverty reduction of the 1960s. By the next decade, however, such effects attenuated, in part because the most generous programs began to encourage slight increases in female headship, which exacerbates poverty. The new structural poverty thesis may offer some understanding of the feminization of poverty in recent years, but the argument that AFDC transfers generate poverty is unfounded.
The welfare system is anti-work, anti-family, inequitable in its treatment of the poor and wasteful of taxpayers' dollars. It provides incentives for family breakup. It discourages work. (Carter 1977)     

“It's Only Sport”—The Symbolic Neutralization of “Violence”

Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury—a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly “violent” confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet, within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be constructed as playful and unserious, it is possible for the consequences of such action to be concealed behind a symbolic, ludic veneer. Within this article, we explore this process with a particular focus on ice hockey spectators, for whom notions of sport violence as in some important way “mimetic” of the “real” enabled their propensity to both enjoy, and find moral validation through, potentially deleterious behaviors among athletes.     

Creating places through language rules: A historical and ethnographic perspective on the “Rule of Irish”

In seeking to understand the political projects underlying pedagogical choices, this article studies the reasons for and situated dynamics of the implementation of the “Rule of Irish” (or Riail na Gaeilge), which prohibits the use of English in Irish immersion language camps (“summer colleges”) set in Ireland's officially designated Irish‐speaking regions, the Gaeltacht. Despite the great difficulty imposing this rule on learners represents, its implantation has remained unquestioned since the development of the first summer colleges at the beginning of the 20th century. Combining ethnographic observations, the study of press articles published between 1901 and 1916, and the analysis of contemporary language policies, I show that the implementation of Riail na Gaeilge aims to provide students with an experience of the monolingual Irish place that the Gaeltacht has long been popularly and officially imagined as being. Riail na Gaeilge is thus not just a pedagogical tool but it also has a social function of consecrating the Gaeltacht as Irish‐speaking Ireland. The article traces how the Gaeltacht was created and has been maintained through Riail na Gaeilge and explores the political reasons underlying this institutionalization.     

The imprudence of labour market flexibilization in a fiscally austere world

This article assesses the effects of combining fiscal austerity with policies aimed at reducing labour costs and, in doing so, sheds new light on current policy debates. Taking a global perspective, the authors explore the aggregation problem by proposing a stylized analytical macro‐model with explicit distribution dynamics. In this framework, flexibilization policies that suppress the labour share trigger global feedbacks that result in a downward spiral, with contraction even in export‐led economies. The initial gains of more competitive economies are shown to be ephemeral. In the long term, the world economy is essentially wage‐led and responds positively to coordinated Keynesian stimuli.     

“One able daughter is worth 10 illiterate sons”: Reframing the patriarchal family

This research note reports on interviews with 120 mothers employed in garment factories in Bangladesh. These mothers express views on the necessity of being married, having sons, and educating daughters that challenge traditional patriarchal practices. They report that men of their families can no longer guarantee women and children lifetime support in the context of extreme poverty and landlessness. Many of them thus choose to assist their husbands, brothers, and parents through wage employment. Their employment creates a space in which these women can begin to make choices and decisions independent of the wishes of the men in their families. Their responses indicate a crack in the traditional patriarchal family system, which requires that a woman be dependent, first on her father, then on her husband, and then on her adult son.     

“Revenge” and “Rescue”: Workplace Deviance in the Taxicab Industry*

This study explores taxicab drivers’ acts of “revenge” and “rescue,” some of which are expressive acts, while others are more instrumental. This article builds on earlier theories of workplace deviance, demonstrating how deviance can serve different purposes and expanding the concept of “deviance admiration” ( Heckert and Heckert 2004 ). It examines deviance in a circumstance—the taxicab industry—which introduces a tension between mandated conformity and necessary deviance: employees must conform to the employers’ rules and yet, to accomplish their jobs well, they need to abandon those rules occasionally. In addition to its theoretical contributions, this work has important practical applications for managers.     

Globalization and Technology Divides: Bifurcation of Policy between the “Digital Divide” and the “Innovation Divide”*

The global diffusion of digital technology, which occurred more rapidly than the global diffusion of any technology previously, has been mired by its uneven distribution across, and unequal effects on, societies worldwide. In addition, policy initiatives to close this global digital divide, which peaked with the two World Summit on Information Society conferences, still did not change the course of this differentiated globalization process. In this article, I attribute the cause of such stalling of policy on the issue of the global digital divide to the bifurcation of current international policy: attention is split between concern for the impeded access of the poor to this revolutionary technology, on the one hand, and the race to lead the world in creating the next “hot” technology, on the other. These two concerns, which have been given the pithy titles of the “global digital divide” and the “global innovation divide,” are leading to two separate policy tracks, targeting the world’s laggards and leaders as separate entities and operating under separate logics. This separation is problematic because the issues of access to technology and ownership of rights to technology are intertwined. This article describes the two global technology divides and analyzes the policies that are currently charted to address them.     

Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden

While there is a substantial scholarly literature depicting the abuses and exploitation of domestic workers in the informal cleaning sector, there is virtually no work that examines conditions in the formal market. This is not an oversight. For many, commodifying domestic labour entrenches gender and economic inequalities; we all should simply clean up after ourselves. We seek to offer a fresh approach: the vital question for those concerned with the women performing this work for pay is not whether to commodify reproductive labour, but rather what form the market will take and what conditions might render it a decent job. In order to make such an assessment, we need to look beyond worst‐case scenarios in the informal sector, and study instead the evolution of the formal market. Only by also examining the content and terms of the work can we address how not to perpetuate inequalities such as the gendered division of labour and its intersection with nationality, race and class. In this article, we analyse the market for household services in Sweden's gender egalitarian social democracy, where a recent tax policy fostered the rapid expansion of a formal market for domestic cleaning. We conclude that domestic cleaning can be a decent job and that there is no inherent contradiction between a market for household services and a social democratic political economy.     

“Discrimination” versus “Unfair Treatment”: Measuring Differential Treatment and its Association with Health

There is consistent evidence of the health‐harming effects of discrimination. However, it remains unclear whether discrimination contributes to persistent racial and ethnic health disparities. One hindrance to documenting the association between discrimination and health disparities is ongoing methodological issues, particularly the role of question wording in assessing self‐reports of discrimination. Using two nationally representative surveys, we investigate whether the prevalence, distribution, and mental and physical health consequences of differential treatment vary by question wording—”discrimination” versus “unfair treatment.” We find that “unfair treatment” yields greater reports of everyday forms of differential treatment relative to reports of “discrimination,” while the latter yields greater reports of major forms of differential treatment. In addition, the negative effect of “unfair treatment” on mental health is stronger than that of “discrimination,” while the latter has a stronger negative effect on physical health. However, the effect of question wording on reports of differential treatment and its association with health is largely unique to non‐Hispanic whites. We conclude that unfair treatment and discrimination reflect distinct concepts that should not be used interchangeably.     

Measuring Social “Informatization”: A Factor Analytic Approach*

Some scholars have argued that we are witnessing a new social revolution—social “informatization”—that is comparable in scope and impact to that of the Industrial Revolu‐tion of the eighteenth century. Others have argued that it is a much more modest phase in the ongoing development of communication and information‐processing technology. While there are a number of reasons for disagreement about what exactly “informatization” is, and what its impact will be, two are paramount: (1) conceptual imprecision, and (2) issues of measurement. Using factor analysis, this study aims to clarify its conceptualization, and, then, rather than focusing on a single dimension (e.g., technological or economic), it will develop a comprehensive multiple‐indicator measure that captures the economic, technological, and size (stock) dimensions of social informatization. We find that this measure of social informatization strongly correlates with the general level of socioeconomic development. This result implies that social informatization may be a more continuous and cumulative process than a disjunctive or discontinuous “revolution.”     

“The Guilt Thing”: Balancing Domestic and Professional Roles

Women’s representation in the workforce has increased dramatically over the past 30 years; yet, women “take a greater responsibility for the care of children” ( Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006 ). Research has suggested working mothers may experience guilt resulting from the social constrictions of a traditional model of intensive mothering ( B. Holcomb, 1998 ). Forty‐two audiotaped conversations of female teachers (n = 8) were collected in a British high school. Qualitative analyses of 3 conversations, in which 5 of the teachers discussed their professional and domestic responsibilities, demonstrated that the participants discursively aligned to 3 dominant interactional positions, accessibility, happiness, and separate spheres ( Y. Elvin‐Novak & H. Thomsson, 2001 ). The analyses also revealed the use of supportive conversational strategies such as co‐complaining and matching accounts.     

The Inseparability of “Career” and “Personal” Counseling

In this article it is argued that “career” and “personal” counseling should not be viewed as different types of counseling because: (a) the holistic philosophy of counseling emphasizes helping “whole” persons whose lives contain many important and meaningful roles; (b) recent research on the implications of gender and race for career development further demonstrates the inseparability of our career and “personal” lives; and (c) there are numerous commonalities in the “career” and “personal” counseling process.     

More but not better jobs in Chile? The fundamental importance of open‐ended contracts

Chilean governments since 1990 have relied on economic growth to generate employment, higher wages and better conditions of employment. But the results of this policy have been mixed: quantitative improvements in employment and wages have not been matched by improvements in job quality. Contrasting Chile's seemingly rigid regulatory framework with its actual labour market flexibility, the authors stress the importance of employment conditions in assessing labour market performance. They empirically explore the effects of individual and job characteristics on employment and income‐generating capabilities, whose most powerful determinant, they find, is employment under an open‐ended contract. They conclude with a discussion of policy implications.     

“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.