DESIGN OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACIES: Performances of citizenship, gender and IT

The point of departure for this article is several Swedish IT policies that articulate goals for further development of the welfare state, which demand and enable active citizenship as well as enrolment of IT in the performance of this active citizenship. This article also examines the performance of active citizenship in a variety of sociotechnical arenas where people and technology coexist. Does the notion of active citizenship turn out a number of performances when translated into materialized technologies, such as Internet portals and web-based services? The authors juxtapose the policies with a construction of agencies in the story of citizens' design. In the last section, the discussions taking place in the parliament of things are summarized and related to the problematizations of citizenship, gender and IT.     

Earnings of foreign-born doctoral engineers in the United States: intersectionality of citizenship status and gender

Abstract

Foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States make significant contributions to their fields. While some studies of their career outcomes investigate the internal differences among immigrant scientists and engineers, there is little scholarly attention to how immigration status and gender work together in shaping their career outcomes. This study employs the intersectionality framework and uses National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2017 to examine how citizenship status and the intersection of citizenship status and gender affect earnings among engineers with doctoral degrees. Findings show that naturalized U.S. citizens do not earn less than comparable native-born citizens, but permanent residents and temporary residents do. In terms of intersectional effects, U.S.-born women experience an earnings disadvantage due to their gender, naturalized U.S. citizen women and permanent resident women face earnings disadvantages because of both citizenship status and gender, and temporary resident women earn less because of their citizenship status. The preceding findings persisted in the period of study with one exception. These findings reveal the internal variations among foreign-born engineers, intersectional effects of citizenship status and gender, and the complexity and persistence of these effects, suggesting the intersectional and enduring nature of inequality.     

Do we need a psychology of gender difference?

In suggesting a psychology of gender difference I am obliged to weave my way very delicately between the social constructivists and post-modernists on the one hand, and the essentialists or maternalists and French psychoanalytic feminists on the other — keeping my head low as well to avoid being spotted by the sociobiologists. This review is intended to provide an update of contemporary perspectives on the contentious issue of gender difference.     

Vulnerability and disability: a citizenship perspective

This article discusses vulnerability and disability focusing on inclusion and citizenship, inspired by Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach and Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory. A public speech held at the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution is used as an exemplary case. The speaker, a woman with Down syndrome, challenges the Norwegian politic of inclusion. By drawing on perspectives from Nussbaum and Fineman, the article argues that a political concept of the person must emphasize individuals as vulnerable together with a recognition of disability as inherent in humanity. Vulnerability and disability are equally important for building future societies characterized by non-discrimination and equal citizenship.     

Sex makes a difference—How gender affects the therapeutic relationship

Because gender issues create obstacles or advance progress, this paper discusses how gender differences affect therapy. The psychoanalytic approach in the four treatment dyads of female therapist-male patient, male therapist-female patient, female therapist-female patient, and male therapist-male patient is presented to suggest propensities. A developmental focus on gender's effect on the therapeutic relationship is indicated by the theoretical rationale from psychoanalytic literature, and by clinical practice discoveries. Because therapists' perceptions about gender identity, gender roles and sexual partner orientation affect responses to patients, countertransference is considered. Acknowledgement of gender components within the transference is recommended if therapists are to provide the best treatment possible.     

(Dis)Abled bodies,gender, and citizenship in the Swedish sports movement

The aim of this article is to examine how the Swedish Sports Organization for the Disabled (SHIF) portrays disabled people. A text analysis of two policy documents, ‘Disability Sports Policy Programme’ and ‘Sports Objectives – A Summary of Aims and Guidelines for the Sports Movement’, examines ways in which sports are supposed to affect people’s bodies and contribute to society. Counter to its own aim to integrate disabled people, SHIF constructs such people as different and subordinated to able-bodied people, setting up an insurmountable boundary between the two groups.     

The importance of difference: conceptualising increased flexibility in gender relations at home

In this paper we have three goals. First, to provide a critique of attempts to theorise in the area of intimate care and domestic division of labour which do not pay adequate attention to issues of plurality/difference. We argue that the ideological environment within which contemporary couples operate consists of more than one existing normative structure, and that therefore an approach which can incorporate the idea of change can only really arise in the context of a focus on plurality and difference among households. Secondly, to discuss large-scale empirical evidence relating to the domestic division of labour which seem to indicate an increasingly narrow basis for blanket 'no change' arguments. Historical series of time-use diaries suggest that over a long period consistent changes have occurred in the amount of time that both women and men devote to domestic labour, such that (some) women are doing on average proportionately less, and (some) men proportionately more. Finally, to offer a framework for the discussion of difference and change in gender relations in the home. This focuses on the analysis of the continuing marital conversation as the key arena where the institutional and interactional dimensions of gender relations are played out. Our evidence suggests that the 'opening up' of the marital conversation is an important indicator and facilitator of change, and that mechanisms underlying this 'opening' can be shown to facilitate higher levels of men's participation in family work.     

How organizational characteristics shape gender difference and inequality at work

Why should students and scholars who are interested in gender difference and inequality study organizations? In recent years, as research on organizations has migrated to business schools and become less connected to other subfields of the discipline, the value of organizational sociology has become less evident to many. Yet characteristics of organizations contribute in important ways to producing different experiences and outcomes for women and men, by constraining certain individual actions and enabling or bringing about others. In this essay, we trace the consequences of four categories of organizational characteristics—the formal structure of work, employment practices, informal structure and culture, and organizational networks and fields—for gender inequality in three areas: workplace experiences, work–family conflict, and career outcomes. We close with some brief reflections on future directions for research linking organizations and gender.     

Locating difference: class, 'race' and gender, and the shaping of social inequalities

The current interest in difference has arisen in part because of its importance in recent recognition claims, and in part because of a belief that as a concept it can illuminate social diversity. Debates here have stressed the importance of the symbolic in the construction of social relations and social diversity, and have highlighted the relational underpinnings of diversity. In this paper we seek to take forward aspects of such an analysis by examining some issues in the shaping of difference and inequalities in the domains of gender, class and ‘race’. It is our argument that we can gain insights in these domains by better describing and theorising the mutuality of value and material social relations. The paper argues that issues of identity and difference need to be more firmly located within relational accounts of social practice, and in the nature of claims (to recognition and resources) which emerge out of different social locations. By exploring issues of difference in debates on class, gender and ‘race’, we argue that relational accounts must be placed within a perspective that also emphasises the content and patterned nature of (highly differentiated) social relations.     

Globalisation and local experience: encounters with difference in a UK school

This paper explores issues of identity, difference and globalisation in the micropolitical context of a UK school. Drawing on ethnographic data and theoretical perspectives from the sociology of education, development and globalisation, the paper takes the communication of the ‘Third World’ in the curriculum as a case study of the ways in which UK schools engage with difference. Thus, the paper goes beyond the traditional focus on ‘race’ and ethnicity, emphasising the importance of distant difference in the context of globalisation. It is suggested that whilst teachers may identify local and global factors as underpinning the need to engender critical engagements with difference, the realisation of this is complex; the communication of the ‘Third World’ in the school is characterised by contradiction, reinforcing as well as unsettling ethnocentrism. To understand this situation, we need to locate these contradictions in terms of the complex interplay of restructuring processes, policy frameworks and the micro‐politics of the school. The paper highlights the impacts of increased assessment and measurement in education alongside policy contradictions around curriculum authority. Teacher empowerment in the articulation of an appropriate curriculum is identified as a priority.     

Disability citizenship and digital capital: the case of engagement with a social enterprise telco

ABSTRACT

This paper uses as its base a key initiative involving a not-for-profit organisation (NPO), government start-up funding and a social enterprise which evolved through three phases. The purpose of the initiative was the development of a smart phone technology platform for people with disability. The paper’s purpose is to answer questions about the ways in which the mobile technology, seen here as assistive technologies, supported the development of disability citizenship and active citizenship. Data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted at three points in the 13-week programme during which participants with disability received customised support for their phone and training in its use, at no cost. Fifteen participants volunteered to take part in the research project, along with their significant other and service provider. Key themes were identified in the preliminary analysis. Exploring these using Ragnedda’s ([2017]. The third digital divide: A Weberian approach to digital inequalities. Abingdon: Routledge) three levels of digital divide, and Wilson’s ([2006]. The information revolution and developing countries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) categories of access allowed a series of philosophical, ethical and human services management questions to emerge, challenging the optimism with which the digital economy is presented as a solution to issues of inequality. Although the mobile technologies were very successful as assistive technologies for some participants, the findings reinforced the potential for such technologies to further entrench aspects of social exclusion. They also identified ways in which the shift in the role of the NPO to social entrepreneurship, and its relationships with government and private enterprise, had the potential to undermine the exercise of disability citizenship by turning participants into consumers.     

Making sense of the new geography of citizenship: Fragmented citizenship in the European Union

Theory and Society -     

Citizenship as cultural: Towards a theory of cultural citizenship

Traditional notions of citizenship have focused on formal membership, including access to rights, in a national community. More recent scholarship has expanded this definition beyond citizenship as a legal status to focus on struggles for societal inclusion of and justice for marginalized populations, citizenship as both a social and symbolic boundary of exclusion, and post‐colonial and post‐national citizenship. In this article, I review conceptions of citizenship that involve more than legal rights. After reviewing this scholarship, I discuss the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship – a move to center the cultural underpinnings of modern citizenship in analyses of citizenship as a boundary of inclusion and exclusion. I use the example of France as one site to locate the connections between citizenship and culture and the cultural underpinnings and implications of citizenship more broadly.     

Interdependencies, values and the reshaping of difference: gender and generation at the birth of twentieth-century modernity

The paper explores the mutuality of values, claims and social relations in the process of social change. Values are not separable from social relations but are embedded in the shaping and reshaping of social difference and interdependence. The paper focuses on developments around the turn of the twentieth century, and analyses changes in the relative social positioning of children and adults, and women and men, shifting patterns of interdependence, and linked values and ideas about difference. The reconfiguring of generational and gender relations was integral to the first fertility decline, to transformation in family life and societal divisions of labour, and to the embedding of particular values and claims regarding gendered difference, identities and gender appropriate roles. Analysis of these developments reveals the mutuality of 'cultural' and 'material' processes and holds lessons for interpreting social change today.