The CB Handle: An Announcement Of Adult Identity*

The CB handle is used as a means of exploring voluntary identity-making among adult CBers. While only an exploratory study, gender appeared to be the most deeply embedded adult identification. Other, apparently less deeply embedded, identities were found in occupation (white- versus blue-collar workers and truckers versus non-truckers). Sexual identifications seemed to have increased in importance with time, with ethnic identifications decreasing in importance. Finally, Turner's (1976) distinction between impulse and institutional anchoring of the real self was used to suggest that white-collar workers and new CBers had significantly more impulse-based handles than blue-collar workers and “old-timer” CBers.     

Class,Family, Education,and the Process of Status Attainment: A Comparison of American and British Women College Graduates*

Turner's conceptualization of the relationship between education and social mobility in Great Britain and the United States as forming “sponsored” and “contest” systems is used as a theoretical framework for comparing the process of occupational status attainment of British and American women college graduates. British women graduates are more occupationally mobile than Americans; they gain more from attending prestigious institutions, studying science and mathematics and securing a higher class degree as compared with American women with similar qualifications. American graduate women benefit more from attaining a Ph.D. Marriage and motherhood have less significant, but different, cross-national effects.     

Autonomy and Conformity in Cooley's Self-Theory: The Looking-Glass Self and Beyond

The totality of Cooley's contribution to self-theory, as reported in most sociology texts and much of the contemporary self literature, is erroneously equated with his concept of the “looking-glass self”, in its passive, dependent, and chameleon form. In this paper, we highlight Cooley's own qualifications to the looking-glass self, which properly place this popular concept in the context of Cooley's broader and more assertive view of self-concept formation. These qualifications include Cooley's emphasis on selectivity and interpretation in the process of reflected appraisals, his writings on core values and the continuity of character, and his discussion of efficacious action and appropriative activity in the early formation of the self.     

Mind,Self, and Human-Animal Joint Action

Abstract

Because Herbert Blumer maintained that symbolic interactionism was useful in examining all realms of social behavior, and advocated what Martin Hammersley refers to as “critical commonsensism,” this paper focuses on one of the most common contemporary social relationships—that between people and companion animals. I first examine the basis for Blumer's (like Mead before him and many interactionist scholars today) exclusion of nonhuman animals from consideration as “authentic” social actors. Primarily employing the recent work of interactionists Eugene Myers, Leslie Irvine, Janet and Steven Alger, and Clinton Sanders, this paper advocates the reasonableness of regarding nonhuman animals as “minded,” in that mind, as Gubrium emphasizes, is a social construction that arises out of interaction. Similarly, I maintain that animals possess an admittedly rudimentary “self.” Here I focus special attention on Irvine's discussion of those “self experiences” that are independent of language and arise out of interaction. Finally, I discuss “joint action” as a key element of people's relationships with companion animals as both the animal and human attempt to assume the perspective of the other, devise related plans of action and definitions of object, and fit together their particular (ideally, shared) goals and collective actions. I stress the ways in which analytic attention to human-animal relationships may expand and enrich the understanding of issues of central sociological interest.     

Durkheim's Response to Spencer: An Essay Toward Historicism in the Historiography of Sociology*

Merton has made an important distinction between the “history” any “systematics” of sociological theory, and outlined the valuable functions of the former. Most histories of sociology, however, have been “presetist” or “Whiggish” in perspective; we propose an “historicist” alternative. Within this perspective, Durkheim's response to Spencer is analyzed in three areas: (1) the relation between “individual” and “society;” (2) evolution and social change; and (3) the scope and method of sociology. In these areas, Durkheim's critical style reveals a repetitive theme which is termed “inversion.” The essay concludes by re-affirming Merton's distinction and urging that the “historicist” perspective is the most valid and useful approach to the history of sociology.     

Fame,Social Media Use,and Ethics

This essay addresses two journalists' very public criticism of a blog that chronicles a woman's fight with cancer. I examine the role of fame in this controversy. Are the expectations for maintaining “privacy” actually stricter for people who are not famous? How do shifting boundaries between private and public (exacerbated by social media, which allow anybody to have a “public” persona) and shifting understandings of what constitutes “fame” affect the traditional understandings of what is appropriate to share?     

Looking back from loss: views of the self in Alzheimer's disease

This article examines the narrative construction of Alzheimer's disease in three autobiographies. Two of them use traditional linear structure, which demands a coherent, consistent “self” as narrator. The third is structured as a journal, allowing the reader to experience more fully the disjointed nature of the disease. All three create a clear sense of “self,” which contrasts strongly the idea that Alzheimer's disease entails a loss of “self”.     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.     

“Our Own Little Language”: Naming and the Social Construction Of Alzheimer's Disease

Social meanings and cultural definitions attached to illness, disability, and aging have a powerful influence on the development and operations of medical care as well as the social, behavioral, and therapeutic processes occurring within these settings. Specialized care environments designed to meet the needs of what some would argue is a dramatically increasing population worldwide, those with Alzheimer's disease, have been dominated by a medical model of care where treatment of disease has primacy over person. In contrast to the medical model, the Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) at Starrmount (pseudonym) Alzheimer's Unit have socially constructed an alternative to the medical model of care through what I argue is the use of language and a process of “naming and reframing.” In this “different world,” as the CNAs call the world of the Unit, the resident is depicted as a socially responsive actor with a surviving self that is to be treated with respect. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, this paper examines the CNAs' construction and use of a “language of openings”—that is, the language arising out of the lifeworld of the residents—as the counterpoint to the “language of limits” of the medical model. Spoken everywhere but nowhere inscribed as “official” knowledge, this “little language,” as the CNAs speak of it, is the fundamental medium for social interaction in the Alzheimer's Unit.     

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.     

Cognitive Claims-Making,Enclosure, and the Depoliticization of Social Problems*

One of the most important contributions of recent social problems theory is the insight that social problems are inherently political phenomena. Existing scholarship on this characteristic has not dealt systematically with (1) the degree of overt politicality of social issues, or (2) the dynamic element of this politicality. This paper first reviews recent literature in the “medicalization of deviant behavior,” and sugests that this literature illustrates how the political element of social problem phenomena can be suppressed and replaced with a seemingly apolitical and technical perspective. Then it is proposed that interpretive social problems theory might deal more adequately with this pattern by incorporating a continuum ranging from “open” to “closed” social problems and analyzing the dynamics of social problem “enclosure,” and that certain sorts of claims—cognitive as opposed to normative—are especially conducive to the depoliticization and enclosure of social problems.     

Place attachment and political orientation: The case of localists in Hong Kong

This study extends the application of place attachment, which is widely used in environmental science research, to the field of political and civic studies. It compares place attachment between citizens with different political orientations and citizenship identities. In addition to its “cognitive” aspect, this study includes an “affective” dimension that has rarely been featured in the extant literature. Our findings, based on a telephone survey of 607 Hong Kong residents, confirm that place attachment is composed of both cognitive and affective dimensions. Besides, the mean score of self-identified “localists” and “Hong Kongers” on place attachment was significantly lower than that of “centrists” and those with no political orientation, as well as those who identified themselves as “Chinese Hong Kongers,” respectively. The weak place attachment among the localists amid Hong Kong's tremendous social and political challenges is most alarming, which highlights the need for policy makers to quickly address the issue.     

Social class,parental values,and child‐rearing practices in Taiwan

This research examines the relationships among social class, parental values, and child‐rearing practices using data from a recent national survey in Taiwan. Kohn's “self‐direction versus external conformity” hypothesis was not supported, nor was his “intent versus consequence” hypothesis. Data, however, showed some evidence in support of Bronfenbrenner's “physical versus psychological” hypothesis. Attempts were made to explain the results in terms of possible overriding and confounding effects of Confucianism and social changes.     

The mediation of gay men's lives: A review on gay dating app studies

A growing body of literature focuses on gay men's use of mobile dating applications or “dating apps.” Running on smartphones and working with GPS, dating apps connect users to others in close geographic proximity and often in real time. These apps allow users to create profiles to present themselves and interact with each other to reach multiple goals, such as casual sex, dating, or networking. Attending to the dynamics between communication technologies and society, this article reviews gay dating app studies that highlight the communicative practices and social relations mediated by dating apps. Using the mediation framework as a starting point, we examine major themes in these studies, including gay men's online self‐presentation and interactions, gay community in the digital era, and gay men's interpersonal relationships. We suggest that future research should pay more attention to the technical development of dating devices and the transformation of gay men's social relations.     

Evaluations of Women and Men Among Black and White College Students1

Rainwater's assertion that blacks have low self-evaluations because they receive more negative evaluations from other blacks than whites receive from other whites is challenged here by reference to Heiss and Owens evidence that negative self evaluation among blacks is limited to work-related traits. Substantial support was found for our major hypotheses that, compared to whites, (1) blacks would report more negative evaluation of “most men” but not of “most women” (since the provider role is traditionally ascribed primarily to men), and (2) the more negative evaluation of “most men” by blacks would be limited to work-related traits.     

“I” and Self-Consciousness in the Japanese Language and in Sociology

Abstract It is often said that the Japanese lack the firm consciousness of “self” namely, they yield to groups and are absorbed in an anonymous state. Some ascribe this to the Japanese language, in which the first and the second person are expressed by various pronouns (or, in many cases, are even omitted) in accordance with the relationships between persons. By contrast the Westerner's “I,” which is usually the only pronoun for the first-person, is rarely omitted. They conclude from this that the Japanese individual does not possess as clearly defined a conception of “self” as does the Westerner. Underlying this issue are the fundamental, interwoven questions of language and self-consciousness: does “self” really exist, and does the analysis of the I in language pertain to the first question? This paper discusses these questions by considering Wittgenstein's argument that “I” does not refer to self-consciousness: rather, “self” is a metaphysical reification of “I.” These problems concern sociology, in which the “subject” of action has been the focal point of methodological arguments. I will show that Meadian interactionism and critical theory are deeply rooted in the metaphysical, subjectivist understanding of “I,” while ethnomethodology offers a perspective which overcomes both subjectivism and objectivism for studying communication.     

A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues)

This article examines how East Timorese women's contributions to the resistance against the twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation (“the Resistance”) have been marginalized within the veteran's valorization scheme (veterans' scheme) established in the post-conflict period. Drawing on interviews with politicians, veterans and members of women's organizations, we show that although women played significant roles within the Armed, Clandestine and Diplomatic fronts, for the most part they have not been recognized as veterans within the veterans' scheme. Instead, the scheme has reinforced perceptions of women's roles as wives, mothers, homemakers and widows, rather than as political actors, suggesting that the return to “peace” in Timor-Leste has been accompanied by the strengthening of patriarchal traditions and the expectation that women return to “traditional” roles. We argue that the failure to recognize women as veterans is problematic both for East Timorese women and society as a whole. It represents a lost opportunity to recognize women's agency and potentially to improve their social status in society. It also narrows the way in which the independence struggle is remembered and represented and further promotes a culture of “militarized masculinity” that elevates and rewards men who show the capacity to use violence.     

Reading social work

Abstract

This paper offers a brief preliminary report on our attempts to apply “close reading” a technique drawn from contemporary literary criticism to social work writing. Reading turns out to be very difficult -something we have had to re-learn but reveals ideological formations deeply embedded in social work texts. Hugh England's “Social Work as Art” is taken as a working example and a case is made saying that it is deeply androcentric. However, it is important to distinguish between text and author and to note that the book shares its androcentricism with many other social work texts and arguably with social work culture in general. (England 1986).     

Farm Women and the Empowerment Potential in Value‐Added Agriculture

While the number of women in farming has risen in the United States, less clear is whether increasing participation in agriculture translates into empowerment. Are invisibility and disempowerment lingering expressions of farm women's experience? Using qualitative data drawn from 32 interviews with Michigan value‐added farmers, we examine the extent to which women have been able to experience empowerment, and the ways in which value‐added agriculture specifically fosters an empowering context. We adopt a conceptualization of empowerment from the development scholarship in order to establish a baseline for scrutiny, viewing empowerment as a multidimensional process constituting the “power to” realize one's goals, the opportunity to exercise “power with” others, and the ability to find and nurture “power within” the self. Our findings indicate that value‐added agriculture provides a unique context for women's empowerment. At the same time, the extent to which value added‐agriculture constitutes a venue for women's empowerment is complex, is multifaceted, and requires constant negotiation. It can be organized and performed in such a way as to subvert the empowerment process by confining women to specific social locations that may reproduce oppressive structures.