When the Lord builds the house: An autoethnographic account of working in an evangelical for-profit organizational culture

Religion is often perceived as a private topic, thus belonging outside the traditional conceptualization of a work environment. However, religion is a pervasive organizing framework and an understanding of its role in the workplace is needed from a communicative perspective. In the following autoethnography, I describe my experience working for a Christian for-profit homebuilder – starting with new employee orientation and moving through my final day at Local Homes. I focus on instances where tension emerges between expectations and reality as I learn about and interact within the overtly evangelical Christian organizational culture. The tension is illustrated through four vignettes that correspond to the traditional phases of socialization. Through writing this autoethnographic account, I attempt to move beyond my personal experience and situate my story within larger disciplinary and societal conversations about the socialization process in a religious organization. With this goal in mind, I conclude with methodological and theoretical implications.     

My Father,His Psychiatrists,and Me

My father is at an age when the body breaks down beyond repair. This essay describes my attempts to sustain what little sense of autonomy is left to him within the constraints of his physical limitations and to contain the anger generated by them. As I negotiate with a host of medical authorities, the most vexing of whom is the all-important psychopharmacologist, I am reminded of earlier interactions between my father's psychiatrists and me. These memories allow me to tell the story of our fraught, if loving, relationship. For a gay man, this telling is marked by the homophobic attitudes that funded many of my ostensibly therapeutic interactions with psychiatrists, as well as by a celebration of the queer genealogies through which I feel at home in the world.     

Insider/Outsider: A Muslim Woman's Adventure Practicing ‘Alongside’ Narrative Therapy

The following paper centres on my unique experience as a white Australian therapist who is able to sympathise with a Western world view while being immersed in an Islamic world view. The goal is to share my journey as a Muslim Australian via an auto‐ethnography reflexive method. Using diaries, intentional reflexive positioning, and multiple modes of supervision, I contemplate an Islamic identity and value system while negotiating poststructural therapies such as solution‐focused collaborative, and in particular, narrative therapy as viable approaches to working with the Muslim community. There are two inquiries which are of interest. The first is to reflexively describe the experience of being a Muslim practitioner and wondering whether core differences in epistemological views between social constructionism and Islamic doctrine can be overcome. Secondly, this enquiry explores Quranic guidelines about how to perceive ‘problems’ in life, based on the premise that understanding how an Islamic world view addresses life's troubles may add to deeper conceptions of the role of difficulties. I propose that adherent Muslims have a natural metaphorical way of thinking that connects with some of the poststructural therapeutic skills and techniques and at the same time draw on past Quranic solutions for contemporary problems. Little has been written on narrative therapy as a suitable approach to working with Muslim clients. In the current paper I review my personal experience as a veiled Muslim therapist striving to implement narrative therapy alongside an Islamic epistemology.     

Mindfulness, vulnerability, and love: Spiritual lessons from frail elders, earnest young pilgrims, and middle aged rockers

Gerontologists have studied religion and spirituality for almost three decades. Much of this work focuses on determining how elders' religious and spiritual beliefs and practices affect various indicators of well-being. This paper critiques many of the assumptions underlying this research and suggests alternatives to individualistic formulations of well-being. Experiences in spiritual communities of various types may help aging persons to be mindfully present to others, to recognize that all are vulnerable to the afflictions of aging and the certainty of death, and to love and care for others while working to promote justice. In this paper, I describe how my marriage to a minister enabled me to develop relationships with frail elders and young adults seeking to live faithfully. These friends have influenced my work and have helped to shape my views on my own aging.     

Marginalized to double marginalized: My mutational intersectionality between the East and the West

Intersectionality allows better understanding of the differences between individuals' experiences. In this article, I use intersectionality to explore how my lived experience of marginalization is different from one context to another. I reflect on how the nature of intersectionality and the intensity of oppression are altered by context. Grounded in a brief reflection of my fragmented experience in two different contexts, I explore how my identities and their intersection “mutate” from the Egyptian context to the UK context. Then, I reflect on how the intensity of oppression changed with this alteration in my intersectionality. In contextualizing my intersectional experience, first I problematize viewing intersectionality as a fixed acontextual ontology. Second, as a student immigrant and racialized minority in the United Kingdom, I seek to extend intersectionality and move beyond the traditional categories of race, class, gender, religion, and sexuality to include precarity as a pivotal social category that amplifies the intensity of oppression and marginalization, especially when intersected with race and gender. Finally, in sharing my reflection as a Middle Eastern woman, I contribute my unique experiences into the conversation, and a voice that has been muted, invisibled, marginalized, and excluded from the literature.     

Resurrected pigs,dyed foxes and beloved cows: Religious diversity and nostalgia for socialism in rural Poland

The aim of my paper is to discuss the phenomenon of nostalgia for socialism in rural Poland. More precisely, I discuss how experiences of rurality and diverse religious beliefs intertwine with nostalgia. Depicting the memories of socialism, shared with me by the inhabitants of a multi-religious rural commune in Southern Poland, I aim to demonstrate the ways in which day-to-day experiences of rural life as well as religious diversity contribute to shaping people's remembrances. In order to do so, I describe both the present situation and the historical experiences of the inhabitants of the commune. I introduce representatives of different Christian communities – Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Orthodox and Pentecostals – and, by presenting their life stories, I address the issue of how villagers' religious creeds interrelate with the memories and (re)evaluation of the socialist past. My aim here is twofold. Firstly I aim to deconstruct the nostalgia for socialism, showing its complexity and proving that this nostalgia means in fact longing for very concrete experiences of rural life. Secondly, I argue that the study of various religious beliefs and practices is very important for a fuller interpretation of nostalgic discourses and responses to postsocialist transformations.     

Childless and Bereft?: Stereotypes and Realities in Relation to ‘Voluntary’ and ‘Involuntary’ Childlessness and Womanhood

Drawing on my own personal and research experience and on the research of others I consider issues of definition, identity, support, and kinship in relation to lifecourse issues and the experience of 'voluntarily' and 'involuntarily' childless women. Motherhood is still considered to be a primary role for women and women who do not mother children (either biologically or socially) are often stereotyped as desperate or selfish. However, just as the experience of motherhood is complex and varied, so is the experience of nonmotherhood. Whereas some 'voluntarily' childless women define themselves as childfree and some 'involuntarily' childless women feel desperate some of the time, others are more ambivalent. In this article I draw on empirical work that considers the significance of ages and changes to the experience of nonmotherhood and that considers the particular and potential experience of older childless women. As well as demonstrating concerns and challenges, this work also suggests the need to challenge the caricature of the childless woman (and particularly the older childless woman) as bereft. In relation to this I extend my argument to consider both the myth that women who do not mother children of their 'own' always live a childfree life and critically evaluate the view that parenthood automatically leads to kinship support in old age.     

“我以我身换儿生”(英文)

她是一位非常普通的女性.她的生活也并无特殊之处,但她是一位非常伟大的母亲。看完她的故事之后.相信你会动容……     

Reflections on conducting research on the ‘war on terror’: religious identity,subjectivity and emotions

In recent years there has been an increase in literature which has explored the insider/outsider position through ethnic identities. However, there remains a neglect of religious identities, even though it could be argued that religious identities have become increasingly important through being prominent in international issues such as the ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East conflict. Through drawing on the concept of subjectivity, I reflect on research I conducted on the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims. I explore the space between the insider/outsider position demonstrating how my various subjectivities – the ‘non-Islamic appearance I’, the ‘Muslim I’, the ‘personal I’, the ‘exploring I’, the ‘Kashmiri I’ or the ‘Pakistani I’, the ‘status I’ and the ‘outsider I’ – assisted in establishing trust, openness and commonality. I conclude by demonstrating how the ‘emotional I’ allowed me to manage my own emotions and participants emotions.     

Celiac disease in North America: the disabling experience

Diagnosed as having celiac disease during my final year of undergraduate studies at McGill University, in the spring of 2005, my identity and lifestyle have undergone a transformative process. In this article I examine my experience of having celiac disease post-diagnosis, using the social model of disability framework. I examine the barriers that persons having celiac disease experience, both generally and personally. At the general level I explore the parallels between the experience of having celiac disease and the experience of being disabled: culturally, environmentally and financially. At the personal level I recount the emotional experience of being disabled.     

MAKING THE CASE ONLINE: HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MULTIMEDIA

New media technologies provide opportunities to expand academic curriculum offerings and enhance student learning. Yet web-based and online learning tools should not be just repurposed text and information, or videotaped faculty lectures. Instead, the web calls for the inclusion of sound, text and visuals for learning tools that provide a media-rich environment. This allows faculty to create multidimensional experiences that cater to different learning styles and provide opportunities for problem solving. Drawing on my production experiences at HBS, as well as my own experience teaching visual anthropology and creating films, videos, photographs and web products, I discuss the teaching opportunities that new technologies and media can provide.     

Growing Up in the Old Left: An Intergenerational Tale of Silence and Terror

This essay explores the intergenerational transmission of trauma that arises from political repression. Using mine and my family’s experiences of the witch hunts during the McCarthy era, I explore the psychic effects of the political terror and silencing that accompanied my growing up as a Red Diaper Baby and the profound internal shifts that occur when the social surround becomes a place of danger. I look at my family’s experience in the left during the 1950s and I consider the fear that couldn’t be registered, our unexpressed grief and loss, and the multiple contradictions against which our silence defended. Viewing my personal history through a psychoanalytic lens (e.g., Freud, Gerson, Butler, Puget), and considering a clinical example, I explore the ways the social surround of state-imposed terror during the 1950s was elaborated internally from my earliest years, shaping and shaped by my interpersonal experience and intrapsychic fantasy. I also consider the pre-McCarthy era family history that gave nuance to our experience in the 1950s and the emergence in my clinical work of my history of having been terrorized and silenced by the state. Finally, I briefly reflect on the interweaving of political repression and gendered silence.     

Forging Forgiveness: Collective Efforts Amidst War in Northern Uganda*

This paper is a case study analysis of the sociological phenomena of forgiveness occurring in an ongoing two‐decade war in northern Uganda. Building on a long‐term relationship with the region and utilizing the methods of participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and a qualitative questionnaire, I identify two especially important social mechanisms that correlate with the prevalence of forgiveness discourse amongst the Acholi people of northern Uganda: (1) a communal sense of war fatigue and (2) a sense of Acholi collective identity, which the religious and cultural leaders have emphasized to promote a pervasive public dialogue of forgiveness. While recognizing that forgiveness in northern Uganda is contested, findings from my study point to how forgiveness opens a space for some Acholi to assert power and express agency in their lives after years of being portrayed largely as victims. Furthermore, forgiveness also offers the opportunity for some Acholi to experience interpersonal empowerment by maintaining a locus of control through meaning‐making.     

Teaching Sociology in Community College: Balancing Ideals with Institutional Constraints

Many professionals experience conflict between personal ideals about the meaning and importance of their work, and the structural limitations of the workplace. This conflict presents professionals with the challenge of how to hold true to their ideals within a non-supportive or even hostile environment. In this paper, I describe my experiences balancing my ideals about teaching, learning, and the purpose of a college education with the institutional constraints of a community college. There are three main sections in this paper. First is a discussion of the reasons I chose a career in community college teaching. The second section focuses on the institutional constraints I have encountered over the first 5 years of my career. In the third section, I explain how I have attempted to balance my ideals with the structural limitations of the college where I teach. Throughout the paper, I blend personal narrative with the relevant literature. In doing so, I intend to use my personal experience as a lens for discussing the challenges and possibilities that characterize community college teaching in general.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

What's in It for Me?

Abstract

Social service workers' values and religious beliefs often differ greatly from those of their clients. This paper will assist helping professionals to develop a deeper understanding of the motivations behind clients' religious behaviors by describing religious participation through the lens of rational choice theory. A working definition of rational choice is provided. A graphic construct explaining the interaction of demand and supply on religious participation is presented. This model shows how a feedback loop develops to increase religious involvement. A discussion follows regarding religious participation as viewed from a demand side and supply side perspective. The paper concludes with ideas of how the information applies to social service workers and researchers.     

Academic odyssey: The training of an African sociologist

This article describes my experience of graduate training in sociology at an elite American university. As an African, I faced cultural and intellectual pressures to adopt white middle class cultural norms and a Eurocentric worldview. The article critiques American sociology, including symbolic interactionism, the sociology of the Third World and the study of race and ethnic relations. I describe my personal encounter with American racism and the process that led me to conduct research on black immigrants. I argue that my exposure to American sociology and experience of American society transformed me into a black marginal sociologist, specializing in teaching and research on the African-American experience in the New World. His forthcoming book,Becoming Black American, is being published by AMS Press.