Serving the army as secretaries: intersectionality,multi‐level contract and subjective experience of citizenship

With the growing elusiveness of the state apparatus in late modernity, military service is one of the last institutions to be clearly identified with the state, its ideologies and its policies. Therefore, negotiations between the military and its recruits produce acting subjects of citizenship with long‐lasting consequences. Arguing that these negotiations are regulated by multi‐level (civic, group, and individual) contracts, we explore the various meanings that these contracts obtain at the intersectionality of gender, class, and ethnicity; and examine how they shape the subjective experience of soldierhood and citizenship. More particularly, we analyse the meaning of military service in the retrospective life stories of Israeli Jewish women from various ethno‐class backgrounds who served as army secretaries – a low‐status, feminine gender‐typed occupation within a hyper‐masculine organization. Findings reveal that for women of the lower class, the organizing cultural schema of the multi‐level contract is that of achieving respectability through military service, which means being included in the national collective. Conversely, for middle‐class women, it is the sense of entitlement that shapes their contract with the military, which they expect to signify and maintain their privileged status. Thus, while for the lower class, the multi‐level contract is about inclusion within the boundaries of the national collective, for the dominant groups, this contract is about reproducing social class hierarchies within national boundaries.     

Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe

A paper by Breen and Goldthorpe recently claimed to have exposed 'fatal flaws' in my work on meritocracy in Britain. This paper responds to their criticisms. The results of their re-analysis of the NCDS data set are shown to be consistent with my earlier findings and arguments. Furthermore, re-running some of my earlier models using measures that they favour and a method designed to privilege their position, the results once again demonstrate that, while class origins have some effect on class destinations (in particular, for those born into the middle class), ability and effort exert a much greater effect. Based on these results, the paper identifies three core propositions about meritocracy in Britain on which all parties to this debate should now be able to agree.     

Public relations and customer service: Employer perspectives of social media proficiency

Social media has enhanced integration between marketing and public relations. As such, public relations professionals have had to adapt and grow their knowledge and skillsets to stay relevant and current throughout the evolution of the digital landscape (Gesualdi, 2019). One of the growing areas of focus for public relations professionals has been customer service skills online. This specialization, often referred to as social care or social customer service, has been promoted and discussed heavily in industry circles and publications, but not in academic research. This study focuses on the survey results from 396 employers exploring the social media skills they most prefer university graduates to possess when entering the workforce. The results indicate that public relations and customer service are the social media skills most sought after by employers of university graduates ahead of proficiency in areas such as social media content production, strategy development and analytics. The potential implications of these findings to the public relations profession are examined and future research is also discussed.     

In search of the mechanisms conducive to class differentials in educational choice: a mixed method research

This paper inquires into the mechanisms conducive to social class differentials in educational choice in Flanders (the Northern, Dutch‐speaking part of Belgium) using both quantitative data gathered from parents (N = 1339) and qualitative data gathered during two focus groups with pupils (N = 16). Unlike most of the previous studies, this study takes into consideration all three theoretical perspectives that have driven research on class differentials in educational choice so far, namely cultural reproduction theory, rational action theory and the notion of social capital. Logistic regression analysis shows that self‐selection does also occur in Flanders and that the effect of parental SES cannot be explained by a specific measure of cultural capital centred on knowledge of the educational system, nor by measures of social capital. What emerges most clearly from this study is that pupils' perception of their choice process is powerfully framed by deep‐rooted conceptions about the educational alternatives available to them. Furthermore, children's choices seem to be delimited by parents' opinions of which educational alternatives were acceptable, and which ones not. Our study calls for future research to take the wider context of decision‐making processes more explicitly into account.     

In search of unity: a new politics of solidarity and action for confronting the crisis of global capitalism

ABSTRACT

This essay is an introduction to a Special Forum by critical scholar-activists responding to the late Samir Amin’s call for the establishment of a new political vehicle that would be capable of uniting diverse progressive and revolutionary movements consisting of the workers and peoples of the whole world. The purpose of this vehicle would be to confront and radically transform a global capitalist order in deep crisis. The authors of these essays tend to agree that Amin was a profound contributor to the global justice movement, and to the reformulation of Marxism to address the evolution of global capitalism and imperialism that took place in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, some are critical of Amin’s stance. The essayists differ about whether they see Samir Amin’s proposal for the establishment of a global party as a good or bad idea. Among those who think it is a good idea there are differences regarding the organizational nature and issue focus of the proposed organization. There are also different attitudes toward the institution of the nation-state and regarding the sources of progressive revolutionary political forces in the contemporary world. We briefly review the main issues under contention.     

Capital limits: social class,motivations for term-time job searching and the consequences of joblessness among UK university students

Youth unemployment figures include large numbers of full-time students, yet student joblessness receives very little academic attention, especially at a qualitative level. Despite being relatively less deleterious than youth unemployment more broadly, we show that student unemployment remains an important site for the practice and reinforcement of social inequality. Using a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with 27 undergraduate students who have been unsuccessful in term-time job searching, we expose some of the limits to the extent that social and cultural capital can be converted into positive employment outcomes. Importantly, the data reveal that it is (lack of) access to material and economic resources that is most significant in ensuring that both the experience of unemployment and, concomitantly, the experience of university, in yet another way, remain highly structured by social class. These divisions shape the imperative and timing of the need to work, and also underpin nuances in respect of desires and needs in how students talk about their motivations for part-time work. These should be important considerations if policy-makers want to create a genuinely meritocratic system or deliver equitable psychological and material well-being.     

In search of counterurbanisation: some evidence from Devon on the relationship between patterns of migration and motivation

"The term counterurbanisation is frequently used to describe the redistribution of a population away from major cities and metropolitan areas and towards more rural areas. The widespread nature of this phenomenon has attracted much attention, yet the concept remains relatively under-developed, and even the basic definition lacks rigour. It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been a lack of cumulative evidence as to the extent of the process and little agreement as to its significance. In essence, ambiguity surrounds the types of movement that should be admitted, the necessary motives for movement and the appropriate measures for both. This paper offers some preliminary suggestions for a more structured approach to the problem. It draws on original survey data from Devon [England], a county which has experienced substantial net in-migration, both to examine the contribution of three alternative definitions of counterurbanisation and to consider how these issues relate to motivation."     

Syntactic variation and beyond: Gender and social class variation in the use of discourse‐new markers1

The paper explores the relations between syntactic variation and the large‐scale social dimensions of gender and social class. It argues on the basis of an analysis of the marking of discourse‐new entities in interview speech that syntactic variants may frequently be involved in sociolinguistic variation, but indirectly, as just one of a broad set of choices that includes forms drawn from other components of language besides syntax. The analysis shows that although there is no sociolinguistic variation in the use of the strategies speakers use to mark discourse‐new information, there are significant social class and gender differences in the use of Noun Phrases that are not marked. Whilst acknowledging the risks of generalising on the basis of large‐scale social categories, an interpretation of these differences is suggested in relation to findings from previous research that suggest differences in the interactive style of different gender and social class groups. The paper discusses some implications of the analysis for the fields of language variation and change, and pragmatics.     

The school class as a social network and contextual effects on childhood and adult health: Findings from the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort study

Little is known about the health consequences of the school class as a social network. The present study asked whether overall school-class structure has contextual effects on psychiatric problems in childhood and adult self-rated health. From longitudinal data on a Scottish cohort, measures of school-class structure (centralisation, degree of reciprocity and proportion of isolates) were constructed based on sociometric information. Multilevel analysis demonstrated significant effects of centralisation on both health outcomes. It is suggested that highly centralised classes are characterised by inequality, resulting in a low level of integration, with subsequent negative consequences for health.     

Work–life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class

The paper was stimulated by the relative absence of the working class from work–life debates. The common conclusion from work–life studies is that work–life imbalance is largely a middle‐class problem. It is argued here that this classed assertion is a direct outcome of a particular and narrow interpretation of work–life imbalance in which time is seen to be the major cause of difficulty. Labour market time, and too much of it, dominates the conceptualization of work–life and its measurement too. This heavy focus on too much labour market time has rendered largely invisible from dominant work–life discourses the types of imbalance that are more likely to impact the working class. The paper's analysis of large UK data‐sets demonstrates a reduction in hours worked by working‐class men, more part‐time employment in working‐class occupations, and a substantial growth in levels of reported financial insecurity amongst the working classes after the 2008–9 recession. It shows too that economic‐based work–life imbalance is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction than is temporal imbalance. The paper concludes that the dominant conceptualization of work–life disregards the major work–life challenge experienced by the working class: economic precarity. The work–life balance debate needs to more fully incorporate economic‐based work–life imbalance if it is to better represent class inequalities.     

独立学院毕业生就业指导服务体系创新研究

大学生就业问题一直是社会关注的热点,独立学院作为普通本科高等学校的重要组成部分,毕业生的就业情况不仅关系到学院的繁荣兴衰,同时也牵系着社会的稳定和可持续发展。在分析独立学院大学生就业目前存在问题及阐述独立学院一般性的就业工作基础上,就如何更好地做好独立学院大学生就业指导工作提出了一些创新性的方法。     

Mobility closure in the upper class: assessing time and forms of capital

Most understandings of the ways classes become social groupings centre on processes of mobility closure whereby mutual appreciation and recognition within classes arise from homogenous experiences over time. The mapping of such structured biographies, however, remains understudied. This paper explores intra‐ and intergenerational mobility patterns in the upper strata of the Norwegian class structure and aims to include temporal processes and multiple forms of capital in the quantification of class trajectories. By combining multiple correspondence analysis and social sequence analysis, two important but often neglected aspects of recruitment to the upper class are emphasized: first, by introducing multiple forms of capital, different ways of maintaining mobility closure are demonstrated; second, different pathways to power are highlighted by distinguishing between divergent class careers. A key aim of the analysis is to explore internal divisions within the upper class in forms of parental capital (an ‘origin space’) and link these divisions to a typology of ‘destination careers’ in adulthood. The analysis suggests that individuals from modest origins are more likely to have careers that feature a biographically late arrival and/or short‐term affiliations to upper‐class positions whereas individuals from families rich in capital are more likely to have stable careers in the upper‐class fractions from which they originate. The analysis thus reveals important divisions in the trajectories of Norwegians who reach the upper class; not only are there differences in their upbringing in terms of the availability of different amounts and types of capital but such divisions also seem linked to their own class careers later in adulthood.     

服务经济发展对金融监管制度的要求研究

服务经济环境下,金融业发展呈现出金融手段信息化、金融发展自由化等特征,对金融监管提出了更高的要求。金融监管的核心要解决好两大关系,即金融自由化与金融监管、金融创新与金融监管的关系。我国传统金融监管与当前服务经济发展的要求存在一定的差异,应借鉴国外服务经济先行国家金融监管的经验与教训,结合中国服务经济发展的实践要求,构建国内金融监管制度和先行试点。     

Routes of success: influences on the occupational attainment of young British males

Using data from the National Child Development Study, the paper develops a complex path model predicting the occupational grade achieved by 4,298 employed British males at age 33. Most British social mobility research has been based in the 'class structurationist' tradition, and the paper begins by comparing this with the 'status attainment' tradition, which is more common in the USA. The class structurationist approach has rarely analysed the factors influencing individual occupational attainment, and those working in this tradition in Britain have often assumed that people from working-class origins fare worse on average than those from the middle class because of factors associated with their class disadvantage rather than any difference in individual characteristics such as ability or ambition. Status attainment research, however, has generally found that individual ability and motivation are the key factors influencing occupational attainment, and that class origins count for comparatively little. Using various measures of class origins, parental support, qualifications, and individual ability and ambition, the paper goes on to develop a linear structural equations model which achieves a good fit to the data. The model demonstrates that individual ability is by far the strongest influence on occupational achievement, that motivation is also important, and that factors like class background and parental support, while significant, are relatively much weaker. The paper concludes that occupational selection in Britain appears to take place largely on meritocratic principles.     

论产业跨界融合对服务经济的影响

产业跨界融合是生产力进步以及产业结构高级化的必要条件,它给上海新一轮发展提出了诸多挑战,同时也赋予其极大的发展机遇。服务业发展,既需要先进制造业、现代服务业的融合发展,也要推动服务行业间的融合发展,增强服务业自主增长能力。然而,上海目前还存在诸多制约产业扩散和融合的障碍性因素。透彻了解产业跨界融合的涵义、具体形式及其影响,设计符合产业跨界融合规律和发展趋势的规制框架,从优化产业融合的内外部环境入手,制定和实施新的政策、措施,来保障和促进产业融合这一新型产业创新的顺利发展,是上海经济与社会发展的客观需求,也是理论界和决策部门亟待解决的关键问题。     

Social class variation in risk: a comparative analysis of the dynamics of economic vulnerability1

A joint concern with multidimensionality and dynamics is a defining feature of the pervasive use of the terminology of social exclusion in the European Union. The notion of social exclusion focuses attention on economic vulnerability in the sense of exposure to risk and uncertainty. Sociological concern with these issues has been associated with the thesis that risk and uncertainty have become more pervasive and extend substantially beyond the working class. This paper combines features of recent approaches to statistical modelling of poverty dynamics and multidimensional deprivation in order to develop our understanding of the dynamics of economic vulnerability. An analysis involving nine countries and covering the first five waves of the European Community Household Panel shows that, across nations and time, it is possible to identify an economically vulnerable class. This class is characterized by heightened risk of falling below a critical resource level, exposure to material deprivation and experience of subjective economic stress. Cross‐national differentials in persistence of vulnerability are wider than in the case of income poverty and less affected by measurement error. Economic vulnerability profiles vary across welfare regimes in a manner broadly consistent with our expectations. Variation in the impact of social class within and across countries provides no support for the argument that its role in structuring such risk has become much less important. Our findings suggest that it is possible to accept the importance of the emergence of new forms of social risk and acknowledge the significance of efforts to develop welfare states policies involving a shift of opportunities and decision making on to individuals without accepting the ‘death of social class’ thesis.     

The generalized action potential of protest movements: The new class,social trends,and political exclusion explanations

Three explanations have been advanced to account for the generalized action potential of contemporary protest movements: the rise of the new class, a set of general social trends that cumulatively lead to liberalized social values and loosened social restraints against protest, and the mobilization of excluded groups. Analyzing three dimensions of generalized action potential—protest potential, political action repertoires, and protest movement support—we find support for all three explanations. Educated salaried professionals, especially sociocultural and public sector professionals, display greater protest potential, especially for civil disobedience, and are supportive of emerging “middle class” movements. A set of general social trends centering on increased education, life-cycle and generational change, secularism, and increased women's autonomy also create greater action potential. Reflecting mobilization against political exclusion, African Americans display a consistently strong generalized action potential. These protests reflect the rise of new political repertoires, particularly “protest activism,” which combines protest with high levels of conventional participation and is centered among the more educated.     

促进我国服务经济发展的体制创新研究

体制改革与创新对于加快我国服务经济发展具有特别重要意义。制约我国服务经济发展的体制性障碍表现为产权体制、规则体制、管理体制、支持体制、环境体制5个方面的缺陷。为服务经济发展创造良好的制度环境,应建立开放公平的产权体制、透明合理的规制体制、简洁有效的管理体制、协调有力的支持体系、诚信宽松的环境体制。