‘Who should do the caring’? Involved fatherhood and ambivalent gendered moral rationalities among cohabiting/married irish parents

Drawing on qualitative couple interviews with cohabiting/married mothers and fathers, this paper examines accounts of involved fatherhood in contemporary Ireland. It shows that while the ideal of fathers as heavily involved in day-to-day parenting is widespread, the reality is somewhat different – and this despite increased participation of Irish mothers in the labour market. Given this mismatch between fatherhood ideals and realities, it begs the question: how do we account for this inequitable division of family work? Gender-differentiated parenting experiences, I argue, are strongly influenced by ambivalent attitudes on the part of both fathers and mothers. I argue that mothers draw on ‘primarily mother’ moral rationalities that associates ‘good’ mothering with large amounts of time in direct provision of childcare, while fathers display a ‘primarily worker’ rationality associated with strong commitment to the labour market. It is the clash of these contrasting normative societal demands that gives rise to a pervasive sense of ambivalence about ‘who should do the caring’. This ambivalence, I demonstrate, is especially prominent in single-income families where the father is the sole breadwinner. In dual-income families, several parents go some distance towards reconciling these contradictory claims, these competing moral discourses.     

The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic: A Sociological Analysis

A new type of sex crime was discovered in the United States in the 1980s – the sexual abuse of young children in ghastly rituals performed by devil worshippers who happened to be their day care providers. ‘Ritual abuse’, as this new sex crime came to be termed, appeared to be epidemic during that decade; hundreds of day care centers were investigated and scores of providers were arrested and prosecuted. This article asserts that the day care ritual abuse scare was a moral panic, in fact, the ‘purest example’ of a moral panic in that the putative threat to children had to be wholly constructed. Using the key sociological elements set out by Cohen (1972/2002), this article analyzes the day care ritual abuse moral panic and concludes by discussing additional key elements that will facilitate future sociological analyses of moral panics.     

Ethical living: relinking ethics and consumption through care in Chile and Brazil

Mainstream conceptualizations of ‘ethical consumption’ equate the notion with conscious, individual, market‐mediated choices motivated by ethical or political aims that transcend ordinary concerns. Drawing on recent sociology and anthropology of consumption literature on the links between ordinary ethics and ethical consumption, this article discusses some of the limitations of this conceptualization. Using data from 32 focus groups conducted in Chile and Brazil, we propose a conceptualization of ethical consumption that does not centre on individual, market‐mediated choices but understands it at the level of practical outcomes, which we refer to as different forms of ‘ethical living’. To do that, we argue, we need to depart from the deontological understanding of ethics that underpins mainstream approaches to ethical consumption and adopt a more consequentialist view focusing on ethical outcomes. We develop these points through describing one particular ordinary moral regime that seemed to be predominant in participants’ accounts of ethics and consumption in both Chile and Brazil: one that links consumption and ethics through care. We show that the moral regime of care leads to ‘ethical outcomes’, such as energy saving or limiting overconsumption, yet contrary to the mainstream view of ethical consumption emphasizing politicized choice expressed through markets, these result from following ordinary ethics, often through routines of practices.     

The moral middle-class in market socialism: An investigation into the personhood of women working in NGOs in Vietnam

The paper uncovers the values that Vietnamese women produce and accumulate from the NGO sector to acquire a morality central to their middle-class identity. They present an idea of a moral middle-class that conforms to the neoliberal criteria of self-reliance and self-optimisation within the economic segment, in which values are generated in the forms of sacrifice and giving away. I argue that this idea is associated with a mode of governmentality whereby the socialist state shapes the moral subject for the sake of governance in the context of marketisation. Morality, as a governing device, motivates and polices women's compliance with their subordinate position. This paper presents findings that illustrate the slipperiness of the notion of middle-class between theories and practices and from women's perspectives. Perceived in part in terms of women's sacrifices, this study illustrates how middle-class identity is negotiated through moral, gender and class divisions in a post-socialist society.     

Becoming “People of Faith:” Personal Moral Authenticity in the Cultural Practices of a Faith-Based Social Justice Movement

Interactive cultural practices such as songs and storytelling are key to contemporary social movement organizing because they can attenuate the challenges of social difference by expanding participants’ understandings of self and community. Yet the precise cultural dynamics through which such practices become effective are not well understood. Using the case of a large faith-based community organizing coalition, I show that practices focused on personal moral authenticity are especially effective in fostering alignment between social movement goals and individuals’ pre-existing moral commitments. I define personal moral authenticity as the ambition to develop, enact, and perform a moral identity that is “true” to an enduring internal self, and validate that identity through interactions with others. This is an effective basis for organizing practices because it spans the various cultures of commitment that prevail in different racial and religious subgroups and gives individuals a personal stake in social change projects. In highlighting how it animates practices in faith-based community organizing, one of the most robust fields of grassroots civic activity in the United States, this article illuminates an important part of the cultural dynamics underlying much contemporary social change work, and specifies how religion contributes to progressive social change efforts amid ongoing religious disaffiliation.     

Beyond reputational and financial damage: Examining emotional and religious harm in a post-crisis case study of Hillsong Church

Religious organizations have largely been overlooked in public relations scholarship, particularly in the crisis communication literature. Additionally, research in crisis communication primarily focuses on the reputational, material, and financial damage caused by crises. This study addresses theoretical and topical gaps in public relations scholarship by advancing Spaulding’s (2018) emotional and religious harm categories for moral crises within religious organizations. Results of a qualitative case study of Hillsong Church’s Carl Lentz crisis suggest an emotional harm continuum exists for moral crises, and religious harm emerges as distancing as a religious protective measure. Findings advance crisis communication theory regarding the use of religious and renewal rhetoric and types of harm inflicted from crises, and assists practitioners in crafting post-crisis messages that prioritize stakeholder healing and the organization’s recovery.     

Early adolescents' reflections on social justice: Facing History and Ourselves in practice and assessment

This article describes Facing History and Ourselves, an international moral, character and civic education program, and introduces an assessment instrument used to explore young people’s perspectives on their and others’ choices in relation to social exclusion and teasing among peers. The instrument, developed collaboratively by educational researchers and practitioners, is based on a theory of psychosocial development and core themes and practices of the program. The assessment elicits students’ responses to a true story about a girl who had been ostracized by peers and is then invited to join them in teasing another girl. A rubric is introduced for analyzing perspectives on the girls’ choices as a bystander to teasing.     

Think rich,feel hurt: the critique of capitalism and the production of affect in the making of financial subjects in South Korea

This article describes the process of financial subjectification by observing a private educational programme on financial self-management in South Korea. ‘Wealth-tech’ is a popular Korean term that refers to techniques of personal finance and money-management. Ethnographic research on a private educational programme on the subject of wealth-tech brings to light justifying mechanisms of financial investments and moral foundations for the pursuit of wealth whereby laypeople’s engagement with, and attachment to, financial markets are (re-)vitalized. In particular, this study highlights the role of critiques about capitalism as well as the production of affect in the making of financial subjects. By re-appropriating critiques of capitalism and employing therapeutic narratives, the wealth-tech pedagogy redefines financial investment as an act of resistance against the ills of capitalism and foreign capital. Moreover, this case study shows that wealth-tech is legitimized not solely by risk calculations per se, but also by feelings of hurt. Participants tend to transform themselves into active wealth-tech practitioners by cultivating the kind of affect that I call here ‘thinking rich, feeling hurt’. Therefore, the financial subjects configured in this wealth-tech pedagogy are those who feel hurt, and in this emotive state are led to think from the perspective of the rich. Moreover, they are configured not only as self-governing individuals but also as collective beings who resist foreign capital through their own engagement with financial markets. In this process of financial subjectification, the beliefs that finance can make them rich become consolidated. By illustrating these Korean experiences, this article calls attention to critical and affective practices in the process of financial subjectification, in particular those that take shape at the encounter between market rationality and ordinary experiences, memories, and feelings whereby laypeople translate discourses and techniques of financial capitalism into their own values and judgments.     

Religious residue: The impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of nones in France,Germany, Great Britain,and Sweden

One of the distinguishing features of religious life in Western Europe in recent decades has been the sharp increase in the proportion of people who identify as unaffiliated with any religious tradition (religious nones). Non-affiliation entails a rejection of religious belonging, not the absence of all religious belief and practice; yet the determinants of religiosity among nones have not been fully explored. Drawing on data from the 1998–2018 ISSP surveys in four West European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden), I test the impact of childhood religious socialization on the religiosity of unaffiliated adults by comparing lifelong nones, who were never religiously affiliated, with disaffiliates, who were raised within a religious tradition and have since exited organized religious life. Disaffiliates are consistently more religious than lifelong nones due to religious residue from childhood, with greater residue found among those who were more religiously committed as children. Religious decline among the unaffiliated over time, combined with the increasing proportion of lifelong nones and second-generation lifelong nones who lack even an inherited, minimal religious residue, suggest that secularization will gather momentum.     

Salat-al-Juma: organizing the public in Tahrir Square

What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those working in the informal economy and living more of their lives – eating, chatting, praying, selling, etc. – on the streets of Egypt’s cities and thereby drawn into increasing contact with state police forces. Given that aggressive policing and intimidation had generated a sense of passive solidarity among Egyptians, I ask how this solidarity was transformed into animated opposition to the regime. My answer is that the Islamic congregational prayers as well as the Sunday Masses held during the revolution were spectacles of interfaith cooperation that inspired courage and trust across sectarian and religious/secular communities. These prayers were rational rituals that generated trust among diverse Egyptians that Mubarak had sown suspicion among and played against one another to stay in power. These were embodied rituals that lent moral support to more the mundane aspects of occupying Tahrir Square, which was symbolically and strategically important in bringing down the regime.     

Ideological or religious? Contending visions on the future of Alevi identity

Establishing a coherent collective identity within the modern urban context among people who have different ideological, social and religious orientations, and social and economic backgrounds, is an ongoing struggle within the Alevi community in Turkey. This study tries to understand how alternative positions on Alevi identity dynamically construct the boundaries, moral contents and the new shape of Alevi identity in modern urban contexts through use of various discursive resources. At least two main contending ‘positions’ on Alevi identity try to institutionalise Alevi identity in modern urban contexts, which are ‘Ideological Position’ and ‘Religious Position’. Those discourse positions constitute different visions about the past and the future of the Alevi community as well as the cultural and the political boundaries of Alevi identity. More importantly, those positions resonate in ordinary citizens’ life stories as well as group narratives. This study utilises the analytical frame of ‘positioning theory’ to shed light on the complexities of identity negotiation.     

‘Not that kind of atheist’: scepticism as a lifestyle movement

This article examines atheist activists from a lifestyle movement perspective. I focus on how atheist activists adopt the term ‘sceptic’ as a distinct identity marker to represent their growing interest in other types of activism beyond atheist community building and criticism of religious beliefs. My data come from thirty-five interviews with Canadian atheist activists and participant observation in the province of Alberta. In contrast to previous social movement approaches to atheist activism, I deemphasize the importance of collective identity and instead attend to personal identity as the site of social change. My findings show that being a sceptic is a personally meaningful identity in the context of a relatively weak secularist collective identity. Moreover, atheist activists who also identify as sceptics wish to expand the boundaries of the atheist movement to include individualistic projects of personal affirmation based on science and critical thinking. This work contributes to our understanding of the everyday activities of activists who engage in individual action in the absence of a strong collective identity. In particular, this article expands our understanding of lifestyle movements beyond the current focus on socially conscious consumption. Instead, I return to the roots of lifestyle movement theory, that is, how one’s everyday choices serve as a form of protest. Finally, this work contributes to atheism scholarship, which has neglected the diversity of individual identities within atheist organisations and among atheist activists.     

Gender relations,transnational ties and rituals among Bosnian refugees

In this article I show how Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) refugees reproduce, contest and construct their ethnic and religious identities. Using ‘ritual’ in a broad sense to refer to everyday routinized activities and practices that characterize family hierarchies and gender relations, as well as more easily identifiable religious rituals, I show that rituals assert belonging to a community and an identity, but are also, in the process of construction and contestation, selectively evoked and ignored. ‘The Other’ constructed through certain rituals is not merely the non–Muslim Bosnian (Serbs and Croats), but also, for refugees, other Bosnian Muslims who stayed behind. Moreover, engagement in secular and religious rituals, and the wider issue of identity constructions cannot be understood fully without exploring the dynamics between refugees and people who have remained in Bosnia. Competing constituencies claiming ‘Bosnianness’ and ‘Muslimness’ can be found across national boundaries and complicate the attempt to construct a community of believers or nationals, or both.     

The Moral Economy of Neoliberalism: How Voters Use Neoliberal Ideology to (De)Legitimate Undocumented Worker Access to Labor Markets

Neoliberalism is prevalent in American life. While researchers have documented the use of neoliberal ideology in institutional and macrolevel policy contexts, they have yet to investigate how voters use neoliberal ideology to legitimate their position on economic policy. I use data from semi‐structured interviews with 85 Tucsonans about why they voted the way they did on Proposition 202 (2008): “Arizona Stop Illegal Hiring”—which sought to reregulate undocumented worker labor market access—to address this gap. I found evidence of two distinct neoliberal ideological legitimations: “fair market competition” and “individual responsibility.” Furthermore, I use these data to shed light on the debate over whether neoliberalism spans partisan affiliation or converges with American conservatism. I found that voters across party lines who supported the measure paired neoliberal legitimations with conservative legitimations. We can interpret this bipartisan use of neoliberal ideology as evidence of a neoliberal “moral economy”—or consensus about the moral principles in which market action is embedded. Evidence of this moral economy indicates that moral principles from neoliberal ideology are simultaneously bipartisan and converge with American conservatism. These findings suggest that there could be a broader moral consensus among voters concerning the legitimacy of anti‐immigration economic policies.     

Professions as "callings"

The idea of an occupation as a "calling" refers to some moral and perhaps religious motives and to a vision of the larger ends and purposes that work serves. Professions are characterized by mastery of technical information, concepts and theories that guide choices, institutionalization that exercises social controls, and, at least traditionally, a service orientation. "Calling" without professionalization is inept, and a profession without a calling lacks moral and humane roots, loses human sensitivity, and restricts the vision of the purposes of human good that are served.     

State-authorizing citizenship: the narrow field of civic engagement in the liberal age

Liberal citizens are held ethically accountable not only for their own acts and behaviors, but also those of their state. Reciprocally, a proper liberal subject is one that metonymizes with the state, merging their fates and moral worth, and taking personal responsibility for the state’s actions. I claim that as a result, the liberal subject is not only self-authorizing according to liberal theories of moral autonomy, but also state-authorizing. I demonstrate the above claims through a consideration of changing activist practices among the Israeli political left. I show that the hegemonic model of civic engagement is oriented towards the state and state policy as the privileged and naturalized site of ethical intervention. I then describe the ways this model hampers political endeavors by restricting the sites of intervention as well as structural access to political participation. I also consider contemporary efforts at political engagement that bypass the state.     

The additional labour of a disabled PhD student

This is a personal account of the challenges I have faced during the first year and a half of my PhD, solely due to my identity as a disabled student. I address issues such as a lack of representation when researching PhD life, the impact of the services which are meant to be there to help and the complexities of juggling the additional time-consuming events which occur when you are disabled, with PhD time, a home life and work. This is especially relevant in the United Kingdom at this time as the Disabled Students Allowance has recently been cut back, meaning there is less support available for disabled students, and with the increased marketisation of higher education it could be argued that there is less impetus for universities to support those who have non-standard needs.     

Invisible labor,invisible bodies: how the global political economy affects reproductive freedom in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have critically demonstrated the links between the global political economy, social reproduction and gender-based violence. This article builds on this scholarship by investigating restrictions to reproductive freedom and their connection to the depletion of women’s bodies in the global political economy. Specifically, I use the Depletion through Social Reproduction (DSR) framework to reveal how the work of social reproduction is harnessed to service economic activity at the cost of rights to bodily integrity with the aid of religious fundamentalist ideologies that (re)inscribe discourses of female altruism such as the “self-sacrificing mother” ideal. Drawing on the case of the Philippines, I argue that the control of women’s bodies is integral to the Philippines’ economic strategy of exporting care workers in a competitive global political economy. This strategy is abetted by local Catholic religious fundamentalists who challenge reproductive rights reform at various levels of policy-making and legitimize the lack of investment to sustain social reproduction in the household, community and country as a whole. This article suggests that the neoliberal global economy is increasingly reproduced through women’s labor at the cost of their bodily integrity and reproductive freedoms.     

Trust,uncertainty and identity in health-related decision-making: the role of key professionals

There is a growing literature examining the way service users make choices in the context of complex and frequently changing forms of welfare provision and increasingly personalised services in England. Despite criticisms of the individualistic, consumerist assumptions underpinning these policies, little is known about the relational contexts of individuals’ lives and the role of professional support in choice-making. Drawing on interviews with ‘key professionals’, identified by service users as having played a crucial role in recent important choices, this paper explores how these choices are made with the support of those who are trusted to provide assistance. Placing ‘key professionals’ at the centre of the analysis, the distinct experiences of people with fluctuating and sudden-onset health conditions are examined. The analysis highlights the particular value of relationships that pay close attention to transitional health identities and the co-production of health-related decisions.     

Negotiating the Lines of Contention: Counterframing and Boundary Work in the School of the Americas Debate1

Counterframing scholars typically identify counterframes that interpretively distinguish arguments among opponents. This approach assumes that counterframing strategy centers on directly countering the claims of protesters. In my in‐depth examination of the ongoing debate between protesters and officials of the former School of the Americas, I identify a form of counterframing that agrees with and embraces the moral alternatives implicit in accusers’ claims. I bring boundary construction theory into conversation with counterframing analysis to expand understanding of how framing and counterframing strategies revolve around the competition for common, moral resources. I explain that in the movement to close the School of the Americas, protesters’ claims have served as moral boundaries against which the targeted institution has redefined its objectives and programs. I introduce the concept of “boundary negotiation” to argue that counterframing strategy and success lie in the negotiation of moral boundaries called into question by social movements. I outline defensive and offensive modes of boundary negotiation and identify boundary negotiation as a mechanism driving the link between counterframing and demobilization.