Islam and patriarchy: how robust is Muslim support for patriarchal values?

Evidence that Muslims support patriarchal values more than non-Muslims is abundant but the nature of this evidence is contested. The ‘cultural’ interpretation suggests that patriarchal values are an inherent element of Muslim identity. The ‘structural’ interpretation holds that patriarchal values reside in structural characteristics and have little to do with Muslim identity. Evidence on these contradictory claims is inconclusive. Neither have advocates of the cultural position shown that Muslim support for patriarchal values remains robust under control of structural characteristics; nor have proponents of the structural position demonstrated that Muslim support for these values vanishes under such controls. Filling this gap, we use multi-level models to test whether Muslim support for patriarchal values vanishes under control of patriarchy's structural underpinnings. We find that Muslim support for patriarchal values is robust against various controls; and we identify mosque attendance as a mechanism to sustain Muslim support for patriarchy in non-Muslim societies. Yet, rising levels of education, labor market participation, and a glacial emancipative trend diminish Muslim support for patriarchy, especially among women.     

Metabolism and colonization. Modes of production and the physical exchange between societies and nature

Written by a sociologist and a biologist, this paper attempts an interdisciplinary approach to describing the basic exchange relations between human societies and their natural environments. One type of exchange relation is termed ‘metabolism’ and related to the biological metabolism member organisms of societies require. A historical overview (part 1) demonstrates this exchange relation in terms of mass throughput per inhabitant to have grown in the course of human cultural evolution—without necessarily increasing the quality of life of those concerned—to the twentyfold it now amounts to in industrial societies (as is demonstrated empirically for Austria in part 3). A strategy of ‘contraction of physical metabolism’ (reduction of physical growth irrespective of ‘economic’ growth) of industrial societies is proposed as a strategic means of survival and possible ways to this goal are discussed quantitatively. The other exchange relation termed ‘colonization’ refers to treatments of natural environments that purposively change some components to render better exploitability (for the purpose of social metabolism), while still relying upon their basic self‐regenerating qualities. It is sketched how colonization strategies developed historically, and it is demonstrated empirically that industrial societies now use about 50% of the available plant biomass (the energetic basis of all animal life) upon their territories for human purposes (part 4). Part 5 classifies different ‘paradigms’ for judging the ‘harmfulness’ of social interventions into the environment and outlines the logic of an information system that would enable society to generate an awareness of its own interventions into nature. On the whole the paper presents a theoretical as well as an empirical attempt to view societies as physical systems (among other physical systems on this planet) and confront sociology with the paradigmatic task to analyze the social regulation of these physical processes.     

Trust,perceptions of corruption,and demand for regulation: Evidence from post-socialist countries

While the tradeoff between market failure and government failure has been explored both theoretically and in practical policy design, the question of whether this trade-off appears in the calculus of citizens’ demands for government regulation remains underexplored. We first clarify the channels through which concerns for market failure, as proxied by trust in market participants, and concerns for government failure, as proxied by perceptions of corruption, jointly affect individuals’ demand for government regulation. We then investigate these effects empirically, using data from post-socialist countries. Our analysis confirms the previously established result that trust has a negative effect on demand for regulation. Perceived corruption, however, affects demand for regulation primarily via a negative interaction effect with trust. Our findings suggest that, in post-socialist countries, both concerns for market failure and concerns for government failure are indeed in citizens’ minds and that concerns about the anticipated ‘grabbing-hand’ effect from government involvement are particularly salient.     

Weber,Simmel, and the sociology of culture

Max Weber and Georg Simmel began their long and important association not later than the mid-1890s. Both emerged from the upper middle class intellectual life of Berlin, but with different starting points: Protestant political and moralistic culture for Weber; the Jewish experience and the new aesthetic culture of modernism for Simmel. Despite such a contrast, Weber and Simmel were drawn together essentially because of a shared interest in problems of modern culture. The historical evidence shows that this interest developed around an assessment of Nietzsche's significance and a critique of ‘psychologism’. The German Sociological Society both helped to establish in 1909 then became a notable, if brief, episode in the attempt to clarify the tasks of sociology as a ‘science of culture’. Their relationship (and Marianne Weber's) to the debate over the prospects for a unique ‘female culture’ illustrates a neglected aspect of the cultural problem. Notwithstanding their different sociologies, Weber and Simmel can be seen as raising a similar question about the ‘fate’ of our culture, and it is this question that continues to make their work significant.     

Race,power and white siege cultures

A group's awareness of its own particular ‘identity (racial, cultural, ethnic, etc.) is heightened when it competes with other groups for power, privilege and resources. It is especially when a group (be it a dominant or subordinate group) perceives its culture threatened that it mobilizes its resources, articulates its beliefs and organizes its followers to assure its cultural survival. When its protective efforts are blocked or stymied, the group is transformed into what Smelser terms a ‘value‐oriented movement’. It becomes a culture under siege, and its development closely follows those characteristics and stages of collective behaviour that Smelser identifies. Continued stress or threats to a siege culture also lead to the transformation of the group's beliefs into what Rokeach identifies as a ‘closed belief system,’ characterized by dogmatic beliefs and, among its members, highly rigid and intolerant forms of behaviour. Where a group's racial beliefs are threatened, the group is readily transformed into a siege culture. This is evident especially in three historical/contemporary cases: White Southerners in the U.S., Afrikaners in South Africa, and White Rhodesians. Their cultural/racial beliefs (based on White superiority and White supremacy) threatened, the three groups became value‐oriented movements, their transformation and characteristics (closely paralleling each other) easily identified in terms of the analyses of Smelser and Rokeach.     

Twenty‐Five Years After the Fall of Communism: The Cultural Peculiarities of Fighting Corruption and Building Civil Society in Romania

Even when the domestic political system has undergone reform, it sometimes seems unlikely that any outside force can introduce enough of a “carrot and stick” approach to persuade a country to maintain momentum. This article is concerned with understanding the cultural peculiarities of fighting corruption and building civil society in Romania, where despite the tough EU monitoring and domestic anti‐sleaze efforts, corruption, and low trust remain significant problems. Many of the theorists in the post‐communist literature argue that socioeconomic factors and the communist legacy have weakened post‐communist civil society in the region. This article explores the question whether corruption has replaced the legacy of communism as a factor undermining trust in others and government in Romania and presents an examination of the association between corruption and post‐communist civil society. The article argues that future research needs to switch focus from discussing Romanian social, political, and cultural behaviors from a longue durée perspective to evaluating the impact of political corruption on trust and, hence, civil society in Romania.     

Individual values,cultural embeddedness,and anti-immigration sentiments: Explaining differences in the effect of values on attitudes toward immigration across Europe

During the last decade, many European countries have faced sizeable immigration inflows accompanied by high prevalence of negative sentiments toward immigrants among majority members of the host societies. We propose that basic human values are one important determinant of such negative attitudes, and we seek to explain variation across countries in the strength of the effects of values. Based on Schwartz’ (1992, 1994) basic human value theory, we hypothesize that universalism values are conducive to positive attitudes toward immigration, while conformity-tradition reinforce anti-immigration sentiments. We furthermore hypothesize that these value effects are moderated by two contextual variables. Both value effects are expected to be weaker in countries with a higher level of cultural embeddedness. Furthermore, negative effects of conformity-tradition values are hypothesized to be cushioned by a lower proportion of immigrants in the country. A multilevel analysis of data from 24 countries from the fourth round of the European Social Survey (2008–2009) supports these hypotheses. Moreover, we demonstrate that the measurement properties of the theoretical constructs exhibit equivalence across countries, thereby justifying statistical comparisons.     

City of Quartz

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the production of Indian ethnicity in the United States through a close reading of the Cultural Festival of India, an event that took place over four weeks in 1991 in Edison, New Jersey. The festival, organized by the Gujarati Hindu sect, Bochasanwasi Swaminarayan Sanstha, presented an extravagant and general vision of ‘India’ for Indian as well as non-Indian Americans through arts performances, shopping displays, food stands and cultural exhibits. The Cultural Festival of India can be seen as an occasion for a new type of ‘imagined community’, or as an instance of diasporic nationalism, that is, produced by immigrant Indians intent on projecting a positive image of themselves, and is steeped in romantic notions of the home country.

As Indians in First World countries form larger and more visible populations, they begin to develop elaborate strategies for constructing associative identities. In the United States, the Indian middle class has chosen the terminology and the historical precedents of ‘ethnicity’ to construct itself as a group within the political and cultural landscapes of a ‘multicultural’ nation. The rapidly expanding Indian capitalist economy simultaneously procures foreign investment through connections maintained with these overseas Indians as well as through a new image projected abroad of India as a source of progress. Nationalism, diaspora, culture and identity become confounded both as theoretical categories and as material forces. The Cultural Festival of India illustrates these developments through the reification of Indian ‘culture’, the portrayal of idealized Indian social values and the celebration of technological innovation. Through an examination of the festival, the article explains the continuities in colonial and postcolonial strategies of building national and transnational communities.     

Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals

Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones—they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE’s uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling—in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.     

When David met goliath: Research collaboration in the context of changing political realities

This article examines the dimensions of research collaboration between researchers from EU and Central and East European countries in the post‐communist period. The discussion draws on experience of two initiatives for research co‐operation, COST and EUREKA. Following an analysis of the formal levels of participation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in COST and EUREKA, the quality of exchange during the collaborative projects and the networks that have been established, some benefits from and barriers to East‐West co‐operation in research and technology are considered. Although the collaborative arrangements have been overall successful the different groups of participants display diverging and even sometimes conflicting expectations and perceptions of benefits. Two extreme positions view the collaborative links in terms of ‘master’ and ‘student’ and as relationships between partners of equal standing. By far the most serious barriers to successful East‐West research co‐operation stem from broad cultural differences and from a tendency to assume that lack of information means lack of development. The benefits from research co‐operation can increase many‐fold, it is suggested, if the relationships are seen as a symmetrical exchange rather than as a meeting between David and Goliath.     

Campus politics,student societies and social media

The university campus has often been seen as an important site for the politicization of young people. Recent explanations for this have focused attention upon the role of the student union as a means to enable a ‘critical mass’ of previously isolated individuals to produce social networks of common interest. What is missing from these accounts, however, and what this article seeks to address, is how these factors actually facilitate the development of political norms and the active engagement of many students. Drawing upon qualitative data from three countries we argue that it is the milieu of the smaller student societies that are crucial for facilitating the habitus of the student citizen. They provide the space for creative development and performance of the political self, affiliations to particular fields and access to cultural and social capital. Moreover, we contend that these processes of politicization are increasingly enacted through social media networks that foreground their importance for developing political habitus in the future.     

Parenting Style,Child Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Problems: The Moderating Role of Cultural Values in Australia and Indonesia

Abstract

Research has shown that the congruence of parenting styles with cultural values, rather than parenting styles alone, impacts child adjustment. This study examined if parents’ cultural values moderate the relationships between parenting styles and child outcomes across both an individualist culture (Australia) and a collectivist culture (Indonesia). Three hundred and eighty-seven parents of 2–10-year-old children from both countries reported their parenting styles, the importance of the collectivistic values (security, conformity, and tradition), and their child's emotion regulation and behavioral problems. In both countries, authoritative parenting was associated with higher child emotion regulation and lower levels of behavioral problems, and authoritarian parenting was associated with lower child emotion regulation and higher levels of behavioral problems. Although cultural values did not moderate the relationship between authoritarian parenting and child adjustment, in both countries greater importance placed on tradition attenuated the positive effect of authoritative parenting on child outcomes.     

Internet usage and cosmopolitanism in Europe: a multilevel analysis

Despite the transnational interconnected nature of the internet, cross-national comparisons in internet usage and their effects are still relatively scarce. Moreover, one of the core intrinsic properties that internet theorists have distinguished, the ability to increase democracy and ‘global understanding’ through its connectivity, has hardly been empirically studied. This paper examines how internet usage affects individuals’ openness to other cultures: cosmopolitanism. I analyze two manifestations of such openness: first, the cosmopolitan orientation toward other cultures in the broad sense; second, the interest in foreign cultural expressions. Using Eurobarometer data on 29 European countries, the results show that interactive internet practices are positively associated with openness to foreign culture. Buying culture online is positively related to interest in concrete expressions, but negatively to cosmopolitan orientation. Importantly, individual effects on cosmopolitan orientation are often moderated by the country people live in, whereas effects on interest in foreign expressions are more stable across Europe.     

The powerful relational language of ‘family’: togetherness,belonging and personhood

This article examines the notion of ‘family’ to consider how it may be understood in people's everyday lives. Certain recurrent and powerful motifs are apparent, notably themes of togetherness and belonging, in the context of a unit that the person can be ‘part of’. At the same time, there may be important variations in the meanings given to individuality and family, evoking differing understandings of the self and personhood. I consider these ideas further through globally relevant but variable cultural themes of autonomy and relationality, suggesting the term ‘social person’ as a heuristic device to distinguish the sense of ‘close‐knit selves’ that may be involved in some understandings of personhood. I argue that this version of personhood may be powerfully expressed through ‘family’ meanings, with a significance which can be at least provisionally mapped along lines of inequality and disadvantage within and between societies around the world. These forms of connectedness may be hard to grasp through those theoretical and methodological frameworks which emphasize the (relational) individual. I argue that, in affluent English speaking societies, ¹ there may be little alternative to the language of ‘family’ for expressing such forms of relationality and connection.     

Winners and losers in the post‐communist transformation: The czech republic in comparative perspective

The gradual dismantling of redistributive practices as part of the transition to a market economy, together with an increase in wage, income, and wealth inequalities make those who actually profited (in relative terms) from the socialist redistribution feel like ‘losers’ of the transformation. Conversely, those who were relatively disfavoured by the communist redistributive policies and who feel strong today in the competition for better life‐chances may consider themselves ‘winners’ of the transition process. This article considers who are the winners and losers informer communist countries and what impact this factor has on the crystallization of political attitudes. The principle assumption is that the two segments of the population uphold quite different views on the consequences of the transition to a market economy and democracy for their life‐chances and maintain different positions on the political spectrum. The analysis starts from a subjective definition of winners and losers based on the perception of ones’ change in social status (social status of the family) and economic situation (families’ wealth) during the years of transformation. Then, objective characteristics of the two groups are examined. Finally, the effects of being a loser or winner on left or right political orientations are analyzed.     

‘(What's so funny ‘bout) peace,love & understanding’: rock culture and the rebuilding of civic identity in the post-conflict Balkans

The article examines current rock culture in the Balkans as a potential vehicle for rebuilding the broken sociocultural bonds between the different post-Yugoslav societies and for creating a constructive cultural space for articulating new forms of civic and post-nationalist identities. The argument offered is that, after the sociocultural exile during the war years, rock culture in the post-conflict Balkans has considerable potential to establish itself as a popular-cultural force of ‘utopian transcendence’ of the current ethno-nationalist sociopolitical moment, and as a catalyst of the new post-Yugoslav spirit of openness, tolerance and peaceful coexistence.     

Assessing values and value change in Thai organizations

Abstract

The development of coherent culture is important for corporations to develop goals that can be shared, understood and commonly pursued by the member of an organization. A lack of cultural coherence needs to be addressed since it can impact on corporate effectiveness affecting, for instance, communication, performance and adaptation. Under the crises caused by the complexification of societies and the development of increasing political uncertainty, corporate cultural coherence becomes more important. Such corporation change situations tend to be influenced by a new emerging value system, and it is useful to identify the impact of this on corporate coherence. while the evaluation of cultural coherence can be explored through cultural mapping models, there are few adequate approaches to this. One approach that does offer such adequacy will be explored within the context of Thai culture, where the ‘core value coherence’ in three corporate environments across different levels of management and between employees will be examined.     

Cultural studies, a sociological poetics: institutions of the Canadian imaginary

La poétique sociologique est définie comme problématique pour la sociologie critique de la culture afin de considérer l'avenir du rapport du dédoublement entre les cultures vécue et officielle à travers les institutions de l'imaginaire canadien anglais. On propose des critiques de la CBC, du développement de la politique culturelle, et des Études canadiennes comme école de pensée. A critique of the official definition of Canadian culture is presented. Given the distinction between lived and official culture, the question posed is, ‘how do we theorize the relations between these two levels for an entire society? Based principally on Bahktin's concept of ‘dialogism’ with references to Dumont and Rioux, a sociological poetics is advanced as a theoretical device for unravelling ‘the Canada’. It is argued that cultural studies defined as a sociological poetics must negate any definition of the one Canadian culture or representations of the one Canadian society. Lines of inquiry are suggested with respect to the CBC and Canadian studies as cultural industries.     

Integrating Contested Aspirations,Processes and Policy: Development as Hanging In,Stepping Up and Stepping Out

This article proposes a dialogue around a conceptualisation of development as involving three complementary processes: ‘hanging in’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping out’. These describe different types and scales of structural change in national and sub‐national societies and economies, in different sectors within these economies, and in people's evolving livelihoods. The simplicity and strong theoretical, empirical and experiential content of this make it a powerful framework both for interdisciplinary, inter‐sectoral, multi‐scale analysis of dynamic development processes, and for structuring dialogue about contested aspirations, assumptions, modalities and constraints among development analysts and stakeholders with different interests and paradigms.     

Social order,cultural capital and citizenship*

The question of whether education should be seen as an instrument of social order is an old topic in the social sciences. There exist several theories concerning this question. Two of these rival theories are dealt with in this paper. On the basis of each, historical data have been looked at anew and empirical research has been carried out into the prevailing conditions in the Netherlands. On the basis of the first theory, which was inspired by Bourdieu and which concerns economic, cultural (including educational) and social capital, data on the Dutch history between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries have been reanalysed with respect to the attitude of the diverse sections of the dominant class towards culture in general and the university in particular. Dutch history can be regarded as a national variant of the universal tensions between ‘culture’and ‘knowledge’and between ‘culture’and ‘economics’in human societies. On the basis of Bourdieu's theory it is assumed that under the prevailing social conditions elementary schools will differ in ‘educational status’in the schools market. Empirical investigation confirms this hypothesis. The ‘educational status’of elementary schools mediates (reproduces) almost all of the influence of the childrens’social background on their school career, and reinforces this influence. On the basis of the second theory, which is based on the work of Meyer, Boli and Ramirez, data on the Dutch history in the Enlightenment period have been reanalysed with respect to the rise of mass education. These historical data give substantial evidence to the theory that the construction of the nation-state is of decisive importance for the rise of mass education. Our empirical investigation, however, does not confirm the hypothesis that in the actual situation elementary schools differ in ‘comprehensiveness’. Neither schools nor parents are oriented towards integration. Rather, the contrasts seem to be getting sharper in the 1980s and the schools as well as the social classes seem to be distancing themselves further from each other. Various sections of the dominant class are busy strengthening their position of power in education. In short, the use of schools to constitute citizens does not lessen the pressure towards differentiation. Thus, the theory of Boli and Ramirez explains the rise of mass education, but cannot explain its social class bound form, a fact that can be explained very well by Bourdieu's theory. Therefore the theories of both Bourdieu and Boli and Ramirez should be regarded not as rivalizing, but as complementary.