Continuing complexity: The university careers of a scientific elite in relation to their class origins and schooling

We report on continuing research on the UK scientific elite, intended to illustrate a proposed new approach to elite studies and based on a prosopography of Fellows of the Royal Society born from 1900. We extend analyses previously reported of Fellows' social origins and secondary schooling to take in their university careers as under- and postgraduates. The composite term ‘Oxbridge’, as often applied in elite studies, is called into question, as members of the scientific elite prove to have been recruited more from Cambridge than from Oxford. Particular interest then attaches to the relation between Fellows' social origins and schooling and their attendance at Cambridge. Among Fellows whose university careers were made at Cambridge, those of more advantaged class origins and those with private schooling are over-represented, although in this, as in various other respects, including Fellows' field of study, family influences persist independently of schooling. One suggestive interaction effect exists in that being privately educated increases the probability of having been at Cambridge more for Fellows from managerial than from professional families. Private schooling leading on to both undergraduate and postgraduate study at Cambridge can be identified as the educational ‘royal road’ into the scientific elite; and Fellows coming from higher professional and managerial families alike have the highest probability of having entered the elite in this way. But the most common route turns out in fact to be via state schooling and attendance at universities outside of ‘the golden triangle’ of Cambridge, Oxford and London; and this route is far more likely to have been followed by Fellows of all other class origins than higher professional. The relation between the degree of social skew in the recruitment of an elite and the degree of social homogeneity among its members can be more complex than has often been supposed.     

Creative precarity? Young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the careers of young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia. It discusses entrepreneurial experiences and labour practices of fashion designers in the context of precarity: that is, the structural conditions characterized by a lack of social, economic and emotional security caused by a shift of responsibilities for the labour market from the state to the citizens. The article takes the perspective of designers’ agency and answers the question of how young fashion entrepreneurs deal with such structural conditions using state support, community support, organizational practices and emotional management. The article also focuses on creative labour in the broader context of the circumstances of a creative class in an authoritarian state. We argue that in today’s Russia, the discourse on the creative class is perhaps more important than the discourse on precarity, since belonging to the creative class is a source of political identity for fashion designers. The issue of precarity, then, can become a further basis for solidarity and political action. The research draws from 21 in-depth interviews with fashion designers and experts conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk between 2015 and 2016.     

Analysing Change in Women's Careers: Culture,Structure and Action Dimensions

This article addresses a number of related issues. It outlines and illustrates three dimensions of explanations about women's careers: cultural, structural and action dimensions. The three dimensions are considered as aspects of determinism and choice in women's careers and are illustrated with regard to different professional sectors. The article argues that change needs to be a prominent feature in the analysis of women's careers but that change is differently perceived and interpreted in analyses in the three different dimensions.     

Patterns of Neighboring: Practicing Community in the Parochial Realm

This article investigates the practices and functions of neighboring. It is based on interviews and “go‐alongs” with over sixty residents and on ethnographic observation of two middle‐class neighborhoods in Hollywood, California. Building on Lofland's (1998) model of three social realms (the public, the parochial, and the private), I conceptualize neighboring as a set of interactive principles that characterize parochial or communal territories such as neighborhoods. I discuss four distinct patterns in detail: friendly recognition, parochial helpfulness, proactive intervention, and embracing and contesting diversity. While integrating previous research and theorizing on neighboring, the article contributes to the continuing debate in sociology over what constitutes community.     

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.     

Economic evaluation of continuing care interventions in the treatment of substance abuse: recommendations for future research

The chronic and relapsing nature of substance abuse points to the need for continuing care after a primary phase of treatment. This article reviews the economic studies of continuing care, discusses research gaps, highlights some of the challenges of conducting rigorous economic evaluations of continuing care, and offers research guidelines and recommendations for future economic studies in this emerging field. Rigorous economic evaluations are needed by health care providers and policy makers to justify the allocation of scarce resources to continuing care interventions. The adoption of cost-effective continuing care services can reduce long-term consequences of addiction, thereby potentially increasing overall social welfare.     

Class,work and family in women's lives

Interviews with white, working professional and working class mothers suggest that these women share values about work, family and on-the-job sociality. Respondents draw from a common value system, and many of the statements voiced by one group are echoed in the other. Work and motherhood are important paths to the development of individual identity for both working class and professional women. Differences in jobs, however, lead to differences in the actualization of values in their lives. Professional women are pulled in two directions and face continuing dilemmas in balancing careers which extract strong commitments from them and the demands of motherhood. Working class women's jobs do not require the same intensity of commitment, and they find it easier to meet their families' demands on their time. But conceptualizing their work as meaningful becomes more difficult than it is for professional women. Sociality is the third area of concern. Women in this study emphasized sociality because it allowed them to complete their work more effectively. It also served expressive functions; some women made friends at work. Some de-emphasized sociality if it interfered with their work identities. The importance of sociality was not necessarily dependent upon respondents' class location.I would like to thank Harold Bershady, Charles Bosk, and Robin Leidner for their comments and encouragement during the research and writing of this project. I would also like to thank M. E. Hughes, several anonymous reviewers, andQualitative Sociology for their helpful comments on earlier version of this article.     

Student Life in the Medieval Universities

Oral history research projects are assignments that can foster student engagement and learning in undergraduate survey history courses. However, existing scholarship indicates that these assignments are seldom used in undergraduate survey courses. Since the aims of undergraduate survey history courses are to satisfy graduation requirements, foster critical thinking skills, and provide options for potential major areas of study, there is a need to examine whether engaged learning strategies, such as oral history projects, can serve as a high-impact practice (HIP) in undergraduate history courses. With these premises in mind, the purpose of this action research study is to evaluate whether my five-step oral history research project could serve as a HIP in the undergraduate history survey courses I taught at a two-year college located in metropolitan region of the Southeast. Major findings indicate that oral history research projects can be considered a HIP when grounded in pedagogies that emphasize community-based field work that encourage students to consider diverse perspectives on topics and make real-world connections to content and experiential knowledge.     

Putting Principles Into Practice: Addressing Historical Trauma,Mistrust, and Apprehension in Research Methods Courses

The social work profession has articulated commitments to acknowledging and affirming how diversity and culture shape the human experience and to developing social workers who can competently engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research. However, there remains a need in social work education for more widespread use of culturally relevant pedagogies that can help achieve these goals. Informed by historical trauma theory and the Black perspective, this article presents a model we used for teaching research to master’s-level social work students at a historically Black university. The article describes assignments and classroom exercises that were used and discusses the implications of this model for culturally informed research curricula that promotes antioppressive research in diverse classroom settings.     

Décloisonner la sociologie de l’engagement militant. Note critique sur quelques tendances récentes des travaux français

This critique reviews an especially active field of research during the last 20 years in France: the sociology of activism. In this current of sociology, a new interactionist paradigm has emerged that takes into account activists’ careers and the process of becoming an activist. This critique focuses on how the idea of the “rewards” of activism has been reworked. After reviewing theoretical debates about whether or not new forms of activism and new activists are arising, this article points out two issues for current research, both related to the social division of labor, namely: improving our understanding of, on the one hand, the linkage between macrosocial changes and activism and, on the other hand, of the way that organizations shape activism.     

Diverse students and literacy in social work education: pedagogies for a new tertiary landscape

In the Western policy landscape, students from diverse cultural, linguistic, economic and other backgrounds are increasingly represented in an expanded tertiary education system. Structural and technological changes have challenged traditional pedagogies designed for more elite cohorts, and shifted the boundaries of textual practices in both universities and professional worlds. In spite of these momentous trends, university literacies often remain tacit and inaccessible to those new to them, and pedagogies rarely explicitly engage with the complexities of these shifting boundaries. University students unfamiliar with these tacit literacies can become marginalised and ultimately struggle with the literacy demands of their academic and professional worlds. This is problematic in social work education, as professional practice demands complex written and oral communication, with potentially significant social and legal repercussions. This paper reports on pedagogies initiated by action research in a Bachelor of Social Work programme in an Australian University. Pedagogies were introduced to make elite codes explicit, use students’ literacies as assets for learning and encourage ‘code switching’ between literacy practices to resist colonising into more powerful literacies. Students’ capacities in academic and professional literacies were significantly enhanced by these practices, and their cultural inheritances valorised, encouraging their contribution to the social work discipline.     

The Interdependent Family‐Centric Career: Career Perspective of the Overseas Chinese in Indonesia

This theoretical article presents an interdisciplinary approach to extend the scope of current career theories and their application to the overseas Chinese (OC) in Indonesia. Using an ecological model to analyze culture and an emic perspective, the article discusses several factors that affect careers of OC Indonesians. Factors such as culture, discrimination, subjective careers, Confucian values, and family business structure are discussed as variables that create a bounded career perspective. This conceptual view is used as a foundation to discuss the needs for future research and the development of a cross‐cultural career model that is applicable in bounded career environments.     

Craft as work–life unity: The careers of skilled working‐class men and their sons and grandsons after deindustrialization

This article focuses on the enduring significance of craft in the careers of Kent Royal Dockyard craftworkers and their sons and grandsons after deindustrialization. The closure of this naval shipbuilding and repair yard together with the subsequent move to post‐industrial employment did not end men's engagement with their craft practices. Instead, this developed into a ‘craft outlook’ defined by a motivation for performing actualizing labour that interwove paid and non‐paid work. Men's careers did not become individualized projects of self as collaborative intergenerational practices gave a long‐term narrative to their careers and lives. Therefore, three contributions are proposed to the literature on working‐class male careers and craft. First, an analytical framework is advanced that empirically distinguishes a ‘craft outlook’ from traditional manual trade employment. Second, a craft outlook reflected ‘whole life careers’ that were constructed from both paid and non‐paid work. Third, the concept of ‘human imprint’ is developed to recognize the generational affirmation produced by the transmission of craft practices.     

New maps of struggle for gender justice: Rethinking feminist research on organizations and work

The 2018 Gender, Work and Organization conference was held in Sydney. That fact is relevant to the issues now facing feminist organization research. The journal was launched in 1994 in the global North, in the wake of the women's liberation movement but after a first wave of neoliberal politics. Gender studies has changed since then, especially with growing recognition of feminist thought and activism in the global South. There have been changes in the object of knowledge ‐ that is, work and organization ‐ especially managerial transformation of organizations and global economic restructuring. There are related changes in the political arena, most recently the rise of an authoritarian populism with new patterns of masculinity politics. Proposals are made for an agenda of feminist research in this field, relevant to the new circumstances and the continuing struggles for gender equality.     

Political Social Work

This article contributes to discourse on signature pedagogy by reconceptualizing how our pedagogies are understood and defined for social work education. We critique the view that field education is social work's signature pedagogy and consider what pedagogies are distinct about the teaching and learning of social work. Using Shulman's work on professional education, we offer a conceptualization that rests on the belief about the necessary outcome of our pedagogy—it must enable students to think and perform like social workers through the development of the professional self. We present a framework that focuses on three integrating features: thinking and performing like a social worker, development of the professional self, and characteristic forms of teaching and learning.     

Mobilizing betrayal: Black feminist pedagogy and Black women graduate student educators

This article addresses Black women graduate students' educational labor in higher education teacher training programs. We ground this reflective account of our respective teaching praxis in the educational betrayal we endured as younger students, connecting it to our engagement of Black feminist pedagogy. We illustrate how this praxis empowered us as undergraduate educators to implement pedagogies of equity and justice. Employing a structured vignette analysis framework, we draw on a Black feminist paradigm and Black feminist autoethnography to examine field notes of our teaching praxis. These two field notes, one from Francena and one from ArCasia, demonstrate challenges that emerged in our instruction of mostly white undergraduates. Despite the precarious nature of our political and professional positions, we discuss why working toward an anti‐oppression praxis remains our ultimate pedagogical aim.     

The story about theater organizations, the public's approval, and the actors' identity formation in Nordic disability theater

Nordic disability theater is a relatively new and interesting field of disability research. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the field of disability theater in a Nordic context. The article is based on a comparative analysis from 3 research projects conducted in Sweden and Norway. The projects used qualitative methods and were analyzed from different theoretical perspectives. Interviews were conducted at 4 different disability theaters involving actors with hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and mental disabilities. The aim of this article is to illustrate how the organizational settings reflect different goals and aims at the political and artistic levels. The authors will also address the relationship between the theaters and the public opinion and media. Finally, they will illustrate in what way organization, recognition, and public approval play an important role for the actors' identity formation and sense of belonging.     

Strategie- und Organisationsentwicklung in KMUs – von der Abstraktion zur Konkretisierung

Despite the importance of strategic measures for organizational development in small and medium sized companies, it often remains quite difficult to integrate such activities. Access to consultancy and continuing education on offer in this field is being impeded by lack of resources, such as time, personnel and finance, as well as by the abstract nature of the theme itself and the lack of familiarity with this learning and counseling situation. Three fields of tension are focused on: Teaching and learning as a management of contradictions, strategy between myth and reality, and the role that tools play in working with strategies. Against the backdrop of the experiences in a project that combined elements of research, counseling and continuing education the article points out challenges for institutions promoting economic development, for entrepreneurs, and for researchers or consultants in such a context.     

Bachelorhood and Late Marriage: An Interactionist Interpretation*

This paper summarizes an exploratory investigation of the interactional careers of forty bachelors (men who had reached the age of 35 without marrying), twenty of whom later married. Depth interviewing was used to collect life history data establishing major career lines of specific heterosexual dyads as well as developments in preceding and paralleling universes of interaction. The findings support the contention that continuing social pressures rather than personal abnormalities of individual bachelors ultimately determine marital careers in that bachelorhood and late marriage are interactional products stemming from differential socialization and situational contingencies.