The ties that bind: the role of migrants in the uneven geography of international telephone traffic

Recent work suggests that migrants have been a major driving force in the dramatic growth of international telephony over recent decades, accounting for large rises in telephone calls between countries with strong immigrant/emigrant connections. Yet, the existing literature has done a poor job of evaluating the substantive importance of migrants in explaining large disparities in levels of bilateral voice traffic observed between different countries. It has also failed to go very far in examining how domestic and relational factors moderate (namely amplify or attenuate) the influence of migrant stocks on international calling. Our contribution addresses these gaps in the literature. For a sample, which includes a far larger number of countries than previous studies, we show that, together with shorter‐term visitors, bilateral migrant stocks emerge as the relational variable with one of the substantively largest influences over cross‐national patterns of telephone calls. We also find that the effect of bilateral migrant stocks on inter‐country telephone traffic is greater where the country pairs are richer and more spatially distant from one another.     

Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine‐Feminine Dualism of Leadership

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Advancing a sociology of ignorance in the study of racism and racial non‐knowing

By a wealth of indicators, ignorance appears a bona fide if often vexing social fact. Ignorance is socially constructed, negotiated, and pervasive; ignorance is often socially inevitable, even necessary; and, without a doubt, ignorance is socially consequential. Yet, despite its significance, ignorance has appeared a largely secondary concern among sociologists. Perhaps more perplexing, while sociologists of racism, power, and domination have long focused on the ways racial ideologies distort and mystify racial understanding to sustain White supremacy over time, we have done less to elaborate ignorance than is possible and warranted. Here, I join growing calls for a fully‐fledged “sociology of ignorance” and argue that antiracist and decolonial scholars have much to gain from and contribute to such an endeavor. This article traces the historical forebears of a “sociology of ignorance” and explores ignorance as a social concept before turning to examine precedents and increasing attention to ignorance scholarship on racism, racial domination, and racialized non‐knowing. Drawing from this work, I urge race‐critical scholars take advantage of our unique position to advance theory and methodology surrounding ignorance and the social‐cultural production of non‐knowledge as a broader area of social inquiry.     

Interactionism,Social Organization,and Social Processes: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

With its roots in American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism has created a distinctive perspective and produced numerous important contributions and now offers significant prospects for the future. In this article, I review my intellectual journey with this perspective over forty years. This journey was initiated within the American society, sociology, and symbolic interaction of circa 1960. I note many of the contributions made by interactionists since that time, with particular focus on those who have contributed to the study of social organization and social process. I offer an agenda for the future based on currently underdeveloped areas that have potential. These are inequality orders, institutional analysis, collective action across space and time, and the integration of temporal and spatial orders. The article concludes with calls for further efforts at cross‐perspective dialogues, more attention to feminist scholars, and an elaborated critical pragmatism.     

Children’s Concerns about their Parents’ Health and Well‐being: Researching with ChildLine Scotland

This paper reports on collaborative research conducted with ChildLine Scotland, a free, confidential, telephone counselling service, using their database. We focussed on children’s calls about parental health and well‐being and how this affected their own lives. Children’s concerns emerged within multi‐layered calls in which they discussed multiple issues and problems in their lives such as alcohol misuse, drug misuse, domestic violence, family relationships, depression, mental health problems and bereavement. We discuss how children were making sense of these experiences; how they were trying to get by in difficult family circumstances; whose help they valued; and conclude with implications for policy and practice.     

Language and (in)securitization: Observations from educational research and practice in conflict‐affected contexts

Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic‐speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro‐processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro‐practices of schooling—issues that are possible to “see” when language policy is the site of inquiry. In centring everyday communicative practice, sociolinguistics provides a distinctive entry point for examining the lived experience of this (in)securitization, by illuminating pervasive and mundane micro‐processes within the “extraordinary” and routinized social interactions of everyday schooling.     

“There Ain’t No Bond in Town Like There Used to Be”: The Destruction of Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields1

There is a paucity of research focusing on the circumstances that cause or contribute to a decline in social capital within communities. Furthermore, relatively few researchers employ qualitative methods in their studies of social capital, despite the multidimensional and many‐layered nature of this concept, characteristics that make social capital well suited for qualitative analysis. To address these two gaps in social capital research, I explore the mechanisms that have led to a depletion of social capital in the southern coal‐producing region of West Virginia. I examine whether the coal industry, which has caused bitter conflicts among residents over environmental degradation and union loyalties, has also undermined social capital in the region. My principal data include 40 semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews with randomly selected individuals in a coal‐mining town and a demographically similar non‐coal‐mining town in West Virginia. I analyze the experiences of residents in each town, assessing the qualitative differences in community and personal life associated with social capital. I find that the loss of social capital in the coal‐mining community has arisen through a combination of depopulation and the community‐wide conflict that arose when an anti‐union coal company bought out the union coal mine at which many in the community worked, challenging the union identity so engrained in this region.     

Telephone support for parenting: an evaluation of Parentline Plus

Recent Government policy has advocated universal support services for parents, including a national telephone helpline (for example, Department for Education and Skills, 2003). The Home Office funded just such a helpline—Parentline Plus—as part of the Supporting Families initiative. The efficiency and effectiveness of this service in supporting parents were evaluated through secondary analysis of call data, assessment of taped calls, and interviews with callers. The helpline offers anonymous non‐stigmatising support to a growing number of callers, and most callers interviewed valued highly the service they received. Many had significant support needs that were not met by other forms of service provision.     

Telephone communication with children as part of the self‐care arrangement: A research note

Children in self‐care (latchkey) arrangements have been portrayed as a population at risk, and this has recently led to research investigations, social policy discussions, and legislative proposals. This study examines selected characteristics of mother, child, and family, and the amount of time children spend in self‐care, for their influences on the use of the telephone to communicate with children in self‐care. The analysis builds on earlier studies that indicate the importance of time, child's age, and mother's employment for understanding the growing phenomenon of self‐care. The results of multiple regression analyses are presented and discussed. As expected, the age of the child is the most important variable in predicting the length of time spent in self‐care. The age of the child and the length of time spent in self‐care are the strongest predictors of telephone communication with children in self‐care arrangements.     

THE ANSWERING MACHINE GENERATION: WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT PROBLEM DO THEY POSE FOR SURVEY RESEARCH?

Increased incidence of telephone answering machines and theuse of such devices to screen calls pose a potential threatto the representativeness of samples in telephone surveys. Usingdata from nine statewide surveys, this analysis examines theextent to which answering machines are used to screen callsand the demographic characteristics associated with answeringmachine use and call screening. Results show that at most twoto three percent of households use answering machines to screencalls, and that such screening is more likely to take placein households with higher family incomes, outside rural areas,and which include individuals who are younger and have higherlevels of education. While call screening does not presentlythreaten the representativeness of samples in telephone surveys,the increased incidence of answering machines together withthe increased percentage of households indicating these devicesare sometimes used to screen calls demonstrate that the potentialbias from this source is growing.     

BIRDS ON THE WIRE

This article explores the symbolic relationship of the telephone and teenage girls in mid-twentieth-century U.S. media culture, focusing in particular on the trope of the girl on the phone and its use as a signifier of modern American girlhood. Unpacking this trope's broader social significance, I relate its development to the construction of the telephone as a gendered medium and the emergence of nre form of female subjectivity associated with teenage girls. Though teenagers were hailed as America's future promise during World War II, teenage girls were often represented during this period as resisting the roles and behaviors associated domesticity, thus posing a threat to both traditional ideologies of identity and the dominant social order of the nation. As a result, considerable anxiety developed in relation to teenage girls, especially after the war when the U.S. was attempting to reconstitute itself through domestic containment strategies. Since the telephone has long symbolized both social progress and social disruption, it worked well as a signifier of modern girlhood during this period, simultaneously representing teenage girls’ liberation from the domestic sphere while also suggesting a method for their containment within it. Used by virtually every media and entertainment industry during the 1940s, ‘50s, and early ‘60s, the trope of the girl on the phone sensitized the American public to a new form of female subjectivity while at the same time helping to mediate the threat it posed to adult heterosexual patriarchy. Analyzing closely transformations in the trope of the girl on the phone as used in several films and television series from this period, I point to significant shifts in the containment strategies used by the media industries in relation to teenage girls.     

Telephone counseling and the masturbator: A dilemma

Summary The problems facing telephone counseling services who receive calls from men who desire to masturbate while talking to a female are discussed. Some suggestions are made as to how the counselor can handle this type of call, but it is noted that there is no evidence that telephone counseling is feasible with such callers.     

Refusing to Listen: Are We Failing the Needs of People with Alcohol and Drug Problems?

This paper argues that social work education in the UK has persistently failed to equip its social workers with the knowledge to work effectively with people with alcohol and drug problems. In spite of continuing criticism of the profession's unwillingness or inability to engage with substance use issues, social work education has failed to respond to the calls for better training on this subject, even when specific guidance has been issued about course content. This results in a failure to meet the needs of our service users as well as social work staff who remain frustrated at their inability to intervene. The paper explores the historical and current debate about social work training in relation to alcohol and drugs and identifies the barriers to its inclusion in qualifying and post‐qualifying (PQ) curricula. Finally it offers a strategy for improving social work training as well as an overview of programme content requirements.     

Aux limites du paradigme de la distribution : l’écoute des appels de détresse et le traitement de la souffrance des suicidaires,du téléphone à l’e-mail

How can a telephone hotline for helping the suicidal be seen as a distributed practice and collective skill? Based on fieldwork, this research reviews the paradigm of distributed action by broadening it to activities that imply not only cognition but also moral and emotional dimensions. Two limits of this paradigm are discussed. The first, illustrated with the shift from telephone calls to electronic mail, bears on the capacity for analyzing the development of activities; it leads to a discussion of the differences and similarities between distributed cognition and activity theory. The second has to do with covering up the political dimension of distributed cognition: how do the persons involved in an activity perceive what they do and act on their perceptions — how are they “concerned”? This case study of a counseling hotline by telephone and E-mail raises questions about the performative nature of the words used to express suffering.     

Nonviolent Civil Resistance and Social Movements

Research on non‐violent civil resistance has burgeoned in recent years. This field has much in common with the study of social movements, and yet there has been little cross‐fertilization between these literatures. In this article, I review the historical development of non‐violence studies from its Gandhian roots, through an emphasis on strategic non‐violence, to current empirical research that has generated new insights into the strategic interactions between non‐violent movements and their opponents, the effects of repression, the factors shaping movement outcomes, and cross‐national tactical diffusion. I summarize key findings and implications for the field of social movements. I conclude by charting out new areas of inquiry that future researchers ought to explore.     

Youth research on video self‐productions reflections on a social‐aesthetic approach

This article advances my thoughts on a social‐aesthetic approach within the field of youth and social research. These reflections are not primarily grounded in traditional approaches of visual sociology and anthropology but emerged from the context of media‐educational youth research in Germany. The main assumption of this article is that qualitative youth and social research in particular, which has audio‐visual self‐productions as the object, should—in view of the increasing influence media has on our perception and the way how the reality is experienced—be open to concepts of subject‐related self‐presentations. First I make an attempt to formulate a social‐aesthetic theory which focuses on the media‐ethnographical exploration of symbolic milieus. Next, I introduce projects run by media‐educational youth researchers in Germany, emphasizing the question of conceptions and methods when working with adolescent video self‐productions. The final section reflects upon the quality, the validity and the hermeneutics of self‐produced videos.     

Relationality, place, and absence: a three-dimensional perspective on social memory

This article builds on recent work on memory and place in the social sciences. One emphasis in the literature on ‘Western’ forms of social memory has been on official, intentional sites of commemoration, such as war memorials and monuments. Based on fieldwork in the north of England with older residents of a former coal mining village, I approach social memory from a different perspective, emphasising the work of memory and its complex interactions with place, absence, social relations and social rupture. Like Village on the Border, this research has taken place in a setting that has undergone significant socio‐economic change: the closure of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The embeddedness of local knowledge in social relations emerge in both Ronnie Frankenberg's work and my own and I explore these topics here in connection with what I term a ‘three‐dimensionality of memory’.     

Toward an integrated analysis of social movements and new religious movements research

Despite calls from researchers for intersectional studies between religion and social movements over the past few decades, scholars have not engaged in fruitful conversation about integrating the two disciplines. This article aims to facilitate such discussion by examining the topic of new religious movements (NRMs). I first review the existing literature on NRMs and discuss why NRM research has been neglected in social movement studies. Then, I explore a few research areas where both NRM studies and social movement research could intersect and benefit from a synthetic approach. Specifically, I suggest that social movement studies could advance through the examination of some relatively ignored subjects of research, such as persistent participation and disengagement, by drawing on empirical cases of NRMs. I also propose ways in which the application of social movement theories would enhance our understanding of different aspects of NRMs, such as their leadership and coalition practices. In making these arguments, I refer to one of the prominent, long-term NRMs, the Unification Church or Movement, to help illustrate my ideas.     

Global Anti‐Money Laundering Standards and Developing Economies: The Regulation of Mobile Money

This article discusses the confluence of international initiatives to counter money laundering and terrorist finance with migrant remittances and the growing use of mobile telephone technology for more than making a call. The experiences of Kenya and the Philippines with mobile telephone‐based financial services are outlined as potential models consistent with the ‘risk‐based’ approach now promoted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), one objective being to encourage the implementation of regulation of m‐money services by recognising the development and social‐welfare opportunities offered by the technology in the context of a developing economy.     

Outline of a sociology of decisionism

I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision‐makers, and decision‐making qua social facts. Given society S, group G, or field F, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something—call it X—is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision‐making process. What must X be like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom or what must X be done by? What can't be a decision‐maker (besides, presumably, rocks and apples)? Second, empirically investigate how decision/choice concepts are used in everyday life, politics, business, education, law, technology, and science. What are they used for? To what extent do people understand and represent themselves and others as decision‐makers? Where do decision‐centric or “decisionist” understandings succeed? These aren't armchair, theoretical, philosophical questions, but empirical ones. Decision/choice concepts’ apparent ubiquity in contemporary societies calls for a well‐thought‐out research program on their social life and uses.