Pop Music and the Search for the Numinous: Exploring the Emergence of the “Secular Hymn” in Post-Modern Culture

A growing body of research suggests that traditional religious institutions are failing to meet the spiritual needs of their adherents, who are now abandoning traditional worship and turning to pop music to fill the void. This article defines and explores the phenomenon of the “secular hymn.” While nonreligious in nature or intent, the secular hymn is a pop song that allows the listener to experience the numinous by creating an affective state that parallels a spiritual or religious state of mind. This article outlines the phenomenon of the secular hymn in pop culture, defines its characteristics, and evaluates several pop songs against these criteria. While some secular hymns may be used in some church settings, the overall trend may exemplify the continuing erosion of traditional religion and the use of explicitly religious music in both public and private settings.     

Does “The Public” Think Politically?: A Search for “Deep Structures” in Everyday Political Thought

An abundant literature studies the political thought of ordinary citizens qualitatively, but cross-national comparative studies are rare. To begin identifying cultural differences, this article focuses on the U.S. and Argentina, two countries that are opposite in many respects, while homogenizing the age, family situation, income, and metropolitan residence of the respondents. On one hand, the analysis shows two elements (that we call ideologemes) common to both countries: the vision of the public sphere of mothers who have experienced downward social mobility, and the recurrent reference to the breaking of a previously extant social covenant. On the other hand, it shows differences in a basic axis of discursive organization: In Argentina, personal experience is tied to political events and historicized, while in the U.S., discourses about society are predominantly articulated in terms of spatial categories.     

Whither Criminology? The Search for a Paradigm Over the Last Half Century

To what degree does criminology demonstrate the genuine presence or lack of a paradigm (i.e. theoretical-methodological consensus) to help structure its research enterprise? There are trade-offs to consider when pressing the question, such as a potential drain on efficiency in its allocation of resources, limits on its scientific credibility, and weakened institutional strength resulting from conceptual dissensus. Alternatively, an interdisciplinary field may benefit from insights continually drawn from its various parent disciplines. The present research offers a reply in two parts. The first focus relies on a content analysis of 2,109 peer-reviewed articles published in leading journals from 1951-2008 in providing a positive analysis. There is mixed evidence of methodological agreement and less on the matter of commitment to a specific theory. The second inquiry draws from reactions delivered by 17 leading criminologists on the normative question of whether the field’s a-paradigmatic status helps or harms scientific advance. An analysis of the oral histories indicates an indifference to the criticism of lacking paradigmatic uniformity as a legitimate critique and a vehement defense of porous intellectual boundaries. However, pragmatic considerations such as the potential for a diminishing need to train criminal justice undergraduates and threats to government funding may force the profession to give more consideration to the matter of its scientific bone fides.     

Accounting for State Intervention: The Social Histories of “Beneficiaries”

How does the state imagine the people? In what ways does it come to know the targets of its policies? This paper examines the transformation of the state through a focus on the visions implied in tools and practices of results-based management in state bureaucracies. When scholars have discussed the state’s vision or imagination they have often critically examined how the state constructs aggregates of the population as a whole. But an emphasis on or critique of aggregation can only be the beginning of understanding the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways in which people are imagined in governance today. Results-based management has created a new way in which the state imagines people. In some policy arenas citizens have been turned into “beneficiaries” through the practices of state managers. Beneficiaries differ from citizen in a number of ways: Citizens are thought to benefit from policies with broad goals; beneficiaries are shown to benefit from specific interventions. Citizens are owed service; beneficiaries are selected for intervention if it suits specific funding priorities. Citizens are the origins of politics and the end of policies; beneficiaries are a means to an organization’s success.     

The Search for Meaning: Revisiting Herbert Blumer’s Interpretation of G.H. Mead

Herbert Blumer’s interpretation of George Herbert Mead’s work has set the intellectual foundation for the symbolic interactionist tradition. However, the adequacy of this interpretation has been challenged, leading to a series of highly charged debates in the 1970s–80s. This article reflects back on these debates, and reconsiders the contrast between the Blumerian and Meadian epistemologies from a contemporary perspective. It is demonstrated that while Mead’s work is able to adapt to and contribute to emerging challenges to dualism in contemporary interpretive theory, Blumer’s root epistemological position fails in this regard, and creates an inconsistent framework for social reality.     

“The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay”

One of the stylized facts from the past 30 years has been the declining rate of first births before age 30 for all women and the increase rate of first births after age 30 among women with four-year college degrees (Steven P. Martin, Demography, 37(4), 523–533, 2000). What are some of the factors behind womens decision to postpone their childbearing? We hypothesize that the wage difference often observed between like-educated mothers and non-mothers (Jane Waldfogel, Journal of Labor Economics, 16, 505–545, 1998a; Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1) 137–156, 1998b) may be affected by the postponement of childbearing until after careers are fully established. Hence, we focus on college-educated women because they are typically more career-oriented than their non-college educated counterparts and also the group most often observed postponing maternity. We use individual-level data on women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in order to control for individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as human capital characteristics, such as actual work experience, in our empirical analysis. We estimate wage equations, first producing base-line results to compare to the existing literature. Then, we expand the basic wage equation model to address fundamental econometric issues and the education/fertility issue at hand. Our empirical findings are two-fold. First, we find that college-educated mothers do not experience a motherhood wage penalty at all. In fact, they enjoy a wage boost when compared to college-educated childless women. Second, fertility delay enhances this wage boost even further. Our results provide an explanation for the observed postponement of maternity for educated women. We argue that the wage boost experienced by college-educated mothers may be the result of their search for family–friendly work environments, which, in turn, yields job matches with more female-friendly firms offering greater opportunities for advancement.JEL Codes: J13 and J3     

The Iraqi Kurds: The struggle for autonomy in the shadow of the Iran‐Iraqi conflict

This article examines the intricate relationship between the Kurds of Iraq and the Iraqi‐Iranian conflict. In the final analysis, the Kurds were both a major beneficiary but at the same time also the major losers from it. This situation became manifest during the Iraqi‐Iranian war which started in September 1980 and ended in August 1988.

Hoping to manipulate the war in order to achieve a meaningful autonomy, the Kurds both received support from Iran and lent it their own in the fighting against Iraq. But at the end of the war, Iran dropped its erstwhile allies, who once again found themselves between hammer and anvil. The punishment which the government meted to the Kurdish movement and the Kurdish population in general was unprecedented in its harshness and totality. The Kurdish hopes for a meaningful autonomy were dashed.     

Educating the “Variant,” Educating the Public: Gender and the Rhetoric of Legitimation in The Ladder Magazine for Lesbians

This article explores the rhetorical strategies used within The Ladder magazine to legitimate its producers, and by extension all lesbians, as participants in the public dialogue regarding the problem of homosexuality. The Ladder was the first lesbian-produced, nationally distributed magazine in the United States, publishing continuously from 1956 through 1972. Unlike early publications by male homophile groups, the producers of The Ladder had two delegitimating statuses to overcome in order to establish legitimacy–their stigmatized sexuality and their delegitimated gender. This article examines the ways that gender expectations experienced by women during the magazine's early years of publication shaped and constrained the discursive practices within The Ladder in its quest for legitimation. Three rhetorical strategies are analyzed: normalization (constructing the lesbian as heterosexual woman), status elevation (the lesbian as man), and emphatic individualism (the lesbian as idealized citizen).     

The politics of death: on life after the “end of history”

In this paper, the most recent writings by Giorgio Agamben and Bruno Latour are brought into dialog by examining what light they shed on contemporary debates concerning “end of life” decisions. More specifically, the paper focuses on the debates sparked by Diane Pretty's request for a grant of immunity against legal prosecution if her husband were to assist her to commit suicide and so terminate her increasingly unbearable suffering from motor neurone disease. The aim of this exercise is to articulate the presuppositions informing two influential and radically opposed views on the contemporary reconfiguration of relationships between humans, animals and other non‐humans.     

Searching for the Self: Adult International Adoptees’ Narratives of Their Search for and Reunion With Their Birth Families

In this case study, five international adoptees from Finland were interviewed about their search and reunion experiences to find out what meanings they ascribed to their identities and family relations. The thematic analysis yielded three themes: search and reunion in significant periods of life, meaning of reunion for identity, and belonging and relatedness within family. The first theme was characterized by the changing interest in birth family from the inability in childhood to fully understand the meaning of adoption and the growing interest in adolescence to adulthood where participants’ own parenthood intensified their interest. The second theme was characterized by the sense of coherence and sense of continuity that the adoptees, despite the conflicting emotions of reunion, felt they had achieved through reunion. In the third theme, reunion with their birth family appeared significant, even though belonging to a family was interpreted more as an outcome of attachment and nurture than biology. Particular for all themes was the meaning of communicating about adoption-related issues for the adoptee–adoptive parent relationship. Future research is needed to concentrate in more detail on the broad themes and to investigate how the meanings of the birth family for adoptive identity change over life courses.     

The “Wall of Fear”: The Bridge Between the Traumatic Event and Trauma Resolution Therapy for Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors

ABSTRACT

A multitude of published books and papers on child sexual abuse (CSA) describe symptoms, long-term effects, and therapy for survivors of abuse. However, the parallels between the nature of the sexual trauma event(s) as originally experienced by the victim and the therapeutic process into which the survivor later becomes engaged have not been reported. This paper attempts to fill that gap and proposes that the concept of a “Wall of Fear” is the bridge connecting the two. In the first part of the paper, a model of the CSA experience based upon Furniss (1991) will be explained in order to point out the basis for the dissociation and other symptomology demonstrated by the CSA victim. Following that, the stages of therapy will be mapped out, with special attention to the concept of the Wall of Fear (Oz, 1999) and traumatic memory resolution (abreactions) and with reference to the experience of the original traumatic events. Therapist fear of decompensation will be addressed.     

The ambiguity of “having sex”: The subjective experience of virginity loss in the united states

Ambiguity surrounds virginity loss as defined and interpreted by young people in the contemporary United States. Drawing on in‐depth case studies of 61 women and men of various sexual orientations, ages 18 to 35, I explore the influence of that ambiguity on conduct and identity. Although uniformly agreeing that virginity loss could occur through first coitus, most respondents claimed that other kinds of genital sex could also sometimes result in virginity loss. Many argued that virginity could not be lost through rape. Respondents offered three primary interpretations of virginity—as a gift, stigma, or part of a process—which were associated with distinctive presentations of self, choices of virginity‐loss partner, and contraceptive practices. Different definitions and interpretations of virginity loss gave distinctive shape to individuals ‘ choices about the transitions from virgin to nonvirgin identity. Understandings of virginity loss were further patterned by gender and sexual orientation.     

Clinical Realism Versus the Seductions of Universal Theory: Discussion of Celenza's “The Guilty Pleasure of Erotic Countertransference: Searching for Radial True”

In this discussion of Celenza's (this issue) article, I consider a paradox in our responses to psychoanalytic writing: from the same data, we expect both “clinical realism” and something more universal that expands psychoanalytic theory. So with Celenza's rich clinical material: from it, I argue, we may be able to make some universal claims about psychoanalytic process at the most general level. It is not, however, possible to make universal claims about what transpires in analyses in general based on the particular treatments she describes. Instead, I argue that the content of any given analysis inevitably varies with each individual patient and each analytic dyad. This discussion is greatly informed by the work of Edgar Levenson (1982 Levenson , E. ( 1982 ). Follow the fox: An inquiry into the vicissitudes of psychoanalytic supervision . Contemporary Psychoanalysis , 18 , 1 – 15 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Benjamin Wolstein (1981 ———. ( 1981 ). Psychic realism of psychoanalytic inquiry . Contemporary Psychoanalysis , 17 , 399 – 412 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

“You're not getting married for the moon and the stars”: The uncertainties of older British widowers about the idea of new romantic relationships

Older widowers are more likely to remarry than older widowed women. However, relatively little is known about the attitudes of older widowers to new romantic relationships and remarriage or repartnering. In this study of 60 widowers, more than half spontaneously discussed their attitudes toward, and experiences of, these relationships. However, none of the widowers had remarried and of those who described themselves as repartnered only one was cohabiting. We examine these data in the light of Lopata's concept of ‘husband sanctification’ (1981). We identify four themes. First, some widowers do sanctify their late wives. Second, we argue that wife sanctification contributes to widowers' uncertainties about repartnering. Third, when widowers make decisions to repartner, wife sanctification does not appear to make an important contribution. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that wife sanctification influences how men refer to their new women friends. Thus, we conclude by arguing that wife sanctification influences widowers' decisions surrounding remarriage/repartnering.     

Leadership in Voluntary Associations: The Case of the “International Association of Women”

Three models of leadership in voluntary associations have been proposed in the literature: democratic leadership, oligarchy, and leadership by default. Through an intensive case study of leadership structure, differences in the attitudes of members and leaders at three hierarchical levels, and differences between the attitudes and behaviors of aspirants and nonaspirants to leadership in a women's service association, this article examines the degree of fit between these models and a specific organization. Data is drawn from questionnaires, annual reports, and interviews. The results fail to conform to any of the existing models, suggesting instead a fourth model, leadership for self-development—in which leaders are motivated primarily by a desire to develop administrative and interpersonal skills.     

Search for Unity: Will the Real Practicing Sociologist Please Stand Up?

In this presidential address given at the Unity 2000 Meeting held in Bethesda, Maryland, I briefly identify and define various types of applied side sociologists. My objective was twofold. First, I wanted to express my appreciation for the necessity of organizational cooperation. Second, I wanted to demonstrate that diversity among practitioners and by association representative organizations is a strength not a weakness. I conclude by identifying six collaborative paths these representative organizations could take to promote unity.     

Introducing “The Ontology of the Rape Joke”

This short essay introduces the panel for this issue focusing on Vanessa Place’s performance piece “The Ontology of the Rape Joke.”