Strangers of the north: South Asians,cricket and the culture of ‘Yorkshireness’

As a county, Yorkshire is a ‘cultural region’: an imagined space, where culture is constructed, refined and articulated by a set of discursive relationships between local populations and a whole range of cultural forms. In this context however, culture is conceived as something which belongs to, and is only accessible by, certain groups of people. Our focus in this article is on the culture of Yorkshire cricket. Historically, Yorkshire cricket has been linked with White male privilege and some studies have shown that people within Yorkshire take a degree of pride in this. Consequently, the county and its cricket club have faced frequent accusations from minority ethnic communities of inveterate and institutionalised racism. Drawing upon Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid modernity’, we argue that the processes of deregulation and individualisation championed by New Right policies have led to a divorce between power and politics, a cornerstone of the old solid modern world. This in turn has led to an erosion of the state, causing individuals to navigate turbulent life projects which are consistently haunted by the spectres of fear and insecurity. Such an environment has caused cricket to be pushed further behind gated social spaces, in an attempt to maintain a semblance of ‘community’.     

Rock on reel: The rise and fall of the rock culture in America reflected in a decade of “rockumentaries”

This article analyzes the filmic representation of the rise and demise of the American rock/youth culture of the 1960s through several popular “rockumentaries.” This article explores the ways in which popular film and music both reflect and define political and cultural movements in advanced industrial societies by comparing and contrasting the plots and narrative techniques of films such asMonterey Pop (1968),Woodstock (1970),Gimme Shelter (1971) andThe Last Waltz (1978). We all remember that time. It was so different for me than for others. Yet we all do tell each other over and over again the peculiarity of the events we shared, and the repetition, the listening, is as if we are saying, “It was like that for you, too? Then that confirms it, yes, it was so, it must have been, I wasn't imagining things.” Doris Lessing,The Memoirs of A Survivor (1974)     

‘The house belongs to both’: undoing the gendered division of housework

This article studies 28 dual-income Spanish childless couples who were undoing gender in routine domestic work. We understand ‘undoing gender’ as defined by Deutsch [(2007). Undoing gender. Gender & Society, 21, 106–127, p. 122]: ‘social interactions that reduce gender difference’. The dual-earner couples came from different socio-economic backgrounds and were interviewed in four different Spanish towns in 2011. The analysis shows that resources in a wide sense, time availability, external help, ideas about fairness, and complex gender attitudes are key interdependent factors that can weave together to form different configurations leading to a non-mainstream division of housework. All configurations were based on principles of gender equality: some couples found it fair to have a 50/50 division of domestic work, others a 50/50 division of all work (paid and unpaid); and a third group showed conflicts in practice. These couples’ ways of undoing gender illustrate the external, individual, and couple circumstances under which spouses are able to achieve a non-traditional construction of unpaid work.     

“Something More”: The Meanings of Marriage for Religious Couples in America

This study focused on how couples’ beliefs about marriage and religion shape the meanings they find in their marriage. Interviews about connections between religion and marriage were conducted with 57 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim couples in New England and northern California. Qualitative analyses found the major theme, common across faith traditions, was that marriage is a sacred union that is “something more": more than the self, more than the couple, and more than the family unit. To these couples marriage is divine and institutional and a vital support for their relationship. Our findings raise an interesting counterpoint to the current scholarly discourse about the deinstitutionalization and individualization of contemporary marriage. Institutionalized features of marriage may retain their strength in contemporary society as many religious couples, and perhaps many other couples as well, believe marriage is something more than the deinstitutionalized, private relationship that many scholars now see.     

Subtle images of antigypsyism: An analysis of the visual perception of “Roma”

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the powerful stereotypical media discourse that shapes and reproduces a certain racialised and prejudiced perception of people identified as “Roma” in Germany. Using a close analysis of a single picture – appearing as harmless at first glance – and through the reconstruction of its various interpretational contexts and semantics the paper identifies mechanisms used in stereotypical media coverage of “Roma”. This qualitative analysis draws on media analysis of antigypsyism as well as on research of photographic construction of the “gypsy” in order to analyse the contemporary visual regime of “Roma” in Germany. As it portrays “the Roma” as a fundamentally different and socially deviant group, this visual stereotyping is shown to be an integral element of the persistent antigypsyist ideology, deeply embedded in German society.     

“Friendly” Initiatives: An Emerging Approach to Improve Communities for Vulnerable Populations

A growing number of cities and towns are implementing “friendly” initiatives to change the community’s social and physical infrastructure to address the needs of a particular vulnerable segment of their population. Three prominent examples are aging-friendly, child-friendly, and immigrant-friendly initiatives. Although the limited but growing literature describes these initiatives as promising strategies to improve the quality of life of the targeted population, to date there has been little written about the underlying goals, values, and assumptions of these efforts. Using the value-critical approach, this article aims to better understand these aspects of population-friendly initiatives by examining the scholarly and grey literature. Social workers engaged in community and policy practice can play a key role in these efforts and call attention to the ways they may alleviate or exacerbate inequities. Future research is needed to assess the effects of these initiatives on their targeted population as well as other community residents.     

An Examination of the Reliability of the “What If” Situations Test: A Brief Report

ABSTRACT

One of the primary barriers to evaluating child sexual abuse prevention programs is the limited availability of measurement tools with demonstrated psychometric properties. The purpose of this study was to investigate the internal and test-retest reliability of the “What If” Situations Test (WIST) to determine its utility as an evaluation tool for young children. The WIST contains six scales designed to assess children's abilities to recognize, resist, and report inappropriate touching. The WIST was administered to 406 preschoolers involved in five previous studies. Internal and test-retest reliabilities of the six scales met research standards, supporting the internal consistency and temporal stability of the WIST. Advantages and limitations of the measure are presented and validation issues are then discussed.     

Is the web a promising tool for data collection in developing countries? An analysis of the sample bias of 10 web and face-to-face surveys from Africa,Asia, and South America

Whereas the sample composition biases of web surveys have been discussed extensively for developed countries, studies for developing countries are scarce. This article helps to fill that gap by comparing similar non-probability-based web surveys (WEB) and probability-based face-to-face (F2F) surveys both to each other and to the labor force. An analysis of WageIndicator data on work and wages derived from surveys held in 2009–2013 in 10 developing countries (WEB-sample N = 9135; F2F-sample N = 14,659), shows that F2F samples resemble the labor force to a larger extent than web samples do. In both cases, individuals in their 20s and early 30s are overrepresented, and younger and older respondents are underrepresented. This trend is more pronounced in WEB than in F2F samples. However, the differences converge in countries with higher Internet usage. A comparison of the WEB and F2F samples shows that compositions differ greatly, with web respondents being younger, more often male, more often living alone, and higher educated, although these differences are smaller in countries with higher Internet usage. Given the cost differences between the two survey modes, one should nevertheless consider the potential of web surveys as an instrument to gain explorative insights, specifically when searching for individuals with particular characteristics.     

Introduction: Challenges to the homogenization of “African American”

African American sociologists are beginning to confront the use of African American/Black as a homogeneous sociological category. In doing so they are laying the ground for improvements in social scientific research in general. One aspect of that improvement involves the use of people of African descent as subjects for theoretical statements about humanity at large rather than merely about other African descendent populations. Another aspect involves confronting the extensive segregation within the discipline around the research done by African American scholars. This introduction discusses the implications of these issues for African American scholars and for the discipline as a whole.     

Philosophy on the Ground: An Appreciation of a “Spirit Master”

This essay is an appreciation of Melvin Pollner’s distinctive sociological approach to topics that are usually associated with philosophy. Pollner’s dissertation and early writings took up the theme of “mundane reason,” which he defined as an incorrigible presumption of a real world that is implicit in everyday conduct. Pollner addressed mundane reason, and the reciprocal idea of “reality disjunctures”—momentary divergences between perceptual accounts of the “same” mundane reality—by describing routine exchanges in traffic court and confrontations between doctors and patients in psychiatric settings. Pollner’s work anticipated current enthusiasms for developing novel “ontologies” in social and cultural studies of science, medicine, and other subjects. Although he did attempt to locate metaphysics in the midst of everyday experience, this essay suggests that his “philosophy on the ground” radically transformed philosophical ontology into an original and imaginative way to investigate constitutive activities.     

“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

On the Use of “Intent to...” Variables in Organizational Research: An Empirical and Cautionary Assessment

Organizational research often relies onsurrogate variables. By surrogate we donot refer to family of construct, factor, or latentvariables. Rather, we address the situation where onevariable is literally the substitute for another variablethat is generally unavailable. Consider, for example,the use of intent to turnover orintent to transfer variables commonly usedwhen actual turnover or transfer data are unavailable. Wedemonstrate that reliance on such surrogate variablesmay lead to some misinterpretation. This tendency may beparticularly apparent when the relationship between the surrogate and the actual variable is low. Thismay be further exacerbated when the relationship betweenthe surrogate variable and a third variable is modest aswell.     

“The Scum of the Scum of the Scum”: Rose Romano's Search for Sisterhood

This article explores the interplay of ethnicity and sexuality in poet Rose Romano's work, especially as she engages in a complex, and, at times, highly debatable identity politics. In her poetry, Romano denounces the oppression she experiences as a lesbian, a Sicilian American, and even as an “olive” ethnic in the lesbian publishing community. Particularly interesting is her strained relationship with the multicultural lesbian community due to disagreements around the concept of race, and, consequently, of racial hierarchies. With her poetry, Rose Romano questioned all kinds of categorizations that do not take into account the complexities of her multi-faceted identity.     

Melanie Klein and the Black Mammy: An Exploration of the Influence of the Mammy Stereotype on Klein’s Maternal and Its Contribution to the “Whiteness” of Psychoanalysis

This article seeks to show the influence of the black mammy stereotype on Melanie Klein’s theorization of the maternal object. It takes as its starting point the underrepresentation of black analysts and their negative experiences within psychoanalysis and links this to the wider cultural phenomenon of “whiteness,” defined as the denial of racialized experience. It then explores a symbol of this whiteness, the colonial stereotype of the black mammy, and demonstrates that she was a well-known figure in the interwar Britain in which Klein developed her ideas. It suggests that the colonial dynamics between the mammy and white people are repeated in Klein’s formulation of the maternal object and infant, and argues that we can see evidence of this in Klein’s analysis of Dick and in her theorization of the maternal object as split and as a combined parent figure. It then shows that a “negress” is central to the article used by Klein in her formulation of reparation, but that Klein transformed this article, replete with questions of racial identity, into a theory of “universal” psychic processes by reading the “negress” as mammy. It argues that the mammy may well have been a potent figure for Klein both professionally and personally due to the modernist trend of using “blackness” to break from tradition and due to a precedent of the mammy facilitating Jewish assimilation into whiteness. The Kleinian theory of the maternal object, inflected with the racial dynamics embodied by the mammy, can therefore be seen as contributing to psychoanalysis’ silence on race, perpetuating the invisibility of whiteness to white subjects and legitimating (psychic) violence toward the black other.