Objects,Meanings, and Role Identities: The Practices that Establish Association in the Case of Home‐Based Employment1

Contemporary social theory suggests that the meaning of any object differs by how we, as social actors, respond and relate to it. The challenge for sociology lies in exploring the different strategies and practices recursively and productively embedded in these relationships. In this article, I present data from in‐depth interviews with 20 home‐based employees to illustrate how these individuals interact with familiar objects in their surroundings to form anchor points for diverse lines of conduct. Although I draw from a number of sociological theories in my analyses, I further utilize cognitive theory to outline three micro‐psychological practices (i.e., routinization, goal targeting, and emotional alignment) that respondents apply in their attempt to establish the desired association between objects and identities. In this way, the article both extends previous lines of inquiry into the relationship between objects and actors, and makes a new contribution to the growing literature on culture and cognition.     

JUNO (JASON REITMAN, 2007): A PRACTICAL CASE STUDY OF TEENS,FILM AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Jason Reitman's Juno (2007), the story of how a teenager handles her pregnancy, is the kind of film that leaves no one indifferent. Released at a time of conflicting discourses on sexual education, Reitman's film addressed the confusion experienced by teenagers as they came of age in a context where patterns of masculine and feminine behaviour were rapidly changing. In this essay I argue that Juno offers a complex understanding of the disorientation suffered by adolescents during the 1990s – a time when anti-sex discourses coexisted with an increasingly sexualized youth culture. This said, my intention is to move towards the film in a roundabout way by focusing, first, on why so many, supposed ‘cultural criticisms’ of films turn out to be so superficial. In this introductory section, the argument will be made for an approach in film analyses that takes full account of cinema as a visual medium. After exposing my critical stance, I shall draw nearer to the film itself by examining various of the overlapping contexts that, together, created a conducive space for its success – namely, the political scene; changing attitudes towards sex and gender; and most importantly, cinema's aesthetic dimension and the impact of genre conventions in the film-viewing experience. Once the complex diagram of differing (and sometimes contradictory) forces at work in Juno has been mapped out, my aim is to link these conjunctures to a detailed analysis of a key scene in the film as a means of demonstrating how the combination of film studies and Cultural Studies can operate as a method that eschews too easy, ideologically oriented, assumptions.     

I AM IMMORTAL

I suggest a model to forecast life expectancy based on the electrocardiogram signal. I show how the heart electrical activity can be decomposed in the state‐space and that the suggested model has superior out‐of‐sample properties compared to a set of alternatives. When the model is used to forecast my own electrocardiogram, a striking result arises: the n‐step ahead forecast remains bounded and positive even after one googol period. Therefore, my life expectancy tends to infinity implying that I am immortal. (JEL I10, I19)     

Making connections between global production networks for used goods and the realm of production: a case study on e‐waste governance

Recent scholarship on waste within economic geography and global production network (GPN) studies has identified several unique characteristics of networks for used goods vis‐à‐vis ‘traditional’ GPN studies focused on production, exchange and consumption. However, in un‐bracketing GPNs to include analysis of post‐consumption activity, identifying how the distinct moments of production, exchange, consumption and disposal/recycling are related becomes a crucial task. Towards this end, I present a case study on the governance of e‐waste networks that draws upon discussions of performativity and Hudson's cultural political economy approach to GPNs. In my analysis, I demonstrate how multiple factors, such as ideological differences over how to handle e‐waste, the non‐standardized nature of used goods, as well as production factors such as design choices and planned obsolescence, all shape and disrupt efforts to standardize and coordinate resource recovery and hazard mitigation in the post‐consumption phase of electronic goods. Such analysis moves past the novelty of GPNs for used goods toward a more integrated understanding of GPNs as a whole.     

Power and Shame: Reply to Mark Blechner and to Ruth Stein

I touch briefly on my own experience of shame as triggered by what my discussants have written. I look at how shame and power interact in psychoanalytic discourse, examine their play in relation to questions of aggression and activity, and refer as well to what I am calling “an ethics of relativism.” Cautioning against uncritical binary thinking, I conclude that, if we forget the intimacy of good and bad, we are going to write jouissance, that site of extremity and transcendence where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable, right out of our sexual lives. And, if we do that, we are once again going to write sexuality out of psychoanalysis.     

The Symbiotic Ideology: Stewardship,Husbandry, and Dominion in Beef Production

Social studies of agriculture tend to overlook the micro and symbolic interactions that structure relationships among agriculturalists, the environment, and animals raised as commodities. In this study, I use ethnographic methods and in‐depth interviews with conventional beef producers to understand their perceptions of the environment and the nonhuman animals they raise. Central themes in this setting are the ethics of stewardship and husbandry. I seek to understand how these values are constructed and used interactionally. I argue that stewardship and husbandry help describe a process of co‐constitution that binds together ranchers, cattle, and the natural environment. The analysis engages actor‐network theory by emphasizing nonhuman activeness and draws from symbolic interaction and cultural sociology to show how people interpret the actions of nonhumans. The findings show that ranchers frame their relationships with cattle and the environment as symbiotic and work to understand the interests of the nonhuman as complementary to production. I introduce the term symbiotic ideology to show the way this approach mystifies power dynamics embedded in the ethic of dominion.     

The transnational effect of multicultural policies on migrants' identification: the case of the Israeli diaspora in the USA

While it is difficult to gauge the effect of multicultural policies within countries, it is even more difficult to measure them across countries. In this article, I use fundamental multicultural changes that have occurred in Israeli society in recent decades as a case study, and track their effect on how Israelis who reside in the USA identify with Israel. Analysing the US census and the American Community Survey, I have focused my research on three groups of Israeli‐born migrants in the USA – Israeli Arabs, ultra‐Orthodox Jews and the Jewish majority. Findings indicate that originating from a minority community in the homeland predicts not only a different rate, but also different longitudinal trends of Israeli identification. I offer several possible explanations for these variations, but an in‐depth analysis of the Israeli case indicates that the transnational effect of the changing multicultural agenda in Israel is the leading mechanism at play.     

Home Is Where She Is

ABSTRACT

I have written this paper with the intention of reading it out loud to you. As I was writing this paper, I imagined your skin, that soft outer membrane of your body. I imagined my tongue moving to shape my words, all the while carefully shifting my teeth out of the way. I imagined having these words thump under your skin and tremble your presence to the beat of our hearts. Because this paper was supposed to have you feel me and my people. And by “my people,” I truly mean everyone around me, including you. So, this paper is essentially about us, you and me. You know, I just had a feeling that you might know us, but you do not feel us. I just had a feeling that you have got to feel how we are. … Do you hear me? Because, only then, can we finally, start.     

“I want my social worker”. One child's struggles to find an available maternal figure: reflections from a peer supervision group

In this paper, I analyse a piece of social work practice using the reflections provided by a peer supervision (work discussion) group. I describe my work with an eight year child looked after, who telephoned me stating that he wanted to kill himself. I discuss the powerful unconscious processes that contributed to his risk-taking behaviour and my emotional experience of it. I reflect on how my knowledge of psychoanalytic theory enabled me to contain the powerful feelings being projected and to safely manage the situation. I highlight how reflective peer supervision groups are a helpful way to understand the complexities of the lives of children looked after and can help inform decision making.     

Squashed dreams and rare breeds: ableism and the arbiters of life and death

The week beginning 29 June 2015 is not just historic for the closure of the Independent Living Fund in the United Kingdom, but for me was the week they decided that my life is not worth investing in; they being NHS England, NICE and, with them, the Department of Health. They chose not to support the enzyme replacement therapy that has been not only keeping me alive, but giving me a quality of life – enabling me to return to finish my Disability Studies PhD exploring how Christian leaders explain disability, where ethics have become the main topic, and to rebuild my career – or so I thought.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

HORIZONTAL CUTS & VERTICAL PENETRATION: THE 'FLESH AND BLOOD' OF IMAGE FABRICATION IN THE OPERATING THEATRES OF INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY

In my essay, I analyse surgical and radiological practices of how the blood flow is being explored, rendered visible and treated. For this I use material of my ethnographic research, which I conducted in the operating theatres of interventional radiology at the University Clinic of Radiology/General Hospital in Vienna. I am particularly interested in notions of invasiveness and how they are permanently transformed in this clinical area. Continual inventions of new technologies in surgery as well as in radiology lead necessarily to a decomposing of what terms like invasive, minimal- and non-invasive mean. However, the meanings of invasiveness for patients and radiological personnel are shifting – this notion is crucial – because it marks a cultural and epistemic turn in medicine, which is already far advanced. In the operating theatres of interventional radiology, surgical and digital imaging proceedings melt into one another and transform the integrity of the patient' body through particular ways of staging and through a specific choreography between the physicians' hands and eyes.     

Inspiration Across Cultures: Reflecting Teams among the Métis in Canada

Métis Community Services on Vancouver Island exists to serve the Métis, one of Canada's three aboriginal peoples. I went there, hoping for an exchange of thoughts and ideas that I could apply to my work back home in Sweden. I was welcome to observe and participate in the work. I was asked to talk about something that I wanted to share with them. The result was a workshop about how to apply the reflecting team mode of working when counselling aboriginal families. The outcome of our exchange was a blend of the ethics and rules of behaviour among aboriginal people and the Scandinavian reflecting team mode of working.     

Queer visual pleasures and the policing of male sexuality in responses to images of David Beckham

Since he stepped out in a sarong in 1998, David Beckham's sexuality and gendered image has been a popular topic of discussion in the media. He has also attracted academic attention for the expanded range of masculinities he seems to represent. Some academic studies of Beckham have employed ‘queer theory’ to analyse the destabilising of gender that his public presentations seem to embody but little attention has been paid to the specifically visual dynamics of images of Beckham. In this essay, I take Sam Taylor-Wood's David (2004) as a starting point to suggest the types of visual pleasure that images of Beckham might be seen to offer to both male and female audiences. For the remainder of the essay I focus on an Armani male underwear advertisement from the 2007–2008 campaign. Informed by discourse analysis and queer theory, I identify a set of ‘queer’ responses to the advertisement, suggesting they represent the ‘policing’ of male sexuality, which often accompanies potential signifiers of homoeroticism. I conclude by considering how and why Beckham has retained his status as a heteronormative masculine icon despite his continued appearance in homoerotic images.     

Ethnography and anxiety: Field work and reflexivity in the vortex of U.S.-Cuban relations

This paper explores the ways in which geo-political forces can shape doing, interpreting, and representing ethnographic field work. Using my field work in a law collective in Havana, Cuba between 1989 and 1994 as a starting point, I consider how macro-social relationship—in this case 30 years of political hostility between the U.S. and Cuban governments—can inscribe themselves on the micro-social relations between ethnographers and informants in the field, and ethnographers and their audiences at home. The combination of geo-political tensions and reflexive attempts to discern the impact of these tensions on my field work generated, what I term, disciplinary anxietyand discursive anxiety.I consider how anxieties became part of my reflexive routines in the field, shaped my interactions with Cubans, colored my attempts to interpret those interactions, and affected my framing of those interpretations for audiences at home. I suggest that reflexivity in fieldwork must be sensitive, not only to the standpoints imbedded in the field worker's biography, but also to the way in which macro-political processes enter into the biographies of field workers, their informants, and their audiences, and influence the interactions among them.     

Mobile Persons: Cell phones,Gender and the Self in North India

In this article I analyse the varied ways mobile phones are integrated into the daily lives of low-income people and the implications for courtship practices, marriage relations and kinship ties. Rather than offer a celebratory analysis of the mobile phone's empowering effects, my ethnographic research reveals a more complex story, one that shows how the presence of the mobile both reinforces and undermines gender roles and institutions of authority. Conceptually, I argue that mobile communication provides insights into north Indian personhood as ‘nodal’, while also stimulating new practices and ideologies that render this technology central to the struggle for (and over) power and domination.     

Managing manipulation: tools and challenges in creative collaborations with intellectually-disabled people

There has long been an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality when it comes to the production of disability narratives on screen, driven by an assumption that non-disabled people cannot accurately interpret the disabled experience. Given the appalling history of representations by non-disabled filmmakers, it is easy to understand why many academics and members of the disability community favour the complete control of disability content by disabled people. But this approach has failed the many compelling ‘disabled voices’ that go unheard because they do not reach audiences. The most practical solution is to forge new models of creative collaboration between disabled and non-disabled people, something I attempted to do with my PhD film, a comedy feature entitled Down Under Mystery Tour. I discovered that the most important tool in such collaborations is the utilisation and management of manipulation, one that prioritises skill and experience and best expresses the unique perspective of intellectually-disabled collaborators.     

Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex

This article discusses sexuality and sexual rights of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. I will address the issue by reflecting on my own previous negligence about the issue, and unpack the ethics of sexuality of persons with profound intellectual disability in the light of ethnographic observation and interview data. I will discuss the significance of cognitive and communicative capacities as regards sexual rights as well as the boundaries of ethically justified facilitation of sex. I will also analyse the definition of sex and its ethical implications. Finally, I will offer some reflections on how we should consider more carefully in research the sexuality of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities in order to enhance in practice their sexual fulfilment.     

When Social Work and Psychoanalysis Meet

In this paper I share my personal journey from agency social worker to psychoanalyst. I show how I have brought to my psychoanalytic work the teachings of such well known social workers as Mary Richmond, Bertha Reynolds, Gordon Hamilton, and Florence Hollis as well those of such contemporary social workers as the late Gertrude and Rubin Blanck, Nancy Bridges, and Eda Goldstein, among others. In the presentation, I also consider how social work values, social work ethics and social work attitudes have influenced my approach to the practice of psychoanalysis. The attitudes which I refer to, include flexibility, beginning where the client is; an appreciation of the importance of understanding a patient’s cultural background and a recognition of the importance of the relationship in the therapeutic encounter. These were not standard for psychoanalysts at the time I began to practice. Today however psychoanalysis has largely caught up with social work, and this paper affirms how those of us who have had a social work background are well prepared for psychoanalysis in the 21st century.