Conversation takes two: understanding interactions with people with dementia

The term ‘person-centred’ underpins dementia policy and approaches to support people with dementia. However, ‘person-centredness’ remains hazy, and words and definitions matter greatly when they are at the heart of defining what happens in people’s lives. Drawing on data from an ongoing project, this article suggests that conversations which include a person with dementia can elucidate how ‘relational’ support is enacted in practice and the implications this can have on our understanding of ‘person-centredness’. Identities are shaped in part through how we speak to people, and how they speak to us. This is particularly pertinent to the aims of ‘person-centredness’. A conversation analytic approach to dementia support may therefore move us towards seeing ‘personhood’ as jointly constructed and reconstructed through interactions with others.     

Visually available order,categorisation practices,and perception-in-action: a running commentary

This article is concerned with perception and visually available order in running. It draws on ethnomethodological principles to analyse a commentary produced during a run through a city centre. In doing so, the article revisits and takes forward two articles previously published in this journal. The article discusses the radical ethnomethodological understanding of perception-in-action, before presenting an analysis of the running commentary that draws out the ways in which the describing of the commonplace scene exhibits the organisation of ‘seeing’ in terms of the practical relevance that elements of the visual environment have for the work of running. The analysis identifies various practices including, routing and navigation, the seeing of ‘assemblies’ of people and objects, and the categorial identification of individuals and groups. The article thus aims to demonstrate the local, categorial, and situated grounds of perception and the practical adequacy of observation in and through the work of a given activity.     

How does Conflict in Migrants’ Country of Origin Affect Remittance‐Sending? Financial Priorities and Transnational Obligations Among Somalis and Pakistanis in Norway

This article examines how conflict in the country of origin interacts with other factors in shaping migrants’ remittance‐sending practices. Our data come from a survey of 10 immigrant groups in Norway and semi‐structured interviews with Somali and Pakistani remittance‐senders and receivers. First, we conduct an in‐depth comparison to explore the differences in how Somali and Pakistani migrants decide about remittance‐sending. Second, we use survey data on all 10 migrant groups to evaluate whether the differences that are not explained by socioeconomic characteristics, may partly reflect whether or not there is ongoing conflict in the country of origin. In our analyses we differentiate between (1) the effect of migrants’capacity to remit and their prioritizing of local and transnational expenditures, and (2) the impact of state collapse and absence of human security on migrants’ and refugees’desire to remit. We find that ongoing conflict in the country of origin exerts an upward pressure on remittance‐sending.     

EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK AND AMPLIFICATION IN SOCIAL INTERACTION

This article develops an interactive, theoretical model of emotional feedback and amplification. Whereas the sociology of emotions typically examines how affect arises, this article focuses on the aftermath of an evoked emotion as it evolves in ongoing interaction. I argue that interactions serve as a stimulus to evoke emotional responses, but as interactions continue, these interactions provide an additional stimulus that feeds back into the initial emotion, amplifying it. I articulate two modes of emotional feedback and amplification: spontaneous and managed. Spontaneous amplification is a by-product of unplanned but continuous interactions. In contrast, managed amplification results from purposeful interactions and can be initiated through either surface acting or deep acting. The process of feedback and amplification is more likely under structural and cultural conditions that facilitate ongoing interactions. An empirical elaboration of the model is drawn from an ethnographic study of "TD's Restaurant." Examining how feedback and amplification occur in different settings is an ongoing task for sociologists interested in emotions, work and occupations, mental health, and social movements.     

WHY THEY LIKED IKE: Tradition, Crisis, and Heroic Leadership

Much is known about Dwight Eisenhower's accomplishments as wartime general and postwar president; however, little is known about the reasons for his extraordinary popularity. Drawing from opinion polls, popular media, and related sources this article shows how Eisenhower's achievements and public conduct resonated with the concerns and values of his generation. "Symbolic leadership" theory and the "action theory" of heroic leadership frame this twofold articulation of Eisenhower's midcentury image, but we place it in a broader perspective centered on tradition, crisis, and generational change. We thus explain not only why Eisenhower's reputation was so strong during the postwar years but also why it declined so sharply after his death, even while other American leaders' reputations remained intact.     

“Scissors,Please”: The Practical Accomplishment of Surgical Work in the Operating Theater

The focus of this article is on professional activity in the operating theater. We explore how surgeons and nurses organize their activities, how social interaction is used to help structure and define situations, and how differentials in knowledge are constructed and oriented to. We utilize some ideas and concepts from symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis to analyze small clips of audio‐ and video‐recorded interaction. Focusing on how surgeons and nurses request, provide, and apply surgical instruments, the analysis shows how surgical work is accomplished through talk and bodily conduct. We conclude that, examined in detail, the social interaction between surgeons and nurses is analytically inseparable from the “technical” demands of their work.     

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) interventions and the development of sustainable evaluation practice: An exploratory study

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is a practice that can help organizations conduct and use evaluations; however, there is little research on the sustainable impact of ECB interventions. This study provides an empirical inquiry into how ECB develops sustained evaluation practice. Interviews were conducted with 15 organizational leaders from non-profits, higher education institutions, and foundations that “bought in” to ECB and were at least six months removed from an ECB contract. The result of this work highlights how sustained evaluation practice developed over time and what these practices looked like in real-world settings. A developmental, iterative cycle for how ECB led organizations to sustain evaluation practice emerged around key components to sustainability. First, leadership supported ECB work and resources were dedicated to evaluation. Staff began to conduct and use evaluation, which led to understanding the benefits of evaluation, and promoted value and buy-in to evaluation among staff. Common barriers and emerging sustainability supports not previously identified by ECB literature—the “personal” factor and ongoing ECB practitioner contact—are described. Practical tips for ECB practitioners to promote sustainability are also detailed.     

Massively Multiplayer Online Video Gaming as Participation in a Discourse

This article has two primary goals: (a) to illustrate how a closer analysis of language can lead to fruitful insights into the activities that it helps constitute, and (b) to demonstrate the complexity of the practices that make up Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOGaming) through just such an analysis. The first goal is in response to the way we sometimes treat language in studies of activity, despite calls for more nuanced analyses (e.g., Wells, 2002), as a mere conduit for information in which its other (social, identity) functions are overlooked. The second goal is in response to the diatribes against video games in the media and their frequent dismissal as barren play. In this article, I use functional linguistics to unpack how a seemingly inconsequential turn of talk within the game Lineage reveals important aspects of the activity in which it is situated as well as the broader "forms of life" enacted in the game through which members display their allegiance and identity.     

Aftershocks of Chile's earthquake for an ongoing, large-scale experimental evaluation

Evaluation designs for social programs are developed assuming minimal or no disruption from external shocks, such as natural disasters. This is because extremely rare shocks may not make it worthwhile to account for them in the design. Among extreme shocks is the 2010 Chile earthquake. Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), an ongoing early childhood program in Chile, was directly affected by the earthquake. This article discusses (a) the factors the UBC team considered for deciding whether to put on hold or continue implementation and data collection for this experimental study; and (b) how the team reached consensus on those decisions. A lesson learned is that the use of an experimental design for UBC insured that the evaluation's internal validity was not compromised by the earthquake's consequences, although cohort comparisons were compromised. Other lessons can be transferred to other contexts where external shocks affect an ongoing experimental or quasi-experimental impact evaluation.     

Bourdieu, International Relations, and European security

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality.     

Remembrance: the Essop brothers,formative realism and contemporary African photography

Remembrance is the title of group of photographic artworks by Hasan and Husain Essop. Made in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the artworks picture people and places, buildings and landscapes. At first look, the action within the frames is straightforward. The photographs present ancient and modern religious sites in digitally produced, staged scenarios. However, there is an unseen complexity to these composite images that are made of hundreds of individual still shots, shot one section at a time and then meticulously stitched together. One impact of these contemporary artworks is their ability to show the powerful impact of global Islamic culture. Dynamics of place and belonging, the picturesque and landscape, slavery, religion and race are offered to view by means of these images. I offer formative realism as a conceptual framework to think with and against these pictures made by photographic means. I will say something about the concept and context of formative realism, discuss principal features and propose a way of seeing. The central questions are these: what do the Essops’ pictures show us about Islam in South Africa and beyond? How does this seeing matter to the ongoing activity of race, racism and “Othering” now? How does any of this matter to the dynamics of contemporary visual art in South Africa?     

Open door environments as interactional resources to initiate unscheduled encounters in office organizations

ABSTRACT

In this article, we show how a common type of material environment in office organizations, namely offices with doors left open, enables and sustains the initiation of unscheduled, informal encounters. Using video recordings of naturally occurring interactions, we identify and describe a recurrent practice whereby visitors, mainly through their embodied conduct as they approach the doorway, are recognized by their recipients as initiating an encounter. We unpack the systematic practices and resources involved and analyze a series of variations through which co-workers deal with three interactional problems: obtaining the office occupant’s attention, negotiating availability, and negotiating entitlement. The article (1) demarcates a set of practices typical of unscheduled encounters in office organizations; (2) sheds new lights on how shared and fractured visual spaces can be used as resources to produce complex organizational meanings; and (3) proposes an approach of organizational activity and knowledge as inherently interactional, embodied and material.     

Campaign Finance and Policymaking: PACs,Campaign Contributions,and Interest Group Influence in Congress

The general public is skeptical of our current system of campaign finance and feels that members of Congress are corrupt. Although the scholarly literature on campaign contribution influence is mixed, there is growing consensus that Political Action Committees (PACs) and interest groups do, indeed, have a powerful influence on policymaking in Congress. In this article, the author reviews this literature and discusses how influence occurs. Findings reveal that influence is only very rarely an explicit quid pro quo exchange. Instead, it is typically an ongoing, implicit, reciprocal exchange that impacts multiple stages of the legislative process and yields contributors many dividends, such as softer regulations, lower taxes, and lucrative contracts – none of which are explicitly promised (except in rare cases of full‐blown bribery) but are, nonetheless, regularly granted. The social relationships between contributors and lawmakers are central to this process, as is the ability to get legislators to sway their colleagues.     

Commodification,water infrastructure,and methodologies for counting water losses in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article takes up the story of a numerical indicator of system water losses called Non-Revenue Water (NRW), which is becoming an important measure for benchmarking South African Water Service Authorities (WSAs). The aim of this paper is, in the first place, to document the adoption of NRW as a Performance Indicator (PI), showing how it reflects a shift in the domestic regulatory framework in South Africa and the assumed priorities of water managers in line with the dominant governmental rationality in the sector. However, in drawing this discussion towards the theme of commodification I also show that the NRW audit enables a new way of seeing and speaking about “public water,” while the story of its uptake tells us a something about the development of contemporary governmental norms, and the forms of the resistance that shape it. On the one hand then, the article links the enthusiasm for NRW auditing in South Africa to a wider movement in the development and usage of audits and indicators as technologies of government at a distance. On the other hand, and stepping to a higher level of abstraction, I argue that the uptake of NRW must be read in relation to a contested set of processes marked by struggles over the commodification of water, and which sometimes turns up in the numbers.     

“That Power and Privilege Thing”: Securing Whiteness in Community Work

In this article, I draw upon written texts and discussions with white community organizers so as to explore how the discourse of community work secure whiteness not as an act of maintaining privilege but as an accepted, unnoticed, and even helpful way of seeing and acting in the world. This is problematic because it creates a space in which there can be ethical white subjects who are able to understand themselves as outside of relations of racism. I suggest that it would be more useful to understand practices in which white people advocate with racialized communities as acts of ambivalence.     

BEYOND MANIPU LATION:

Critical social histories of consumption often attribute the rise of consumer culture largely to the success of advertising and marketing while leaving unexplored a wide range of consumer education practices that aimed not to minimize but to maximize thoughtful consumer conduct. In this article I move beyond the manipulation hypothesis that I find embedded in these critical histories in order to investigate how one woman's consumer education practices contributed toward a discourse and subjectivity for the modem, urban, middle-class woman consumer. Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) developed her own psychology of work satisfaction as a scientific management consultant in the 1910s and applied this industrial psychology to women consumers in the late 1920s. Michel Foucault's image of "government" as "the conduct of conduct," along with newer lines of analysis developed by scholars interested in governmentality, provide useful tools for showing how Gilbreth attempted to make women into careful organizers of family consumption. Her story allows us to glimpse a whole dimension of governmental power that has been overshadowed by a preoccupation with manipulative power in many sociological and historical studies.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
                    Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack ¹
Through the various campaigns for Wise Spending, the woman consumer has come to know that while as an individual she may have a small budget, she belongs to a group which controls vast sums of money. She can use this power to help or to hinder.
                    Lillian Moller Gilbreth, "Know the Facts"     

Factors predicting student intervention when witnessing anti-LGBTQ harassment: The influence of peers,teachers, and climate

Bullying and harassment are systemic problems in schools, especially for sexual minority youth. Previous research suggests the importance of addressing student intervention in cases of bullying, but little is known about how to encourage this kind of intervention, particularly in response to anti-LGBTQ bullying. The present study used data collected through a participatory action research project to examine three factors' impact on students' intentions to intervene: hearing homophobic language, seeing teachers intervene, and seeing other students intervene. In the final model, seeing other students intervene (β = .19, p < .001) had a more significant positive effect on a students' own likelihood to intervene than seeing teachers intervene (β = .07, p < .05). In multivariate analysis, frequency of hearing homophobic language did not impact student's likelihood to intervene. Findings suggest the importance of youth leadership in multi-level anti-bullying programs.     

Negotiated Discretion: Redressing the Neglect of Negotiation in “Street‐Level Bureaucracy”

This article proposes an interactionist update of “street‐level bureaucracy,” one of the most influential approaches for studying how public policy is translated into street‐level practice. While the street‐level approach assumes that bureaucrats are alone in enacting policy, the present article argues for seeing “street‐level policy” as formed in negotiation between bureaucrats and clients. To demonstrate this, the article uses ethnographic data and a Straussian framework to analyze how nurses and patients negotiated access in a Norwegian emergency service. The article thus sets a new course for street‐level research, helping researchers look beyond the individual to explore inter‐individual negotiation and its influence on street‐level decision‐making.     

The social power of algorithms

ABSTRACT

This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up.     

A new theory of financial regulation: Predicting,measuring and preventing financial crises

The frequency of financial crises in the last 20 years can be attributed to the lack of a comprehensive theory of financial regulation to guide policy makers. Existing theories fail to define the range of regulatory models, the causes of regulatory failure, and how to measure and prevent it. Faulty design of regulatory models, and the lack of ongoing performance monitoring incorporating early warning systems, is disrupting economic and social development. The new theory illustrates the necessity for a staged approach to liberalisation, which first assesses the capacity to conduct effective prudential supervision, before attempts are made to remove protective measures.