The Profusion of Individual Roles and Identities in the Postwar Period

In recent decades, the individual has become more and more central in both national and world cultural accounts of the operation of society. This continues a long historical process, intensified by the consolidation of a more global polity and the weakening of the primordial sovereignty of the national state. Increasingly, society is culturally rooted in the natural, historical, and spiritual worlds through the individual, rather than through corporate entities or groups. The shift has produced a proliferation and specification of individual roles, accounting for what individuals do in society. It has also produced an expansion in recognized individual personhood, accounting for who individuals are in the extrasocial cosmos and fueling elaborated personal tastes and preferences. Where it has been contested, the shift to the individual has also produced a rise in specializing identities (e.g., in such domains as ethnicity or gender). These offer accounts of individuals' distinctive linkages to the cosmos, and they serve to bolster individual claims to standard roles and personhood. Over time, specializing identities tend to get absorbed into roles and personhood. And in turn, expanded roles and personhood provide further bases for specializing identity claims. Because many theorists mischaracterize the relationship of specializing identities to roles and personhood, the literature often overemphasizes the anomic character of the identity explosion and the closeness of the coupling between social roles and identity claims. On the contrary, specializing identities tend to be edited to remain within general rules of individual personhood and to be disconnected from the obligations involved in institutionalized roles.     

Las políticas de igualdad en el ‘welfare mix’: opiniones y percepciones sobre el papel de las ONGs

This paper has been structured in three areas. In the first one, the author shows the relevance that words and conversations among individuals have on social research, both terms being very important to the well-known sociologist and writer Franco Ferrarotti. In the second part, the author explains the necessary qualitative methodology to be used when analysing a main topic. In the third one, the author analyses the reality of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the gender perspective to detect if they are or not a reflection of that Spanish reality regarding sex discrimination. Finally, this paper states the challenge the Spanish society needs to face to outweigh sex inequality without excluding the NGOs or any other form of association. This paper calls for the involvement of society, which along with the state and market, has an important task to accomplish.     

France and the Unknown Second Generation: Preliminary Results on Social Mobility

The growing concern about the future of the offspring of immigrants in France has prompted the rise of a “second generation question.” Access of “new second generations” (i.e., those born from the waves of immigration of the 1950s and 1960s) to the job market and their visibility in social and cultural life have challenged the “French model of integration.” Moreover, the ebbing of social mobility in the France of the 1970s led to a process of social downgrading which may affect significantly the second generation due to their social background and the persistence of ethnic and racial discrimination. It is thus important to investigate what kind of social mobility is actually experienced by people of immigrant ancestry, and what could hinder their mobility. This article uses the data from a new survey, the Enquête Histoire Familiale (family history survey) conducted in 1999 and based on 380,000 individuals, which analyzes the positions of second generations of Turkish, Moroccan and Portuguese origin. We argue that they follow different paths: a reproduction of the positions of the first generation; a successful social mobility through education; or a mobility hindered by discrimination.     

Why ‘class’ is too soft a category to capture the explosiveness of social inequality at the beginning of the twenty‐first century

We can distinguish four positions on the continuing, or maybe even increasing, relevance of the category of class at the beginning of the twenty‐first century depending on the extent to which they accord central importance to (1) the reproduction or (2) the transformation of social classes with regard to (3) the distribution of goods without bads or (4) the distribution of goods and bads. One could say that Dean Curran introduces the concept of ‘risk‐class’ to radicalize the class distribution of risk and charts who will able to occupy areas less exposed to risk and who will have little choice but to occupy areas that are exposed to the brunt of the fact of the risk society. As he mentioned it is important to note that this social structuring of the distribution of bads will be affected not only by class, but also by other forms of social structuration of disadvantage, such as gender and race. In order to demonstrate that the distribution of bads is currently exacerbating class differences in life chances, however, Curran concentrates exclusively on phenomena of individual risks. In the process, he overlooks the problem of systemic risks in relation of the state, science, new corporate roles, management the mass media, law, mobile capital and social movements; at the same time, his conceptual frame of reference does not really thematize the interdependence between individual and systemic risks. Those who reduce the problematic of risk to that of the life chances of individuals are unable to grasp the conflicting social and political logics of risk and class conflicts. Or, to put it pointedly: ‘class’ is too soft a category to capture the explosiveness of social inequality in world risk society.     

Stages and modes of incorporation of exiles in Switzerland: The example of Chilean refugees

Many scholars perceive the incorporation of refugees and immigrants to a new society as a matter of time: the longer the length of residence, the more the refugees and immigrants perceive their stay in the host society as permanent. Other social scientists go even much further: they perceive adaptation not only as a linear process but also as an inevitable and desirable process which should lead to the disappearance of immigrants as an ethnic community and to their assimilation to a new society. In this paper we argue that incorporation to a new society is not necessarily a linear process depending exclusively upon length of residence. We also argue that assimilation is not necessarily the end result of this process. In our opinion, linear and assimilationist approaches neglect macro‐social context and, to a lesser extent, social stratification which are important variables influencing the incorporation process of migrants to a new society. The empirical study of Chilean refugees in Switzerland shows the relevance of these factors and also of the actor's own perception of the situation in the definition of different stages of exile.     

The Health Risk Behaviours and Social Connectedness of Adolescents in Immigrant Families: Evidence from Australia

Using data from Australia, health behavior outcomes and the social connectedness of adolescents in immigrant families are contrasted with the outcomes of adolescents in non‐immigrant families. Findings suggest that first and second generation adolescents are less likely to drink alcohol and lack social support than third generation adolescents, but more likely not to be physically active and not to have membership to a social club or group than third generation adolescents. Second generation adolescents are more likely to smoke than third generation adolescents. Findings suggest that immigrant adolescents appear protected from negative risks, yet at the same time, do not benefit from Australia's cultural traditions for physical activity and social participation. Across generations, however, social participation and physical activity increase. Lastly, as length of time in Australia increases, the protective effect of the immigrant family against some negative risks wanes. Overall, the assimilation process leads adolescents in immigrant families to adopt Australia's prevailing social customs of health and social behaviors.     

A historical perspective on the working contributions of children in britain: 1800-1914

This paper considers the work of children and their contribution to modern societies by looking at this from a historical perspective. Children's work today is often characterised as being little and of no consequence, while it is expected that children should enjoy a childhood free from the cares and worries of the adult working population. In this article I show how children's experience of work moved from the 'public' world of the street and workplace outside the home, to one where children's work is centred in the 'private' realm of the home and school. Children were denied the status and benefits associated with receiving a wage and were therefore a role assumed to be dependent upon others and undervalued. It is argued that children's place in society is similarly devalued and their contributions to the reproduction of that society marginalised. Children's activities and contributions are merely represented as being unworthy of any kind of economic, political or legal reward. The subsequent exclusion from social, economic and political reward separates children from the independence normally enjoyed by adults. While not of course condoning the exploitation of children, or even suggesting that children today are not entitled to a time where they are free of the burdens of paid work, I discuss how children's contributions are redefined, undermined and undervalued. I do so by focusing on the experience of the city of Manchester between 1800 and 1914, and the effects of the slow introduction of legislation curbing children's paid work.     

Dominican‐American Etbnic/Racial Identities and United States Social Categories

The majority of Dominicans have sub‐Saharan African ancestry, ¹ 1 In the 1980 Dominican census, 16 percent of the population were classified as blanco (‘white’), 73 percent were classified as indio (‘indian‐colored’), a term used to refer to the phenotype of individuals who match stereotypes of combined African and European ancestry and 11 percent were classified as negro [‘black’] (Haggerty, 1991). These categories are social constructions, rather than objective reflections of phenotypes. The positive social connotations of “whiteness,” for example, lead many Caribbean Hispanics to identify themselves as white for the public record regardless of their precise phenotype (Dominguez, 1978:9). Judgments of color in the Dominican Republic also depend in part upon social attributes of an individual, as they do elsewhere in Latin America. Money, education and power, for example, “whiten” an individual, so that the color attributed to a higher class individual is often lighter than the color that would be attributed to an individual of the same phenotype of a lower class (Rout, 1976:287).
which would make them “black” by historical United States ‘one‐drop’ rules. Second generation Dominican high school students in Providence, Rhode Island do not identity their race in terms of black or white, but rather in terms of ethnolinguistic identity, as Dominican/Spanish/Hispanic. The distinctiveness of Dominican‐American understandings of race is highlighted by comparing them with those of non‐Hispanic, African descent second generation immigrants and with historical Dominican notions of social identity. Dominican second generation resistance to phenotype‐racialization as black or white makes visible ethnic/racial formation processes that are often veiled, particularly in the construction of the category African‐American. This resistance to black/white racialization suggests the transformative effects that post‐1965 immigrants and their descendants are having on United States ethnic/racial categories.     

Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use

I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso‐descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their ‘sending’ society. Specifically, I examine how LDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French‐influenced speech. In telling each other these stories, LDs position themselves relative to two models of language and personhood. The first diasporic model interprets LDs' French as willful abandonment of an essential Portuguese identity. The second transnational model interprets LDs' French as the legitimate result of extended residence abroad. I examine how participants explicitly and/or implicitly invoke both models, through the relationship between narrating and narrated participants' language use. I conclude by asking about LDs' awareness of their simultaneous adherence to multiple models of language and identity.     

Marginal movements and minority struggles? The case of the Japanese minority social and labour movements

In Japan, some of the socially, economically and politically marginalised have developed robust social and labour movements that engage with mainstream society. These movements have developed strategies challenging the conditions of the excluded, while also highlighting pathways to establish, or enhance, individual and collective participation in the labour market and the wider society. Two distinct though related, social and organisational forms of these movements are elaborated – firm‐centred and community centred respectively. The former especially has a combative past in the labour struggles of the 1950s in what are known as sa'ha shōsū‐ha kumiai (left wing Minority union, or, Minority‐faction union). However, this does not mean Minorities are inherently leftist in orientation. In the 1940s and 1950s, during a period of radical union hegemony, a collaborative form of second unions developed assisting the purge of radical leaderships. Our focus here is on a contemporary radical democratic current. While articulating concerns of those in full time employment outside the political mainstream they may also represent ethnically and otherwise socially marginalised workers. The community unions, a form of what are known as ‘new‐type union’, shingata kumiai (this term will be used here to describe the community unions) articulate the concerns of those socially and economically marginalized in the community and the wider labour market. Controversially, the term ‘Minority union’ is used to depict the different forms of oppositional social movement union in a broader sense than is typically understood in the literature. This is because they share a common concern with the articulation of Minority social and political interests in the context of the employment relationship and the local community. In considering the character of these social movement unions the article seeks to add to what Price (1997 ) describes as ‘bottom up history’ which we term ‘sociology from below’.     

Between Spatial and Social Segregation among Immigrants: The Case of Immigrants from the FSU in Israel

Studies on immigrants' residential concentration have reported mixed findings. Some have argued that immigrants' residential concentration is a necessary step in the process of their social integration because there the newcomers find housing and employment opportunities as well as social support. As they learn the language and improve their socioeconomic status, they move to neighborhoods where they share space with the native population. Others have argued that the ethnic neighborhood delays the process of social integration in the new society because it nurtures informal ethnic social networks that provide incomplete information and retard the process of language acquisition. The study reported here investigated the effect of motivations, perceptions of attitudes of the host society, acculturation and socioeconomic factors on immigrants' residential concentration. It also sought to expand previous research by examining the relationship between immigrants'residential concentration and social relationships with nonimmigrants. Data for the study were collected in 1999 through a survey of immigrants from the FSU who had settled in one northern city in Israel after 1989. The results show a negative relationship of socioeconomic status and fluency in Hebrew with the percentage of immigrants residing in a given neighborhood. The higher the socioeconomic status and the more fluent the immigrant in Hebrew, the lower the percentage of immigrants in his or her neighborhood. Immigrants who expressed a proactive motivation for migration resided in neighborhoods with a low percentage of immigrants. Immigrants' residential concentration was not found to be related to the development of social relationships with the local population. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Narrating ageing: Deconstructing negative conceptions of old age in four contemporary English novels

Characters in their late sixties, seventies and even eighties have become the main protagonists and narrators in contemporary fiction. Narratives of ageing not only allow the reader to go into deep confines of an ageing protagonist, they also offer a detailed account of how these protagonists as well as the society around them deal with an increasing reality within the Western world, namely, that a demographic change is taking place and, thus, social and individual conceptions related to old age and ageing need to be revised and redefined. Novels such as Pat Barker's The Century's Daughter, Margaret Forster's Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Doris Lessing's The Diaries of Jane Somers and Rose Tremain's The Cupboard invite the reader to explore the ageing process, both at an individual and social level, through the stories their main protagonists narrate to a member of a younger generation. As a human complex process within a broader demographic change, stories of ageing succeed in helping young and old protagonists (and ultimately the reader) to reflect on the ageing process from a multiplicity of perspectives.     

中国“贫二代”现状解析

“贫二代”与“富二代”的产生有着深刻的社会原因。拉美地区由于贫富不均产生的层际断裂引发社会动荡给我们提出了警示。只有每一个社会成员都能感觉到自身利益与全社会休戚与共，才能达成社会共识。因此，在社会建设中通过体制改革与政策调整撬开贫富之间的壁垒，缩小贫富差距，消除层际心理断裂，才能共享和谐社会。     

Second‐Generation “Return” to Greece: New Dynamics of Transnationalism and Integration

Based on in‐depth narrative interviews with 64 second‐generation Greek‐Germans and Greek‐Americans who have “returned” to Greece, this article explores intersections between return, transnationalism and integration. Having grown up with a strong Greek identity in the diaspora, second‐generation “returnees” move to Greece mainly for idealistic, lifestyle and life‐stage reasons. However, most find living in Greece long‐term a challenging experience: they remark on the corruption and chaos of Greek life, and are surprised at the high level of xenophobia in Greek society, not only towards foreign immigrants but also towards themselves as “hyphenated Greeks”. The “return” to Greece provokes new “reverse” transnational links back to their birth country, where they still need to keep in touch with relatives and friends, including caring obligations towards parents who remain abroad. Some contemplate another “return”, back to the US or Germany.

Policy Implications

• Policymakers responsible for integration should not assume that the second generation has no connections with its parents' country of origin.
• In the diasporic home country (in this case Greece), more effort should be made to facilitate the reintegration of the second generation returning ‘home’ and to break down discrimination towards hyphenated Greeks.
• Greek policymakers should pay heed to homecoming second‐generation Greeks in order to benefit from their bicultural insights into how Greek society can be improved, especially as regards efficient public services, transparent employment opportunities, better environment management, gender equality, and the elimination of racism and discrimination.

     

They tell us “we don’t belong in the world and we shouldn’t take up a place”: HIV discourse within two-spirit communities

Objectives: We investigated how HIV discourse is negotiated and given meaning in the lives of young, male two-spirit leaders, when considering their communities’ and their own health and wellness. These men are also unique in that they have always lived under the specter and dominant discourse of HIV; that is, they are part of a second generation since the time of HIV/AIDS. Methods: We conducted a discourse analysis of six qualitative interviews from the HONOR Project, a multi-site, mixed-methods study of the two-spirit community across the United States, foregrounding the relationships among trauma, coping, and health. Results: HIV functions discursively in four ways: as a shadow presence, professionalized identity, health sub-/priority, and vehicle for belonging and (re)claiming. Conclusions: This study is important to social work as well as HIV prevention and care as it affords voice to two-spirit men, a highly marginalized community and one often silenced in scientific discourse. And, it centralizes language and context, complicating social epidemiological characterizations of HIV/AIDS, risk, and historically traumatized populations.     

Bourdieu,Technique And Technology

This paper examines the place of technology in Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, and argues for the relevance of Bourdieu's thought to the study of technology. In moving from an examination of the status of technology in Bourdieu's work through to his broad approach to social practice and his widely cited concept of habitus, it is argued that technologies are crystalliz­ations of socially organized action. As such, they should be considered not as exceptional or special phenomena in a social theory, but rather as very much like other kinds of social practices that recur over time. Ultimately, through the use of Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, and capital, we are able to overcome the binary divisions such as technology/society and subject/object that have plagued technology studies.     

Changing Lives: what is really changing for Scottish social work?

In 2004 the then Scottish Executive launched the 21st Century Social Work Review. The review report, Changing Lives, addressed perceived shortcomings in statutory social work services, claiming to offer a fundamental review of the profession. This paper argues that, rather than offering any significantly new principles or policies, the drift of the Changing Lives process was chiefly to refurnish the discourse in which statutory social work is conducted. Specifically it shifts that discourse away from a long-standing Scottish concern to promote social welfare on a community basis towards an individualised conception of well-being. Central to that process is the Review's advocacy of personalisation of services. It is argued therefore that Changing Lives is best understood as an exercise in the ‘problematics of government’—a reassertion of control by reshaping expectations, rather than a substantive reform of services.     

New voices in social work: an explorative study of female Turkish and Moroccan-Dutch professionals in social work in the Netherlands

In social work, the participation of Turkish and Moroccan-Dutch professionals, second and third generation migrant women from a Muslim background, is increasing. In this participative qualitative inquiry, new professionals were actively involved as co-researchers, doing research with peers from the same background. The question addressed is how these professionals deal with identity tensions and if they find positive sources of identification in social work. The new professionals claim a positive identity, connected to what they consider their strength and in particular their faith and ‘otherness’. At the same time, this increases their vulnerability, in a context in which Islam by some is considered a threat to society. The importance of a supportive professional social work identity is advocated.     

Mediatized Ritual – Expanding the Field in the Study of Media and Ritual

The purpose of the article Mediatized ritual – Expanding the field in the study of media and ritual is to identify the key debates in present‐day scholarship on media and ritual and bring them into dialogue with current theorizing on the mediatization of society and culture. The article consists of three parts. The first presents a short outline of the study of media and ritual in modern life. The second discusses the idea of mediatized ritual as an evolving concept in the field. The third provides an empirical illustration of the mediatization of ritual by applying the concept to the analysis of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013). In conclusion, it is argued that to study mediatized rituals in today's society is to face the theoretical and empirical challenge of engaging the two social realms of ritual and media in a close interplay. This intellectual venture changes our understanding not only of rituals and media (what they are and what they do) but also of society. This said, to study mediatized rituals is, in fact, to study society in action.     

Environmental Degradation,Disproportionality, and the Double Diversion: Reaching Out,Reaching Ahead,and Reaching Beyond

Abstract Rather than seeking ivory‐tower isolation, members of the Rural Sociological Society have always been distinguished by a willingness to work with specialists from a broad range of disciplines, and to work on some of the world's most challenging problems. What is less commonly recognized is that the willingness to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries can contribute not just to the solution of real‐world problems, but also to the advancement of the discipline itself. This point is increasingly being illustrated in studies of environment‐society relationships. Most past discussions of humans' roles in environmental problems have focused on overall or average human impacts, but rural sociologists have played leading roles in identifying what I have come to call “the double diversion.” First, rather than being well‐represented by averages, environmental damages are often characterized by high levels of disproportionality, with much or most of the harm being created by the diversion of environmental rights and resources to a surprisingly small fraction of the relevant social actors. The dispropor‐tionality appears to be made possible in part through the second diversion, namely distraction—the diversion of attention, largely through the taken‐for‐granted but generally erroneous assumption that the environmental harm “must” be for the benefit of us all. There are good reasons why rural sociologists would have been among the first to notice both of these “diversions”— and why they will give even greater attention to both in the future.