Young People’s Reactions Change Elderly People’s Generativity and Narratives: The Effects of Intergenerational Interaction on the Elderly

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the young listener’s reaction on the development of generativity and narratives of elderly people. Thirty-four males between the ages of 60 and 82 participated in this experiment in which the listener generations (young/elderly) and listener reactions (empathic/neutral) were controlled. The participants shared and taught their wisdom gained from their past experiences through narratives. Results showed that many elderly people spoke about “lessons from experiences of failure” when there was an empathic reaction from young people, and such narratives were promoted by an increase of generativity. These results suggested the impact of the younger people’s reaction on the elderly people’s psychological development and behavior.     

Security a la Mexicana: on the particularities of security governance in México’s War on Crime

Social scientists from different fields have identified security as a future-oriented mode of governance designed to preserve the social order from diverse types of global risk through international cooperation, militarization and privatization of the state security apparatus, surveillance technologies, community policing, and stigmatization of identities and behaviors deemed dangerous. This literature has largely been limited to English-speaking countries in the Global North, however, that are relatively “secure.”. To understand how security operates in a different context, this article focuses on the current War on Crime in México using newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, and extant academic research. In México, it is argued, the basic elements of security governance (international cooperation, militarized police, surveillance technologies, law, etc.) are present, but in modified form. Rather than focusing on external risks that could develop into future threats, security in México is turned inward against traditional forms of national economic, political, and cultural life thought to produce harm in the present. This, in turn, underscores security’s unique purpose in the country, which is not to preserve the prevailing social order, but to transform an emergent social order that through globalization has come to threaten the state’s legitimacy. These observations suggest an international divide in the operation of security that leaves those most vulnerable in the Global South to bear the greatest costs.     

The effect of the Cold War on African-American civil rights: America and the world audience, 1945–1968

Theory and Society -     

Motherless Subjects and Mothered Selves: The Implications of Jacques Lacan’s and Donald Winnicott’s Writings on the Formation of the ‘I’ for American Studies

ABSTRACT

This article contrasts the theories of ego formation put forward in Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage’ and Donald Winnicott’s ‘The Mirror Role of the Mother,’ and discusses their methodological implications for the field of American studies. While Lacan theorises subjectivity as irreparably split and (self-)alienated, Winnicott offers an optimistic version of a self which is sustained in its going-on-being by a nourishing maternal presence. These disparate conceptualisations of the human being produce two powerful frames through which to approach culture. Yet, while Lacan is widely recognised in the American studies scholarship, Winnicott remains virtually unknown. This article aims to enhance the visibility of the British author by outlining the productivity of his ideas for any cultural or literary analysis. By stressing the foundational significance of the primary bond Winnicott’s theory intervenes in the recent critiques of neoliberal capitalism which remain halted in a Lacanian-like melancholic mode, masked by a cultural command of perpetual enjoyment. The Winnicottian perspective challenges Lacan’s fixation on the unattainable objects of desire, reiterated by the neoliberal myth of self-perfection through consumption, and offers an alternative pattern of human sociality, based on relational, self-reflexive moderation.     

‘Run after time’: the roads of suitcase traders

Since the 1990s, the development of informal trade in trans-frontier places bordering Mongolia has offered opportunities for Mongolian people to develop new trade links with China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. These ‘businessmen of the transition’ or informal ‘suitcase traders’ go abroad along roads opened to and through Russia and China. My article analyses the ‘circulatory roads’ opened by suitcase traders. I take two examples of this activity: Mongolian Kazakh traders who go to Russia and Mongolian traders who go to China. The trans-frontier places reveal the particular ways of being and skills of drivers, retailers and wholesalers.     

Culture’s Coherence: How the Trees Compose the Woods

In cultural sociology, the concept of culture refers to processes and products of meaning-making. This concept sustains coherence while also encompassing empirical complexity and theoretical difference. Much of the variety in the way cultural sociologists talk about culture is simply attributable to inconsequential terminological difference, and the remainder is attributable to differences of empirical angle and theoretical emphasis within the field which are encompassed by this core idea. Cultural sociologists understand meaning as transcending biology, irreducible to social structure, and public rather than private. These conceptual boundaries provide a firm foundation for empirical research and guide the development of cultural theory. Further exploration of the concept of “meaning” is better pursued in the analytic philosophy of meaning, but such exploration is unnecessary and potentially counter-productive for cultural sociology.     

The Ethics of the Child Custody Process: Are the American Law Institute’s Guidelines the Answer?

Our principal ethical concern is that children have greatly differing opportunities to have their developmental needs addressed in the custody process. We illustrate this variation with example cases in five different adult contexts: custodial parent, relocates; natural father disputes an adoption; gay parents break up; “psychological parents” come forward to claim custody or visitation; and the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is invoked and may disrupt a placement. We acknowledge and then evaluate in relation to our cases, the recent guidelines for custody issued by the American Law Institute (Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations, 2002). Our recommendations for an ethical process include making the child a legal player.Eleanor Willemsen, Rebecca Andrews and Bethany Karlin are affiliated with Department of Psychology, Santa Clara University. Rebecca Andrews is now at Syracuse University Law School.Address correspondence to Eleanor Willemsen, Department of Psychology, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053; e-mail: ewillemsen @scu.edu. This research was supported by a grant from the Bannan Center for Jesuit Education of Santa Clara University. We wish to acknowledge Bree Nakashima for her assistance with our legal research.     

Professors and politics: Noam Chomsky’s contested reputation in the United States and Canada

There is an extensive literature comparing the politics, sociology and economics of the United States and Canada, but very little work comparing the role that public intellectuals play in the space of public opinion and how their ideas are received in both nations simultaneously. Noam Chomsky provides a theoretically useful example of an established academic and public intellectual whose reputation is deeply contested in both countries. Our comparative case study offers leverage to contribute to debates on the sociology of knowledge, reputations, intellectuals, and the politics of professors using data from six major Canadian and American newspapers from 1995–2009 and an innovative coding of media portrayal. Earlier work has demonstrated that Chomsky is discussed as a public intellectual more prominently in Canada than in the United States (McLaughlin and Townsley in Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(4):341–368, 2011). Here we examine the comparative construction of a “public intellectual” reputation in the context of significant political change. We document small differences between the Canadian and American receptions of Chomsky, show change in the patterns of portrayal and number of publications over time, and offer an analysis of differences between political attacks and consecrations. We demonstrate more engagement with Chomsky’s political view in Canada than in the United States, a rise in Chomsky’s fame post 9/11, and illustrate clear political patterns in attempts to marginalize him.     

American Fair Expositions Revisited: Morocco’s Acrobatic Performers between the Industry of Entertainment and the Violence of Racial Display

When and why did Moroccan acrobats intervene in the American entertainment show business? Who were these subjects and how did they negotiate their collective identities and individual agencies within the exhibition apparatus? This article discusses the early experience of Moroccan acrobats in American amusement industry and raises issues pertaining to representing cultural otherness through acrobatic performances incorporated in various American entertainment sites of the time. International expositions and various spectacle arenas associated with leisure activities developed discourses on ethnological living exhibits that were reinforced by Orientalist images, which stemmed from a history including the fascination with the exotic and sensual Other. I argue that Moroccan–American artistic encounters through acrobatic performances, which could roughly be located in the first decades of the nineteenth century, are cultural and discursive terrains about identity and difference where modes of representation about Self and Other are negotiated in dialectical ways. My major assumption is that the alternative routes of travel taken by noncanonical voices to the West, namely to America, need to be retracked, documented, translated, and circulated. These voices reorder the archives of history and fill up vacant spaces that official discourses have overlooked. I shed light on the historical context of Moroccan acrobats’ journeys to America; then I reflect on how the economy of pleasure fostered and legitimized discourses of racial violence on the displayed subjects in various performances.     

Struggling for One’s Name: Defense Narratives by those Accused of Small-Time Corruption

ABSTRACT

Under scrutiny (what we term a “bribery gaze”), many interpersonal exchanges in work contexts are perceived as bribes rather than gifts, tokens of appreciation, or mundane favors. Current Swedish bribery laws are strong, and the media keep a vigilant eye out for suspicious activities. From a wide set of qualitative data, we selected 13 interviews with formally-accused middle managers and low-level officials in Sweden who claimed to be innocent of small corruption. We discovered that they were more concerned with defending their honor than with job losses, material losses, or legal repercussions. The interviewees used a contrast structure: While they defined the humiliating accusations and disproportionate measures as turning points, they narrated their moral struggles and claimed their innocence by retelling significant events. These personal narratives from those accused of corruption showed that honor remains very important in contemporary society.     

Professional purpose and academic legitimacy: Ross’s social control and the founding of American sociology

The community of inquiry moved through two phases between 1876 and 1911, and Ross emerged as a transitional figure. From Spencer's text through the 1896 work of Franklin Giddings, sociologists sought identity. Only through comparison with other social sciences could sociologists realize the true scope of their own discipline. Sociology was grounded in biological, and thus social, determinism. Human institutions were categorized but were not controlled. Recently received his doctorate in American intellectual history at Florida State University.     

Site of struggle: the Freedom Park fracas and the divisive legacy of South Africa’s Border War/Liberation Struggle

Every war is fought twice: militarily and then discursively. The war of words or discursive struggle tends to be particularly acrimonious following civil wars. This is true of South Africa’s Border War/Liberation Struggle, during which the white minority’s ‘terrorist’ became the black majority’s ‘freedom fighter’. Notwithstanding the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the legacy of this conflict remains divisive. Contestations over the meaning and memory of the war have manifested themselves in a number of ways. These include tensions during the integration of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed wings of the liberation movements. A commemorative crisis has also followed the erection of new memorials, such as Freedom Park, to honour heroes and heroines of the Liberation Struggle. A fracas followed the decision of the Park’s trustees to omit the names of deceased SADF soldiers from the Wall of Names. This paper examines how Freedom Park became the site of struggle between self‐styled representatives of SADF veterans and cultural elites of the post‐apartheid order. It suggests that this controversy exemplifies the functioning of memory politics in transitional societies.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

Jack Michael’s Musings on the 60th Anniversary of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - When the B. F. Skinner Foundation reprinted Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in 1992, Jack Michael wrote one of its two forewords, a detailed outline of the...     

The Dark Side of Art’s Social Turn: Towards a Discourse on the Impact of Art’s Use of Social Forms Upon the Social

The recent “social turn” in art, in which art favours using forms from social life above its own, has been extensively discussed. Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, Conversation Pieces and The One and the Many by Grant Kester, essays by Claire Bishop who supplies the term “the Social Turn,” and her recent publication Artificial Hells, are now as important to the field as the art they scrutinise. Ironically, however, when this discussion regards the implications of the “turn”, it habitually addresses the effects of this development from – and for – art’s point of view, overlooking the way in which artists’ inroads into social life may be differently regarded in the social realm. As much as this represents a failure to illuminate a particular area for knowledge, it also signifies a failure to take art’s revalorised commitment to the social to its ethical conclusion: such, from two perspectives, is the “dark side” of art’s social turn. This article seeks to mitigate these oversights. In particular, it looks at art in which an artist undertakes another person’s professional work. Considering the effects of this on those whose practices are appropriated, I propose a consultative approach, involving ethnographic and empathetic modes of address. Consequently, this article does not present an answer to the question it poses, “how do professionals in the social realm see art’s appropriations of their practices?” but rather, a framework for approaching that.     

“Everyone was Pounding on Us”: Front Porch Politics and the American Farm Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s

This essay analyzes agricultural politics and activism in the United States during the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Although journalists and social scientists studied farm activism at the time, historians have neglected it. As this article demonstrates, however, the farm crisis is valuable for analyzing why ordinary Americans mobilized as citizens and activists in a period of economic dislocation. Informed by the recent “emotional turn” in social movement studies, the essay frames farm organizing as an archetypal example of “front porch politics”. Mostly, farmers organized out of a sense of being wronged; the resulting sense of injustice fueled a rural uprising.