‘They are harsher to me than to my friend who is blonde’. Police critique among ethnic minority youth in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Young people belonging to categories and living in areas that are targeted by the police find more arguments for detailed police critique than others. When they narrate their assessments there is a series of experiential references being made, which can be used to sort out their police critique. This article draws on 20 interviews with ethnic minority youth in so-called vulnerable neighborhoods in Sweden. It shows how young people portray the police as sometimes profiling and racist, sometimes just and legitimate, and how they do so by comparisons and identifications. Comparisons within Sweden and identifications with police targets tend to result in more negative assessments whereas comparisons with countries of origin and identifications with non-targeted categories may result in more positive or mixed assessments. These young people also evaluate the police with reference to the stigmatization of their neighborhoods. To be stopped because you are associated with a residential area is described as deeply unfair, even if the police are polite, and observations of how the police change behavior in different areas promote critique. Our findings point to the importance of extending a criteria-based model of how today’s young people assess the police with a more social and ethnographic understanding.     

Fat, desire and disgust in the colonial imagination

This article tracks the relatively unexamined ways in which ethnographic, travel and medical knowledge interrelated in the construction of fat stereotypes in the nineteenth century, often plotted along a temporal curve from ‘primitive’ corpulence to ‘civilized’ moderation. By showing how the complementary insights of medicine and ethnography circulated in beauty manuals, weight-loss guides and popular ethnographic books – all of which were aimed at middle-class readers and thus crystallize certain bourgeois attitudes of the time – it argues that the pronounced denigration of fat that emerged in Britain and France by the early twentieth century acquired some of its edge through this ongoing tendency to depict desire for and acceptance of fat as fundamentally ‘savage’ or ‘uncivilized’ traits. This tension between fat and ‘civilization’ was by no means univocal or stable. Rather, this analysis shows, a complex and wide-ranging series of similarities and differences, identifications and refusals can be traced between British and French perceptions of their own bodies and desires and the shortcomings they saw in foreign cultures. It sheds light as well on those aspects of their own societies that seemed ‘primitive’ in ways that bore an uncomfortable similarity to the colonial peoples they governed, demonstrating how a gendered, yet ultimately unstable, double standard was sustained for much of the nineteenth century. Finally it reveals a subtle and persistent racial subtext to the anti-fat discourses that would become more aggressive in the twentieth century and which are ubiquitous today.     

Migration and the dialogue of multiple identifications: Kurdish migrants in the tourist industry of Istanbul

This article examines the cultural dilemmas proceeding from the multiple identifications of Kurdish migrants working in the multicultural environment of Istanbul’s tourist industry. Since identifications invariably multiply when migrants enter multicultural environments, the question emerges how migrants cope with increasing identifications? How are multiple identifications related within the self? In this article, these questions are addressed, first, by analysing how Kurds explain ethnic stereotypes of themselves with reference to migration from the region of origin. Furthermore, conflicts and ambiguities between identifications as individual migrant and identifications as family member are investigated. Third, identifications of the ‘villager’ versus the ‘urbanite’ are reviewed, while, finally, the role of ‘learning’ in the migration process for Kurdish identifications will be highlighted. Dialogical self theory is used to situate the analysis of cultural dilemmas and contradictions of Kurdish migrants in Istanbul within the broader study of multiple identifications of migrants in multicultural societies.     

Re‐examining Cultural Contradictions: Mothering Ideology and the Intersections of Class,Gender, and Race

Hays argues the dominant ideology of mothering in the United States is intensive mothering. Women embracing this ideology are completely devoted to their children and cultural contradictions of motherhood make it difficult to juggle work and family. Rothman argues further that ideologies of patriarchy, technology, and capitalism shape our notions of mothering. I explore these ideologies in this paper, paying careful attention to the labor performed by mothers – paid, childcare, and reproductive. Finally, using surrogacy as an example of how these ideologies interact, I argue that Rothman’s identifications of ideologies helps explain how the cultural contradictions of motherhood vary among mothers based on race and class.     

Identifications,communities and connections: intersections of ethnicity and sexuality among diasporic gay men

This paper explores sexual and ethnic-cultural identifications among first- and second-generation gay migrants in Belgium. Based on a theoretical framework highlighting the multiple, fluid and intersectional nature of identifications, 29 in-depth interviews are used to study self-identifications and connections to different communities. Drawing on a diverse sample, three clusters of participants can be distinguished: second-generation migrants, who were born in Belgium; sexual refugees, who escaped to Belgium; and voluntary migrants, who chose to move to Belgium. Ethnic-cultural and sexual identifications interact and vary between these groups of participants, but also within them as they intersect with other social positionings such as class, gender and race.     

Freedom within bars: maximum security prisoners’ negotiations of identity through rap

This paper examines the construction of prisoners’ identity through rap in England’s high security prisons. While hip hop studies has often addressed rap’s connection to the social practices of criminalized youths, prison rap cultures have received scant attention. This paper draws on a series of rap workshops and interviews with prisoners to investigate the experiences of black prisoners in high security prisons and how identities are produced and negotiated through rap. Rap is associated with the production of a range of identities and identifications, enabling prisoners to accommodate themselves to the conditions of their incarceration and to challenge aspects of the criminal justice system that they experience as unfair or illegitimate.     

Who Is Hispanic? Hispanic Identity among African Americans,Asian Americans,Others, and Whites*

Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States and their presence is likely to continue to expand. Little is known, however, about the correlates of Hispanic identity or the processes that are involved in its maintenance. We investigate these issues by ascertaining and then seeking to understand the various associations between reported racial identities and Hispanic ethnicity using data from the Current Population Surveys. Restricting the sample to individuals who are known to have demographic origins in Latin America, our results indicate that persons with African or Asian racial identifications are substantially less likely than whites or Others to also identify as Hispanic. Relative to the first generation, Hispanic identification declines and the racial differences increase in the second generation. The exceptions in this regard are Others for whom racial and Hispanic identifications are the most highly associated for both the first and second generations. These findings are interpreted as reflecting various social processes that are involved in the development and maintenance of racial and ethnic identities. Our results provide insight into the complex, social nature of Hispanic identification in modern America.     

The everyday use of surname to determine ethnic ancestry

This paper examines the influence of surname on how descendants of white European immigrants to the United States, who are of mixed ethnic ancestry, determine their ethnic identification. It is based on 60 in-depth interviews about ethnic identity and family history, conducted with Catholic, suburban later-generation residents of Santa Clara County California and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (suburbs of San Jose and Philadelphia, respectively).These respondents describe how other people identify them using their surname as an indicator of ethnic background as well as how they use surnames to identify others. They continue to use surnames for their own and others' ethnic identifications despite the fact that they are also continually made aware of the ways in which surname is a faulty, and often inaccurate, indicator of ethnic origin. Factors such as intermarriage, name changes and insufficient knowledge of types of surnames undermine the predictive value of surnames for determining ethnic origin. This examination of the day-to-day use of surnames to determine ethnic ancestry shows the discrepancy between the widespread belief that ethnicity is the naming of a fixed, personal, biological trait that is inherited from one's ancestors and the day-to-day evidence that ethnicity is a processual social phenomenon involving change, choice, and movement across ethnic boundaries for the individual.     

When Loss Becomes Gain: Transforming Women’s ‘Internal Saboteur’

Even as they strive for their, own self-definition, women hold onto old relational ties. In this paper, two ease examples are used to elucidate the complex relationships that women have with their earliest caregivers—mainly their mothers. The cases demonstrate how women remain fixed in early familial internalizations and identifications and find themselves repeating patterns of self-sabotage that impede their success. The relational approach to psychotherapy, furthered by the analyst’s use of the transference-countertransference paradigm, can create the gateway to explore and understand patients’ internal barriers to growth. The analysis can then help patients to achieve a more integrated self-view that allows them to enjoy success and fulfillment in both their private and public lives.     

“Reactive Ethnicity” or “Assimilation”? Statements,Arguments, and First Empirical Evidence for Labor Migrants in Germany

In this article, we scrutinize the often stated assumption that labor migrants in Germany turn away from integration and reaffirm their ethnicity by examining their identificational, cognitive, and social assimilation processes. Using data from the German Socio‐economic Panel, we present trend analyses of different hostland‐ and homeland‐related indicators for the past fifteen years. Results are presented separately for first‐ and second‐generation migrants from Turkey, the EU, and the former Yugoslavia. While not all assimilation‐related indicators change a great deal over time, they show at least a substantial difference between the first and the second generation. With regard to the homeland‐related indicators, the results by no means suggest that Turkish migrants try to compensate for their comparatively disadvantaged social status by revitalizing ethnic cultural habits or homeland‐oriented identifications.     

A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities,interactions, and ideologies in the United States,United Kingdom,and South Africa

In this paper, I explore the experiences of the Black middle classes across the United States, United Kingdom (UK), and South Africa. I argue that the similar experiences the Black middle classes face across these nations are not coincidental but represent the process of globalised White hegemony. Globalised White hegemony refers to how the middle class, transnationally, is often understood as a symbolic category informed by specific White norms, identifications, and practices. I explore globalised White hegemony through three areas of Black middle‐class experience: identity, interactions, and ideologies. Thus, I examine how across the UK, United States, and South Africa, the Black middle classes construct public identities according to White norms, encounter interactions through which their blackness negatively trumps their middle‐class status, and confront classed‐racialised ideologies, which construe the Black middle class as inauthentic. I argue in this paper that central to fleshing out the similarities in Black middle‐class experiences across the globe is engaging in relational sociology, which stresses the globalised nature of contemporary raciality.     

Parental Divorce,Residence Arrangements,and Contact Between Grandchildren and Grandparents

When parents divorce, grandparents can play a supportive role in the lives of their grandchildren, but a parental divorce may also put grandchild–grandparent ties under pressure. In this study the authors investigated how grandchildren of married and divorced parents differ in the frequency of face‐to‐face contacts with grandparents and how this is mediated by postdivorce residence arrangements. Based on the multi‐actor survey “Divorce in Flanders,” they used reports of contact provided by more than 1,000 grandchildren and compared them with more than 1,100 grandparent reports for validation. The results showed that grandchildren from divorced parents have fewer contacts with their grandparents than grandchildren whose parents are married but that it is the postdivorce residence arrangement of grandchildren that produces this result. When grandchildren live with their divorced father or in a shared residence arrangement, they even see paternal grandparents more often than grandchildren with married parents.     

The Voice,Language, And The Gendered Self

This paper examines the intersubjective cocreation of gender ambiguities, identifications, and defensive disidentifications as they emerged out of the vicissitudes of an erotic transference–countertransference in the analysis of a man who stutters. The author posits that the patient's ruptured speech provides an entryway into exploring the problematics of gender. For this man, embracing his masculinity placed him in severe conflict with powerful feminine identifications. The author experienced transferentially the embodiment of different gendered states: receptive preoedipal mother, castrating “phallic” mother, sensuous lover, sadistic penetrating male, benevolent father. She suggests that the stuttering can be understood as an emblem of the sacrifice of the lost primordial union with the mother that accompanies the transition into language.     

Social Impact Measurement and Non-profit Organisations: Compliance,Resistance, and Promotion

Non-profit organisations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their social impact. This paper examines the experience and behaviour of non-profit organisations in the UK in relation to a demand for social impact evaluations. External resource providers request organisations to present evidence on how resources are used and what organisations have achieved. While most organisations are willing to comply and accept this control, they can also resist through using their discretion in deciding what to measure, how to measure and what to report. Non-profit organisations can proactively and voluntarily use social impact measurement for learning and promotional purposes, and as a way of exerting control over their environment. The analysis develops the concept of strategic decoupling to explain the differences observed between what organisations are asked to do, what they plan to do and what they are doing in practice.     

Struggling for Legitimacy: Trajectories of Membership and Naturalization in the Sorting Out of Engineering Students

Situated learning theory proposed the notion of legitimate peripheral participation as central to newcomers’ trajectories toward membership in communities of practice. Left underdeveloped were questions of how legitimacy is conferred or denied. Leigh Star’s work suggests ways of addressing these questions by considering how identifications of participants are made on the basis of classification systems. This article examines how classification of “calculus-readiness,” tied to an identification of engineering with mathematics, shapes the activity of students, staff, and faculty involved in a diversity program at a U.S. college of engineering, and is used to organize trajectories for students in the program.     

Reactive transnationalism: homeland involvement in the face of discrimination

In this article we examine whether migrants' perceived discrimination in the country of settlement leads to an increase of their transnational involvement. So far, this so‐called ‘reactive transnationalism’ has not been studied extensively. Based on literature on discrimination and transnationalism, reactive transnationalism is expected to be most prominent among socioeconomically successful migrants, particularly among males and those who consider themselves Muslims. Our research among middle‐class migrants in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, indeed shows that the more respondents experienced discrimination, the more transnationally involved they are, both regarding transnational identifications and transnational activities. While no gender difference was found regarding reactive transnational activities, for women perceived discrimination proves to lead to stronger instead of weaker transnational identifications than for men. The fact that no difference was found between Muslim and non‐Muslim respondents regarding reactive transnationalism suggests that, despite heated public debates about ‘Islam’, in the Netherlands, ethnic divides – being considered as ‘Dutch’ or ‘non‐Dutch’ – are even more prominent than religious ones.     

Dog-Women and She-Devils: The Queering Field of Monstrous Women

Contemporary British writers Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, and Fay Weldon all employ representations of excessive and powerful female characters in their fiction. Although these often monstrous characterizations may be read as posing an onslaught to the notion of the subject, such representations ultimately allow for greater complexity in exploring possibilities of sexual subjectivity and identifications. All three authors craft their characters through a strongly-invested materialism, one derived through Bakhtinian excesses, pornography, and S/M. This essay investigates how these monstrous bodies model both feminist and queer applications, and how the narratives open spaces for a queer configuration of female heterosexuality.     

Professional Socialization as Embedded Elaborations: Experience,Institutions, and Professional Culture Throughout Teacher Careers

Across a wide range of studies on professional socialization, there is a shared assumption that people carry forward what they learn in formal training experiences and somehow bring it to bear on the subsequent organizational settings they enter. Yet we actually know very little about whether, and exactly how, people carry forward the meanings they develop as part of their professional socialization experience. We address this gap in the literature by examining professional socialization that unfolds over the teaching career. Combining interview data with public and private school teachers across career stages with ethnographic data of a university‐based teacher education program, we examine how the meanings people develop about their work are shaped concomitantly by accumulated experience and institutional settings. We develop a conceptualization of professional socialization that we call embedded elaborations, which attends to the ways that people's ongoing meaning making (or elaborations) is situated (or embedded) institutionally and temporally. We also show how embedded elaborations act as meaning‐making processes through which people in local settings actively produce and reproduce elements of a wider professional culture.