Menstrual time: The sociocognitive mapping of “the menstrual cycle”

Despite the many angles from which the biological phenomenon now known as “the menstrual cycle” has been addressed, no work explicitly focuses on how social groups actually draw lines around and mentally partition these complex biological processes into discrete temporal units. This paper examines not the meaning of “the menstrual cycle,” per se, but hegemonic Western culture's intersubjective notions of how to carve up this inherently unstructured phenomenon in the first place. Although sociologists of cognition have still to consider this sociomental structuring of “the menstrual cycle” as a case of mental cartography, and sociologists of time have still to consider “menstrual time” as a case of sociotemporality, I conclude that the mental mapping out of what constitutes the elements of this rhythm is a highly social act with serious implications for women's lives.     

What is a problem?

Among others, the term “problem” plays a major role in the various attempts to characterize interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity, as used synonymously in this paper. Interdisciplinarity (ID) is regarded as “problem solving among science, technology and society” and as “problem orientation beyond disciplinary constraints” (cf. Frodeman et al.: The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010). The point of departure of this paper is that the discourse and practice of ID have problems with the “problem”. The objective here is to shed some light on the vague notion of “problem” in order to advocate a specific type of interdisciplinarity: problem-oriented interdisciplinarity. The outline is as follows: Taking an ex negativo approach, I will show what problem-oriented ID does not mean. Using references to well-established distinctions in philosophy of science, I will show three other types of ID that should not be placed under the umbrella term “problem-oriented ID”: object-oriented ID (“ontology”), theory-oriented ID (epistemology), and method-oriented ID (methodology). Different philosophical thought traditions can be related to these distinguishable meanings. I will then clarify the notion of “problem” by looking at three systematic elements: an undesired (initial) state, a desired (goal) state, and the barriers in getting from the one to the other. These three elements include three related kinds of knowledge: systems, target, and transformation knowledge. This paper elaborates further methodological and epistemological elements of problem-oriented ID. It concludes by stressing that problem-oriented ID is the most needed as well as the most challenging type of ID.     

A feminist revisiting of the insider/outsider debate: The “outsider phenomenon” in rural Iowa

This article draws upon findings from an ethnographic study of two towns in rural Iowa to examine the adequacy of the insider/outsider distinction as a guideline for evaluating and conducting ethnographic research. Utilizing feminist standpoint and materialist feminist theories, I start with the assumption that, rather than one “insider” or “outsider” position, we all begin our work with different relationships to shifting aspects of social life and to particular knowers in the community and this contributes to numerous dimensions through which we can relate to residents in various communities. “Outsiderness” and “insiderness” are not fixed or static positions, rather they are ever-shifting and permeable social locations illustrated in this case study by the “outsider phenomenon.” Community processes that reorganize and resituate race-ethnicity, gender and class relations form some of the most salient aspects of the “outsider phenomenon.” These dynamic processes shaped our relationships with residents as ethnographic identities were repositioned by shifts in constructions of “community” that accompanied ongoing social, demographic, and political changes.     

Studying one's own in the Middle East: Negotiating gender and self-other dynamics in the field

This article uses examples of the experience I had in the field as an indigenous researcher in Turkey in order to problematize claims to knowledge. I contend that for researchers who are positioned as relative “insiders,” whether indigenous or bicultural, such aspects of the researcher identity as gender, class, professional and relationship status are made especially salient, perhaps even more so in Middle Eastern contexts. I also argue that while indigenous status can be both empowering and restricting, the insider/outsider position can be employed as a useful vantage point for “rethinking the familiar.” I discuss with examples how this position informed my researcher role and my perspective on what is traditional.     

“The Littlest Science” Revisited

I revisit Allan Mazur’s 1968 claim that sociology is “The Littlest Science.” In doing so, I review four decades of disciplinary battles on how sociology might raise its scientific profile. I examine data on public attitudes toward sociology as a science and how sociology is perceived by the larger scientific community. I conclude that taking a more interdisciplinary perspective will improve the scientific status of sociology.     

Much ado about Goffman

“The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation.” (Goffman 1959, 72, 254) “Given that the logic of privatization....now odiously shapes archetypes of citizenship, [and] manages our perceptions of what constitute the ‘good society’....it stands to reason that new ethnographic research approaches must take global capitalism not as an end point of analysis, but as a starting point.” (Kincheloe and McLaren 2000, 304) “My abhorrence of neoliberalism helps to explain my legitimate anger when I speak of the injustices to which the ragpickers among humanity are condemned. It also explains my total lack of interest in any pretension of impartiality, I am not impartial, or objective...[this] does not prevent me from holding always a rigorously ethical position.” (Freire 1998, 22)     

The cultural apparatus: C. Wright Mitts’ unfinished work

Conclusion Mills wrote to his Oxford publisher in 1955. “One book grows out of another; the trouble is not only is there no end to it, but after the second is pressing upon you before you can finish the first, for planning is more fun than working.” 78 Indeed, this mode of working was common to all of Mills’ projects. He worked fast and furiously and always juggled a number of different ideas in various stages of formation. This certainly was the case with The Cultural Apparatus. In a 1955 letter to his publisher Mills enthusiastically said of the book “I'm into it.” He predicted, optimistically, that unlike his other books, this book would be easy, a natural for him that “writing it will not involve the anguish that White Collar and Elites have provided.” By 1959, however, Mills had to admit that this optimism was premature. In “The Personal Note to the Reader” he confessed that “I've never had so much trouble writing a book as I have with this one, and I’ve never taken so much pain with the writing of it as I’ve taken to heart the criticism of being repetitious, verbose and prone to jargon.” 79 Mills never completed the project. By the late 1950's he became preoccupied with the political issues of “war and peace” and American foreign policy in Cuba, the latter in particular. His health was poor as a result of a heart attack he suffered in December of 1959 on the eve of a televised debate with an American advisor in Latin America, A.A. Berle. He became embroiled in what he understood as necessary public work from within the media and he remained adamant about the personal significance of The Cultural Apparatus in 1959.     

Mental Health of Non-gamblers Versus “Normal” Gamblers Among American Indian Veterans: A Community Survey

Goal This analysis was undertaken to assess the demographic and mental health characteristics of “normal” or non-problem gamblers versus non-gamblers in a representative community sample. Sample Study participants consisted of 557 North Central American Indian veterans. Data collection included a demographic and trauma questionnaire, a computer-based Diagnostic Interview Schedule for DSM-III-R, and a treatment history algorithm. Findings Univariate analyses revealed that gamblers had greater social competence (i.e., higher education, living with a spouse) and higher lifetime psychiatric morbidity. Binary regression analysis revealed that, compared to non-gamblers, gamblers were older, more highly educated, and more apt to be married. More gamblers showed evidence for lifetime risk-taking as evidenced by Antisocial Personality Disorder and Tobacco Dependence. Conclusions Social achievement and disposable income function as prerequisites for “normal” gambling in this population, although “externalizing” or “risk-taking” disorders also serve as independent contributors to at least some gambling. The increased rate of “internalizing” or emotional disorders are only indirectly related to gambling, perhaps through increasing age or through the “externalizing” disorders.     

Seen but unseen: Part-time faculty and institutional surveillance and control

This article examines surveillance techniques utilized by several metropolitan community colleges to manage part-time faculty. We find that with the increased use of part-time faculty, administrators at these organizations are relying less on direct, personal supervision of these instructors and are instead using more “remote” surveillance practices to certify that “acceptable educational standards” are being maintained. The use of these practices not only signals a decline in the professional status of college instructors, but also points to differences in social control techniques used in “productive” institutions versus those used in “disciplinary” institutions. We find that while surveillance techniques employed at these community colleges make the education process visible and controllable, they simultaneously render part-time faculty invisible but controlled.     

Sociology and the environment: An analysis of journal coverage

Many sociologists have suggested that the dominant paradigm in sociology ignores the environment, which accounts for the fact that environmental sociology is poorly represented in sociology’s mainstream journals. The purpose of this article is to test this assumption empirically by examining the coverage of environmental sociology in nine mainstream sociology journals from 1969 through 1994. The nine journals are separated into two tiers, representing higher and lower prestige journals. Each environmental article is categorized by its area (attitudes and behaviors, environmental movement, political economy, risk, and “new human ecology”) and whether it involves “sociology of the environmental issues” (the application of standard sociological perspectives to environmental issues) or “core environmental sociology” (the examination of societal-environmental relationships). We find that less than two percent of all articles published in the sampled journals in the twenty-five-year period of study were environmental, and that the higher tier journals were less likely to publish environmental articles than were the lower tier journals. Environmental articles were more likely to be part of “core environmental sociology” after 1981 than they were “sociology of the environmental issues,” which suggests a greater recognition among both environmental sociologists and journal reviewers that human societies are ecosystem-dependent. The number of environmental articles increased in the 1990s, portending a fruitful period for sociologists specializing on the environment. We argue that the broader field of sociology can benefit by recognizing the linkages environmental sociology has to other sociological specializations and that, ultimately, sociology needs to be able to address environmental variables in order to understand society. Naomi T. Krogman’s primary interest is in stakeholder framing of environmental disputes and natural resource policy change. She is currently a research sociologist at the Center for Socioeconomic Research at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and adjunct faculty in the Department of Sociology, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504-0198. JoAnne DeRouen Darlington is a research sociologist focusing on social change and community sustainability emerging from the disastrous interactions between society and the environment. She is currently employed with the Natural Hazards Research Center, Campus Box 482, Boulder, CO 80309.     

Two main problems in the sociology of morality

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed.

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Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work”

This article presents a discussion of the relationship between classification systems and individuals' everyday activities. The concept of “boundary work” is defined as the practices that concretize and give meaning to mental frameworks by placing, maintaining, and challenging cultural categories. “Home” and “work” provide a case study for examining boundary work across a range of realm relationships, from those that are highly “integrating” to those that are highly “segmenting.” Boundary practices involving calendars and keys, clothes and appearances, eating and drinking, money, people and their representations (like photographs and gifts), talk styles and conversations, reading materials and habits, and work breaks (including lunches and vacations) are discussed. Mary Douglas's work on categorical purity helps illustrate the relationship between cognitive order and visible behavior seen in the boundary work of home and work. This article includes material that was published in a larger study,Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life (1996 University of Chicago Press), after it was presented at the 1995 Eastern Sociological Society meetings in Philadelphia.     

On Past and Future of Community: A Pragmatic Analysis

Charles Sanders Peirce proposed a semiotic that directed attention to the person or people who are providing interpretation, making place for the social and cultural. Following Peirce, we consider the meanings and consequences the term “community” has in an international context. We argue that English affords a richer set of meanings to community, which was not paralleled in the languages of Southeast Asia. The encounter between English and Southeast Asian languages has lexical consequences, but more momentous are the cultural changes they index. In Southeast Asian cultures, there is less need for “community” to take on broader meanings, since those cultures assume social relationality. Thus, the spread of English “community” could be associated with a rise of individualism in these other cultures, but it could also impoverish the Anglophone West, which would be denied alternative frameworks in which associational and affective meanings of community are unnecessary.     

On the multi-preference approach to evaluating opportunities

The purpose of the paper is to provide a general framework for analyzing “preference for opportunities.” Based on two simple axioms a fundamental result due to Kreps is used in order to represent rankings of opportunity sets in terms of multiple preferences. The paper provides several refinements of the basic representation theorem. In particular, a condition of “closedness under compromise” is suggested in order to distinguish the flexibility interpretation of the model from normative interpretations which play a crucial role in justifying the intrinsic value of opportunities. Moreover, the paper clarifies the link between the multiple preference approach and the “choice function” approach to evaluating opportunities. In particular, it is shown how the well-known Aizerman/Malishevski result on rationalizability of choice functions can be obtained as a corollary from the more general multiple preference representation of a ranking of opportunity sets. Received: 3 September 1996 / Accepted: 18 August 1997     

Beyond the antinomies of structure: Levi-Strauss,Giddens, Bourdieu,and Sewell

In this article, I attempt to address some enduring problems in formulation and practical use of the notion of structure in contemporary social science. I begin by revisiting the question of the fidelity of Anthony Giddens’ appropriation of the idea of structure with respect to Levi-Strauss. This requires a reconsideration of Levi-Strauss’ original conceptualization of “social structure” which I argue is a sort of “methodological structuralism” that stands sharply opposed to Giddens’ ontological reconceptualization of the notion. I go on to show that Bourdieu’s contemporaneous critique of Levi-Strauss is best understood as an attempt to recover rather than reject the central implication of Levi-Strauss’ methodological structuralism, which puts Bourdieu and Giddens on clearly distinct camps in terms of their approach toward the idea of structure. To demonstrate the—insurmountable—conceptual difficulties inherent in the ontological approach, I proceed by critically examining what I consider to be the most influential attempt to resolve the ambiguities in Giddens structuration theory: Sewell’s argument for the “duality of structure.” I show that by retaining Giddens’ ontological focus, Sewell ends up with a notion of structure that is at its very core “anti-structuralist” or only structuralist in a weak sense. I close by considering the implications of the analysis for the possibility of developing the rather neglected “methodological structuralist” legacy in contemporary social analysis.     

Advocacy with Gloves on: The “Manners” of Strategy Used by Some Third Sector Organizations Undertaking Advocacy in NSW and Queensland

This article examines the strategies used by some third sector organizations in Australia to advocate. The purpose of this article is to identify the kinds of activities that organizations in New South Wales and Queensland use to promote advocacy, the kinds of language that is used to describe these activities, and the reasons given for the particular strategies adopted. The extent to which the organizations adopt “softer” (that is more institutional forms of advocacy) rather than more openly challenging forms of activism is examined, particularly in light of a neo-liberal political and economic environment. In this analysis emergent strategies are identified that are not easily categorized as either “institutional” or “radical” advocacy. The article presents an exploratory analysis of some of the implications of the strategies adopted, in terms of their democratic effects and potential to strengthen the capacity of third sector organizations. The article is informed by the findings of a qualitative research project involving interviews with 24 organizations in the community services and environmental fields.     

Debating the Burqa in France: the Antipolitics of Islamic Revival

In 2009 a French national commission was created to issue recommendations against “the burqa” and raise the possibility of a ban on the practice in certain public settings. This paper explores the different normative stakes of politicizing the burqa and the form of Islamic Revival with which it is associated. Recent scholarship has sought to overturn orientalist depictions of Islamic movements but has insisted that bodily ethical practices, such as Muslim women’s veiling, constitute forms of politics. Based on ethnographic research in a women’s mosque community in a poor suburb of Lyon, France, I argue that these women are not engaged in a form of politics but rather, antipolitics, a movement originally conceptualized in the 1970s and 80s as a rejection of politics and a valorization of private life. Three components define their antipolitics: a reconfiguration of the private sphere against an intrusive state, a retreat into a moral community, and emphasis on spiritual conditions and achievement of serenity. In interrogating different meanings of politics and antipolitics, this paper suggests a rethinking of the relationship between “political Islam” and piety movements.     

Interaction Ritual Chains and the Mobilization of Conscientious Consumers

Markets for “socially responsible” products are comprised of activists who lead protests, organize boycotts, and promote the consumption of these goods. However, the ultimate success of these movements is dependent upon the support of a large number of consumers whose self-professed values often contradict with their own purchasing patterns. Consumer support of socially responsible products cannot be explained by consumer culture theories, which privilege identity, attitudes, and behavior, or mass consumption theories, which emphasize location and advertising’s influence on consumption patterns. These perspectives are informative but unable to explain why some consumers will only buy socially responsible products while others with similar value systems possess much more contradictory consumption patterns. I extend Collin’s theory of “Interaction Ritual chains” to show that rituals and emotions—more than identity or coercive advertising—explain how ethical consumers are mobilized. I show how face-to-face interactions between consumers and producers produce solidarity and motivate support for the Fair Trade movement. This paper employs a micro-sociological approach to contribute to studies of ethical consumption in three notable ways: 1) it emphasizes the importance of “contexts” and is able to explain contradictions in consumer behavior; 2), it contributes to our understanding of “brand communities” by describing the micro-sociological processes that both help to build these communities and create value within the products that organize these groups; and 3) it offers the potential to develop a predictive model for the purchasing patterns of consumers.     

Why advocacy research?: Reflections on research and activism with immigrant women

This article discusses some of the common problems that arise in fomenting participatory research, and proposes that some form of advocacy research may be a more accessible alternative. The advocacy research alternative is distinguished from the pure model of participatory research by several factors: 1) the people being studied do not control the research; 2) advocacy research recognizes that it is not always possible to know in advance precisely what research findings will in fact be “useful” as a tool of social change; and 3) advocacy research is realized through political action, but not necessarily in the same community in which the research was conducted. I discuss advocacy research by relating some of my research experiences in a Mexican undocumented immigrant community in northern California, and how I utilized some of the research materials in an outreach program aimed at Latina immigrant domestic workers in Los Angeles.     

The organizational shaping of collective identity: The case of lesbian and gay film festivals in New York

Using information gathered during fieldwork on New York lesbian and gay film festival organizations, this paper argues that scholarship on identity has not paid sufficient attention to the organizational mediation of collective identity. The shape of collective identity—how internal instabilities and diversities are accommodated, in this case—depends not only on the emergent characteristics of the “collective,” but also on the resolution of challenges particular to organizational fields. Two very differently conceived lesbian and gay festival organizations, sites at which decision making about collective identity is ongoing and self-conscious, are examined. The analysis traces how each responds to two related tasks: maintaining community legitimacy, which requires racial diversification, and surviving within an altered institutional environment. Rather than imposition from “above” or construction from “below,” the adaptive responses by organizations (to changes in both community expectations and the resource environment) transform the collective identity formulations reaching public visibility. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Colloquium Series of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York, 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, 1995.