The world economy and contemporary migration

While not enough is known about international proletarian diasporas to be able to say much about their present or future behaviors, it is clear that they are closely tied to the key problems of the world today: establishing greater equality between and within societies and doing so under conditions of cultural pluralism that is no longer based on exploitation and domination, but on grounds which lead to a mutual enrichment of social life in both sending and receiving countries. The agenda for future research is to examine these issues in detail, cross-nationally and comparatively. For example, we must study the strategies involved in such migration variations as "commuting," "trial" migration, and "visiting," and what implications these apparently widespread practices have for the receiving societies, as well as the moral obligations of these societies, which have developed historically on the basis of labor provided by immigration and continue to depend for capital accumulation and economic growth on the availability of imported laboring hands. Nevertheless, if economic recovery in the advanced nations should continue to lag, if there are new recessions, or if dramatic improvements in employment opportunities in developing countries fail to materialize, migration across international boundaries may become even more volatile. Since the political, economic, and ethical questions which migration poses for both sending and receiving societies have become potentially explosive issues, it is imperative that they be debated and coherent and appropriate guidelines established.     

Social Movement Endurance: Collective Identity and the Rastafari

In this paper we argue that a movement's longevity depends on its ability to develop and sustain a strong sense of collective identity. We investigate social movement endurance by examining the Rastafari, whose membership is comprised primarily of disadvantaged Jamaicans of African descent. While many social movements fade after a short-lived peak, the Rastafari not only has persisted, but it also has become globally important. Despite its radical posture and its perceived threat to the Jamaican established order, the movement has prevailed for more than six decades. On the basis of a number of concepts derived from different theoretical traditions in social movement theory, we examine the dynamic processes involved in the construction of collective identity among the Rastafari. We are particularly interested in the concepts of "cognitive liberation,""movement culture/boundary structure," and "the politics of signification." These concepts allow us to describe and analyze the key dimensions of the Rastafarian collective identity. This framework, we argue, enhances our understanding of collective identity as well as the processes contributing to social movement longevity.     

"I HATE MY VOICE":

This article presents a narrative, autoethnographic, theoretical account of the public and private negotiation of "minor bodily stigmas," which are mild physical "imperfections" that make us fear we stand out and might be rejected. To examine the situated complexity of stigmatized identity, I tell a story that shows concrete interactional details of an episode in which minor bodily stigmas evolved into a significant topic of conversation between strangers. My personal narrative explores the felt experience of minor bodily stigmas from the perspective of the experiencing and interacting holder. Thus, my work problematizes Erving Goffman's sociological approach to stigmas, which examines inclusively all forms of stigmas from a distanced observational stance of beholder that privileges the outsider perspective of how others see us. Using minor bodily stigmas as a heuristic category, I emphasize how they are experienced as a double bind in interaction (to notice or not to notice) and a double bind in personal feelings (of moral character as well as physical appearance). I seek to connect theoretical and categorical understandings of minor bodily stigmas to their concrete felt experience in day-to-day life in order to examine possibilities for resisting and reframing stigmas in everyday life.     

Life Course Analysis—The Courage to Search for Something More

Abstract

In this paper we discuss middle-to-late life issues of the transgender and intersex communities. We demonstrate that these mid-to-late life issues are richly complex, full of courage, coping, risk, and resilience, and are grounded in a socio-ecological landscape of systemic actual and perceived violence and abuse. We examine how this socio-ecological environment affects the “normative” mid-life cycle processes. Practical examples are drawn from the author's field interviews and survey research over the past decade. We close by examining the effects of such a landscape on the middle-age life stage and examine its potential ramifications for old age as well.     

Passing:

This paper seeks to examine issues and circumstances related to passing both as a function of social conditions of discrimination/oppression and in terms of the consequences for the individuals and groups who may practice it. For the purpose of this illustration, two minority groups for whom passing is an issue, "interracial blacks" and "homosexuals," will be analyzed in detail. The existence of this phenomenon clearly illustrates certain of the dynamics of oppression; the means by which this oppression is exercised; and some of the adaptations which those who endure it may adopt.     

Social Change in Postwar Japan: A Theoretical Consideration

Abstract  The objective of this paper is to examine social change in postwar Japan using the concept of social structure. There are two ways to conceptualize social structure. I would like to call the first, established by Radcliffe-Brown and Parsons, "Structure as a Pattern," and the other, established by Levi-Strauss, "Structure as a Rule." It is clear that postwar social change in Japan has brought about a new economic order, but it is also true that Japanese society is beginning to accept a new system of values. My conclusion is that the structure of the Japanese social system has. under the pressure of internationalization, reached a crucial turning point.     

T Cell Immunity and Aging

The effect of age on the immune system is generally detrimental and results in "immunosenescence," a poorly-defined state inadequately reflected in clinical data and for which few reliable "biomarkers of aging" are available. The multinational consortium "T-Cell Immunity in Ageing," T-CIA, was set up to examine these issues specifically as applied to T lymphocytes. This Perspective discusses some of the outcomes of a recent conference that considered progress toward resolving these questions in humans.     

Social Skill and the Theory of Fields

The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. This paper suggests that the "new institutionalist" focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by focusing on the construction of local orders. This paper criticizes the conception of actors in both rational choice and sociological versions of these theories. A more sociological view of action, what is called "social skill," is developed. The idea of social skill originates in symbolic interactionism and is defined as the ability to induce cooperation in others. This idea is elaborated to suggest how actors are important to the construction and reproduction of local orders. I show how its elements already inform existing work. Finally, I show how the idea can sensitize scholars to the role of actors in empirical work.     

APPEALING APPEALS:

We read the 1912-1917 New York Time's "One Hundred Neediest Cases" charity campaigns in three ways. First, we examine campagns as they formed an image of the "morally worthy" poor person who was the proper recipient of modern charity. Second, we read these campaigns as moral tales promoting the goodness of the institutional order, particular types of subjects within that order, and particular relationships between subjects who have money and those who need it. Finally, we examine how mythologies, such as those transmitted through these charity campaigns, produce political legitimations, social hierarchy, and structures of domination.     

Not so great expectations: sex and housewives in Hong Kong

The study explores the life of married women who are being described as having "good," "normal," "blessed" sexuality. The case of si-nais (housewives) in Hong Kong shows that we can never assume that married women (or any social category) are privileged by virtue of their status on the sexual hierarchy. The blessings of social respectability apparently enjoyed by these women may work to enable or hinder women's expression of their erotic desires and sexual fulfillment, depending on their special social circumstances. These women's imagination and experience of good sex is composed of a multitude of components. Women may feel good because they can achieve other psychological and social aims that are important in their lives (which could be related to the maintenance of marriage or the peace of the family). Women may feel good because of the erotic satisfaction that they derive from different pursuits including interests, leisure or other intimate relationships, rather than sexual fulfillment in terms of orgasm or physical pleasure. Women may reformulate their pleasure variously at different stages of their lives. Social respectability, orgasm, emotional intimacy, or any other specific element, may all enter or leave the formula for good sex.     

Disability, social exclusion and the consequential experience of justiciable problems

In this article, we examine the situation of disabled people in England and Wales with regard to one specific aspect of social exclusion—experience of justiciable problems, and the potential effects such problems can have on their lives. Having defined 'disability', we examine how this fits within the wider dialogue on social exclusion issues. By analysing the results of the Legal Services Research Centre's (LSRC) periodic survey of justiciable problems, we find that disabled respondents were not only more likely to experience a problem, they also experienced more problems. Increased likelihood of a problem was observed in the majority of problem categories and particularly those relating to issues of social exclusion, such as housing and welfare benefits. This propensity to experience multiple problems can lead to a negative impact on the lives of long-term ill and disabled people.     

Preparing the next generation of researchers

This paper examines the needs of new and future social work researchers in the light of the overall aims of this particular project. The author is an aspiring ‘new’ researcher and will examine her own personal experience, to date, of being part of a postgraduate research programme in order to clarify how we might best ensure that the next generation of researchers can contribute to the strategy which is being developed. The paper reviews the author's experience of research training to test its adequacy in preparing the next generation to meet the demands required and in consideration of current professional develop ments around social work and social care. The paper will also consider who will be the members of this next generation and how the future agenda for the profession might potentially contribute to the development of a sound professional knowledge base and also influence the wider social science debate. The conclusions of this paper will draw together a number of key issues that have been highlighted so far and give a perspective on these which links values, knowledge and skills in ways which might usefully promote further debate and constructive resolution.     

The Compassion Strategy: Race and the Gender Gap in Campaign 2000

Recent studies have shown that social "compassion" issues, andnot those directly linked to women’s interests, seem todrive the gender gap in presidential vote choice. Some of thesecompassion issues are associated with the plight of racial minoritiesin the media and in the minds of average citizens. Drawing ontheories of gender role socialization, we predict that traditionalpartisan stands on racial issues may help to explain the gendergap. Specifically, we hypothesize that the gap emerges becausemen and women react differently to cues about how compassionatecandidates are toward vulnerable social groups. In one experiment,we manipulate news information regarding George W. Bush’scommitment to blacks versus women. The gender gap is maximizedwhen Bush takes the traditional Republican stance, while itis reduced significantly when Bush espouses a more moderateposition. The gender gap is unaffected by variation in the positionthat Bush takes on women’s issues. In another experiment,we also find that the gender gap emerges when traditional partisanappeals are racialized. Finally, exposure to the 2000 RepublicanNational Convention, with its message of racial inclusion, boostedevaluations of Bush among women but not men.     

The Kyana Corroboree: Cultural Production of Indigenous Ethnogenesis

This article analyzes the 1993 Kyana Corroboree of the Noongah Aborigines of Western Australia as a case study of the cultural production and cultural politics of ethnogenesis and indigeneity through public celebration. Kyana is a local example of how indigenous peoples globally experience "ethnic reorganization," an often inchoate, mutable process of social reproduction that encourages the survival of an ethnic group, albeit in an altered form. This article demonstrates how Noongah and Aboriginal ethnogenesis is composed of a mercurial mixture of conflict and concordance, especially in regard to aspirations toward some level of influence over the self-definition of Aboriginality and its symbolic representations.
The organization of contemporary ethnicity and the nature of current ethnic relations reflect contemporary adaptations and continually evolving identities and institutions.—Nagel and Snipp 1993, p. 225
Celebration is a "text," a vivid aesthetic creation that reflexively depicts, interprets and informs its social context. [Celebration] articulates and modifies power relations.—Manning 1983, p. 6     

IF LIONS COULD SPEAK:

Though they have not tended to be the focus of sociological attention in the past, interactions between humans and nonhuman animals are central to contemporary social life. This discussion presents the problems inherent in and the unique rewards offered by investigations of animal-human relationships. Of particular importance are the issues of whether one can and how one goes about assuming the perspective of alingual and/or nonhuman others. We also examine the inclination to intervene which arises when researchers gain intimate familiarity with animal perspectives in the typically unequal contexts in which they interact with humans. General issues of central sociological and social significance upon which the study of animal-human relationships can potentially shed light are identified.     

In Search of a Useable Past

The "voice of the people," the root meaning of public opinion,is an old idea. Early political thinkers struggled to definethe proper role of public opinion in government. The confluenceof developments in commercial opinion polling and social psychologicalstudies of attitudes in the 1930s gave the concept new meaning.An historical perspective is helpful in understanding how publicopinion research has progressed; it also allows us to identifyonce vital but now neglected issues. A concern with professionalstandards in opinion research links modern researchers withthe moral imperative contained in the earliest idea of publicopinion.     

"Sense" and "Intention" in Max Weber's Theory of Social Action

Ambiguities in Weber's theory of social action have been compounded in translation into English. American commentators have generally given a psychological twist to Weber's concepts of "intended sense" and "understanding," in terms of an "imputation of motive." Weber, on the other hand, distinguishes between the intended sense of an action and the actor's motivation. As a sociologist, he is interested, not in the imputation of motive to the individual actor, but in understanding social action in its "context of sense" in relation to "typical" or "cross-sectional" usages based on "consensus," that is, in its "cultural significance".     

Social assistance in Austria: regulating the poor as in-between

Not only the concept of social inclusion is widely recognized as an important basis today for making social policy, but it also provides a platform for the policing of the poor. Thinking uncritically about social inclusion prevents us from seeing how it operates to re-inscribe subordination even as we help the poor overcome their marginalization. With an awareness of the paradox of inclusion, it is possible to examine how welfare policy today operates to discipline the poor as people who must accept their plight at the bottom of the socioeconomic order. While formal policy may not make this paradox apparent, the disciplinary effects of an inclusionary social assistance policy are starkly visible when we examine its implementation, where we can see how the excluded become included in ways that perpetuate their subordination. Social assistance recipients obtain a benefit, but the way they are treated does not correspond with full social rights, which is reminiscent of Georg Simmel's discussion of the poor. As exemplified by research at one local social assistance office in Austria, welfare recipients are ultimately neither included nor excluded. Welfare, as administered today, upholds the system of social stratification by perpetuating an ‘in-between’ status for the claimants of social assistance benefits at the frontline.     

The Organizational Demography of Japanese Environmentalism*

Although a macro‐organizational perspective has become increasingly commonplace in social movement analyses, few studies examine the full spectrum of organizations in any single social movement industry (SMI). Utilizing a unique source of data on Japanese environmental movement organizations, we compare characteristics of groups focused primarily on environmental issues with those for whom environmental issues are part of a larger multi‐issue focus. We then profile across distinct, and theoretically important, organizational domains to assess how local, prefectural and national groups compare on a variety of organizational attributes, including: size, membership type, tactics and activities, and issues. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding both Japanese environmentalism and the structure of SMIs generally.