The eye of the storm: visual perception and the weather

Much has been written on how we see landscape; virtually nothing on the relation between visual perception and the weather. This essay is an attempt to take the study of vision out of doors. I argue that weather enters visual awareness not as a scenic panorama but as an experience of light. Rather than placing sight and light on opposite sides of a boundary between the mind and the physical world, I follow Merleau‐Ponty in claiming that light is fundamentally an experience of being in the world that is ontologically prior to the sight of things. Though we do not see light, we do see in light. Drawing on James Gibson's tripartite division of the inhabited world into medium, substances and surfaces, I link the relation between landscape and weather to that between surfaces and medium. Since weather, as a phenomenon of the medium, is an experience of light, to see in the light is to see in the weather. In the canons of western thought, however, the surfaces of the landscape are identified with the limits of materiality. This, in turn, renders immaterial the medium through which persons and organisms move in perception and action. Thus while the landscape appears to be real, the weather can only be imagined. Overturning this ontology, I show that in the perception of the weather‐world, earth and sky are not opposed as real to immaterial, but inextricably linked within one indivisible field.     

Social constructivism and the process‐content distinction as viewed by Vygotsky and the pragmatists

In a recent article in this journal, Stetsenko and Arievitch compared and contrasted 3 versions of social constructivism, all of which successfully deal with one vexing epistemological problem, the separation of mind and world. However, solutions offered by the first 2 approaches are problematic, according to the authors, because of the way they treat the subject‐object issue. On this score, Gal'perin's (1989) brand of post‐Vygotskianism is preferred because it manages to retain the individual while externalizing the mind. As I point out in this article, all 3 approaches fail when it comes to solving a third, equally intractable problem—the process versus content dualism. In the last part of the article, I present a promising solution to all 3 problems first proposed by Peirce and Dewey and later embraced by Lev Vygotsky in the last years of his life.     

Mind Matters

The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind‐versus‐matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full‐bodied understanding of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and human biology and culture. I begin by first delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirce's alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as transaction, then consider the self‐transcending nature of the human body‐mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpectedly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting‐gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged.     

Understanding the position of end nodes in the world city network: using peer city analysis to differentiate between non‐hub cities

In the current debate on the world city network and inter‐city connectivity, a large number of cities, particularly in developing countries, have received limited attention. Despite a growing interest in emerging market cities, many scholars still focus on the more affluent parts of the global economy. In an attempt to redress this imbalance, I present an assessment for use on cities that are not at the centre of the network; but what we consider ‘end nodes’. I build my argument on Taylor's interlocking model for assessing city connectivity and zoom in on the types of networks that non‐hub cities create through their inter‐linkages with so‐called peer cities in the same economic sector. I take these ego networks as a starting point and then lead the argument on to view city networks from a non‐hub perspective. This allows me to identify the existing linkages between different peer cities within as well as between selected city networks. The renewable energy business in India puts this argument to an empirical test. My findings confirm that this way of looking at city connectivity allows one to assess specifically for city end nodes and thereby contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the world city network.     

In the Face of Conflict: Work‐Life Conflict and Desired Work Hour Adjustments

This study helps integrate the work‐life and work hours literatures by examining competing predictions about the relationship between work‐life conflict and the desire for paid work. Using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N =2,178), I find that work‐life conflict makes women want to decrease the number of hours they work whether the conflict originates at home or at work. Men only want to decrease their hours when work‐life conflict originates at work, and some men facing frequent conflict actually want to increase their hours. I also find that having children does not increase the likelihood of wanting to work fewer hours but having a higher income does.     

Early Manifestations of Children’s Theory of Mind: The Roles of Maternal Mind‐Mindedness and Infant Security of Attachment

This study investigated two aspects of mother–child relationships—mothers’ mind‐mindedness and infant attachment security—in relation to two early aspects of children’s theory of mind development (ToM). Sixty‐one mother–child dyads (36 girls) participated in testing phases at 12 (T1), 15 (T2), and 26 months of age (T3), allowing for assessment of maternal mind‐mindedness (T1), infant attachment (T2), and child ToM understanding (T3). Results indicated that children’s understanding of discrepant desires and visual perspectives was positively related to their mothers’ earlier use of appropriate mind‐related comments in certain contexts. Furthermore, more securely attached boys, but not girls, performed better on a task requiring comprehension of their mothers’ visual perspective. Hence, the links previously found between competent parenting and older children’s ToM performance appear to extend, to a certain degree, to toddlers’ first manifestations of ToM understanding.     

‘Scarier than another storm’: values at risk in the mapping and insuring of US floodplains

How do people respond to the ways in which insurance mediates environmental risks? Socio‐cultural risk research has characterized and analyzed the experiential dimension of risk, but has yet to focus on insurance, which is a key institution shaping how people understand and relate to risk. Insurance not only assesses and communicates risk; it also economizes it, making the problem on the ground not just one of risk, but also of value. This article addresses these issues with an investigation of the social life of the flood insurance rate map, the central technology of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), as it grafts a new landscape of ‘value at risk’ onto the physical and social world of New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Like other risk technologies, ubiquitous in modern societies as decision‐making and planning tools, the map disseminates information about value and risk in order to tame uncertainty and enable prudent action oriented toward the future. However, drawing together interview, ethnographic, and documentary data, I find that for its users on the ground, the map does not simply measure ‘value at risk’ in ways that produce clear strategies for protecting property values from flooding. Instead, it puts values‐beyond simply the financial worth of places‐at risk, as well as implicates past, present, and future risks beyond simply flooding. By informing and enlarging the stakes of what needs protecting, and from what, I argue that plural and interacting ‘values at risk’ shape how people live with and respond to environmental risks that are mediated by insurance technologies.     

On the conditions of authority in academic publics

The discourse of some of the most powerful public figures in today’s world is often incoherent and nonsensical. Incoherent yet authoritative discourse shows that authority does not rest in language but results from non‐linguistic and pre‐textual conditions. The non‐linguistic and pre‐textual conditions are exemplified in an Australian case‐study of a media debate between the Immigration Minister and a refugee, drawing on research by Smith‐Khan (2019a, 2019b). Two such conditions are then examined with reference to academic publics. First, I ask which languages do or do not carry authority, before moving on to speaker identity as a condition of authority. The close association between English and academic excellence has resulted in diminishing the authority of academic publications in languages other than English. The same is true of publications by women and people of colour. I close by reflecting on referencing practices as forms of extending authoritativeness to voices in excluded languages and from excluded scholars in academic publics.     

The Demand for Healthy Eating: Supporting a Transformative Food “Movement”

To the extent that social science scholarship engages real‐world developments it remains grounded and better able to resist elite agendas. With this in mind this article argues for the critical encounter with what I argue is the most significant struggle around food and agriculture today—the amorphous and broad‐based movement that strives to resist the further degradation of food environments and ensure healthy eating in society. This struggle is inevitably engaged with contemporary neoliberal agendas that have transformed and degraded food environments as they have privileged profit making over healthy diets. The article considers different sites where the struggle over healthy eating is taking place, both at the level of the state and more extensively in civil society. It considers the debate over bovine growth hormone in Canada and the wider efforts to turn around school food environments as examples of state‐centered and civil‐society struggles, respectively, that illustrate different dimensions of the healthy‐eating movement today. In each case the agendas of transnational food corporations are seen to be directly contradicting efforts to ensure healthy diets. The article considers some notable successes among advocates of healthy eating, in the United States and Canada and most notably in Britain, and examines some of the factors that may account for this success. Overall, I argue that this struggle has the potential to challenge the hegemony of neoliberal discourse in fundamental ways. The article concludes with a call for academics, and rural sociologists in particular, to give a much greater priority to healthy‐eating struggles, and considers a number of areas where academic practitioners can aid activists' efforts to resist the further degradation of diets and establish healthier food environments.     

The Dodo Manifesto

In this article I review the psychotherapy outcomes literature as it pertains to the Dodo hypothesis. This is the proposition that the effects of psychotherapy are due to common factors rather than specific techniques. A variety of sources provide substantial empirical support for the Dodo hypothesis. I conclude that CBT and medication do not appear to be any better than other methodologies for the treatment of psychological distress. I look at some of the criticisms of the Dodo hypothesis. I suggest that the major themes that emerge from the literature as it stands are conclusions that would be immediately obvious to most clinicians. Further, the utility of specific techniques has not been ruled out, due to some serious conceptual flaws in efficacy trials. I suggest that there are a number of ways for family therapists to survive in an evidence‐based world. One is to point out to champions of evidence‐based practice just how flimsy their claims are. Another would be to advocate for pluralism and to practise and conduct research under the aegis of a contextual philosophy.     

Refracted Knowledge: Viewing Families Through the Prism of Social Science

I reinforce a vision for family science in which we routinely step back from our research to consider the fit of the empirical world with the reality of everyday life. This vision suggests that we pursue the methodological advances of the past decade but remain mindful of the limitations of the scientific approach. Such mindfulness will help us attend to both similarity and variability in families and in family‐life experience. A responsible social science also requires that we attend to rhetoric or how we communicate. I reflect on the practice of humility as a way to achieve these goals.     

A Long Loop: Transmigration of Korean Women in Japan

Focusing on new women immigrants/migrants from Korea to Japan in recent years, this article explores the form of transmigratory practice of U‐turnees, who have past experiences of having lived in Japan or been born there prior to the end of Japan's colonial rule in 1945 and returned to Japan around the year 1989 when the South Korean government lifted the restriction of overseas travel for its citizens. I suggest through mini life histories of five women that their lives can best be understood in terms of ongoing engagement with more than one nation‐state as home. On this basis, I argue that what might look like a chaotic swirl of new immigrants/migrants is in fact not based on the discovery of a brave new world, but firmly based on family history and configurated by state‐to‐state relations.     

At the Intersection of Urban Sociology and Criminology: Fear Of Crime and the Postindustrial City

This essay examines the intersections between urban sociology and criminology in relation to fear of crime. I argue that there is a disconnect between theory and practice when it comes to reducing fear of crime that needs to be resolved in order for the postindustrial city to attract the new middle‐class demographic that is known for embracing and seeking out diversity. Despite the contributions made by environmental criminologists and new urbanists, the most popular explanation of fear of crime and crime reduction, offered by the field of criminology, focuses on reducing quality‐of‐life offenses and incivilities. Yet, these strategies are not known to significantly reduce fear of crime, but rather for purging the urban landscape of its diversity through exclusion.     

Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox

Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature of the desire for self‐creation. Locating life coaching in the larger identity‐fashioning market, this article illustrates how the artificial nature of outsourced social relations reconciles two apparently contradictory desires: the “need for help” and “wanting to find it on my own.” Three mechanisms are involved: creating an independent social space where identities can be crafted away from significant others; deliberately deemphasizing the coach and intentionally underwriting personal authorship; and encouraging clients to root identities in the social world while promoting an instrumental view of sociality. The article discusses the blurring of boundaries between intimate social relations and utilitarian market logic, and the implications of the ongoing outsourcing of identity support that reinforces the privileged ideal of self‐made identities.     

Body Representation in the First Year of Life

Like faces, bodies are significant sources of social information. However, research suggests that infants do not develop body representation (i.e., knowledge about typical human bodies) until the second year of life, although they are sensitive to facial information much earlier. Yet, previous research only examined whether infants are sensitive to the typical arrangement of body parts. We examined whether younger infants have body knowledge of a different kind, namely the relative size of body parts. Five‐ and 9‐month‐old infants were tested for their preference between a normal versus a proportionally distorted body. Nine‐month‐olds exhibited a preference for the normal body when images were presented upright but not when they were inverted. Five‐month‐olds failed to exhibit a preference in either condition. These results indicate that infants have knowledge about human bodies by the second half of the first year of life. Moreover, given that better performance on upright than on inverted stimuli has been tied to expertise, the fact that older infants exhibited an inversion effect with body images indicates that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops by 9 months of age.     

Immigrant Incorporation in Western Democracies1

How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to prove both futile and misleading, I propose a radically dis‐aggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains — state, market, welfare, and culture. Because some but not all of the regulatory institutions in these domains were created with immigrant incorporation in mind, national incorporation frameworks are not fully cohesive, are constantly changing, and at best can be described as belonging to a handful of loosely connected syndromes.     

Desire,death and wonder: Reading Simone de Beauvoir's narratives of travel

Abstract

This article draws upon the work of contemporary French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray in developing a post‐structuralist analysis of travel within the autobiographies of the second wave feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Travel and the experience of wonder at the otherness of the world figure as important self shaping experiences within the four volumes of Beauvoir's life narrative (1958, 1960, 1963, 1972). Travel has a metonymic relation to the passage of Beauvoir's life, in which the existential extremes of anguish and ecstasy are played out in a (feminine) quest for self knowledge. Through a close reading of Beauvoir's writing I analyse the different formations of desire that structure the experience of wonder in relation to the otherness of the world and death. I also draw upon debates within feminist philosophy about the nature of subjectivity and knowledge that were, in Beauvoir's time, ordered around an Hegelian opposition between immanence and transcendence. I take up Irigaray's notion of the sensible transcendental to explore another way of conceptualising the feminine subject's desire to know and value the world differently.     

Coming of age

Those of us who study aging have the unique opportunity to live their subject matter. Whether we learn any personal lessons is a matter of our own reflectivity, but personal experience can make us far better scholars than can scholarship alone. As one ponders the life course, it is clear that a number of institutional influences, temporal patterning, and unexpected intervening variables are involved in the unfolding of one's life. Life-long institutional memberships furnish social capital that helps establish parameters for our personal experience, for how we view our personal trajectories and for our ability to cope with the aging process itself. But how to come to terms with unexpected occurrences that alter the anticipated futures we had in mind? Do our scholarly efforts and our experience come together in ways that enrich one or the other? These are the questions I explore in this personal essay.