Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a “Sauce‐Scented Neighborhood”1

This article investigates the problem of ethnic boundary making in a changing context. Our case is Boston’s North End, a historically Italian neighborhood undergoing changes to its social and physical environment, making the ethnic definition of neighborhood identity and belonging more difficult though not less salient. Consequently, participants in the workings of the neighborhood—residents, business owners, politicians—face challenges of both boundary placement (who is Italian and who is not?), as well as cultural content (what does it mean to be “Italian”?). Rather than viewing Italian ethnicity as simply weakening over time, we argue that the North End shows ethnicity is in a stage of category divergence, where the still‐dominant ethnic identity is juxtaposed not against another ethnic out‐group, but at various times against boundaries of class and race, commercial and community values, even city political boundaries. Drawing on ethnographic research and in‐depth interviews, we describe three group identity frames that illustrate these processes and reveal how Italian ethnicity continues to animate discourse and action in the neighborhood.     

Economy “versus” Environment: The Influence of Economic Ideology and Political Identity on Perceived Threat of Eco‐Catastrophe

Using data from a national survey of American adults, we examine the relationships between economic, political, sociodemographic, and religious characteristics with perception of the potential for eco‐catastrophe. We employ the treadmill of production theory to frame our understanding of views about ecological concerns, arguing that the treadmill discourse associated with economic development is hegemonic and fundamentally shapes public views of eco‐catastrophe. In line with this approach, economic ideology is the strongest predictor of attitudes about eco‐catastrophe, and its influence is conditioned by political identity. There is also significant patterning in these perceptions based on gender, race, education, and religion, but the influence of social characteristics is primarily indirect—mediated by economic ideology and political identity. These results provide useful information for addressing environmental problems in public discourse and bridging policy divides.     

The Emergence of a Social Problem: Single‐Parent Families in U.S. Popular Magazines and Social Science Journals, 1900–1998*

Abundant research investigates the content of public discourse about social problems. Far less is known about the quantity of social problems discourse. This article employs original data to address this gap by examining the emergence of single‐parent families as a social problem within U.S. popular magazines and social science journals. I trace the growth of discourse about single‐parent families in magazines indexed by the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (N= 3050) and social science journals indexed by JSTOR (N= 1376) between 1900 and 1998 and explore factors associated with this growth. The results indicate that contemporary issues functioned as rival social problems and depressed single‐parent family discourse within magazines but not within journals. Increases in the prevalence of single‐parent families were associated with increases in related discourse in both arenas, but discourse increased earlier in journals. Growing popular concern about single‐parent family formation in the 1960s was associated with a reduction in the quantity of single‐parent family discourse within journals but not within magazines.     

Negotiating space with family and kin in identity construction: the narratives of British non‐heterosexual Muslims1

This paper highlights significant moments, strategies, and themes in British nonheterosexual Muslims’ management of familial and kin relations. Significant socio‐cultural and religious factors constitute the framework within which they negotiate such relations. These factors are: the strict religious censure of non‐heterosexuality (specifically homosexuality) based on various Islamic written sources, the pervasive cultural censure of homosexuality as a ‘western disease’, the expectation of marriage as a cultural and religious obligation, the respect for parents, and the maintenance of family honour (izzat) particularly in the close‐knit kinship network. These factors, which significantly inform the participants’ responses and experiences, also reflect the social position of this religious and ethnic minority in British society. Specifically, the participants highlighted the complexity of secrecy, silence and discretion in balancing individualism (ie expression of sexuality) and socio‐ religious obligations. In general, the data demonstrate the intricate inter‐relatedness of structure and agency, and the cultural embeddedness of the production and management of identity and social relations.     

“I Was Always This Way…”: Rhetorics of Continuity in Narratives of Conversion

This article is concerned with identifying, comparing, and accounting for the principal rhetorical conventions within Pagan practitioners’ narratives of conversion. Applying key insights from studies on narrative identity and drawing on 15 months of fieldwork and 25 in‐depth interviews with Pagan practitioners, I first outline formal similarities in the content of participants’ narratives, arguing that these narrative conventions together constitute an ideal typical conversion narrative: what I call the rhetoric of continuity. This narrative form depicts the process of conversion as a rediscovery or uncovering of a temporally continuous and essentialized Pagan self. I suggest that while all conversions involve both change and continuity, adherents of different faith traditions vary in the degree to which they stress self‐transformation and/or self‐continuity. I then argue that the rhetoric of continuity reflects and reinforces practitioners’: (1) perspective on the locus and nature of the authentic self; (2) claims to legitimacy and social acceptance; and (3) understanding of the nature of religious truth.     

Conceptualizing and understanding the Gülen movement

The Gülen movement (GM) is a controversial international Islamic movement originating in Turkey. Interestingly, the movement seems to be “in between” the standard conceptual categories used by social movement scholars: The GMs' focus on individual transformation and religious practices suggests that it is a religious movement; its extensive outreach into various institutions (i.e., education, health care, and media) suggests a social movement seeking legitimacy and broad social change; its purported infiltration of key government and military offices suggests a political movement. In this article, I demonstrate the utility of conceptualizing the GM as an everyday‐life‐based movement and of using a multi‐institutional politics model to examine this type of movement. By doing so, it becomes clear that sometimes, movements focusing on individual change may also be seeking to transform social, economic, and political institutions.     

Enclosure: Palestinian Landscape in a “Not‐Too‐Distant Mirror”

This article develops an explanation for the fractured and partitioned landscape in Palestine by comparing it to the early modern enclosures in England, and framing this comparison within a theory of “territoriality.” Territoriality is a practice of power and refers to the efforts of individuals or groups to reorganize the economic life, politics, and culture of a place by reshaping landscape. The argument is that the Palestinian landscape is part of a long‐standing narrative in which groups with power seek to transform the economy, demography, and culture of territorial space through the time‐honored territorial practice of enclosing land. Enclosure consists of two basic instruments: a legal element that redefines rights of property by reorganizing systems of use, access, and socio‐economic relations on the land; and architectural elements that reshape the landscape itself. English estate owners and Israeli Zionists are parallel actor groups using law and the built environment to remake life on the landscape. Mobilizing the institutional power of property law and the material power of the built environment, these groups reorder land ownership, use, and circulation on the landscape in an effort to consolidate systems of control over subalterns and reorganize socio‐economic life and demography in a place. By exploring the contours of this pattern, this article seeks to uncover a more general meaning in the enclosure landscape of Palestine today.     

The “Homeless Problem” and the Double Consciousness*

The purpose of this article was to identify manifestations of a social discourse that construct those who are homeless as an existential problem. Based on 4 years of ethnographic data and grounded theory analysis, we illustrate the nature of exclusionary social practices that emerge from discourse on the “homeless problem” as well as the conflicting identities experienced by those who are homeless. Herein we frame the data using DuBois concept of “double consciousness.” Our findings indicate that those who are homeless mix together discourses of value and legitimacy with self‐applied stigmas and self‐denigrating political perspectives in ways that directly mirror DuBois’ notion of the conflicting nature of African and American identities around the end of the nineteenth century. We illustrate identity problems that manifest in the contemporary conflict between being both “homeless” and “American.”     

LGBT Religious Activism: Predicting State Variations in the Number of Metropolitan Community Churches, 1974–2000

Armstrong and Bernstein (2008) critique the emphasis movement scholars place upon activism within the formal political sphere, proposing, instead, a multi‐institutional approach which argues that protest can occur within any social institution and that the desired outcomes of activism can include cultural outcomes. The goal of this article is to expand the range of social movement targets studied through an examination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism within the institution of religion. In the United States, religion, particularly Christianity, is used as the primary justification for defining same‐sex sexuality as undesirable and denying LGBT individuals full citizenship. The LGBT community challenges these traditional Christian definitions of same‐sex sexuality in numerous ways, including through the creation of LGBT‐affirming congregations. I examine the development and spread of congregations affiliated with the United Federation of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), an LGBT‐affirmative denomination, across all 50 states from 1974 to 2000. Drawing upon organizational ecology, resource mobilization, political opportunity, and theories of religious switching, I find that the distribution of UFMCC congregations challenges the usefulness of traditional explanations for activism.     

“You are your only limit”: Appropriations and valorizations of affect in university branding

This article considers the role of affect in university branding in a context of neoliberal higher education, by way of examining the semiotic landscape of the Singapore Management University concourse. Contemporary branding often involves stimulating stakeholder/audience investments of meaning and affect into the brand, thereby appropriating consumers’ affective labour for brand‐building and communications. Adopting a discourse‐analytic approach, I examine how linguistic, visual and spatial modalities are utilized to evoke and semiotize particular affective meanings and orientations in the emplaced discourse within the university's brand space. This discourse, which includes organizational branding discourse as well as more organic student‐generated texts, becomes part of the affective regime, helping to encourage and enjoin what is deemed to be normative affective sensibilities and practices in that context. Consequently, the article also considers the kinds of affective subjectivities that are valorized, and how stakeholder/student‐subjects are interpellated in a context of neoliberal‐oriented higher education.     

Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work”

Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary‐work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.     

“Just a Typical Teenager”: The Social Ecology of “Normal Adolescence”—Insights from Diabetes Care

In Western society “normal adolescence” is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of “normal adolescence” derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contradictions inherent in the social order at this stage of the life‐course. While helping us to comprehend sociologically the ecological niche in which “normal adolescence” is sustained, this analysis raises questions about the persistence of this discourse for social action.     

“You Know,Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant”: Religion and Transnational Migration

The purpose of this article is to summarize what we know about the role that religion plays in transnational migration and to outline a strategy for further research in this area. While migration scholars now generally acknowledge the salience of migrants' economic, social, and political transnational activities, we have largely overlooked the ways in which religious identities and practices also enable migrants to sustain memberships in multiple locations. My goals in this article are threefold. First, I provide a brief overview of related bodies of work on global, diasporic and immigrant religion and differentiate them from studies of migrants' transnational religious practices. Second, I selectively summarize what we have learned about the role of religion in transnational migration from prior research. Finally, I propose an approach to future research on these questions.¹     

“Get Therapy and Work on It”: Managing Dissent in an Intentional Community

Based on two years of fieldwork in an intentional community that was officially both egalitarian and therapeutic, we examine how community founders used a discourse of liberation psychotherapy to maintain power over newcomers. When newcomers expressed their desire for more financial accountability or for limiting the expression of anger, the founders managed such dissent by (1) reframing community problems as psychological issues, (2) discrediting critics as psychologically troubled, and (3) emotionally attacking recalcitrant newcomers. In contrast to those who argue that a discourse emphasizing emotions fosters equality within social movement and utopian communities, we show that it depends on how people use the discourse. Our study points to the importance of interaction for research on discourse as well as the importance of discourse for an interactionist approach to power.     

“Everything's There Except Money”: How Money Shapes Decisions to Marry Among Cohabitors

Cohabitation is now the modal path to marriage in the United States. Drawing on data from 115 in‐depth interviews with cohabitors from the working and lower middle classes, this paper explores how economics shape marital decision making. We find that cohabitors typically perceive financial issues as important for marriage, and we delineate several key themes. Whereas some social scientists speculate that cohabitors must think that marriage will change their lives in order to motivate marriage, our findings suggest that cohabitors believe marriage should occur once something has already changed—in this case, their financial status. Our results also imply that political and scientific discourse on financial problems as deterrents to marriage should be broadened beyond a focus on poor unmarried parents.     

Between “Here” and “There”: Immigrant Cross‐Border Activities and Loyalties

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the prevalence and determinants of cross‐state social exchanges and attachments among Latin American immigrants living in the United States. As we shall show, using data from a recent survey of Latin American migrants living in the United States, migrant cross‐state social action comes in a variety of types, with the direction of conditioning factors differing from one type to another. Moreover, social and political incorporation in the United States reduces affective ties and provision of material support, all the while facilitating other forms of cross‐state social action. Consequently, while international migrants regularly engage in trans‐state social action, the paper shows that neither transnationalism as condition of being, nor transmigrants, as distinctive class of people, is commonly found.     

Designating Dependency: The “Socially Inadequate” in the United States, 1910–1940

This article examines the use of “socially inadequate” as a label for the dependent poor in the United States, 1910–40. It analyses the dense meanings that were given to this term and the political significance that the label “socially inadequate” gained in relation to sterilization and immigration policy. The article explores the role played by eugenicist, Harry Laughlin, as a label maker for the term and a moral entrepreneur in relation to the problem of dependency. It argues that “socially inadequate” was a stigmatising designation for members of perceived deficient groups, whom were seen as falling below the normal or acceptable standards of society and were, as such, viewed as undeserving of the status of citizen. Finally, it contends that the negative moral and emotional judgments encoded into definitions of the “socially inadequate” can be situated within the history of the derogation of dependency, understood as economic reliance on the state or charity, in the United States.     

Remittances,Transnational Dahiras and Governance in Senegal

The potential role of transnational organisations in fostering effective governance goes unexplored despite the increasing positive role that these organisations are playing today. In Senegal, a whole range of non‐state actors have always played a substantial socio‐economic role, even before the rise of the post‐colonial state. The Murid brotherhood can be regarded as part of this category of customary non‐state actors. In the 1980s, young Murids started to organize themselves in what can be viewed as self‐help community‐based organisations whose functions included the provision of social safety nets to their adherents. By the late 1980s, the scope of these youth organisations, or dahiras, expanded beyond the national boundaries. Mention of these dahiras in the vast development literature has so far been confined to the socio‐economic importance of the money they remit. This paper offers to transcend this focus on financial remittances, to explore the potential political role of international dahiras in their home country. By playing the role of alternative providers of social services, dahiras have propelled themselves to a position of legitimate non‐state actors with political clout. Today, some of them are starting to hold government to account for their actions. Their political power is not only derived from their affiliation with customary centres of authority, but it is also the resultant of their increased financial autonomy. Because transnational dahira interventions in Senegal are mostly associated with the role of remittances, their relations with the state are analysed through the lens of revenue generation and other processes of state formation such as internal bargaining between the state and societal forces. The paper is an examination of the potential role of transnational dahiras in demands for responsive governance. Its analytical orientation is placed within the theoretical premises of the “drivers of change” approach, fiscal sociology of state making and governance.     

‘Blair's children’: young women as ‘aspirational subjects’ in the psychic landscape of class

This paper engages with the subjective experience of ‘doing’ aspiration, teasing out the psychic and social costs that accompany this as a classed process. It draws on a qualitative study of young women located in further education and contemplating their futures under New Labour, locating how the political rhetoric of aspiration gets institutionalized within school practices; how it intersects with maternal expectations and practices of involvement; and how these are lived and managed by subjects located in different positions in class‐inflected social space. In attending to the tangled web of institutional, intergenerational and affective practices which shape young women's aspirations, the paper seeks to interrupt the celebratory and simplistic rhetoric of aspiration that characterizes the contemporary socio‐political register of neoliberalism. As these ideals become further entrenched by the current Coalition government, there is an even greater urgency for such sociological enquiries.     

Invisible labor,invisible bodies: how the global political economy affects reproductive freedom in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have critically demonstrated the links between the global political economy, social reproduction and gender-based violence. This article builds on this scholarship by investigating restrictions to reproductive freedom and their connection to the depletion of women’s bodies in the global political economy. Specifically, I use the Depletion through Social Reproduction (DSR) framework to reveal how the work of social reproduction is harnessed to service economic activity at the cost of rights to bodily integrity with the aid of religious fundamentalist ideologies that (re)inscribe discourses of female altruism such as the “self-sacrificing mother” ideal. Drawing on the case of the Philippines, I argue that the control of women’s bodies is integral to the Philippines’ economic strategy of exporting care workers in a competitive global political economy. This strategy is abetted by local Catholic religious fundamentalists who challenge reproductive rights reform at various levels of policy-making and legitimize the lack of investment to sustain social reproduction in the household, community and country as a whole. This article suggests that the neoliberal global economy is increasingly reproduced through women’s labor at the cost of their bodily integrity and reproductive freedoms.