Emotion Language and Social Power: Homosexuality and Narratives of Pain in Church

This paper examines the narratives of pain in two religious groups to explore how the everyday concept of emotional pain can work to obscure differences between opposing sides. It shows how these narratives can effectively help to reproduce social hierarchies, even as actors seek to challenge them. Specifically, by examining church debates about homosexuality, it shows how putatively heterosexual actors on both sides use languages of pain to justify welcoming gays into the church, albeit on very different terms, while creating particular feeling rules for gay men and lesbians (Hochschild 1979, 1983). By comparing these two sides we see how narratives of pain (and the shared assumptions behind them) effectively help to reproduce the sexual hierarchy some members seek to subvert.     

Self and other: The importance of social interaction and social relationships in shaping the experience of early-stage Alzheimer's disease

Various factors influence how individuals experience illness. Especially important, however, is the reaction of others whose response shapes the meaning of the illness for the person who is ill, and the impact it will have on her or his sense of self. Adopting a symbolic interactionist perspective, and drawing on data obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with nine individuals living with early-stage Alzheimer's disease, this paper examines how others’ reactions to and treatment of persons living with the condition can influence how they experience dementia. The findings reveal that the majority of the participants did not believe others’ treatment of them had substantially changed, nor did most express the level of concern about the possible negative response of others reported in other studies. Within their relationships and social interactions participants received the essential support, cooperation, and encouragement that enabled them to create meaning in life and sustain identity.     

Elders and the Courts

Abstract

This article examines how trial courts should address complex issues of an aging society. More older people, living longer, will enter courthouses with underlying problems that will impede effective access and court processes and will require judges to enhance linkages with community health, mental health, and social services providers. The article analyzes how court systems perceive these issues and explores how they have begun to address them. It concludes with an argument in support of innovative new approaches to assist courts in responding to emerging issues of older adults.     

The terrors of night and the arrows of day. Social workers' processes in the aftermath of murder

This paper provides extended extracts from interviews conducted with three social workers interviewed for a study enquiring into social workers' experiences of stress. For the purposes of this study, experienced practitioners were asked to recall a time that stood out for them in their minds as causing them stress. They were asked to describe the experience, to say how it had affected them, how they responded to it and what they had found helpful and unhelpful when attempting to deal with the experience. The three participants quoted in the paper all talked of their involvement with service users who had killed others. They describe personal and organisational responses to the murders and tell of internal processes and responses from others that were found to be helpful and unhelpful. The 'haunting' quality of such experiences is apparent throughout accounts, as is the relevance of psychodynamic theory and concepts. The importance of creating and using a therapeutic space in which it is possible to have ideas about how such stress can be thought about is emphasised.     

Armed robbery and the meanings of money

In this study, we investigate the meanings active armed robbers give to money before, during, and after their crimes and how these meanings shape their offending. We do so by examining interviews undertaken from 1994 to 1995 with robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Prior to their robberies, the interviewees' desperation leads them to define money as essential to survival. Immediately following robberies and in looking back on them, they come to view this essential money in other ways as well—as too time-consuming to get, as “easy,” or as guilt-free. These meanings facilitate the contradictory way robbers see money as “fast” after offences. We discuss how these shifting meanings of money shape and are shaped by robbers' structural positions, cultural outlooks, and social relations. In doing so, we also help to explain how the shifting meanings of money play into criminogenic cycles of predatory offending.     

Representing representations: the ethics of filming at Ground Zero

In this paper I analyse the ethical challenges that informed the production and filming of my documentary September Signs and Symbols. The film focuses on the material objects that commemorate the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and how this memorabilia circulates in New York City. The film explores how these objects have come to be complex signifiers containing within them the possibility for a range of meanings for people who create them, sell them, collect them, and use them and this paper reflects on the complex ethics of filming at Ground Zero – a highly charged political and cultural site. I analyse the ethics of representing a hyper‐represented space, the necessity for self‐reflexivity in the process of demystifying signifiers that have had meaning appended to them and my own complicity in the dialectic of production and consumption that informs any engagement with the objectified discourse of September 11th.     

How scientists and engineers use cultural resources to make controversies and selves meaningful

In this essay, I provide an overview of recent sociological studies of science, technology, religion, and spirituality; the ways they contribute to sociological theorizing; and make some recommendations for future research. There are two major themes in these studies. One of them analyzes religious and spiritual discourse as controversy practice, suggesting how religion and spirituality are used as cultural discourses to understand controversy, who the actors are or should be, how to act in a controversy, and how popular discourses inform, and are informed by, science and technology discourses. This theme contributes to theorizing by describing how forms of cultural talk organize understandings of controversies, interactions, and action. The second theme explores scientific and religious identities, and how they are made compatible with each other. This theme points sociological theory toward considering science and religion relations as intertextual relations.     

Web power: a survey of practitioners’ World Wide Web use and their perceptions of its effects on their decision-making power

A national e-mail survey investigated how 432 public relations practitioners perceive their World Wide Web use impacts their decision-making power in their organizations. Practitioners’ web use appears to be positively related to three of Finkelstein's [Finkelstein, S. (1992). Power in top management teams: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of Management Journal, 35(3), 505–538] conceptualizations of power derived from “upper echelons” theory from the strategic management literature—structural, expert and prestige power. “Super users” who use the web more frequently for productivity and efficiency, for research and evaluation, and for issues communication are most likely to perceive the web empowered them to be promoted (structural power). Practitioners who use the web more frequently for productivity and efficiency as well as for issues communication are more likely to perceive the web empowers them as experts in their organizations (expert power) and enhances how others see them (prestige power). Practitioner-owners perceive that greater web use leads to greater expert power than did non-owners.     

William Wilberforce and Thomas Chalmers

Abstract

Wilberforce describes how sinners' faith in Jesus Christ enabled them to problem-solve, perform religious activities with Him redeeming them from sin. In turn, Chalmers developed Wilberforce's ideas into a complex evangelical Christian framework and charitable method encouraging all persons to redeem themselves by developing faith in Jesus Christ's expiation of their sins encouraging their performance of righteous activities or doing righteous activities endowing them with the Holy Spirit's grace and faith in Christ. Chalmers charitable method employed collocative processes of sequential problem-solving and caring activities between benefactors and recipients developing Christian and caring institutions, families and persons into harmonious communities. Loch and Richmond developed Chalmers charitable method into socially oriented charitable and social work methods. doi:10.1300/J377v26n02_04     

Living on the Edge: Institutional Supports and Perceptions of Economic Insecurity Among People with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions

The growth of precarious employment coupled with declining social safety nets has increased economic insecurity among many households, leaving them without key resources to weather financial hardships like those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been especially true for people whose disabilities, health statuses, and already precarious economic situations have made them extra vulnerable. We combine survey (N = 1,027) and interview (N = 50) data for Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions to explore how mobilizing four types of institutional supports connected to labor markets, financial markets, family, and government influenced perceptions of current and future insecurity during crisis. Because employment income was only available to about half of our respondents, many relied on a combination of savings, family supports, and government programs to make up the difference. This paper demonstrates how marginalized groups make use of different supports within liberal welfare states during times of crisis.     

Parental Expertise,Trustworthiness, and Accessibility: Parent‐Adolescent Communication and Adolescent Risk Behavior

A communication framework of persuasion and attitude change was utilized to analyze parent‐adolescent communication about adolescent risk behavior. Three parent dimensions were deemed important: (a) perceived expertise, (b) perceived trustworthiness, and (c) perceived accessibility. Data were collected in surveys from 668 mother‐adolescent dyads in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in New York City (N= 668). Results showed weak correspondence between how expert, trustworthy, and accessible mothers thought they were on the one hand and how their sons and daughters characterized them on the other. All dimensions were related to how often adolescents said they talked with their mothers about a risk behavior, which, in turn, was predictive of lower levels of adolescent risk behavior. Implications for future research are discussed.     

The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention

Social media is emerging as critical element of scanning for many crisis risks. When these crisis risks emerge online, people often confuse them with crises and that is why we have developed the term paracrisis. Para can mean “like” something. A paracrisis is like a crisis. It can “look like” a crisis and does require action from the organization. However, a paracrisis does not warrant convening the crisis team and operating in a crisis mode. This paper details the value of paracrises, how to evaluate their threat potential, and ways to respond to them and how to evaluate those responses.     

Gender, aging, poverty and health: Survival strategies of older men and women in Nairobi slums

This paper is based on data from focus group discussions and in-depth individual interviews carried out in two slum areas, Korogocho and Viwandani in Nairobi, Kenya. It discusses how the division between domestic sphere and public sphere impacts on survival during, and adaptation to old age. Although this paper adopts some of the tenets of the life course approach, it posits that women's participation in the domestic sphere may sometimes give them a ‘gender advantage’ over men in terms of health and adaptation to old age. The paper also discusses the impact of gender roles on the cultivation of social networks and how these networks in turn impact on health and social adjustment as people grow older. It investigates how older people are adjusting and coping with the new challenges they face as a result of high morbidity and mortality among adults in the reproductive age groups.     

Being,feeling and acting: A qualitative study of Swedish home-help care recipients' understandings of dependence and independence

This article contributes to the debate on dependence and independence through a study of how a group of 29 cognitively healthy Swedish home-help care recipients between the ages of 77 and 93 perceive their situation. Two overall themes with regards to how the constructs of dependence and independence are understood were found. One of them concerns how being in need of help can be justified (i.e. the why of receiving help) and the other how the very situation of being in need of help and care can be regarded (i.e. the how of receiving help). The study reveals a clear distinction between receiving help and care and feeling dependent, as well as between receiving help and care and being able to remain an active agent. On the basis of these findings we argue for the fruitfulness of distinguishing between ‘being’, ‘feeling’ and ‘acting’ as aspects of dependence and independence.     

Unpacking “the pimp case”: Aging black masculinity and grandchild placement in the child welfare system

The child welfare system is responsible for identifying long-term caregivers for children whose biological parents are unable or unwilling to care for them. Although grandparents are increasingly identified as custodians for their grandchildren, little is known about how grandparents are assessed by state actors. Using ethnographic data, this article unpacks the failure of one 63-year-old African American grandfather and his wife to gain custody of his grandson from foster care. This case–known informally as ‘the pimp case’ because of the unverified but widely accepted belief that he had earned income through sexual solicitation–illustrates how men's aging bodies and histories undermine their efforts to be seen as competent caregivers. This article shows how this grandfather's aging body and its perceived limitations became problematic, how his illegitimate social history was at issue, how their family form as grandparents (and thus, non-parents) was deemed illegitimate, and how these came together to mark race, class, and gender in interrelated–but also contradictory–ways.     

Twenty Years and Counting: Thoughts about Measuring the Upper Tail

This article first describes the main developments in measuring the upper tail of the income and wealth distributions over the last twenty years. Second, it points out some of the key methodological challenges and how better data could address them. Third, it discusses the academic and policy impacts of upper tail measurement.

     

Incomplete Role Exit and the Alimony Reform Movement

This analysis explores men's role exit process from being married to divorced in the context of the alimony reform movement in the United States. Those considering potential role exit may face governmental policies that either support or oppose them in making these personal changes. In this case, mostly men want to leave their husband roles behind but legally imposed alimony, in their view, unfairly binds them to their former spouses. This analysis uses 182 narratives to map out how major collective action frames—based upon the highly valued, masculine concept of autonomy—are generated in this social movement. Overall, this research demonstrates the importance of both considering the operation of governmental policies in producing successful or incomplete role exit for individuals, and how these same individuals can respond using collective action frames drawn from privileged notions of masculinity as they aim for significant life change.     

Linking power and inequality in global value chains

There is increasing interest in the study of globalization on whether the emergence and consolidation of global value chains (GVCs) have exacerbated inequalities within and across nations and/or how GVCs may be leveraged to mitigate them. Although power asymmetries have been identified as a central factor shaping (un)successful GVC participation, dominant discourses still disregard the links between power and inequality or use these concepts interchangeably. In this article, we provide an analytical approach to GVC-related inequalities (within, along and through value chains) and examine how they may co-evolve with different types of power (bargaining, demonstrative, institutional and constitutive). We apply this approach to the case study of the hake value chain in South Africa to illustrate how existing inequalities are manifested, challenged, mitigated or exacerbated—and draw an agenda for future research.