Natural relations: horses,knowledge, technology1

Maintaining the tensions and divisions between the human and non‐human, nature and culture has been a mainstay of Euro‐American thought. Drawing upon two studies of people's associations with horses, we examine how these divisions are being reworked in the social sciences as well in everyday life. We focus on how different ideas about ‘horses’, ‘horsemanship’ and how knowledge is acquired, accomplishes different social worlds. Specifically, what emerges in these differential discourses is that a paradox is put into play to make a distinction between traditional and contemporary ways of being in relation to nature and the animal; it is the paradox of what we want to refer to as ‘natural technologies’. We suggest that the paradox of ‘natural technologies’ is a proliferating feature of Euro‐American cultural life that troubles old divisions between nature and culture and propose that it indicates less about a politics of nature than a politics of culture. Specifically, we show that the preoccupation with bringing nature, and the non‐human, more into alignment with the human promotes ethics and equality as matters of lifestyle choice to the exclusion of very specific ideas about tradition, hierarchy, evolution and socialization.     

The temporal landscape of shoes: a life course perspective

This empirically grounded article draws on an ESRC‐funded project on footwear, identity and transition to offer new understandings of how a linear model of the life course may, in practice, be disrupted, subverted or reconfigured. Combining the insights of material culture and life course studies, it develops the notion of a temporal landscape of shoes within which their scope for interrupting life course temporalities can be explored. In particular, it identifies four temporal strategies made possible through the symbolic efficacy of footwear: the retrieval of an earlier identity through the purchase of styles previously worn; the deferral of later life by rejecting comfortable shoes that might symbolically reposition someone as ‘old’; the release of former age‐based identities and the embracing of freedom from a felt need to wear impractical or painful shoes; the appropriation or reconfiguring of the past as a contemporary resource through the wearing of vintage/hand‐me‐down shoes.     

Criminality and violence in intra‐ and extra‐familial child sex abusers in a 2‐year cohort of convicted perpetrators

Men convicted of sexual abuse against children are an important but understudied population. In this study, based upon lifetime police records, of the criminality of convicted child sex abusers, we undertake the first British comparative analysis of the criminality of intra‐ and extra‐familial abusers. In a cohort of 374 convicted male child sex abusers, 50% had convictions for ‘sex only’ crimes; 26% for ‘sex and other’ offences; and 24% for ‘sex, other and violent’ crimes. There were three ‘relationship‐to‐victim’ subgroups: ‘biological relatives’, consisting of fathers and other biological relatives (18%); ‘non‐biological relatives’ — cohabitees or stepfathers (10%); and 72% who were ‘extra‐familial’ offenders, having no family relationship to the child. This atypical pattern of abusers indicates a filtering process, in which intra‐familial abusers are less likely to be prosecuted than extra‐familial offenders. The main findings were: (i) biological relatives were more often ‘sex only’ offenders, but averaged more sexual offences than the other groups; (ii) non‐biological abusers has more ‘other’ criminal and convictions for violence, and were more similar to the extra‐familial offenders than biologically related abusers; (iii) extra‐familial abusers consisted of more ‘other’ criminal and violent offenders than the non‐biological abusers; (iv) non‐biological offenders, however, had a pattern of criminality more like the extra‐familial group than the other intra‐familial abusers. The violent men, often with long histories of both sexual and non‐sexual offending, pose particular problems for the criminal justice and child protection services. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pet grief: when is non‐human life grievable?

This study explores how pet owners grieve their pets and view their pets' transience. Drawing on Butler's notion of the differential allocation of grievability, I have analysed interviews with eighteen pet owners. Butler argues that grievability is made possible by a normative framework which allows for some human or human‐like lives to be grieved, while other lives are rendered ‘lose‐able’. All the interviewed pet owners say that they are capable of grieving a non‐human animal, but analysis suggests that they make their pets grievable and ungrievable by turns. I argue that by maintaining this ambivalence, the interviewees negotiate pets' inclusion in a human moral community while simultaneously defending human exceptionalism. The article concludes with a discussion of pet grief as a potentially destabilizing emotion. I suggest that grieving beings on the border between grievable human and lose‐able animal – ‘werewolves’ according to Giorgio Agamben – may be a powerful way of challenging normative frameworks which arbitrarily render some human and non‐human lives lose‐able.     

Bending Modernity: Chairs,Psychoanalysis and the Rest of Culture

Coming from the premise that in order to capture the social in action, we have to be able to re‐construct or re‐assemble reality through parallel histories, I propose to re‐examine the notion of modern subjective culture by focusing on a historically specific interaction of human and non‐human actors. The main vehicle of comparison utilized for this purpose is the cultural history of psychoanalysis and contemporary furniture design. Specifically, the bent‐wood furniture and its emblematic example, the Thonet chair, are used to recover a cultural history of design through bending. By cross‐referencing such design practice with the contemporaneous to it moment of psychoanalysis, I propose that the cultural logic of the fin de siècle, viewed through this particular configuration of the human and material cultures, rests on the practice of plasticity; a conditions which, since then, has become an indispensable component of modern individuality and its numerous identity “construction‐projects”.     

‘Life stage dissolution’ in Anglo‐American advertising and popular culture: Kidults,Lil’ Britneys and Middle Youths

The ‘long road to adulthood’ that supposedly now characterizes the period from the teens to the late twenties (for individuals in developed countries) has been the subject of much recent media and academic commentary. This paper adopts a sociological perspective to review and critique this commentary, and in particular the argument made by certain developmental psychologists that the period between adolescence and fully‐fledged adulthood is now distinct enough to constitute a new stage in the life cycle known as ‘emerging adulthood’. In contrast, it is argued that, rather than anything as significant as a new life stage, what is actually happening is the erosion of established ones. To illustrate this point, the article introduces the new theoretical concept of ‘life stage dissolution’ (and its attendant bi‐directional processes of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’) – a blurring (or more accurately merging) process that makes it increasingly difficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate themselves from the generation immediately ahead of them, and indeed vice versa. The paper argues that, whilst this process takes a number of cultural/psychosocial forms, it is at its most prominent in contemporary Anglo‐American advertising and marketing practices that actively seek to erode traditionally demarcated adult and childhood roles, differences, and oppositions as a new and distinct message within contemporary consumerism.     

Uneasy passages between neoliberalism and feminism: Social inclusion and financialization in Israel's empowerment microfinance

This article focuses on feminist non‐governmental organizations advocating for economic empowerment of women (EEW) through microfinance, using Israel as a case study. Through fieldwork, interviews and documents, we investigate the institutional practices, cultural discourses and struggles that EEWs develop in order to expose the particular ways in which feminist organizations interact with the world of finance and state institutions. Our analysis points to the complex power dynamics of mediation, suggesting that there are ‘uneasy passages' between neoliberalism and feminism, ones that help re‐signify the meaning of financial discourses while re‐politicizing women's social and economic exclusions. Simultaneously, however, this relation induces a series of compromises, whereby EEWs adopt neoliberal modes of governance. Rejecting the notion that contemporary feminism has simply been co‐opted by neoliberalism or the perception of EEW microfinance as a mere expansion of neoliberal rationalities, we reveal new sites and ways in which feminism both colludes and collides with neoliberalism.     

Revitalizing sociology: urban life and mental illness between history and the present

This paper proposes a re‐thinking of the relationship between sociology and the biological sciences. Tracing lines of connection between the history of sociology and the contemporary landscape of biology, the paper argues for a reconfiguration of this relationship beyond popular rhetorics of ‘biologization' or ‘medicalization'. At the heart of the paper is a claim that, today, there are some potent new frames for re‐imagining the traffic between sociological and biological research – even for ‘revitalizing’ the sociological enterprise as such. The paper threads this argument through one empirical case: the relationship between urban life and mental illness. In its first section, it shows how this relationship enlivened both early psychiatric epidemiology, and some forms of the new discipline of sociology; it then traces the historical division of these sciences, as the sociological investment in psychiatric questions waned, and ‘the social' become marginalized within an increasingly ‘biological' psychiatry. In its third section, however, the paper shows how this relationship has lately been revivified, but now by a nuanced epigenetic and neurobiological attention to the links between mental health and urban life. What role can sociology play here? In its final section, the paper shows how this older sociology, with its lively interest in the psychiatric and neurobiological vicissitudes of urban social life, can be our guide in helping to identify intersections between sociological and biological attention. With a new century now underway, the paper concludes by suggesting that the relationship between urban life and mental illness may prove a core testing‐ground for a ‘revitalized' sociology.     

Non-attendance for health care: When rational beliefs collide

Some patients choose not to attend for health care despite health concerns or an opportunity for improved health. Social norms that privilege professional expertise, and good health, deem this choice irrational. However, this paper explores how a particular version of rational choice theory suggests ‘positive choices’ for such non‐attendance. These are cognitive and subjectively rational decisions, which are made freely with potentially positive consequences and are not social problems if respect for personal autonomy trumps obligations to others. Specifically, Boudon's ‘cognitivist theory of action’ is used to conceptualise non‐attendance as both a rational and irrational choice, from different perspectives. Because the perspective of non‐attendees has been marginalised, the paper also suggests a typology of instrumental and non‐instrumental ‘strong reasons’ for rational non‐attendance. This may help groups such as professionals to understand and accept that non‐attendance can be subjectively rational, without relinquishing their own perspective that it is irrational. Acceptance of the defensibility, if not the rightness, of the perspective of non‐attendees is needed to show respect for non‐attendees' moral agency and to begin to repair relationships with these individuals, who may seek help from health professionals in the future.     

Unity and fragmentation of the habitus

This paper examines a unitary notion of the habitus present in Bourdieu's early works and its transformation along his sociological career, to later conceptions of a fragmented habitus concept to examine contemporary relationality and social change. The career of the concept of habitus in Bourdieu shows that interplays of habitus and fields are seen to demand increasing labour of integration from individuals as social life becomes more differentiated. The paper claims the need for sociology to engage with field analyses to advance explorations of the habitus and to acknowledge the potential pliability of the concept. It is suggested that sociology may adopt the psychoanalytic notion of ‘standing in spaces’ (and associated notions of ‘liminality’ and experiences in interstitial positons) for a productive development of the notion of fragmented habitus, and to enhance proposals that view the social with a history that is made available to humans to change.     

The ‘animal‐advocacy agenda’: exploring sociology for non‐human animals

This paper focuses on sociology and the study of human non‐human animal relations. Using as a catalyst referees' comments on a previous paper about experiments using non‐human animal subjects, in this present paper three problematics are identified and discussed. These problematics centre on the ‘acceptable’ content of sociological inquiry, the ‘permissibility’ of advocacy‐oriented sociology, and the ‘admissibility’ of non‐human animal‐advocacy to advocacy‐oriented sociology. The three problematics are explored through the lens of reflexive and critical sociology. Two central questions are raised: first, should sociology include the study of non‐human animals and secondly, can sociology advocate for non‐human animals? The paper concludes with an affirmative response to both of these questions. The paper ends by stressing that sociology has so much to offer the study of human non‐human animal relations. Professional sociologists have a key role to play in enabling this work to move from margins to centre in published sociology.     

LGBTQ Activist Organizations as ‘Respectably Queer’ in India: Contesting a Western View

This study contests the distinction of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) organizations suggested by earlier scholars as ‘respectable’ — i.e. normalizing, professionalizing and conforming to the dominant cultural and institutional patterns — and ‘queer’, meaning challenging the cultural and institutional forces that ‘normalize and commodify differences’. Using Bernstein's model of identity deployment, it is found problematic to distinguish LGBTQ organizations this way because when the actions of LGBTQ organizations are more complex to describe, it is not warranted to conflate identity goals with identity strategies — whether normalizing (respectable) or differentiating (queer). To examine these concerns, a qualitative inquiry was used to study five LGBTQ organizations in India where the intersections of post‐colonial ethnicity, gender, social class and sexuality offer an intriguing context through which to study queer activism. Based on the findings, it is argued from a post‐colonial perspective that when the socio‐cultural and historical existence of non‐homonormative queer communities and practices is strong, LGBTQ organizations challenge the heteronormative and/or other forms of domination to become ‘queer’. But they may simultaneously become ‘respectable′ by conforming to the diversity politics of non‐profit business, donors, and social movement organizations they seek support from, and turn out as ‘respectably queer’.     

Social exclusion,mobility and access1

Much of the literature on social exclusion ignores its ‘spatial’ or ‘mobility’ related aspects. This paper seeks to rectify this by examining the mobile processes and infrastructures of travel and transport that engender and reinforce social exclusion in contemporary societies. To the extent to which this issue is addressed, it is mainly organized around the notion of ‘access’ to activities, values and goods. This paper examines this discourse in some detail. It is argued that there are many dimensions of such access, that improving access is a complex matter because of the range of human activities that might need to be ‘accessed’, that in order to know what is to be accessed the changing nature of travel and communications requires examination, and that some dimensions of access are only revealed through changes in the infrastructure that ‘uncover’ previously hidden social exclusions. Claims about access and socio‐spatial exclusion routinely make assumptions about what it is to participate effectively in society. We turn this question around, also asking how mobilities of different forms constitute societal values and sets of relations, participation in which may become important for social inclusion. This paper draws upon an extensive range of library, desk and field research to deal with crucial issues relating to the nature of a fair, just and mobile society.     

On the relevance and accountability of dialect: Conversation analysis and dialect contact

The present study seeks to illustrate how the theory and method of conversation analysis (CA) can be used to begin to unpack the notion of ‘contact’ in contact linguistics research. After reviewing language and dialect contact as they are traditionally conceptualized, we describe an additional set of questions inspired by CA's fundamental concern with relevance and accountability. It is argued that, by analyzing the structure and design of turn‐by‐turn talk in situations of dialect contact, we are able to investigate how co‐participants themselves go about carving out the boundaries of their respective dialects, how they can link those dialects to social identities, and how those social identities can become ‘procedurally consequential’ for the design of subsequent talk between the interlocutors. It is ultimately hypothesized that relevance and accountability at the micro‐interactional level may provide new insight into the moment‐by‐moment mechanisms that bring about the comparatively more macro‐level outcomes of dialect contact (e.g. leveling, koineization, etc.) that have been previously identified in contact linguistics research.     

Disability and democracy in Cambodia: an integrative approach to community building and civic engagement

The political framework through which the various communities of disabled persons in Cambodia advocate for and claim their rights is complex and confusing. Both governmental and non‐governmental actors engage this political framework through the mobilization of persons from the various disabled communities, competing in the civic sphere through issue‐oriented advocacy in ways that seek to influence the process of democratic governance. While the status of disabled rights in Cambodia is still comparatively weak, it is argued here that this civic engagement has allowed disabled communities to find common cause with non‐disabled persons and groups in the project of deepening the roots of democracy in Cambodia. This article discusses the demographic composition of disability, the framework of political action that addresses disability issues and the practice of civic engagement and activism by disabled and non‐disabled communities in Cambodia.     

(Visual) Disability – from exclusive perspectives to inclusive differences

By introducing the concept ‘inclusive differences’ of disability this paper suggests that disability is the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non‐human configurations fabricated within the conduct of everyday life. Inclusive differences question the attempt given by exclusive perspectives that try to divide analytically, conceptually or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio‐cultural attributed disability. Applying the concept of inclusive differences, neither the domain of ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self‐explanatory force. Rather, inclusive differences highlight the connection between human and non‐human relations that make up the different enabling and/or disabling scenarios of societal realities. Drawing on the practices of blind people in a visual culture this paper discusses related specificities of inclusive differences.     

Imagination laboratory: making sense of bio‐objects in contemporary genetic art

Public engagement in biotechnology has declined as cloning, genetic engineering and regenerative medicine have become socially and culturally normalized. Zooming in on existing bio‐technological debates, this article turns to contemporary genetic art as sites for ethical reflections. Art can be viewed as an ‘imagination laboratory’, a space through which un‐framing and rupturing of contemporary rationalities are facilitated, and, in addition, enabling sense‐making and offering fantastic connections otherwise not articulated. In this article, the framework of ‘bio‐objectification’ is enriched with Bennett's (2001) notion of enchantment and the importance of wonder and openness to the unusual, in order to highlight alternative matters of concern than articulated through conventional politico‐moral discourse. Drawing on a cultural sociological analysis of Eduardo Kac's Edunia, Lucy Glendinning's Feather Child, Patricia Piccinini's Still Life with Stem Cells and Heather Dewey‐Hagborg's Stranger Visions, we discuss how the intermingling of art, science, critics, art historians, science fiction, internet, and physical space, produce a variety of attachments that this article will unpack. The article demonstrates that while some modern boundaries and rationalities are highlighted and challenged through the ‘imagination laboratory’ of the art process, others are left untouched.     

Knowing cows: Transformative mobilizations of human and non‐human bodies in an emotionography of the slaughterhouse

This ‘emotionography’ of the slaughterhouse elucidates how the identities of both human and non‐human individuals are constructed by line and lairage workers. Hegemonic masculine ideals that underpin slaughterhouse work mean that the emotions of workers as well as the emotional experience of cattle are either denied, diminished or repressed. Based on fieldwork in an Irish slaughterhouse, I articulate how the industrial slaughter of animals entangles human and non‐human life in metamorphic processes that seek to diminish the emotionality of individuals, maintaining the boundary between human/non‐human animals. These transformations simultaneously pacify the emotional toll of killing non‐human individuals and reinforce perceptions of cows as sellable, killable and edible in the commodification of bovine bodies. Amidst the relative absence of emotions in slaughterhouse ethnographies, this article reveals how emotions emerge, erupt and confound the act of slaughtering cattle for slaughterhouse workers unsettling categorizations of masculinity and ‘animals as food’.     

Official policies and informal transversal networks: Creating ‘pan‐European identifications’ through sport?

The idea that sport has been drawn into helping build a collective identity around the nation‐state, particularly in the immediate ‘era of independence’ after 1945, is well documented. However, it is only recently that sport has been linked to notions of moulding what we term here as ‘pan‐European identifications’. It is our argument that there are two distinctive forms to such identification. The first posits a tangible notion of identity based around territories such as nation‐states. Sport assists in this process through ‘official’ policies, such as declarations, reports and statements by the European Commission and other pan‐European institutions. The second form recognizes that increasing transversal interactions weakens ideas of territorialized identity, resulting in a looser ‘sense of belonging’. Sport helps craft identifications here in an informal manner through pan‐European sporting competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League and 2004 European football championships. This article is structured to look at both forms of this sport/identification interface whilst also considering the complex nature of sport and identity by explaining how sport can simultaneously erode such identifications.     

Managing cohesion in transnational organizations: an introduction

Aesthetic approaches seek to enrich knowledge about the ‘sensible’ aspects of experience. The ‘aesthetic dimension’ of shipboard organizational life is evoked and co‐created through multiple aesthetic categories such as the agogic, the sacred, and the sublime rendered through multiple sensory experiences of life aboard. A researcher and sailor‐informant co‐authored aesthetic reading contributes to a growing niche of aesthetic‐based research within organization studies. Our article explores collaboration as an important element of the aesthetic project. Possibilities for future aesthetic inquiries are also considered.