The event of death: Reflections on the dynamics of emotions and embodied resistance in the Moroccan Contexts of hirak (movement) and la hirak ((non)movement)

This paper studies the role of emotions in creating spectacular revolt situations. We underline the travelling competence of sentiments and their power in crafting trans-local moments of embodied resistance. In contemporary Moroccan society, the adaptation of the Bouazizian style of protest has been a reaction to the prevailing feelings of worthlessness gripping the common citizen. The images of wasted beings in the post-2011 atmosphere have been associated with instances of social insurgence, by individuals who attempt self-immolation, or citizens treated by figures from the centre (e.g. police, public figures) in a way that inculcate in them powerful feelings of abjection, after which they feel irreparably delinked from their sense of humanity. This paper seeks to demonstrate how practices of al-hogra (humiliation) have produced cultural forms of abjection that could also be traced in the way common people inferiorize one another in everyday life through the use of a terminology of trash. By disclosing people’s non-subtle armaments of protest (i.e. self-immolation), we contend that resistance and its various trances, as well as the emotions that prompt them, have their origin in the reality of the body, realistic visions of the body owner and his/her awareness of the potential for realization (through it). Hence we will examine how vulnerable people manipulate the three conditions of corporeality, corporealism and corporealization, to subvert the humiliation and symptoms of social death imposed on them by the regime.     

Social dynamics of the multicultural classroom

Instruction and learning are socially determined activities, where social forces such as classroom atmosphere, social feelings, cultural sentiments, prejudice and stereotyping, interpersonal relations and expectations, as well as the reflection of social reality in subject matter all have a significant influence on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. The effective "multicultural" teacher has to be concerned about each individual student, and also be sensitive to the group and cultural affiliations of each of his or her students. Intercultural relations in the classroom may be a source of knowledge and mutual enrichment between culturally diverse learners if managed proactively by teachers. Frustration, misapprehensions and intercultural conflict are a more likely outcome if teachers do not deal with diversity in a sensitive manner.     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.     

How Sentiments Organize Social Action

Sociological studies of affect and associated processes have a long tradition in the discipline, originating with Durkheim's interest in religious belief and practice. Contemporary interest in the area has focused on several distinct instances in which affective evaluations are learned, are expressed toward others, organize behavior in social situations, and change. Attitudes, emotions , feelings, moods, and sentiments are distinguished from one another and studied as distinct factors in the organization of social action. Affective information is socialized in families and reinforced in social institutions as the actor matures. Interaction with others and the exchange of social rewards leads to patterns of social organization in proximal and distal groups as actors identify others who share similar patterns of orientation to social objects. Status structures in groups are reflected in patterns of sentiment distribution. Similarly, sentiment and emotion structures impact status behavior in groups. Technological developments have advanced measurement of emotional reactions, expression of sentiments toward social objects, and identification of social structures in social media. Theoretical developments in the study of sentiment and emotion are highlighted in the essay.     

Charitable giving and lay morality: understanding sympathy,moral evaluations and social positions

This paper examines how charitable giving offers an example of lay morality, reflecting people's capacity for fellow‐feeling, moral sentiments, personal reflexivity, ethical dispositions, moral norms and moral discourses. Lay morality refers to how people should treat others and be treated by them, matters that are important for their subjective and objective well‐being. It is a first person evaluative relation to the world (about things that matter to people). While the paper is sympathetic to the ‘moral boundaries’ approach, which seeks to address the neglect of moral evaluations in sociology, it reveals this approach to have some shortcomings. The paper argues that although morality is always mediated by cultural discourses and shaped by structural factors, it also has a universalizing character because people have fellow‐feelings, shared human conditions, and have reason to value.     

Chippewa Spearfishing,Lake Property Owner/Anglers,and Tourism—A Case Study of Environmental Social Conflict

This article explores ethnic relations surrounding an environmental issue by focusing on Chippewa spearfishing in northern Wisconsin and its impact on local lake property owner/anglers, merchants, fishing guides, and Department of Natural Resources representatives. Tourism has suffered since court rulings have legalized off-reservation spearfishing. These court rulings recognize Chippewa treaty rights going back to 1837. The walleye, a prized fish in this region, has become increasingly scarce and is the focus in this environmentally based social conflict. Using a social constructionist perspective and interviews with 55 persons involved in this controversy, the main features of the conflict are isolated and interpreted, and suggestions are offered for its amelioration. The various stakeholders involved in the dispute have framed the decline in walleye catch in different ways and have made claims that each of their views is valid. For the Chippewa, walleye depletion is an angler problem, and their spearing is claimed to be a sacred entitlement; for the non-Native people, spearfishing is claimed to be an unfair Chippewa privilege that contributes to the decline in walleye catch. These divergent sentiments and interests are shown to be mired in cultural misunderstandings, physical separation between the Chippewa and the non-Native people, and a history of poor social relations.     

Place Effects on Environmental Views

How people respond to questions involving the environment depends partly on individual characteristics. Characteristics such as age, gender, education, and ideology constitute the well‐studied “social bases of environmental concern,” which have been explained in terms of cohort effects or of cognitive and cultural factors related to social position. It seems likely that people's environmental views depend not only on personal characteristics but also on their social and physical environments. This hypothesis has been more difficult to test, however. Using data from surveys in 19 rural U.S. counties, we apply mixed‐effects modeling to investigate simple place effects with respect to locally focused environmental views. We find evidence for two kinds of place effects. Net of individual characteristics, specific place characteristics have the expected effect on related environmental views. Local changes are related to attitudes about regulation and growth. For example, respondents more often perceive rapid development as a problem, and favor environmental rules that restrict development, in rural counties with growing populations. Moreover, they favor conserving resources for the future rather than using them now to create jobs in counties that have low unemployment. After we controlled for county growth, unemployment and jobs in resource‐based industries, and individual social‐position and ideological factors, there remains significant place‐to‐place variation in mean levels of environmental concern. Even with both kinds of place effects in the models, the individual‐level predictors of environmental concern follow patterns expected from previous research. Concern increases with education among Democrats, whereas among Republicans, the relationship is attenuated or reversed. The interaction marks reframing of environmental questions as political wedge issues, through nominally scientific counterarguments aimed at educated, ideologically receptive audiences.     

Youth on the margins in Northern Ireland,England, and Ukraine

This paper deals with the experience of the two authors working in a number of different settings. Both have been for many years practitioners using the Social Action model, Jennie in England and Eamonn in Northern Ireland. Together we have also been providing training for youth social workers in Ukraine, on issues of Social Action and empowering practice. What we attempt to do in this paper is first consider some of the issues and debates around the concept of marginalization. Then, referring to Northern Ireland, England, and Ukraine, we will provide some perspectives on the situation of young people, with examples of the mechanics of marginalization and blocks to the inclusion of young people in their societies. We hope to show that marginalization is a topical concept in all three places and that it has elements that transcend cultural and national boundaries, despite the social circumstances in Belfast, Derby, and Ukraine being very different. However, there are also aspects of the marginalization of young people that are different. Next, we will go on to describe the Social Action approach and to give some examples of how we have attempted to put the philosophy and approach into practice in three different countries and in the settings of research, practice, and training. To do this we will draw on our experience and work with young people in England and Northern Ireland and with youth social workers in Ukraine.     

How social ties transcend class boundaries? Network variability as tool for exploring occupational homophily

The research on social network analysis established the existence of class homophily, the tendency that personal networks are homogeneous in the class sense, as one of the governing patterns. This is explained via two main mechanisms: choice homophily and induced homophily. But the literature focused less on the question how can class boundaries be transgressed and what are the channels of class heterophily. This paper explores class heterophily on Croatian data acquired through position generator, which measures social capital (resources captured in social relations) by exploring the range of different occupational positions which are accessible to an individual (extensity index). Network variability is thereby taken as proxy for class composition of personal networks. The paper concludes that that political participation and sociability enable cross-class ties, since this offers an opportunity to meet and befriend people from all walks of life; and that people on the middle of the social hierarchy have the most diverse social networks. The hypotheses that social mobility can represent a vehicle for class heterophily; and that class heterophily is more pronounced in smaller settlements, where society networks show more overlap between social circles; were confirmed only partially, and require further investigation. These findings concern class boundaries related to the notion of choice homophily. As for induced homophily, the paper concludes that here too the boundaries are not watertight, as cultural omnivores have a wider range of class contacts.     

Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency

Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, we explore the beauty work practices that people perform. We begin with an examination of the cultural context in which beauty work occurs, including the individual, social, and institutional rewards accompanying physical attractiveness, and then review the practices themselves. Because these rewards and practices contribute in part to the reproduction of social relations and norms, we then turn to the gender dimensions of beauty work, along with its unique racial embodiment. Throughout, we raise the issue of individual agency in beauty work. Finally, we conclude with suggestions for future research.     

The ambivalence of ordinary cosmopolitanism: Investigating the limits of cosmopolitan openness

Despite diverse understandings of cosmopolitanism, most authors agree that cosmopolitans espouse a broadly defined disposition of ‘openness’ toward others, people, things and experiences whose origin is non‐local. It is argued that such an attitude is expressed by an emotional and ethical commitment towards universalism, selflessness, worldliness and communitarianism, and that such values should be identifiable in the practices, attitudes and identifications of individuals. By using data generated through qualitative focus group research, this paper extends the development of Lamont and Aksartova's (2002 ) category of ‘ordinary cosmopolitanism’. The participants in this study saw themselves as beneficiaries of an increasingly interconnected world, and they generally expressed cosmopolitan sentiments by referring to easily accepted opportunities associated with globalisation (eg. travel, cuisine, music) rather than the more difficult aspects of openness such as showing hospitality to strangers, or accepting human interest ahead of perceived national interests. Their positive views were counterbalanced, however, by sentiments of ‘dilution of national culture’ and ‘culture loss’. We argue that cosmopolitanism is a set of structurally grounded, discursive resources available to social actors which is variably deployed to deal with issues like cultural diversity, the global, and otherness. Ironically these discourses, which are the basis of the everyday accounts we describe, mirror academic debates on globalisation, suggesting the immersion of theorists in these discursive webs of meaning that structure responses to things global.     

A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

Explaining the Role of Culture and Traditions in Functioning of Civil Society Organizations in Kazakhstan

Recent studies find that Western-style professional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries are weak and unsustainable. Most of these NGOs developed strong dependency on foreign donors for funds, and did not develop local network of support. This study is conducted to understand the lack of effectiveness of NGOs in Kazakhstan and to test popular sentiments toward NGOs. The interview with local and foreign social science experts and public figures confirm that NGOs in Kazakhstan are weak and unsustainable. The explanations of institutional ineffectiveness lay in disconnect with local traditions, low visibility of NGOs, and unsupportive government. Survey of general population suggests that people in Kazakhstan know very little about NGOs and do not appreciate their utility. We explain the inability of civil society organizations to reach out to local people by cultural mismatch. By using the Hofstede national culture model (Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1984), we argue that local culture is in striking dissonance with the culture of donor countries, which created the NGO agenda in Kazakhstan.     

Race,solidarity and dissent in the Trayvon Martin case: a critical analysis

Discourse surrounding the Trayvon Martin case spilled over to social media platforms with heated visual and textual exchanges. While supporters for Mr. Martin cried racial profiling, arguing for civil rights violation, others averred that Mr. Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon was justified because he shot him in self-defence. Many people have shared similar sentiments across the United States. Social curation site Pinterest displays thousands of images reflecting some of the national feelings on the State of Florida v. George Zimmerman. Using Lisa Nakamura’s Race in Cyberspace theoretical framework, and drawing in part from semiotics, the present study critically examines some of the images of race, solidarity and dissent on Pinterest. Two themes emerged, performing white privilege and presenting a counter-discourse.     

Mitchell's Relational Conflict Model: An Analysis of Its Usefulness in Clinical Social Work

This article examines the relational conflict model developed by Stephen A. Mitchell. The main concepts of Mitchell's relational conflict model are discussed, particularly early patterns of connection to parental figures and the interactive treatment approach to understanding and changing those relational patterns. The model is contrasted with classical drive and developmental arrest theories in the psychodynamic treatment of psychopathology. We explain how Mitchell's model, in keeping with a social work perspective, takes into consideration the social, cultural, and environmental factors as well as the intrapsychic. We discuss how patterns of relating are reworked throughout the life course, and we explore the potential for individual agency in constructing new patterns of relating. We also highlight the social constructivist aspects of Mitchell's approach which are congruent with current contemporary trends in social work theory. A case vignette is presented to illustrate the viability of this model for clinical social work practice.     

Social capital and aspirations for educational attainment: a cross-national comparison of Australia and Germany

With the emergence of ‘knowledge economies’ across the industrialised world, transitions from school to work have generally become more complex and uncertain. Nonetheless, such developments vary between countries, as young people form aspirations which align with their individual preferences, academic abilities and the economic, cultural and social capital to which they have access. Previous research emphasises the positive influence social capital received from parents and school networks has on young people's developing aspirations. Meanwhile, the social capital young people generate for themselves through ‘out-of-school’ activities is often construed as either irrelevant or problematic. In this paper, we examine the relationship between this latter dimension of social capital and the educational aspirations of young people in Australia (aged 14/15; n = 3586) and Germany (aged 14/15; n = 2517). Both countries have distinct institutional settings with varied school-to-work transition regimes. Our results show that youth-derived social capital, generated through participation in out-of school extra-curricular activities, mediates the association between parental background and educational aspirations in both countries. We suggest that, by exposing young people to broader sets of values, skills and resources not accessible within the family and the school context, such involvement may be important for promoting educational aspirations and attainment.     

SOCIAL CLASS SENTIMENTS IN FORMATION: Influence of Class Socialization, College Socialization, and Class Aspirations

What explains social class sentiments among public university students? This empirical study uses a distributional model to define social class, which places students and their families with comparable resources over time into similar class locations. We survey a sample of students enrolled in four different schools at a large public midwestern university. The research finds that examining experiences with past, present, and anticipated or aspired future class locations is necessary for understanding the attitudes and beliefs associated with class that are held by young adults. We contend that future research designed to validly measure class consciousness or class sentiments must recognize that for some segments of the general population, class sentiments are not fixed, but are in a process of formation.     

Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration

Recent years have seen a flowering of research and scholarship on cultural memory across the humanities and social sciences. Among the many facets of this work is a quest to extend and deepen understanding of how personal memory operates in the cultural sphere: its distinguishing features; how, where and when it is produced; how people make use of it in their daily lives; how personal or individual memory connects with shared, public forms of memory; and ultimately, how memory figures in, and even shapes, the social body and social worlds. Personal and family photographs figure importantly in cultural memory, and memory work with photographs offers a particularly productive route to understanding the social and cultural aspects of memory. Beginning with a study of one photograph, this article develops and interrogates a set of interlocking memory work methods for investigating the forms and everyday uses of ‘ordinary photography’ and how these figure in the production of memory.     

网络论争中的青年社会情绪及价值取向解读——以“上海地铁二运事件”为例

2012年,上海地铁第二运营有限公司发布的一条官方微博引发了广泛的网络论战。围绕"骚"与"扰"的问题,在政务微博的权威性与通俗性如何权衡、网络时代的社会公共服务管理应如何作为、权利的边界与自由的限度该如何界定、个性张扬与自由标榜中是否也存在着对他人人格与尊严的无视与冒犯、公序良俗与法律对社会秩序的维护起着怎样的作用等问题上所形成的话语盛宴,为我们提供了一个解读当下青年的社会情绪及价值取向的生动范本。     

Long-term care planning as a cultural system

This paper treats long-term care planning from a cultural perspective, that is, as a cultural system in which components of long-term care interlock culturally and therefore meaningfully. In the introduction and background sections, we provide a context in which long-term care planning may be viewed, based on the finding that relatively few people take advantage of long-term care planning and insurance; we also discuss some earlier work on long-term care from a psychological perspective that emphasizes themes of imagination and self-efficacy. We then examine long-term care from a cultural perspective by identifying and explicating five broad themes that help us better understand the meaning of long-term care planning to Americans. Finally, we use these themes to suggest some important social policy correlates.