Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Interdisciplinary agendas in visual research: re-situating visual anthropology

In this article I review recent literature on visual research methods in the social sciences to explore two questions. First, I examine how recent interdisciplinary exchanges have portrayed the founding disciplines in visual research and representation through a focus on visual anthropology (and to a lesser degree visual sociology). Second, I critically survey the common aims and interests of academics promoting visual methods from/for their disciplines. As we delve into the “new” visual research literature, it becomes clear that contemporary visual researchers from different disciplines have common interests: reflexivity; collaboration; ethics; and the relationship between the content, social context and materiality of images. I shall argue for a more collaborative interdisciplinary approach to visual research whereby disciplines might learn from each other without seeking narrative foils to assert the supremacy of their own discipline at the expense of others.     

Sources,Characteristics and Effects of Mass Media Communication on Science: A Review of the Literature,Current Trends and Areas for Future Research

A significant amount of science coverage can be found nowadays in the mass media and is the main source of information about science for many. Accordingly, the relation between science and the media has been intensively analyzed within the social scientific community. It is difficult to keep track of this research, however, as a flurry of studies has been published on the issue. This article provides such an overview. First, it lays out the main theoretical models of science communication, that is, the ‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘mediatization’ model. Second, it describes existing empirical research. In this section, it demonstrates how science’s agenda‐building has improved, how science journalists working routines are described, how different scientific disciplines are presented in the mass media and what effects these media representations (might) have on the audience. Third, the article points out future fields of research.     

Touch and look: The role of affective touch in promoting infants' attention towards complex visual scenes

In a complex social environment, stimuli from different sensory modalities need to be integrated to decode communicative meanings. From very early in life, infants have to combine a multitude of sensory features with social and affective attributes. Of all senses, touch constitutes a privileged channel to carry affective-motivational meanings and foster social connection. In the present study, we investigate whether sharing sensory stimulation that varies for its affective value differentially affects infants' attention towards visual stimuli. 6 to 11-month-old infants (N = 42) were familiarized with two characters respectively matched with tactile (affective or non-affective) and auditory stimulation; then repeatedly exposed to scenes where the two characters moved towards target objects. Our results showed a main effect of stimulation (sound vs. touch) on looking times during familiarization, with longer looking times when sound is provided. During scenes presentation, a main effect of the type of touch (affective vs. non affective) emerged, with longer looking times in infants that previously experienced affective touch, suggesting that this sensory experience may critically engage the self and modulate infant attention. Overall, these findings suggest that while sound acts as attention getter, affective touch supports sustained attention towards complex visual scenes beyond the stimulation period itself.     

The long southern African past: enfolded time and the challenges of archive

The long southern African past before the advent of European colonialism remains neglected despite powerful post-apartheid impulses of various kinds for its recovery and celebration. In the last twenty years or so, outside of the specialist discipline of archaeology, there has been relatively little research undertaken to support those impulses. In this paper I offer my understanding of some of the things that have given distinctive shape to this field, attempt to account for its stalled aspect, identify the key challenges as I see them, and indicate some of the directions of new research currently being inaugurated. Amongst other things, I offer critiques of the prevailing periodisation, the entrenched and limiting effects of persistent thinking in terms of ethnicity, as well as of the portmanteau notion of oral traditions which operates in this field and its consignment out of the realm of political discourse. I make an argument for urgently needed intellectual histories of how this area of history became the preserve of certain disciplines and not others, and of how concepts migrated across these disciplines to become entrenched as the foundational elements in the history of the region. I go on to deal with the making and reshaping of the available archive for these periods and the methodological implications of how that making and reshaping is understood.     

Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime,sex, and rights

This article draws upon recent works in sociology, jurisprudence, and feminist theory in order to assess the ways in which feminism, and sex and gender more generally, have become intricately interwoven with punitive agendas in contemporary US politics. Melding existing theoretical discussions of penal trends with insights drawn from my own ethnographic research on the contemporary anti-trafficking movement in the United States—the most recent domain of feminist activism in which a crime frame has prevailed against competing models of social justice—I elaborate upon the ways that neoliberalism and the politics of sex and gender have intertwined to produce a carceral turn in feminist advocacy movements previously organized around struggles for economic justice and liberation. Taking the anti-trafficking movement as a case study, I further demonstrate how human rights discourse has become a key vehicle both for the transnationalization of carceral politics and for the reincorporation of these policies into the domestic terrain in a benevolent, feminist guise. I conclude by urging greater and more nuanced attention to the operations of gender and sexual politics within mainstream analyses of contemporary modes of punishment, as well as a careful consideration of the neoliberal carceral state within feminist discussions of gender, sexuality, and the law.     

The politics of erased migrations: Expanding a relational,intersectional sociology of Latinx gender and migration

Sociologists of gender and Latina/o migration and Chicana feminist scholars in Chicana/o Studies have made extensive interventions in the academic project of recovering the experiences of women in migration studies across disciplines. I consider these contributions and advocate for an interdisciplinary research agenda that continues expanding relational scholarship by developing the concept of the politics of erased migrations, an analytical tool to theorize why and how the embodied experiences of Latinas are marginalized and misrepresented in academic research. Latinas experience various physical and symbolic migrations—across and within national borders, social and political contexts, identities, academic disciplines, methodologies, and social movements. Yet Latina feminist experiences, knowledge, and political movement largely remain at the margins of these borders. Through a review of prominent research on gender and migration centered on heteronormativity, reproduction, and the nation‐state, I demonstrate the possibilities of the politics of erased migration as a theoretical intervention in expanding a relational, intersectional sociology of Latinx gender and migration. This paper carries implications for shifting the field of Latinx gender and migration from a focus on current oppressive conditions to one that also imagines new avenues for social justice and alternative social worlds.     

The social practice of sustainable agriculture under audit discipline: Initial insights from the ARGOS project in New Zealand

One of the most interesting recent developments in global agri-food systems has been the rapid emergence and elaboration of market audit systems claiming environmental qualities or sustainability. In New Zealand, as a strongly export-oriented, high-value food producer, these environmental market audit systems have emerged as an important pathway for producers to potentially move towards more sustainable production. There have, however, been only sporadic and fractured attempts to study the emerging social practice of sustainable agriculture - particularly in terms of the emergence of new audit disciplines in farming. The ARGOS project in New Zealand was established in 2003 as a longitudinal matched panel study of over 100 farms and orchards using different market audit systems (e.g., organic, integrated or GLOBALG.A.P.). This article reports on the results of social research into the social practice of sustainable agriculture in farm households within the ARGOS projects between 2003 and 2009. Results drawn from multiple social research instruments deployed over six years provide an unparalleled level of empirical data on the social practice of sustainable agriculture under audit disciplines. Using 12 criteria identified in prior literature as contributing a significant social dynamic around sustainable agriculture practices in other contexts, the analysis demonstrated that 9 of these 12 dimensions did demonstrate differences in social practices emerging between (or co-constituting) organic, integrated, or conventional audit disciplines. These differences clustered into three main areas: 1) social and learning/knowledge networks and expertise, 2) key elements of farmer subjectivity - particularly in relation to subjective positioning towards the environment and nature, and 3) the role and importance of environmental dynamics within farm management practices and systems. The findings of the project provide a strong challenge to some older framings of the social practice of sustainable agriculture: particularly those that rely on paradigm-driven evaluation of social motivations, strong determinism of sustainable practice driven by coherent farmer identity, or deploying overly categorical interpretations of what it means to be ’organic’ or ’conventional’. The complex patterning of the ARGOS data can only be understood if the social practice of organic, integrated or (even more loosely) conventional production is understood as being co-produced by four dynamics: subjectivity/identity, audit disciplines, industry cultures/structure and time. This reframing of how we might research the social practice of sustainable agriculture opens up important new opportunities for understanding the emergence and impact of new audit disciplines in agriculture.     

Translations in social work

This article is concerned with the relation between classical texts within social work and the interpretation of these classics in contemporary literature. It aims to explore how classical texts influence and work in our perception of, and writing about, our history, but also how they influence our perception of social work today. A study is made of Mary Richmond’s classic text Social diagnosis [1917. Social diagnosis. New York, NY: The Russell Sage Foundation] and later interpretations of her text in secondary literature. Through this analysis, a grand narrative within the effective history of social work: social work as a ‘borrowing field’ is questioned. Using translation theory as an alternative to the borrowing metaphor, I analyze the transference of ideas and concepts from other disciplines into social work and how these processes have been perceived. The dynamic processes of translation places social work within an interdisciplinary field, where ideas and concepts are continually exchanged between disciplines. It is the thesis of this article that research into authorities within the discipline and early contributions to the development of social work strengthen the discipline’s insight into past and current theoretical contributions within the discipline itself and the knowledge base of social work.     

Media and Disasters: Demarcating an Emerging and Interdisciplinary Area of Research

This article provides an overview of the research and literature on media and disasters. Drawing on the central idea of a disaster as a social and media construction, I identify this young and rapidly emerging body of research as an inherent interdisciplinary area that has attracted the interest of many disciplines within social sciences. A first section of the article focuses on a characterization of (mediated) disasters and the question of academic relevance. Second, I adopt a historical perspective to reflect on issues of disciplinary concern, followed by an outline of the contemporary body of literature. In the final section, directions to advance future research on media and disasters are discussed.     

How biology became social,and what it means for social theory

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life‐sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo‐Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social‐science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty‐first social theory.     

The managed heart revisited: health and social control1

In this paper I investigate emotional labour in the field of nursing. I show how new ideologies of health promotion have become attached to the prior agenda and already-embedded relationships which structure health provision. Beginning with an outline of health promotion principles and policies the paper goes on to trace how the radical dimensions of health promotion philosophies are subverted in practice by discussing data from a research project into nursing roles in health promotion. I present the data to show how nursing's focus on relationships and relationship skills create divisions of knowledge and information between ‘expert’ discourses located in the institutions of health provision and the everyday agenda of the populations using their services. In the final section of the paper I argue that a focus on the deployment of emotion work in specific social and institutional contexts provides a perspective on emotions as resources that are consciously drawn upon by actors in order to achieve socio-cultural and wider political ends.     

Chinese youth performing identities and navigating belonging online

This paper examines the experiences of belonging of young Chinese internet users through an analysis of their online identity practices. Drawing on a qualitative research project about online citizenship practices of 31 young Chinese citizens from mainland China, I explore their experiences of belonging on two online platforms (Weibo and WeChat) and the identities formed and sustained through these experiences. The results show that young people experience different senses of belonging in different social media spaces. Their strategies in navigating these experiences are informed by (a) their perceptions of online spaces as private or public, and (b) using online identity performance as a supplement to or escape from identities in physical life. I argue that young Chinese internet users experience different senses of belonging by flexibly appropriating the affordances of social media platforms for communication and networking; these senses of belonging play a key role in forming and sustaining their identities, and are crucial for their wellbeing.     

The social power of algorithms

ABSTRACT

This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up.     

THE HYBRID CRITICISM OF PATRIARCHY: Rereading Kate Millett's Sexual Politics

While much might be said about the exclusion of feminist texts from the canon of sociological classics, I instead want to offer a rereading of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics to show how the development of feminist theory has depended on rereading disciplinary canons, thereby re-opening the borders between the disciplines, especially the border between literary criticism and social science. At a time when sociologists are participating in or at least attending to the debates over the relationship of fantasy and reality, fiction and history, polemic and academic discourse, rereading Sexual Politics offers an understanding of how these debates have arisen in relationship to feminist theory's ongoing challenge to the canonical distinction of social science from literary criticism. Thus, rather than press for the canonization of Sexual Politics as a sociological classic, I want to suggest that feminist theorizing needs to sustain itself as a social criticism that includes a transdisciplinary criticism of canonicity.     

Migration and the senses

Recent scholarship in the sociological subfields of culture and immigration offers several promising directions for studying how people experience the world in embodied ways and move through and across boundaries. Yet, the lack of overlap between fields has left numerous theoretical angles unexplored. In this review, I consider the limited existing scholarship at the intersection of migration and the senses. I discuss literature on the role of sensation during three critical moments of migration: movement, encounter, and return. These moments highlight the sensorially dislocating nature of travel, the felt politics of inclusion and exclusion, and the transporting power of embodied memories. These works dive deep into the everyday realities of bodies on the move that public and academic discourse has previously ignored. I conclude by briefly outlining exciting new directions to expand work connecting migration and the senses and suggest that we begin to explore globalized migrant sensibilities.     

The Effect of Social Work Education and Self-Esteem on Students' Social Discrimination of People with Disabilities

Social work education on disability content has become more important due to political changes in the last two decades. The United States protected people with disabilities from discrimination in community and employment settings with the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These changes have empowered people with disabilities to become more independent; however, social workers primarily fulfill roles as case managers, and often make decisions for people with disabilities. This is not consistent with the empowerment perspective embedded in the disability movement. Most social work schools have minimal courses covering disability content. Previous research and the Self-Esteem Hypothesis indicate that social work education, social proximity to people with disabilities, self-esteem and other demographic characteristics are associated with social discrimination, or attitudes, toward people with disabilities. Social work students (n = 73) participated in a survey in the last semester of their program to assess how these characteristics were associated with their attitudes towards people with disabilities. A multiple linear regression revealed that social work education preparedness to work with people with disabilities, an MSW education, self-esteem, and having a friend with a disability were significantly associated with students' social discrimination towards people with disabilities.     

Youth research on video self‐productions reflections on a social‐aesthetic approach

This article advances my thoughts on a social‐aesthetic approach within the field of youth and social research. These reflections are not primarily grounded in traditional approaches of visual sociology and anthropology but emerged from the context of media‐educational youth research in Germany. The main assumption of this article is that qualitative youth and social research in particular, which has audio‐visual self‐productions as the object, should—in view of the increasing influence media has on our perception and the way how the reality is experienced—be open to concepts of subject‐related self‐presentations. First I make an attempt to formulate a social‐aesthetic theory which focuses on the media‐ethnographical exploration of symbolic milieus. Next, I introduce projects run by media‐educational youth researchers in Germany, emphasizing the question of conceptions and methods when working with adolescent video self‐productions. The final section reflects upon the quality, the validity and the hermeneutics of self‐produced videos.     

Economic internationalization: the new migration in Japan and the United States

"The general proposition argued in this paper is that international migrations are embedded in larger social, economic and political processes.... The first section of the paper addresses the impact of economic internationalization on the formation of new immigration flows into the U.S. during the last 25 years. The second section examines both the magnitude and forms of Japan's recent economic presence in South and Southeast Asia. The third and fourth sections briefly review questions of policy in the U.S. and Japan during the last few years.... The fifth section conveys evidence of illegal immigration to Japan. The sixth section discusses conditions in receiving countries that make possible the adaptation of immigrants with a view to understanding how illegal immigrants in Japan could become part of the Japanese economy involving Japanese employers deeply steeped in an anti-immigration culture." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Towards design sociology

In this review essay, I introduce and map the field of what I call “design sociology”. I argue that design research methods have relevance to a wide range of sociological research interests, and particularly for applied research that seeks to understand people's engagements with objects, systems and services, better engage publics and other stakeholders, work towards social change, and identify and intervene in futures. I discuss 3 main ways in which design sociology can be conducted: the sociology of design, sociology through design and sociology with design. I explain key terms in design and dominant approaches in social design research—participatory, critical, adversarial, speculative, and ludic design. Examples of how sociologists have already engaged with design research methods are outlined. The essay concludes with suggestions about what the future directions of design sociology might be.