Review Article

This study focuses on the social meaning behind the use of both Ukrainian and Russian in various media texts in contemporary Ukraine. I begin by situating the language issue within the current socio-political context; specifically, I briefly summarize recent language debates relevant to this paper. Secondly, I analyze selected media texts from television programs, films and popular magazines—all instances of the simultaneous and parallel use of Ukrainian and Russian. The analysis is then extended to a discussion of the media’s stake in framing the linguistic situation in Ukraine.

The texts in question are approached on the premise that “media usage influences and represents people’s use of and attitude towards language in a speech community” (Bell and Garrett 1998: 3). I consider the media’s choice of language an institutionalized means of framing reality (Popp 2006: 6) and therefore the use of language in the media acts symbolically, creating prevalent ideas about what language can and should do in a particular society (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994, cited in Popp 2006: 5).

My analysis of communicative exchange is carried out from the perspective of codeswitching that takes place within a larger social and political context. I address the social dichotomy of “we/they” or what Gumperz (1972) calls “metaphorical code-switching.” My analysis rests also on Auer’s code-switching framework, specifically his notions of “preference-related switching” and “sustained divergence of language choices” (1998b).     

Afrikaans,Inc.: the Afrikaans culture industry after apartheid

Following apartheid’s demise, the Afrikaans language was forced to part with the privileged position it once held under the National Party’s guardianship and has, subsequently, contracted in a number of its functions. Despite growing concerns about the language’s “endangered” status, Afrikaans has proven its vitality in multiple market-driven domains. In this paper, I trace the expansion of the Afrikaans culture industry after apartheid. I argue that this process was fomented, at least in part, by paranoia about Afrikaans’s “fading position.” Because Afrikaners still command a vast material and cultural capital, they have been the prime producers, sellers and buyers of Afrikaans language media and cultural commodities. Thus, together with the growth of the Afrikaans culture industry, an array of physical, digital and psychological spaces has opened up where white Afrikaans speakers can be a majority. I argue that the expansion of these spaces has laid the foundation for the formation of new Afrikaner subjectivities and enclaved identities, and contributed to the production and strengthening of separatist tendencies amongst certain Afrikaners. Instead of being an emancipatory force, facilitating Afrikaans speakers’ forceful integration into a new South Africa and “rainbow nation,” it has succeeded in reaffirming and naturalising the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom.     

Mann,war, and cyberspace: dualities of infrastructural power in America

Not long after the completion of Michael Mann’s “quadrilogy” on The Sources of Social Power (1986–2012), social scientists began to interrogate the meaning of his concepts of “despotic” and “infrastructural” power. While we know that the former is the most evident sign of danger in times of war, less well understood is the role of infrastructural power in state/civil society relations. Most important is the ambiguous relationship between the two types of power and the possibility that—especially in times of war—infrastructural power can become the vehicle for despotic ends. But infrastructural power is also reciprocal, offering firms and civil society groups channels with which to contest the state’s projects. In this article, I first explicate the different meanings that Mann gave to his concept of infrastructural power. In the second section, I turn to how the concept has been “received” in political science and historical sociology. In the third part, I argue that the main danger to American democracy in wartime lies not in its becoming a despotic state, but in the use of the state’s infrastructural channels for the exercise of despotic ends. The fourth part illustrates the complexities of infrastructural power in business/government/civil society relations in cybersecurity, which Mann—for understandable reasons—did not examine in his encompassing work.     

Grounded in the World: Developmental Origins of the Embodied Mind

Piaget's (1952) question of how the adult mind emerges from the sensorimotor infant is still the framing issue for developmental psychology. Here I suggest that real‐life skill is better understood if the sensorimotor origins of cognition are not abandoned. Skilled people are not only better at both abstract and logical thinking but also at processing the world “online” and, most important, seamlessly and rapidly shifting between the two modes. I illustrate the tight coupling between action, perception, and cognition in early life and propose that this coupling remains but becomes more flexibly adaptive. Further, I show that the language of dynamics is appropriate to capture these mind‐body‐world interconnections.     

The Criminalization of Muslims in the United States, 2016

The criminalization of Muslims—framing an Islamic religious identity as a problem to be solved using state crime control logic—is undeniably in process in the United States. Local, state, and federal statutes target Muslims for surveillance and exclusion, and media sources depict Muslims as synonymous with terrorism, as others have shown. This paper analyzes the public’s role in the criminalization of Islam, which I call “cr-Islamization.” Drawing on in-depth, qualitative interviews in a major Southwest city during the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, I detail how the majority of 144 politically, racially, and economically diverse interviewees talk about Muslims as a potential “racial threat,” using “fear of crime” language indicative of the mass incarceration era. This suggests that criminalization theory should be central to sociological studies of Muslims in the contemporary United States, and that criminalization rhetoric remains powerful, despite mainstream enthusiasm for criminal justice reform. I argue that criminalization’s power might reside in its ability to mutate in the “post-racial” era. The mechanisms supporting crimmigration, the criminalization of black Americans, and cr-Islamization are related but not identical. Muslims are religiously and racially subjugated, but more economically secure compared to other criminalized groups. This paper’s findings should prompt scholars to re-examine the relationships between racialization, criminalization, religious subjugation, and economic exploitation in the twenty-first century United States.

     

The Social Construction of Race and Minorities in Japan

This article provides an overview of the state of the field of racial and other minorities in Japan – a field that has developed in English mostly since the 1990s. The construction of race in Japan conflates race, ethnicity, language, culture, class, and citizenship. As a result, the majority “Japanese” are constructed against “foreigners,” both categories implying the aforementioned characteristics. Minorities in Japan lack some or all of the aforementioned traits: most are seen as racially different from Japanese but some are marginalized in other ways that support hierarchical social organization. After reviewing scholarship that analyzes the meaning of race in Japan, I briefly describe the major minority groups: Ainu, Okinawans, Burakumin, ethnic Koreans, foreign workers, Japanese Brazilians and mixed race Japanese.     

“I” and Self-Consciousness in the Japanese Language and in Sociology

Abstract It is often said that the Japanese lack the firm consciousness of “self” namely, they yield to groups and are absorbed in an anonymous state. Some ascribe this to the Japanese language, in which the first and the second person are expressed by various pronouns (or, in many cases, are even omitted) in accordance with the relationships between persons. By contrast the Westerner's “I,” which is usually the only pronoun for the first-person, is rarely omitted. They conclude from this that the Japanese individual does not possess as clearly defined a conception of “self” as does the Westerner. Underlying this issue are the fundamental, interwoven questions of language and self-consciousness: does “self” really exist, and does the analysis of the I in language pertain to the first question? This paper discusses these questions by considering Wittgenstein's argument that “I” does not refer to self-consciousness: rather, “self” is a metaphysical reification of “I.” These problems concern sociology, in which the “subject” of action has been the focal point of methodological arguments. I will show that Meadian interactionism and critical theory are deeply rooted in the metaphysical, subjectivist understanding of “I,” while ethnomethodology offers a perspective which overcomes both subjectivism and objectivism for studying communication.     

Immigrants' Language Skills: The Australian Experience in a Longitudinal Survey

This article is concerned with the determinants of English language proficiency (speaking, reading and writing) among immigrants. It presents a model of immigrant destination language proficiency based on economic incentives, exposure to the destination language, and efficiency in second language acquisition. A unique data set, the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, is used to test the model. This survey had three waves, at about six months, eighteen months and three‐and‐a‐half years after immigration. The analyses are performed by wave, type of language skill and gender using probit analysis. Bivariate probit analysis is used across waves. The hypotheses are supported by the data. The bivariate probit analysis indicates a positive correlation in the unexplained component that declines with time between waves, suggesting a “regression to the mean” in the unobserved components of English language proficiency.     

How Monuments Endure: Public Good Framing as Reiterated Problem-Solving in the Statements of Purpose of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, 1916–2005

The process by which the meanings of commemorative monuments change has been carefully investigated. Here, however, I ask how meanings impact the endurance of monuments. I argue that supporters must repeatedly address existential questions regarding their monument’s role in the public sphere, documented here as the statements of purpose justifying the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, a chain of ethnic-themed monuments with a continuing presence in Cleveland, Ohio since 1926. The interpretive framework partners Rhys Williams’ conceptualization of “public good framing” with Jeffrey Haydu’s revision of path-analysis as reiterated problem solving. The framing typology helps me identify and situate claims, while reiterated problem solving elucidates the historical trajectory of framing in a manner that keeps agency in focus. I find that the Gardens’ advocates shifted from contractual frames, emphasizing the character of European immigrants as contributing and patriotic Americans, to stewardship frames, emphasizing community resources such as maintaining Cleveland’s image and preserving a landmark. I argue that understanding these discursive shifts is essential to explaining the survival of the Gardens in Cleveland.     

Certainty,Fairness, and Balance: State Resonance and Environmental Justice Policy Implementation1

Little research has examined how and why institutional context and framing dynamics shape the institutionalization of movement claims into the state’s formal policies, and what the implication of these processes might be for movements attempting to mobilize on the same conceptual terms after institutionalization. In this study, I explore the role institutional context and framing play in the institutionalization of movement claims in a case: the implementation of environmental justice policy in the California Environmental Protection Agency from 2002 to 2007. I ask: How and why were aspects of the environmental justice frame institutionalized into regulatory policy while others were not? I use ethnographic field methods and content analysis of archival data to answer this question and offer two contributions to previous research. First, I add to previous scholarship on the environmental justice movement by identifying the character of newer problems faced by movement actors as they engage in regulatory policy processes with opponents in the United States. Second, I extend social movement framing theory by developing the notion of “state resonance” to understand how and why a collective action frame is institutionalized and implemented in regulatory policy.     

Mechanisms of Organizational Commitment: Adding Frames to Greedy Institution Theory

How do organizations that make significant physical, emotional, and intellectual demands foster commitment and loyalty from voluntary participants? Greedy institution theory (Coser 1974 ) answers this question by identifying structural elements that foster participants' undivided commitment to “greedy” groups, those in which participants' involvement interferes with and takes precedence over their involvement in other social spheres. In this article, I argue for the expansion of greedy institution theory to include frames and framing processes as “greedy” organizational tools that work on the microinteractional level. Using data from an ethnographic study of an intensive program that prepares low‐income students of color to attend elite boarding high schools, I show how the organization's “family” frame mobilized participants and encouraged interpretations and interactions that helped students persist in the program and remain committed to the organization. I argue that turning our attention to frames and framing processes will increase our understanding of the tools organizations use on a microinteractional level to build and repair participants' loyalty and commitment.     

What's in a Name? Causes and Consequences of Labelling Minorities as “National” or “Migrant”: Roma in Italy and Spain

This article analyses how Roma are represented in official policy narratives in Italy and Spain by comparing the four cycles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in the two countries. By tracing the representations that the Italian and Spanish governments hold (and make) about the Roma, I sketch out the different categories that EU‐ropean countries recur to as organizing principles to “other” underprivileged minorities. Based on the tailored‐approaches in which both Italy and Spain engage in framing Roma as either a “national” minority or not, I suggest that constructing or “producing” a minority in our imagined communities as characterized by national, cultural, social or migrant characteristics relies more on political expediency than on objective analytical categories.     

The Political Configuration of Historical Narrative: The Case of Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

As time has progressed, Russia has shed the historical legacy of the Soviet era. The same process is going on in Central Asia. The obliteration of the Soviet historical legacy reflects the dying out of the memories of the Soviet Union and the very fact that all these countries had been parts of one state in the not-so-distant past. At the same time, some of these states started to engage in bitter rivalry. The historical legacies were adjusted to new realities. Here, two models compete: one could be called “Turkic” and the other “Iranian.” The “Turkic” model implies that Turkic people are truly autokthonous and have lived in Central Asia since the Bronze Age, and that Iranians/Indo-Europeans are newcomers, without much legitimacy. The “Iranian” model implies that it is Iranians/Indo-Europeans who are truly autokthonous people of Central Asia, and creators of the ancient culture. At the same time, Turkic people are nothing but destructive brutes. Meanwhile, China increasingly fills the discursive and geopolitical vacuum.     

The Voice of the Dead: Commentary on Cornelia St. John's Paper

This commentary celebrates the evocativeness and acuity of Cornelia St. John's case study, while offering a slightly elaborated rereading. This rereading has a few major elements. First, the fragmentation of language enacted in the patient's stutter does indeed function as a “rupture” in the fabric of consciousness, but this is not as categorically gendered as St. John seems to suggest. Second the case study is framed by a melancholia that is both classical and contemporary in reflecting a state of “being in love with loss” that seems to be sweeping the culture. Third, in this particular case the melancholy is deeply abjected, having its origins in the overwhelming power of the mother's depression, a state that envelops the patient and also touches off fantasies of melancholic dissolution in his analyst. Finally, the relatively muted consideration of the patient's cultural “foreignness” is discussed.     

Schooling a European Identity: ethno‐cultural exclusion and nationalist resonance within the EU policy of “The European dimension of education”

This article aims to explore how the role of education as an aide in the process of “European” identity formation is being articulated in the European Union's (EU) policy of “The European dimension of education”. After having located the EU's views on education in the context of the neo‐liberal discourse on economic globalization, the article goes on to trace EU discussions of the European dimension of education historically. Subsequently, it deliberates on the understanding of European culture and identity which the European dimension of education endeavours to advance. Here a critique is developed of the policy's ethno‐culturalism, thereby excluding delineation of a collective identity in the EU. Basing itself on a notion of cultural identity which, implicitly, includes only those who fit certain versions of European historical “roots” and cultural “heritage”, the policy, it is argued, impedes a discussion of how a trans‐ethnic identity formation could be created in today's EU. Towards the end of the article, a scrutiny of the European dimension's perception of the so‐called “language diversity” in the EU seeks to illustrate this issue further.     

Style and Language Use among Youth of the New Immigration: Formations of Race,Ethnicity, Gender,and Class in Everyday Practice

In this article I consider “style” as a linguistic and cultural concept that can demonstrate how identities performed through language use are linked to topics of central concern in studies of immigrant youth, including racial and ethnic formation, generational cohorts, acculturation, assimilation, and gender. I draw on anthropological and sociolinguistic approaches to style not generally considered in migration studies and present ethnographic data of two cliques of Desi (South Asian American) teens in a Northern California high school. I argue that analyses of youth style can substantially complicate assimilation frameworks by highlighting the ways in which young peoples' linguistic practices may not fit neatly into commonly used analytical categories of “immigrant” and “American.” Focusing on how political economy and local histories inform power and difference that shape migration experiences for youth, the article moves beyond routinely examined areas of heritage language retention and loss to analyze the significance of youth performances of heritage languages as well as English.     

The Enduring Social Psychology of Robert K. Merton: Motivating Sentiments,Reference Groups and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) gained renown as a distinguished sociologist, especially in connection with the paradigm of “structural-functionalism” and he publicly self-identified as a “structuralist.” This paper calls attention to an emphasis in Merton’s work that sociologists have often overlooked, namely, his social psychology. I argue that, throughout his long career, Merton consistently pursued social psychological issues, including how non-logical action, appeals to shared sentiments and collective definitions of situations affect life in organized groups. I shall characterize his earlier analyses as “Harvard style,” and his later social psychological works as “Chicago style,” as a heuristic means of calling attention to interesting variations in framing. Merton’s formulations have impacted numerous subfields of sociology, and some (e.g., “self-fulfilling prophecies,” “the Matthew Effect”) remain influential even today. Examining Merton’s social psychology will contribute both to a fuller appreciation of his career and also to a more complete history of social science in the United States.     

Things Temporal Exposé, Passages from Benjamin

Nineteenth-century Paris was for Walter Benjamin the site of a singular historical event, the ur-form of bourgeois modernity. It was a “hellish” time disastrously bent on repeating itself and yet a threshold of great promise and possibility. By focusing on Benjamin's 1935 and 1939 Exposés for The Arcades Project, my paper develops the keywords of the Exposés (Arcades, Fashion, etc.), and elaborates ways in which these objects articulate such different temporal possibilities. For example, “fashion” enacts an eternally recurrent and capital time, whereas “arcades” represent wish images of the past that might be actualized into utopian promises of the future. My argument develops Benjamin's “objective” framing of temporality. In the Exposés specific and phenomenal things communicate temporalities specific to modernity. Objects not only communicate time but also enable the temporal experience of the modern subject. This reading challenges idealist interpretations of temporality grounded within an interiorizing subject. I do not argue that Benjamin privileges an objective temporal horizon “over” the subject but rather that he resituates dialectical possibilities of temporality in the engagement between subjects and commonplace objects.     

Some indications of limits to framing the policy preferences of the civically engaged: Interplay of social capital,race attitudes,and social justice frames

Our experiment, which tested support for a hypothetical social welfare program, found that the civically engaged as a whole were resistant to social justice framing employing universalistic versus particularistic standards. We suggest the lack of a framing effect was due to the use of a preexisting, shared “symbolic racism” frame. Social justice framing did succeed for those whose attitudes toward symbolic racism were ambivalent or neutral. Other factors including sex, income level, political participation, and ideology significantly influenced choice. These results provide some indications of limits to experimental framing of policy preferences of the civically engaged in their institutional settings.