A Calmly Disruptive Insider: The Case of an Institutionalized Advocacy Organization at Work

Through a case study of a leading service provider organization in Philadelphia, this paper explores the advocacy work of a publicly funded, professionalized, institutionalized nonprofit organization. In this article I relate how in the spring of 2002, staff at the organization responded to a recurring political issue: local business groups were again calling for official action against “aggressive panhandlers” in the downtown district. I use ethnographic and historical data to show that the organization’s institutionalization and ties to the public sector have allowed staff to develop resources and skills for being both contentious claim-makers and influential actors in the institutional political arena.

Transition and Foreign Aid Policies in the Visegrád Countries: A Path Dependant Approach

The paper argues that the current emerging international development policies of the Visegrád (V4) countries are heavily influenced by the certain aspects of the Communist past and the transition process. Due to these influences, the V4 countries have difficulties in adapting the foreign aid practices of Western donors and this leads to the emergence of a unique Central and Eastern European development cooperation model. As an analytical background, the paper builds on the path dependency theory of transition. A certain degree of path dependence is clearly visible in V4 foreign aid policies, and the paper analyses some aspects of this phenomenon: how these new emerging foreign aid donors select their partner countries, how much they spend on aid, how they formulate their aid delivery policies and institutions and what role the non-state actors play. The main conclusions of the paper are that the legacies of the Communist past have a clear influence and the V4 countries still have a long way to go in adapting their aid policies to international requirements.

The Clinton Administration and Labor Law: Was Comprehensive Reform Ever a Realistic Possibility?

This article analyzes the critical obstacles in the path of labor law reform during the 1990s. It stresses the importance of the lukewarm support of the Clinton Administration for labor law reform, organized labor’s failure to frame the debate on labor law reform to its advantage and its inability to convince key Senators to support its reform agenda, and, especially, the determined opposition to reform of employer groups and their allies in Congress. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the lessons of the legislative defeats of the 1990s for the AFL-CIO’s current campaign to revise the National Labor Relations Act.

Creating Community: Latina Nannies in a West Los Angeles Park

Drawing on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles, this article examines how Latina nannies create workplace solidarity in a public park. This article reveals how nannies use public spaces in the neighborhoods in which they work to establish ties similar to co-worker relations in other settings. This paper demonstrates how nannies create a community at the park by incorporating park staff into their activities, reinforcing group values such as sharing and reciprocity, and distinguishing themselves from their employers. Adding to previous research which highlights the atomization and stigmatization that comes with domestic employment, this article shows how nannies create co-worker relationships that are buffers against unfavorable job conditions such as solitary work settings and unappreciative employers.

Sacrificing Women: A Study of Ritualized Practices among Women Volunteers in India

This study addresses issues related to inequality formation and reproduction, especially in regard to gender dynamics operating in a non-western society. Grounded in a post-colonial understanding of urban educated upper and middle class women NGO volunteers in contemporary India, it analyzes how they negotiate new approaches to challenge existing traditional gender roles, yet in critical ways contribute to their reproduction, particularly the traditional concept of ideal Indian womanhood. Employing structural ritualization theory we examine how ritualized symbolic practices related to the traditional concepts of caretaking, sacrifice, and the concept of natural sexual differences continue to be emphasized in a generation confronted with conflicting expectations about modern women’s roles. Twenty-one testimonies provide the major source of evidence along with data gathered through participant observation. This research enhances our understanding of the power of rituals and how they can continue to shape the cognitions and activities of actors.

The Ossification of American Labor Law and the Decline of Self-governance in the Workplace

This article argues that the ineffectuality of American labor law and the shrinking scope of collective representation and collective bargaining are partly traceable to the law’s “ossification”—to its having been essentially sealed off for several decades from democratic revision and renewal and from local experimentation and innovation. The elements of this process of ossification, once assembled, make up an imposing set of barriers to innovation. The basic law has been cut off from legislative revision at the national level by Congress; from “market”-driven competition by employers; from the entrepreneurial and creative energies of private litigation; from variation at the state or local level by representative or judicial bodies; from changing constitutional doctrine; and from emerging transnational legal norms. Moreover, the National Labor Relations Board—the designated institutional vehicle for adjusting the labor laws to modern conditions—is increasingly hemmed in by the age of the text and the large body of judicial interpretations that has grown up over the years. The resulting statutory scheme is drastically out of date and out of sync with the needs of 21st century workers and labor markets.

The Native in the Garden: Floral Politics and Cultural Entrepreneurs

Although sociological research has examined how state symbolism binds citizens together and creates allegiance, little attention has been paid to how such symbols are selected. We investigate the adoption of state flowers in the United States. Seemingly unproblematic processes surrounding the selection of floral emblems can, under certain circumstances, involve heated symbolic politics. The default option of selecting a native flower, naturalizing the state, can be overcome by materialist or cultural interests that invest cultivated flowers with symbolic potency. In-depth case studies of three states where battles were waged over the state flower reveal that the battle lines were material and symbolic, demonstrating that apparently “authentic” representations of nature can be trumped by factional and subcultural interests.

State and Regional Variation in the Effects of Trade on Job Displacement in the US Manufacturing Sector, 1982–1999

Worker-level data from the 1984–2000 Displaced Worker Surveys are employed to examine the effects of trade on manufacturing workers’ probabilities of job displacement. Observed changes in import and export penetration rates yield increases in displacement probabilities for the North Central, Middle Atlantic and South Central regions yet lower displacement probabilities for the Plains/West and Pacific regions. Changes in import and export price indexes lead to increases in displacement probabilities for the Pacific, Southeast and Northeast regions and decreases for the South Central and Middle Atlantic regions. However, while the influences of imports and exports on job displacement vary considerably across states and regions, the estimated net effect of trade on displacement probabilities is minor, generally speaking, when compared to the combined influence of other factors.

The Chinese Banking System: Economic Performance and Prospects for Future Development

This paper examines the main characteristics of the Chinese banking industry. In particular, it analyses the main performance indicators of the system together with some prospects of future development. The paper also considers the problems related to high levels of non-performing loans and the internationalization paths of the Chinese banking market. In spite of some recent reforms, further legislative improvements are required to develop the system and to allow a gradual opening to foreign competition.

Top-Down Civic Projects Are Not Grassroots Associations: How The Differences Matter in Everyday Life

Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called “volunteer” or “civic” groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations.

Gender and Transnational Gossip

Transnational social networks powerfully shape Mexican migration and enable families to stretch internationally. In an atmosphere of such high dependence on social networks, it would be rare for families not to be affected by the opinions of others. This article analyzes this often-overlooked aspect of social networks, gossip. I analyze gossip stories prevalent for one type of migrant family, those in which parents and children live apart. Drawing on over 150 ethnographic interviews and observation with members of Mexican transnational families and their neighbors in multiple sites, I describe both parents’ and children’s experiences with transnational gossip. I show that in a transnational context, gossip is a highly gendered activity with different consequences for men and women. Although targeting both women and men, transnational gossip reinforces the expectations that mothers be family caregivers and fathers be family providers even when physical separation makes these activities difficult to accomplish.

Administrative Practices in American Unions: A Longitudinal Study

Using data collected from surveys conducted in 1990 and 2000, we examine changes in the administrative practices of US-based national and international unions. We examine the hiring, human resource, financial, strategic planning, and organizational practices and how they have changed over time. We find that unions are changing their staff hiring practices in ways that contribute to workforce professionalization and that unions are moving toward more formal human resource policies and more systematic financial and strategic planning practices. These developments appear to be a reaction to the unions’ changing operating environment and reflect the pressure on union leaders to make effective use of their declining resources.

Shame and Worker Activism: Emotional Dynamics in Face-to-Face Encounters

Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.

The Monster Within: Countertransference Reflections on a Gay Adolescent’s Struggle with Sexual Identity

This paper concerns the author’s countertransference reflections on her work with a gay adolescent who identifies with powerfully destructive internal objects, including Hitler and the Monster. The author describes her countertransference inquiry through which she experiences her own potential destructiveness in order to help accommodate her adolescent patient’s rejected and disowned self states.

Unions and Employment Growth: Evidence from State Economic Recoveries

We test the hypothesis that in an economic recovery, unionization negatively affects job creation. We examine state-level job growth following two recent recessions, those with troughs in November 1982 and March 1991. In the five years following the troughs, we assess whether variations across states in union membership and right-to-work laws affect the rate of job growth. We find evidence that links union influence to slower job growth during an economic recovery, a finding consistent with previous studies reporting that unions negatively affect average employment and employment growth.

Irish Pro-Migrant Nongovernmental Organizations and the Politics of Immigration

In this article social movement theory is used to assess the strategic repertoire of a relatively new sector of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocating for migrants rights in Ireland. Pro-migrant NGOs are majority community-led and face a challenging political and societal context for mobilization including a restrictive immigration regime, political and media discourse that racializes migrants, weak public support for the expansion of migrants’ rights, and high rates of discrimination and social exclusion experienced by migrant communities. A competitive funding environment also inhibits pro-migrant NGOs capacity to work with emerging migrant-led organizations that simultaneously compete for state and foundation funds. Pro-migrant NGOs in Ireland have responded with a three levelled strategy, namely alliance building with sympathetic public officials and service and information provision to state bodies, campaigns contesting negative media and societal framing of migrants, and networking with transnational NGO coalitions working on immigration issues.

French NGOs in the Global Era: Professionalization “Without Borders”?

This article asks whether French NGOs have fallen into line with the wider trend towards professionalization that has marked the Northern nonprofit sector, most notably Anglo-American NGOs, over the last two decades or so. It shows how French NGOs, particularly those engaged in longer term development work, were characterized by militancy over the early post-colonial decades. It then demonstrates how, over the global era, the French state has encouraged developmental NGOs (NGDOs) to undertake bureaucratic forms of professionalization. Next, it looks at how these organizations have, in response, adapted their staffing, structures, and procedures, whilst stopping short of overly standardized forms of development. Finally, it shows how French NGDOs have, in eschewing “technical professionalism”, been acting in line with resource dependence theory and responding to the demands of their critical resource, which is not the French state but the donor public and their grassroots supporters.

Curtain rising, baton falling: The politics of musical conducting in contemporary Argentina

This article gives an ethnographic account of the several processes under which a charismatic conductor is de-legitimized, exploring the relationship between institutions and charisma in an art world where the authority of the cultural producer is diminished by the management of everyday interaction. The article shows how, in Argentina, the politics of musical conducting are shaped by four institutional worlds. They range from the macro economic cultural policies of the diverse state agencies to the everyday interaction world of orchestra musicians, and include meso-processes and mechanisms like the field of musical conducting. This article explores the structure and ideologies of the four institutional worlds, their interplay, the concrete practices that shaped them, their struggles, and how they overlap in causing the diminishing power of charisma. In undertaking this endeavor, the article systematizes the existing sociological corpus on the orchestral world in order to sketch a more complex and complete picture of hierarchies and interactions.

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Appropriating the city: space,theory, and bike messengers

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

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Afghanistan: A Change of Course?

The situation in Afghanistan today is not what the international community was planning it to be, 7 years ago when the Bonn Agreement was signed. Deterioration of security, weak governance, corruption, high narcotic production and trade, slow reconstruction process and consequent people’s disappointment are some of the features of that situation. Kabul and its international partners had a very little success in restoring peace and security, and a new phase of strategic re-thinking is in process. This article analyzes the different aspects of Afghan reconstruction and military intervention, their strengths and weaknesses, and outlines some urgent actions to be taken by all concerned actors.