Korean,Chinese, or what? Identity transformations of Chosŏnjok (Korean Chinese) migrant brides in South Korea

Chos?njok migrant brides are Korean Chinese women who married South Korean men (hereafter Korean men). The number of Chos?njok migrant brides increased rapidly until recently due to the attempts of the central and local governments of Korea to resolve bride shortages in rural areas in the early 1990s and the Koreans' preference for ethnic Korean brides over non-Korean foreign brides. Currently there are more than 26,000 Chos?njok migrant brides in Korea. Due to the drastic changes to their post-migration lives in their ethnic homeland of Korea, most Chos?njok migrant brides experience changes in their ethno-national identity(ies). This paper investigates this process and the underlying reasons for these post-ethnic return migration identity changes. It also looks at the types of identity changes that occur through in-depth interviews with 22 Chos?njok migrant brides in Korea.     

Threading meaningful lives: respectability,home businesses and identity negotiations among newly immigrant South Asian women

This article investigates how women who have come to the United States as brides of South Asian professionals use threading, a hair removal method, as a home business to negotiate new challenges they face as newly immigrant women. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the article focuses on how these young women combine their expected roles as wives and mothers in a new country with their own aspirations to win the respect of spouses, in-laws and children via threading. The article demonstrates how these women find meaning and identity through threading and evidences how they negotiate respectability by stressing their connections to home and domestic roles even as they dissociate themselves from beauticians who work at salons. Although they disrupt extant notions of ‘good wives and mothers’, these women nevertheless articulate this disruption within existing models and, more often than not, desire to be the bahu that their mothers-in-law admire.     

An analysis of some factors associated with success and failure in foster home placements

There has been little information available in the social work and sociological literature related to remarriage in Australia. In 1968, there were 106,345 marriages of which 14,116 unions involved at least one partner who had been married previously.¹ Thus, 13.3 per cent of all the marriages can be considered second marriages for one partner at least. Table 1 summarizes the marital status of bridegrooms and brides at the time of their marriage in 1968.     

Childbearing and Marriage: Investigating the Importance of Context for Meaning-Making of First-Time Marriage

Previous research reveals that the temporal ordering of childbearing and marriage can have an impact on the meaning of first-time marriage. This article aims to obtain a deeper understanding of meaning-making of first-time marriage in relation to childbearing. Narrative interviews with 16 brides and grooms in 8 couples in Sweden were conducted. The material was analyzed in relation to the temporal ordering of childbearing and marriage. The study reveals that the construction of meaning of marriage does not only relate to the temporal context. Social factors such as social class or family formation might also be relevant for how meaning is constructed. This article contributes to a deeper understanding of meaning-making as a relational process constructed within particular contexts.     

Hidden Spaces of Resistance of the Subordinated: Case Studies from Vietnamese Female Migrant Partners in Taiwan1

This paper explores how contradictory social structures influence power relations between “Vietnamese brides” and their Taiwanese family members. By analyzing two aspects of interaction between “Vietnamese brides” and their husbands’ families, i.e., how the families require them to integrate into Taiwanese society and what strategies they employ to escape from these constraints, we argue that contradictory social relations together with commodified marriage and liminality help them to develop strategies of escape into the “hidden space.” The development of these strategies indicates one thing: hegemony is never fully achieved – it is always negotiated and contested.     

Comparison style, physical self-perceptions, and fitness among older women

This study examined the relationships between older women's comparison styles, physical self-perceptions, and functional fitness. Participants were community-dwelling women (N = 102, age 65-99) living in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Individuals were categorized as relying primarily on social comparisons, temporal comparisons, or a combination of both styles. Also of interest was whether individuals evaluated themselves positively or negatively when making comparisons. Participants who evaluated themselves positively as compared with others were found to have higher levels of physical self-perception. Analyses revealed that women who relied primarily on temporal comparisons had higher self-perceptions of their functional ability than those who relied on a combination of comparison styles. An avoidance of both temporal and social comparisons was also related to higher levels of physical self-perception.     

Naturalizing Korean ethnicity and making ‘ethnic’ difference: a comparison of North Korean settlement and foreign bride incorporation policies in South Korea

This article compares North Korean immigrants and foreign bride policies in South Korea. Despite being constructed as distinctive policy target groups, North Korean settlement and foreign bride incorporation policies exhibit striking similarities. The similarities result from the way policy problems are identified and certain solutions are justified; both North Korean immigrants and foreign brides are constructed a burden on welfare and as potential threats to social stability. Policy solutions are justified as they are designed to transform North Korean immigrants and foreign brides into ‘normal’ South Korean citizens. The major difference between two sets of policies lies in assumptions regarding cultural differences. Foreign brides are assumed to carry practices that are foreign and alien to Koreans, while North Korean immigrants are presumed to carry ‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ Korean culture. Foreign brides’ cultures are visible and alien to South Koreans, and therefore are addressed under the banner of multiculturalism policies. North Korean immigrants are excluded from such policies. This exclusion reflects and reproduces the view of a Korean nation bounded by ethnic and cultural homogeneity.     

OPTIMISTIC BEHAVIOR WHEN A DECISION BIAS IS COSTLY: AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST

The existence of optimism when biased decisions are costly is investigated experimentally. Subjects make an informed guess about an exogenously determined event: the outside temperature a couple of days later. Payments in the control group depend only on how close the guess was to the realized temperature, while payments in the treatment group also depend positively on realized temperature. The data show the treatment group subjects to guess higher temperatures, that is, higher payments, compared with the control group. Results thus indicate that there is optimism also when a decision bias is costly. (JEL C91, D81, D84)     

“You Go ‘Cause You Have to”: The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation

Getting married is one of the most celebrated and revered transitions in a woman's life. Therefore, many rituals and events exist to prepare a woman to become a wife. The bridal shower is one of those that is most steeped in tradition. It may be viewed as an event in which women friends and family members must participate. Women often attend bridal showers out of “duty.” Interestingly, many women find them boring, socially awkward, or otherwise uncomfortable. In this article, I identify the primary stressors of bridal showers for the three major participants: brides‐to‐be, hostesses, and guests. Finally, I explore the persistence of this ritual, despite its apparent lack of appeal for participants. This study draws on interviews with fifty‐one women who are recent brides or who have recently hosted or attended bridal showers, as well as participant observation at five bridal showers. I discuss the bridal shower as a ritual of obligation, one that is grounded in tradition and gives women the opportunity to express care and support for other women as members of a gender community.     

Explanations of How Love Crosses Class Lines: Cultural Complements and the Case of Cross‐Class Marriages

Sociologists know little about how actors explain their attraction to a partner who grew up in a different social class or why their accounts are likely. This is problematic as one form of social class heterophily is relatively common—heterophily by class origin. Drawing upon data from interviews with college‐educated respondents in heterophilous marriages by class origin (n = 60) as well as interviews with college‐educated respondents in homophilous marriages by class origin (n = 20), this article shows that respondents in heterophilous and homophilous marriages say that they appreciate their spouse for different reasons. Whereas actors in homophilous relationships by class origin explain their appreciation for their spouse in terms of cultural similarities, respondents in heterophilous marriages by class origin explain their appreciation of their spouse in terms of “cultural complements”—the obverse of the dispositions they dislike in themselves and attribute to their own upbringing. The article theorizes that accounts of cultural complements are enabled by the social organization of culture by class.     

Gender, Class Aspirations, and Emerging Fields of Body Work in Urban India

If some research indicates that bodies are becoming central to the life projects of “new liberal Indian” women, public debates simultaneously reveal that their bodies are entangled in satisfying traditional and modern ideals of womanhood. There are few studies, though, that have looked into how women reconcile and make use of contradictory cultural signals surrounding their bodies that arise out of a rapidly changing gender and class structure. We draw upon both followers and critics of Bourdieu to show that bodily concerns and undertakings of 48 urban Indian women, and the ways in which they resist and embrace cultural demands on their bodies, vary by social class locations. The women in the study who were most keenly aware of “options” embedded in thin or fit bodies were the ones who could take advantage of new careers and styles of living that the global economy was bringing to their doorsteps. In contrast, women who saw limited prospects for social mobility were unconvinced of the symbolic value of a thin body and rejected appearance concerns on the ground that it interfered with their mothering responsibilities. We conclude that while the fit body has indeed emerged as an important site of self-making for the modern Indian woman, the degree to which she sees costs and benefits involved in the bodywork of losing weight depends on her class location.     

FOOLING MYSELF OR FOOLING OBSERVERS? AVOIDING SOCIAL PRESSURES BY MANIPULATING PERCEPTIONS OF DESERVINGNESS OF OTHERS

We present a novel experiment demonstrating strategies selfish individuals utilize to avoid social pressure to be altruistic. Subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to “reveal” their true beliefs. Subjects who initially made selfish choices falsely state their beliefs about their opponent's kindness. Their “revealed” beliefs were significantly more accurate, which exposed subjects' knowledge that their selfishness was unjustifiable by their opponent's behavior. The initial false statements complied with social norms, suggesting subjects' attempts to project a more favorable social image. (JEL C9, D03, D83)     

Beliefs in child care: social work consensus and lack of consensus on issues of parenting and decision-making

This paper describes the results of a study that explored social worker's beliefs and opinions about ‘good enough’ parenting and about decision-making in child care and protection. Subjects were qualified social workers from throughout Scotland who were students on post-qualifying courses. Q sorts were used to gather data about significant clusters of opinion. Subjects were asked to rank statements that covered issues of parenting environments, children's needs, damaging environments and decision-making. The findings indicate confidence in the child care system and a consensus about damaging environments. Issues about which there is disagreement suggest where further practice guidance could be helpful. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

Operationalizing Max Weber's probability concept of class situation: the concept of social class

In this essay I take seriously Max Weber's astonishingly neglected claim that class situation may be defined, not in categorial terms, but probabilistically. I then apply this idea to another equally neglected claim made by Weber that the boundaries of social classes may be determined by the degree of social mobility within such classes. Taking these two ideas together I develop the idea of a non-categorial boundary 'surface' between classes and of a social class 'corridor' made up of all those people who are still to be found within the boundaries of the social class into which they were born. I call social mobility within a social class 'intra-class social mobility' and social mobility between classes 'inter-class social mobility'. I also claim that this distinction resolves the dispute between those sociologists who claim that late industrial societies are still highly class bound and those who think that this is no longer the case. Both schools are right I think, but one is referring to a high degree of intra-class social mobility and the other to an equally high degree of inter-class mobility. Finally I claim that this essay provides sociology with only one example among many other possible applications of how probability theory might usefully be used to overcome boundary problems generally in sociology.     

Forced marriage,forced sex: the perils of childhood for girls

A recently formed interagency Forum on the Rights of Girls and Women in Marriage is investigating the widespread problem of nonconsensual marriage and forced sex and advocating for legislative and policy initiatives. This article reviews three research projects in this area: research by Anti-Slavery International on child marriage in parts of West Africa, an investigation by Save the Children of children's views of early marriage, and research conducted by CHANGE on women's resistance to domestic violence in Calcutta, India. Girls who marry before 15 years of age are more likely to be illiterate than their older counterparts, more likely to be dowry payment brides, less likely to come into contact with development projects, have higher rates of infant mortality, and are most vulnerable to sexual violence. In many cases, intercourse is initiated before the girl begins to menstruate. Although adult women also face sexual violence within marriage, this problem is all the more traumatic for girls who lack any information about sexuality. Sex with girls below a certain age is usually covered by rape legislation, but, in countries such as India, this is mitigated by the religiously defined personal laws. The absence of adequate legal and policy action frameworks to deal with the rights of girls, coupled with the lack of sanctions against these abuses, comprise state complicity and neglect of duty under international law to this vulnerable group.     

New Global Politics of Reproductive Labor: Gendered Labor and Marriage Migration

The feminization of international migration nowadays has demonstrated a new global politics of reproductive labor (work necessary for the reproduction of families). This paper reviews recent studies that manifest similarity, affinity, and continuity across multiple forms of reproductive labor carried out by migrant women in four aspects. First, the recruitment of women as foreign maids or foreign brides provides class‐specific parallel strategies to the global care crisis. Second, paid and unpaid forms of reproductive labor constitute intersecting circuits of labor and marriage migration through which women partake in continuous migration. Third, various categories of migrant women are discursively conflated and attached to similar images as sexualized others. Finally, global care chains not only involve migrant reproductive labor conducted at home but also operate on the level of social reproduction as indicated by the expansion of international nursing migration.     

Who Spends Money to Play for Free? Identifying Who Makes Micro-transactions on Social Casino Games (and Why)

Social casino games are online gambling-like games found on social networking sites. They are initially free to play, however, players are encouraged to make micro-transactions (i.e., in-game purchases) for additional game credits or functionality. As a result, they generate billions of dollars in revenue. Yet, little is known as to who purchases virtual credits, let alone why. In the present research, we assessed whether there are individual differences (impulsivity, reward sensitivity, competitiveness, and problem gambling severity) between who is and who is not likely to make micro-transactions during social casino game play. Moreover, we examined possible motivations for making micro-transactions (e.g., extend play, win back lost credits) and whether the individual difference variables of interest predict reported motivation(s) for making micro-transactions. Results showed that social casino gamers who engaged in micro-transactions reported significantly higher levels of impulsivity, reward sensitivity and problem gambling severity, but not competitiveness. In terms of motivation to make micro-transactions, desire to extend play was endorsed most frequently, followed by a desire to access additional features, chasing lost credits, and to speed up play. Lastly, among participants who made micro-transactions, reward sensitivity predicted making micro-transactions to chase lost credits. These results suggest the personality make-up of social casino gamers is important to understand who is likely to make micro-transactions as well as their motivation to do so—information that could prove useful for regulation of the industry.     

Translation style and participant roles in court interpreting1

This paper investigates the translation styles of court interpreters in New York City and the styles' social and pragmatic implications for multilingual interactions in court. Interpreters are found to vary between using first or third person to represent the voice of a translated source speaker, thereby varying between adherence to explicit institutional norms that require first person and accommodation to non‐professional interpreting practices that favor the use of reported speech. In a quantitative and qualitative analysis, this variation is shown to be influenced by several pragmatic and social factors, and to index the interpreters' stances towards source speakers and towards the immigrant court users who are the recipients of translations from English. It is argued that translation styles have profound consequences for limited English speakers, as the insistence on institutional norms in translating to them is viewed as a gatekeeping behavior that may impede their full participation in the proceedings.     

Migration tradeoffs: men's experiences with seasonal lifestyles

This study examines changes in work, health, and family patterns among men who migrate seasonally between Mexico and the US. A representative sample of 219 Mexican seasonal migrants to California was obtained in Jalisco, Mexico, in 1984. The data were generated through a household survey and in-depth follow-up interviews. The findings indicate that migrants experience marked changes and tradeoffs in roles and life styles which are reflected in the workplace and the family. In contrast, changes in physical health associated with seasonal migration seem far less apparent. Beyond the economic function of providing jobs and income, migration performs a significant social function which is described in the context of seasonal life styles.