The genealogical imagination: the inheritance of interracial identities

The aim of this article is to examine ethnographically how ideas of descent, biology and culture mediate ideas about the inheritance of racial identities. To do this, the article draws upon interviews with the members of interracial families from Leicester, a city situated in the East Midlands region of England. The article focuses upon the genealogical narratives of the female members of interracial families who live in an ethnically diverse inner‐city area of Leicester. Attention is paid to the ways in which the women mobilise and intersect ideas about kinship, ancestry, descent, belonging, place, biology and culture when they think about the inheritance of their own and/or their children's interracial identities. The article's emphasis upon the constitution of interracial identities contributes to the sociological study of race and genealogy by exploring the racialised fragmentation of ideas of inheritance and descent across racial categories and generations.     

Government wage differentials revisited

This paper updates studies done in the mid-1970s concerning the measurement of government wage differentials in the United States. Based on an analysis of two large micro data sets, we reached the following conclusions. First, as a group, government employees earned a small wage premium of approximately 2 to 3 percent during the 1970s and early 1980s. Second, the government wage premium was substantially higher for federal employees and for women employees. These findings are consistent with earlier studies. We thank Eanswythe Leicester and Ken Emery for their research assistance and Diane Kurtz for her clerical assistance.     

ETHNIC SHOPKEEPERS IN U.S. CITIES IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The literature on retail entrepreneurship makes an important distinction between shopkeeping and petty trading. Building on this literature, the present study addresses two questions about retail enterprise in U.S. cities in the late nineteenth century: To what extent were retail entrepreneurs from the Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) European groups shopkeepers rather than petty traders? And which region of the country offered the best opportunities for retail entrepreneurs from these groups to become shopkeepers? Census data from 1900 show that: (1) retail entrepreneurs from these immigrant groups were more likely to be petty traders than shopkeepers; and (2) the opportunities for these entrepreneurs to become shopkeepers were greatest in the South, an emerging peripheral region with relatively small immigrant communities. These findings cast doubt on the conventional view that conditions in major northern cities bolstered shopkeeping among entrepreneurial groups, such as Russian and Polish Jews, in the late nineteenth century.     

Race and immigration in the Leicester local press 1945–62

This article argues that a consciousness of Empire is present in the discourse of the local newspapers of Leicester in the 1950s. This consciousness took two forms. First, stories about white emigrants moving to the colonies and Commonwealth countries of the old British Empire suggest an awareness of these societies as being white and as belonging to ‘us’. This contrasts with the view of black members of the community living in Leicester who were perceived as ‘them’. Second, constant references to South Africa present an implicit comparison with Apartheid as a way of organizing racialized relations with which to compare British policies of multi‐racialism.     

"FRANCE NEEDS CHILDREN":

This article examines debates and discussions surrounding French pronatalist policies enacted in the 1980s. Drawing on data collected from a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including daily newspapers, parliamentary debates, and French feminist publications, I explore the following questions: First, does pronatalism spring from conservative nationalist ideologies that conflict with feminist projects? Second, how have French feminists reacted to the pronatalist agenda? Finally, could women's equity serve as an impetus for instituting policies that would encourage births? My analysis suggests that nationalism in France takes many forms, and a wide spectrum of political actors from both the political left and right have supported pronatalist initiatives in the name of “the nation.”     

Absurdly Ambitious? Teenagers’ Expectations for the Future and the Realities of Social Structure

Expectations for achievement in the US border on the unrealistic. High school students expect to obtain better jobs and more education than current cohorts have achieved. Many youth also seem unaware of how to realize their ambitions. These findings lead to several questions about the causes and consequences of ambition. First, how do American youths’ ambitions compare with those of past cohorts and what consequences stem from rising ambitions? Second, how likely is it that youth will achieve their ambitions? What structural forces hinder or assist the goal attainment process? Finally, what cultural and institutional forces shape ambition in the United States? We review available evidence for these questions. Experts agree that the youth are overly ambitious, but debate the consequences of over‐ambition. Furthermore, youth privileged by their race, class, and gender status are more likely to achieve their ambitions than less privileged youth, confirming the key sociological premise that broader social structures play an important role in whether individuals realize their dreams.     

“Should I Trust the Bank or the Social Movement?” Motivated Reasoning and Debtors' Work to Accept Misinformation

How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization in their community has been countering this misinformation for years? Why do people knowingly accept misinformation without even being upset about it? I address these questions by analyzing ethnographic data and interviews with 84 Chilean low‐income housing debtors, whom, like many Chileans, are victims of financial misinformation. While the state and banks had significant agency in inducing the unproblematic acceptance of misinformation, debtors also played an active role in the processes. First, debtors had to decide whom to trust, which was not only a cognitive problem about evidence but also a behavioral and practical problem involving risks. Second, debtors engaged in “motivated reasoning”—affect‐driven biased information processing—to dismiss the possibility of being misinformed, to downplay the significance of misinformation, and to direct blame away from misinforming institutions. The latter two practices reduced debtors' anger about being misinformed. The findings have implications for studies of social movement framing and counterinformation, for the cognitive psychology of misinformation, and for the sociology and social psychology of acquiescence.     

Sixty years of “peaceful liberation” at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa: triumphant modernization at the rooftop of the world

In recent years, China has developed an increasingly ambitious public diplomacy program to enhance its soft power abroad. Although several scholars have sought to assess the effects of this program, little attention has been paid to the Chinese governmental conception of soft power and its use in propaganda. This article explores how the state's view of soft power is transformed into policy through the cultural bureaucracy and, conversely, how it limits the program's effectiveness. The article concludes that the limited success of soft power is due to the following main factors. First, although China's public diplomacy programs are planned and implemented in ways that reflect its domestic cultural policy, they are rarely successful even in their home markets. Second, China's conception of soft power focuses on top-down, State-centered image management, thereby overlooking the relational and context-dependent aspects of soft power.     

Family‐of‐Origin Experiences and Adjustment in Married Couples

Within this article a model is tested that examines the relationship between married individuals' experiences in their family of origin and patterns of marital adjustment. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling procedures, making the couple the unit of analysis. This allowed for an exploration of how one partner's family‐of‐origin experience and the other partner's family‐of‐origin experience uniquely influence each of the partner's experiences of the marriage. Two aspects of the results stand out. First, both husbands' and wives' family‐of‐origin experiences emerged as significant influences on marital adjustment. Second, the data suggest that wives' experiences within their family of origin are more strongly related to both their own accounts of their marriages and their husbands' accounts of their marriages than are husbands' family‐of‐origin experiences.     

Anthropological versus sociological approaches to the study of soccer hooliganism: some critical notes

It is argued that the anthropological approach, as used by Armstrong and Harris, has not generated any breakthrough in the study of soccer hooliganism. In particular, it is suggested that their use of a commonsense rather than a sociological concept of violence vitiates their analysis in several ways, contributing above all to substantial inconsistencies between some of their own empirical data and their general conclusions concerning levels of soccer-related violence. It is also contended that their critique of the ‘figurational’ or ‘process-sociological’ approach followed by the Leicester researchers is based on a confused misrepresentation of that approach. Specifically it is argued (i) that Armstrong and Harris fail to recognize the wide range of methods, including extensive participant observation, used by the Leicester group, (ii) that their attempt to cast doubt on the Leicester group's contention that the core football hooligans come predominantly from the ‘rougher’ sections of the working class is based on nothing more than a priori speculation. In this connection, Armstrong and Harris themselves provide no reliable data on the social class of soccer hooligans in Sheffield, and they seem unaware of the fact that several different sources of data appear to confirm the finding of the Leicester group, (iii) they have misunderstood both the terminology and the reasoning of the Leicester group concerning the ‘rougher’ sections of the working class and their relationship to football hooliganism.     

Teddy Bears: Facilitators of Love,Friendship and Therapy

Abstract

An edited version of a paper delivered to the Scottish branch of the Group for the Advancement of Psychodynamics and Psychotherapy in Social Work, Edinburgh, Winter 1976.

After finishing her degree in Social Science in Dublin Una McCluskey took her professional training at Edinburgh University (1971), specialising in psychiatric social work. She worked for a number of years in a Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, where she was the Principal Social Worker, and was involved in the Innovation of the in-patient treatment of whole families. She worked with Barnardo's in Edinburgh, and went as a lecturer to York University in 1978. Interests have always lain in the marriage of psychodynamic and systemic thinking and the application of these ideas to working with individuals, families and organisations.     

Navigating the landscape of Guangzhou's time-honoured business: From the 19th-century flowscape to the Belt and Road Initiative

Guangzhou's dynamic time-honoured businesses, commonly known as laozihao 老字号, while grounded in a locality, have nevertheless been caught up in the economic and cultural flowscapes of their times as they have followed the migration trajectories of the mainland Chinese. As these traders, businesspeople and migrants have moved and relocated from their hometown to overseas locations, they have also brought along their understanding of their culture, including the cultural elements that are associated with the businesses that they are involved in. This paper will explore the flowscapes and transformation of Guangzhou's laozihao that involved the mainland Chinese and Chinese diaspora communities during two periods. The first period stretched from the 19th century through to 1949 when mainland China came under Communist rule. The second phase started after the 1978 Open Door Policy and has continued through the introduction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 till today. The Belt and Road Initiative has provided a strategic and opportunistic moment for these time-honoured businesses to reinvent and realign their business to suit the modern needs of the 21st century.     

Legal Ruralism and California Parole Hearings: Space,Place, and the Carceral Landscape*

This article discusses the important relationship between rurality and criminal justice processes, drawing on field observations and in-depth interviews with parole commissioners to argue that California's physical carceral landscape profoundly shapes lifer parole hearings. First, commissioners report that prisons' location in rural areas affects the rehabilitative resources available, which are seen as an important aspect of their readiness for release. Location and perceived rurality of prisons shape commissioners' perception of the inmates at various institutions, creating implicitly different standards for inmates housed at different prisons. Second, spatiality and rurality influence parole commissioners' work lives, exacting a toll that includes onerous travel, early burnout, and challenges to assembling a diverse board. Together, these findings underscore the importance of legal ruralism to the relationship between spatial and carceral landscapes.     

The location of ethnic and racial groups in the United States

The distinctive regional and urban locational patterns of thirty-three ethnic groups in the United States are analyzed from two different perspectives. First, who are the numerically important groups in each region? Second, from the perspective of the groups themselves, where are they spatially concentrated? We hypothesize that the forces generating distinctive ethnic locational patterns are strongest at the time of the initial settlement; thus the longer a group has been present in the United States, the less geographically concentrated it will be. This is found to be true for most ethnic groups except blacks and American Indians, whose specific social and political situations explain their particular concentrations. However, the early settlement patterns still affect the ethnic makeup of various areas of the nation, even though the concentrations have diminished over time. Moreover, although the 1975–1980 patterns of internal migration (analyzed through a Markov Chain model) are tending to reduce some of the distinctive geographic concentrations in the nation, this will still not fully eliminate distinctive ethnic concentrations. Groups differ in their propensities to leave or enter each area in a way that reflects the existing ethnic compositions of the areas. Thus even with the massive level of internal migration in the nation, there is no evidence that the substantial ethnic linkage to region is disappearing.     

Does the gender of a practitioner matter in early childhood education and care? Perspectives from Scottish and Chinese young children

This paper responds to concerns over the assumed ‘feminisation’ of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and adds children's perspectives to debates on whether more men should work in ECEC. Pictorial conversations were conducted with 280 children aged 2–6 years old from the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Tianjin. Findings show that although children sometimes related practitioners to their gendered experiences in and outside ECEC, children's gender subjectivities are dynamic and are linked to their short‐term and long‐term, fluid and stable, and interactive relationships with practitioners. This paper argues that practitioners need to openly discuss gender with children in ECEC practices and pedagogies.     

Why do households use alternative consumption practices?

In recent years, the emphasis on economic necessity when explaining engagement in alternative consumption practices (i.e. informal and/or second-hand modes of goods acquisition) has been challenged by an agency-oriented reading that views participation to be more a matter of choice, and more recently by a geographically sensitive approach that ascribes agency to affluent populations and economic necessity to deprived populations. To evaluate critically these contrasting explanations, data collected from 120 face-to-face interviews in the city of Leicester are here reported. The finding is that these previous accounts that reduce consumers participation in alternative consumption practices to the mono-causal explanations of either economic necessity or choice obfuscate how both often coexist in people's explanations for participation, albeit in varying ways in different populations. This paper thus displays the need to reconcile the previous reductive either/or explanations through the use of a both/and approach that recognizes and unpacks how both economic necessity and choice are variously entangled in rationales for participation in alternative consumption practices.     

Women in the American Judiciary

Abstract

This article reviews the women and politics literature on gender and the American judiciary. Specifically, it explores what we know about the behavior of women on the bench: Do women judges behave differently than their male counterparts, or do they blend in and conform to existing norms and institutional cultures? The research in this area largely has gone in two directions. First, there appears to be a great deal of consensus in the literature that in sex-discrimination cases, women judges are more supportive of women's claims than men judges, regardless of their ideology. Second, there is much less consensus over whether or not women employ different methods of reasoning, such as a “difference” jurisprudence.     

Of Roots and Wings: Letting Go of the College‐Bound Child

This article examines how parents experience the process of “letting go” of their college‐bound children. The focus of our analysis is on how the parents evaluate the meanings of their children's leaving home and adopt strategies to facilitate the process for both themselves and the departing child. Our analysis is based on interviews with thirty sets of parents. The interview materials allowed us to recognize and then parse the paradoxical task faced by parents of fostering “attached individuation” for both themselves and their children. We address four broad and persistent themes that emerged from our conversations with parents. First, we consider how parents manage the range of sometimes‐conflicting emotions generated by the letting go process. Second, we analyze the content of parents' worries as a good unobtrusive measure of how they understand the transition to college as a ritual marker in their children's lives. Third, we show how negotiations about geography—about proper distance from home—in choosing a college reflect efforts to impose a measure of gradualism into the letting go process. Fourth, we report on how parents theorize the impact of a child's departure on family relationships in general.     

Continuity and Change in Place Stratification: Spatial Inequality and Middle‐Range Territorial Units*

Abstract Sociologists have produced large, well‐known literatures on inequality across geographic territory at two ends of the spatial scale continuum, within the city and across nation‐states. In this paper, I discuss a different scale of focus, subnational stratification processes across middle‐range spatial units, those between the city and nation‐state. While characterizing much contemporary rural sociological research, this approach to spatial inequality does not tend to be seen as a coherent tradition that cross‐cuts substantive areas. First, I discuss why attention to subnational inequality, rural regions, and middle‐range spatial units are important to social science understanding of stratification processes. Second, I provide an overview of contemporary research traditions in rural sociology which, taken together, form a distinct and innovative approach to spatial inequality. Third, I draw from my own work to explain how factors affecting socioeconomic inequalities across middle‐range territorial units may be conceptualized and provide two sets of empirical examples. Finally, I discuss what should be done in terms of furthering rural sociology's regional approach to spatial inequality.     

Toward a reconciliation of "assimilation" and "pluralism": the interplay of acculturation and ethnic retention

"The reconciliation between ?assimilation' and ?pluralism' is sought to help prevent further polarization among immigration researchers and is based mainly on two arguments. First, if assimilation and acculturation are distinguished, acculturation has proceeded more quickly than assimilation in both ?old' and ?new' immigrations. This reconciles traditional assimilationist theory with current pluralist--or ethnic retention--theory, which admits that acculturation (and accommodation) are occurring but without assimilation. Second, the reconciliation can also be advanced by the recognition that the researchers of the old and new immigrations have studied different generations of newcomers and have approached their research with ?outsider' and ?insider' values, respectively." The geographical focus is on the United States.