Reforming Land‐Tenure Systems in South Africa: Routes to Socio‐Economic and Agricultural Sustainability

Given the historical development of land tenure in South Africa, the aim of this article is to examine the best routes to alleviate poverty and retain sustainable agriculture in the country. First, a theoretical framework is presented that relates land tenure to sustainability, and three historical periods (pre‐colonial, colonial, and apartheid) are then considered to explain the changes in land tenure and their consequences. The progress and main limitations of post‐apartheid land reform to approach agricultural sustainability and alleviate poverty are discussed. Based on the analysis, different possibilities for future land reform are elaborated, followed by some recommendations for future land‐reform policies in South Africa.     

The Prospects for Foreign Debt Sustainability in Post‐Completion‐Point Countries: Implications of the HIPC‐MDRI Framework

The Enhanced HIPC Initiative was launched in 1999 to reduce the Net Present Value (NPV) of foreign debt of the world's poorest countries to a sustainable threshold of 150% of their exports. This article applies a simple growth‐with‐debt model to 16 post‐completion‐point HIPCs to assess whether this goal will be met by 2015. Its somewhat optimistic base‐case projections suggest that participation in the current Enhanced HIPC‐MDRI initiative will only reduce the NPV of their total external debt to 176% of exports by this date. Sensitivity tests which expose these countries to adverse exogenous shocks help draw attention to policies that could ensure that they do not again accumulate unsustainable debt levels.     

When Father Steps Forward and Mother Steps Back: The Moderating Role of Simultaneity in Parents' Coparenting Behaviors in the Development of Anxiety in 4‐ to 30‐Month‐Olds

Infant negative affectivity predicts child anxiety. Coparenting might influence the development of anxiety by weakening this association in the case of supportive coparenting, or by strengthening this association in the case of undermining coparenting. Parents can display coparenting behaviors simultaneously (both parents being supportive or undermining), or divergently (only one parent being supportive or undermining). In our longitudinal study, we investigated whether coparenting moderated the relation between infant negative affectivity at 4 months and child anxiety symptoms 2 years later. Hundred‐sixteen couples dressed up their firstborn infants in a clothes‐changing task. We coded cooperative, mutual, neutral, and competitive coparenting behaviors. Both parents rated infant negative affectivity and child anxiety symptoms. Infant negative affectivity significantly predicted child anxiety. This association was moderated by parents' divergent cooperative coparenting: It was stronger when mothers were cooperative while fathers were neutral, and weaker when fathers were cooperative while mothers were neutral. When fathers step forward (i.e., being cooperative) and mothers step back (i.e., leaving space), they may protect their at‐risk child from developing anxiety.     

The Transnational Tilt of the Treadmill and the Role of Trade Openness on Carbon Emissions: A Comparative International Study, 1965–2010

There are various schools of thought regarding the relationship between the environment and economy. Ecological modernization argues that the harmful effects of economic growth and development on the environment decline through time, whereas the treadmill of production and ecologically unequal exchange postulate different perspectives. This study relies on World Bank and World Resources Institute data for the period of 1965–2010. Time‐series cross‐sectional Prais‐Winsten (PW) regression models with panel‐corrected standard errors (PCSE) are employed to examine whether economic growth and trade openness intensified or decoupled in relation to three measures of carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ emissions during this period. The findings of this study indicate that there has been a “tilt” in the treadmill of production—that is, the most environmentally degrading production processes have moved to less developed countries. Furthermore, integration into the world economy has been associated with an intensification in CO₂ emissions for less developed countries. Surprisingly, however, this phenomenon does not seem to be driven by exports sent to high‐income nations, suggesting that there are mechanisms embodied within the global organization of production that require further exploration.     

Barriers to the Uptake of Emergency Accommodation by Young Runaways and Thrown‐out children and the Role of the ‘Transitional Person’

Young runaways and thrown‐out children, under‐16, face a number of barriers to accessing safe emergency accommodation. The need for such accommodation is not always apparent because children sometimes make themselves invisible to services through fear of being returned or fear of being removed from inappropriate accommodation. Young people's retrospective accounts of their experiences suggest the importance of a ‘transitional person’, an adult who has a pivotal role in trust‐building and who acts as a conduit to services and helps runaway and thrown‐out children overcome internal and external barriers to uptake of emergency accommodation.     

From “nobody's clapping for us” to “bad moms”: COVID-19 and the circle of childcare in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of childcare to national economies in general and women's economic participation in particular, spurring renewed interest in childcare policy in many countries that have implemented lockdowns. This paper adopts a circle of care framework to analyzes how COVID-19 has affected paid childcare, unpaid childcare and other paid work, and the relationship between these sectors. Analysis is grounded in the lived experiences of parents and childcare educators, documented through 16 semi-structured interviews during the initial lockdown (March–June 2020) in British Columbia, Canada. Experiences from educators suggest their safety was not prioritized, and that their contributions were undervalued and went unrecognized. Mothers, who provided the majority of unpaid care, not only lost income due to care demands, but struggled to access necessities, with some reporting increased personal insecurity. Those attempting to work from home also experienced feelings of guilt and distress as they tried to manage the triple burden. Similarities of experiences across the circle of care suggest the COVID-19 childcare policy response in BC Canada downloaded care responsibilities on to women without corresponding recognition or support, causing women to absorb the costs of care work, with potential long-term negative effects on women's careers and well-being, as well as on the resilience of the circle of care. Pandemic recovery and preparedness policies that aim to promote gender equality must consider all sectors of the circle of care and the relationships between them.     

Goodbye to the golden cage: Transformations in gender norms and family morality for working‐class women in occupations considered masculine in Mexico

This article seeks to contribute to the debate, within the feminist sociological theory and gender studies, about the possibility of ‘undoing gender’ in different social fields, mainly family relations. It is based on the premise that as women's objective dependency in the social structure decreases, the unstable character of what Bourdieu called ‘submissive dispositions’ becomes visible, and that women act reflectively, both to adapt to the challenges posed by their participation in different social fields and to gain personal liberties. The results of qualitative research, based on discussion groups and narrative interviews in which 109 women in working‐class sectors in Mexico City participated, are presented. Conflicts around breadwinning, housework distribution and personal liberties demonstrate a displacement of gender norms, parallel to efforts to maintain certain assurances regarding the traditional family model within the context of economic precariousness.     

Self‐Soothing — A Recursive Intrapsychic and Relational Process: The Contribution of the Bowen Theory to the Process of Self‐Soothing

The concept of self‐soothing originating in the psychodynamic tradition has attracted interest from therapists as a key skill in the managing and regulating of strong affect and emotional discomfort. While a capacity for self‐soothing is implicit in, and a vital prerequisite to, the process of differentiation, Murray Bowen also predicted that the outcome of increased differentiation is improved emotional equilibrium and a capacity for self‐soothing, clearly a recursive process. The attention of Bowen family systems theory to both the relational and intrapsychic aspects of human functioning provides a useful framework through which to explore these aspects of the dynamics of self‐soothing. This article describes some of the key processes involved in developing a self‐soothing capacity within an effort to define a more autonomous self in significant relationships. The author contrasts Family Systems thinking with other theoretical perspectives that speak to the importance of self‐soothing. Finally, the role of the therapist as a facilitator of an environment in which the self‐soothing resources of clients can emerge is considered alongside suggestions and strategies for how a therapist may contribute to a client's own efforts.     

Industrial relations and adjustments to the crisis: A comparative micro‐statistical analysis of France and Great Britain

In this comparative study, the authors analyse the relationships between industrial relations and workforce or wage adjustments in response to the 2007–08 crisis, using two highly comparable establishment‐level surveys conducted in Great Britain (WERS) and France (REPONSE) in 2010–12. Notwithstanding contextual differences in the countries’ productive systems and the timing and impact of the crisis, the relationships between industrial relations and adjustment strategies appear to have been similar (trade union presence not preventing adjustments). Differences in industrial relations are therefore not found to provide an explanation for the different modes of adjustment observed at the macroeconomic level.     

From Work as Sex to Sex as Work: Networks, ‘Others’ and Occupations in the Analysis of Work

While once upon a time the social science of work and organization neglected or marginalized gender and sexuality, we have now lost sight of what people actually do, that is to say the activity of work. Gender and sexuality have been identified as crucial to organizational dynamics and, notwithstanding different theoretical emphases, this paradigm has become increasingly influential. We argue (contrary to most of its protagonists) that — within this model — the significance of sex and gender for organization rests principally on their role in the production of identities rather than in what they can tell us about production or work in any wider sense. The article highlights parallels with the ways in which prostitution is now generally understood, whether the emphasis is on subordination or agency. This literature also emphasizes gender relations and identities, even where the focus is on re–writing ‘sex as work’. We argue that this focus neglects the wider networks in which all work, whether mainstream or otherwise, is embedded and that a full analysis must take due account of both these networks and the discursive production of identities. Examples — of work in the finance and sex industries — are used to substantiate this argument and a case is made for the importance of the Chicago School’s analysis of occupations.     

‘They Cry,Cry, They Want to go to School’: the Micro‐Politics of Asylum‐Seeking Children's Articulated Emotions and Belonging in Relation to the Swedish School

This study illustrates how asylum‐seeking children, through articulated emotions, respond to being affected by experiences that enhance or restrict their sense of belonging. The findings show that, owing to power structures and relations, the children's sense of belonging was made uncertain by temporal, situational and relational boundaries of belonging. However, through their articulations, the children also contested these boundaries. The study argues that the children were moved by their structural situatedness and that their articulated emotions demonstrated their micro‐politics. The study also visualises how children may be affected when their rights are not realised in their lived forms.     

‘We took a bath with the chickens’: memories of childhood visits to the homeland by second‐generation Greek and Greek Cypriot ‘returnees’

Drawing on a wider study of 90 second‐generation Greeks and Greek Cypriots who have relocated to their ancestral homeland, in this article we focus on the significance of childhood visits to the homeland. Freedom – how children were allowed to roam free and stay up late – is the key trope of such memories, in contrast with the strict spatio‐temporal parenting they received in the host country. Different, sometimes less pleasant memories, however, emerge when the visits took place during later, teenage years. We explore the connections between childhood visits and adult relocation. Adult returnees find that settlement in the homeland produces a new set of challenges and reactions that differ markedly from childhood experiences and memories. They engage a second narrative trope, nostalgia, reflecting on the loss of the ‘authentic’ nature of the homeland and its customs and values. Instead, they highlight the materialism and xenophobia of Greek and Cypriot society nowadays. However, they see the ‘homeland’ as a safer place in which to raise their own children.     

A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

Collaborative Music‐Making with Digital Audio Workstations: The “nth Member” as a Heuristic Device for Understanding the Role of Technologies in Audio Composition

This article examines amateur music‐making using a digital audio workstation, showing how audio and software are used as resources for creating compositions. The article has two aims. Firstly, to depict how digital music‐making is formed from routine interactional techniques. Secondly, to probe how researchers might account for such multi‐modal activity through a heuristic device: the “nth member.” Whereas sociology has typically been concerned with the cultural facets of how music is made and consumed, we explore the material practices of collaborative song creation utilizing conversation analytic techniques—“turn‐taking” and “next‐selection”—to capture two key interactional moments.     

‘..It takes a lot of brain space’: Understanding young carers’ lives in England and the implications for policy and practice to reduce inappropriate and excessive care work

This qualitative study, undertaken in England, explored young carers’ perspectives on the nature of their caring responsibilities. The findings are significant, particularly in the context of England's Care Act 2014, which seeks to prevent children engaging in ‘excessive’ or ‘inappropriate’ caring. Our research placed children at the heart of the debate on what constitutes appropriate care. The findings raise key questions regarding effective implementation of contemporary child policy, duties of care towards children in caring roles and priorities for child protection and family support policy and practices, with the potential to inform thinking around child's well-being in wider contexts.