Consumption Styles and the Fluid Complexity of Punk Authenticity

Subcultures are distinguished in terms of what they are not, highlighting differences with broader cultural characteristics. From this perspective, authenticity is drawn from external contrasts. This ethnographic study of a local punk scene shows that internal comparisons among participants centered on consumption styles also construct authenticity. This activity was dominated by three indigenous cultural processes: the publicized possession of consumer goods, stylized presentations of self, and conversational display of acquaintance with punk esoterica. In contrast to previous studies, this article shows how the interpretive particulars of consumption in talk and interaction move beyond style alone to feature the fluid complexity of punk authenticity.     

Biosocial Influences on the Family: A Decade Review

The past decade brought a remarkable increase in the number and quality of biosocial studies of family processes. The current review summarizes recent advances in biosocial family research by providing key exemplars of emerging research paradigms. Research in the past decade has substantiated the claim in the previous Decade Review ( Booth, Carver, & Granger, 2000 ) that bidirectional influences between all levels of analysis are paramount. There is an emerging consensus that integrating factors at multiple biological and social levels is highly informative. Because ignoring biological factors often will underestimate mediating or moderating mechanisms, the review provides recommendations for biosocial family research. We also highlight the need for researchers who understand complex family environments to lend their expertise to biosocial studies.     

把握我国消费发展趋势积极扩大上海消费需求

消费需求作为总需求的重要组成部分,尤其是作为最终需求,对于经济增长的拉动作用更为直接和相对稳定。未来我国扩大消费将面临机遇,进入居民消费增长的黄金时期,消费呈现出向品牌化和个性化方向发展、向健康消费和绿色消费升级等特征。上海必须积极应对,一方面聚焦消费需求潜力大、市场销售增长快、影响带动作用强的领域,另一方面完善鼓励消费的各项政策,着力改善消费环境,从而全面提振上海的消费市场。     

Family Influences on Adolescent Gambling Behavior: A Review of the Literature

Gambling, and gambling related problems, are recognized as an emerging health issue among adolescents. Adolescent gambling is associated with numerous individual, social, and family characteristics. This paper provides a review of 21 empirical studies published between 1997 and 2008 that examine family influences on adolescent gambling behavior. Family influences on gambling behavior are conceptualized in the following five domains: (1) family sociodemographic factors, (2) general family climate, (3) family members’ attitudes and behaviors, (4) parenting practices, and (5) family relationship characteristics. Based on the review of extant literature, there is empirical evidence that family characteristics are associated with adolescent gambling and further examination of family system influences on gambling behavior is needed. Gaps in the current literature and recommendations for future research are discussed to help inform the study of family influences on adolescent gambling behavior.     

Demographic Trends in the United States: A Review of Research in the 2000s

Demographic trends in the 2000s showed the continuing separation of family and household due to factors such as childbearing among single parents, the dissolution of cohabiting unions, divorce, repartnering, and remarriage. The transnational families of many immigrants also displayed this separation, as families extended across borders. In addition, demographers demonstrated during the decade that trends such as marriage and divorce were diverging according to education. Moreover, demographic trends in the age structure of the population showed that a large increase in the elderly population will occur in the 2010s. Overall, demographic trends produced an increased complexity of family life and a more ambiguous and fluid set of categories than demographers are accustomed to measuring.     

New Trends of Leisure Consumption in China

This paper described new trends of leisure consumption in China.     

Trends in New Media Research: A Critical Review of Recent Scholarship

Trends in new media research are examined. These trends revolve around four dimensions, including citizen engagement, organizational innovation and adaptation, mobility and content computerization. The following article critically examines this shifting terrain in new media research and its implications for future scholarship.     

Beyond the Self: External Influences in the Career Development Process

The purpose of this article is to explore the wide spectrum of external influences that affect career decision making across the life span and, in particular, how these factors may directly or indirectly alter one's career trajectory and the extent of one's work volition. Career development practitioners are encouraged to respect externally oriented frameworks, explore the social influence of career choice alternatives faced by clients, encourage clients to voice their emotional responses to external constraints, and use career decision‐making strategies that seek an optimal balance of internal and external influences.     

Trends in Military Influences on Army Recruitment: 1915–1953

The implementation of an all-volunteer force in 1974 sparked academic interest in U.S. Army recruiting. During the past three decades Moskos's (1977) Institution/ Occupation (I/O) thesis has dominated this literature. Moskos held that the U.S. Army was becoming less of an institution and more of an occupation. He warned about the danger of offering monetary incentives for enlistment which, he believed, threatened to transform a patriotic duty into a mere job and might also undermine motivation to fight during wartime. This study examines recruiting theme trends through an analysis of recruitment posters from 1915 to 1953. (In a companion article, we extend the examination from 1954 to 1990.) Findings indicate that the I/O thesis was not borne out (Janowitz 1977) and that military changes, including the emergence of an elite military culture, influenced recruitment themes.     

Contemporary Trends in Supervision Theory: A Shift from Parallel Process to Relational and Trauma Theory

This paper describes how relational theories of supervision and one aspect of contemporary trauma theory coalesce to offer a conceptual shift in supervision theory and practices. The paper gives a brief overview of the concept of parallel process in supervision. Following this, the paper summarizes current literature that questions the universal nature of parallel processes in supervision. Next, the characteristics of supervision, when framed in relational theories, are offered. Last, the paper describes how the understanding of trauma theory’s triadic self of victim-victimizer-bystander is a useful construct in understanding impasses in supervisory relationships. Supervisory vignettes are utilized to illustrate the theoretical constructs.     

Review Essay: Constructing the Sociology of Social Problems: Spector and Kitsuse Twenty-Five Years Later

Sociological Forum -     

西洋千夜曲,难得几回闻--从庄裕安的《天方乐谭》说开去

人们谈到<一千零一夜>对西方的影响,都会提及音乐这个领域.研究这一题目--根据<一千零一夜>故事素材创作的西方古典音乐--的专论或著作,虽未读到,但肯定是有的,至少在西方和阿拉伯国家有.几年前,我在王府井外文书店买到一本台湾大吕出版社出版的<天方乐谭>.记得那次购书心情特别愉快,一是因为同时还买到两本台湾版的<一千零一夜>,二是因为在北京直接买到台湾版的自己感兴趣的书,好像实现"三通"已为期不远了似的.     

Power Struggles: Pain and Authenticity in SM Play

Despite a good deal of work on pain as a social/emotional construction, the assumption persists that pain is understood and experienced as inherently and originally negative. Postmodern and constructionist treatments of pain alike focus on negotiations and mediations of pain from that point forward. This article explores the ways in which members of an SM (sadomasochism) community frame, cast, and understand the role of pain in their SM activities, toward the ultimate achievement of authenticity in experiences of power‐imbalanced social interaction. This analysis, based on an in‐depth ethnographic study of an SM community, identifies four main discourses of pain, three of which conform to hegemonic understandings of pain as intrinsically negative experience. It reveals the complex strategies SM participants employ to make sense of pain and contrasts this with a minority discourse in the community in which the provision and experience of pain is framed as a desirable social, carnal, and emotional experience.     

A Transnational Flow of the Art of Tea: The Paradox of Cultural Authenticity in Taiwan

Being regarded as representing authentic Chinese cultural tradition in the eyes of many mainland Chinese, the Taiwanese practice of the art of tea, however, is displayed as an adapted authenticity that integrates multiple sources, including Chinese cultural legacy, Japanese art influences and constant innovations by Taiwanese actors. By conditionally selecting whether to side with Japanese or Chinese culture, a Taiwanese cultural identity through the art of tea is manifested as quests for liberal changes, leisure lifestyle, anti-showy representation and a paradox over commodified practices. This article traces the historical and ongoing transnational cultural flow among China, Taiwan and Japan in the art of tea, and focuses on exploring Taiwanese cultural reconstruction through the development of the art of tea. The author argues that the trajectory of the art of tea intrinsically reflects the paradox of cultural authenticity in Taiwan.     

Racial Authenticity and Familial Acceptance Among Transracial Adoptees: A Bothersome Bargain of Belonging

Transracial adoption in the United States has increased significantly in recent years. Crossing the color line within the intimate familial sphere has important implications for how institutions such as the family enable and constrain individuals' identity work. We explore how transracial family members utilize racial stereotypes and racialist understandings in everyday life, employing 30 in‐depth, life‐story interviews with both transracial adoptees and their white siblings. In attempts to accomplish a sense of belonging and authenticity, we argue that both transracial adoptees of color and their white siblings experience divergent and paradoxical expectations of familial and racial authenticity. We find that although they often utilized “color capital” in a quest for racial authenticity, in certain spaces and environments, they were expected to eschew their nonwhite identity and embrace “acting white” as purported by white family members and their “white debt” approach to racial socialization. This study adds nuance to the question of how families navigate the enduring power of the color line in relation to the reproduction of both material inequalities and racial discrimination.     

Walking the Talk: The Performance of Authenticity in Public Engagement Work

This article examines the performative work of consultants who facilitate public engagement (PE) processes in organizations. Using multimethod ethnography, I find that PE practitioners reconcile tensions between the logics they promote in two different ways. Viewed from one perspective, PE practitioners are agentive entrepreneurs, adeptly negotiating competing logics to reform organizations; viewed from another, they exert a great deal of energy performing rituals that integrate their challenger identities with their elite status as management consultants. Scholars have argued that such contradictions reveal institutional indeterminacy. I argue that the performance of democratic authenticity in PE is both politicizing and depoliticizing.     

Themes and Trends of Journal of Family and Economic Issues: A Review of Twenty Years (1988–2007)

This review article examines the progress and impact of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues (JFEI) between 1988–2007. Over the past 20 years, JFEI has become a major journal publishing articles on the relationship between families and economic systems. JFEI contributed to both the economic and family studies disciplines by publishing articles that explore the interface of these two disciplines. Between 1988 and 2007, JFEI published articles on a variety of themes not often found in other economic or family studies journals such as family resource management, consumer attitudes and behaviors, and economic issues and family relationships. Other unique characteristics of JFEI include many collaborative multidisciplinary studies and many studies analyzing international or cross-cultural samples.