Religion in the everyday lives of second‐generation Jains in Britain and the USA: resources offered by a dharma‐based South Asian religion for the construction of religious biographies,and negotiating risk and uncertainty in late modern societies

While the growth of spiritualties is associated with post‐traditional societies and the ability of individuals to engage in reflexive construction of religious biographies in late modernity, these arguments ignore various dimensions of reflexivity and processes of re‐traditionalization. In this article I explore linkages and affinity between social discourses in late modernity and a religion, with a distinctive ontology, originating in South Asia. Drawing on qualitative data, I examine processes involved in the construction of a religious self among second‐generation Jains in Britain and the USA. Living in late modern societies, young Jains have established a reflexive habitus. Such reflexivity has affinity with a neo‐orthodox tendency in Jainism that rejects the authority of ascetics and rituals while elevating one's own knowledge, discipline and insights in the construction of a Jain biography. I find that neo‐orthodox Jainism provides resources for young Jains to constantly reflect on and actively choose how to be a Jain; to enact cataphatic reflexivity in the construction of a Jain self. For some second‐generation Jains, the Jain tradition also provides resources to enact a non‐instrumental, apophatic reflexivity; a calm equanimous state that enables them to create ontological security in the face of risks and uncertainty in late modernity.     

"MY PROBLEM AND HOW I SOLVED IT":

Social scientists have generated a vast literature on domestic violence, a small part of which has entered the popular media and the consciousness of its consumers. As yet there has been little scholarly investigation of this popular body of knowledge on domestic violence. Using a qualitative analysis of popular women's magazine articles and magazine writers' guidebooks, I investigate the content, creation, and impact of this popular discourse. In this study, I demonstrate that the majority of articles in popular women's magazines continue to portray the public issue of domestic violence as a private problem. Not only is it portrayed as a private problem but most often it is the victim's problem. The dominant individual perspective that places responsibility on the victim normalizes the idea that victims should be held responsible for solving the problem. Finally, I demonstrate how the writing and editorial practices of these popular women's magazines contribute to the dominance of assigning responsibility for domestic violence to individuals.     

Micro-entrepreneurship,new media technologies,and the reproduction and reconfiguration of gender in rural China

This article explores the connections between micro-entrepreneurship, new media technologies, and gender in rural China. Based on fieldwork among diverse individuals engaged in agricultural and non-agricultural micro-entrepreneurship, I examine how uses of technology in economic production become the site for the reproduction and/or reconfiguration of gender hierarchies. Grounding my analysis in feminist and critical theories of technology, I investigate the gendered uses and discourses of new media technologies that emerge from three types of entrepreneurial spaces: physical places where micro-entrepreneurship is based on new media technologies, such as internet cafés and mobile phone shops; virtual realms where new media technologies potentially facilitate entrepreneurship, including text messaging and various websites; and virtual spaces where informal learning and sharing take place via mediated networks formed around common occupations. I argue that in the context of entrepreneurship, even among women and men who are young and have migration experience, deeply entrenched gendered power differentials produce unequal access to capital and social networks, and hence uses and understandings of technology. Although engagement with technology has opened up new spaces for economic enhancement and the rearrangement of conventional gender norms, such engagement does not overcome – indeed, in many cases reproduces – gendered power relations.     

Transgender student experiences in single‐sex colleges

This article reviews popular and scholarly literature on transgender students' experiences who are enrolled in single‐sex colleges. Because such colleges rely on bounded conceptions of sex/gender to determine who can and cannot be eligible for admission, the enrollment and matriculation of transgender students pose a challenge to the central organizing logic of the single‐sex environment. As such, I first draw upon theorizations of gendered and queer organizations to highlight the utility of sociology in analyzing the transing of organizations through transgender inclusion. Using this framework, I then address trans student experiences at the time of admission and during matriculation at single‐sex colleges. These perspectives frame transgender inclusion as a new organizational form but one that is rooted in the social construction of transnormativity rather than institutional transformation.     

Couch Revisited: A Theoretical Treatment of The Information‐Technological Media of Imgur,Reddit, and Twitter

In this paper, I argue that unique locations of digital interactions constitute distinct information‐technological media. I first apply a close reading of Couch's ( 1995a ) work to digital sociology, and then analyze three popular social media networks: www.Imgur.com , www.Reddit.com , and www.Twitter.com . I close with a theoretical application of Couch's paradigm for analyzing the qualities of information technologies.     

Beware of Allies!

In science and technology studies (STS), reflexivity is not the foremost political or ethical concern that it is for some postmodernists, feminists, anthropologists, or those earnest students of Bourdieu. For us, reflexivity is a practical methodological concern. When reflexivity is raised in our scholarly communications it is, without irony, about crafting scientific communications (i.e., scholarly accounts like articles or books) reflexively. This paper therefore is an actor-network account of making reflexive actor-network accounts, specifically, in the process of writing-up qualitative research findings. It is a paper about research. It is a paper about the research process. As our empirical contribution, we report on research we previously conducted and about the subsequent steps we took toward a (publishable) way of reporting it. We are trying to honestly disclose how the process of preparing a reflexive account is more than merely a matter of cleaning-up the messiness of data, but also, and perhaps foremost, a process of finding, aligning, and occasionally distancing our accounts from our allies?—?in our case, actor-network theory (ANT) and reflexivity.     

Opting Out (Without Kids): Understanding Non‐Mothers' Workplace Exit in Popular Autobiographies

Since the term appeared in 2003, popular media and academics have been interested in the phenomenon of ‘opting out’ — elite women choosing to leave their jobs to stay at home with their children. Although it is unclear whether the opt‐out revolution actually exists, this conversation has resulted in a wealth of scholarship on women leaving successful jobs to care for their children, particularly how maternity might be a graceful time to exit gendered organizations. However, there is not scholarship considering women without children who opt out of the dominant career model. In this study, I look at three popular autobiographies of women who left successful careers to pursue alternative work (farming, baking). I found that the women sought meaning in their work, control over their labour process, and a new definition of success. These narratives provide broader insight into the constraints of the dominant career model and gendered organizations as well as the particular difficulties for non‐mothers to opt out.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: The Stratification of Taste in a Cultural Industry

Scholars argue that cultural intermediaries—that is, people that sell popular culture—accomplish their work through an affinity between their personal taste and that of their consumers. Yet, studies have not examined the social origins of such taste. To address this gap, I use qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze data collected from a probability sample of U.S. advertising practitioners. I find that although the tastes of cultural intermediaries are socially stratified, they are not consistently the “middlebrow” taste long associated with such industries. Additionally, by incorporating a two‐dimensional model of class and focusing on how cultural goods are consumed, I extend knowledge on taste more generally.     

The media of sociology: tight or loose translations?

Sociologists have increasingly come to recognize that the discipline has unduly privileged textual representations, but efforts to incorporate visual and other media are still only in their beginning. This paper develops an analysis of the ways objects of knowledge are translated into other media, in order to understand the visual practices of sociology and to point out unused possibilities. I argue that the discourse on visual sociology, by assuming that photographs are less objective than text, is based on an asymmetric media‐determinism and on a misleading notion of objectivity. Instead, I suggest to analyse media with the concept of translations. I introduce several kinds of translations, most centrally the distinction between tight and loose ones. I show that many sciences, such as biology, focus on tight translations, using a variety of media and manipulating both research objects and representations. Sociology, in contrast, uses both tight and loose translations, but uses the latter only for texts. For visuals, sociology restricts itself to what I call ‘the documentary’: focusing on mechanical recording technologies without manipulating either the object of research or the representation. I conclude by discussing three rare examples of what is largely excluded in sociology: visual loose translations, visual tight translations based on non‐mechanical recording technologies, and visual tight translations based on mechanical recording technologies that include the manipulation of both object and representation.     

Women's status and global food security: An overview

Scholars are increasingly examining how gender interacts with food security, with specific attention given to women. This is not surprising, given that women make up 43% of the global agricultural labor force and are responsible for producing almost half of the global agricultural food supply. Since women tend to be disproportionately responsible for taking care of household activities, including the production, purchase, preparation, and allocation of food‐based resources—particularly in the developing world—there is a scholarly consensus that an improvement in women's status has a positive impact on nutritional outcomes. Current scholarship on gender and food security is thus broadly divided into relationships between food security and women's economic freedoms, legal opportunities, and both formal and informal education via improved knowledge of agricultural procedures. In this review, I draw attention to the role that sociologists can play in engaging these topics, and I specifically highlight the need to conduct more cross‐national and longitudinal analyses of women's status and food security. Finally, I point towards recent studies that assess the impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on food security, and suggest the need to explicate the role of gender within such processes.     

Agency,reflexivity and risk: cosmopolitan,neurotic or prudential citizen?

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the turn to risk within sociology and to survey the relationship between structure and agency as conceived by popular strands of risk theorizing. To this end, we appraise the risk society, culture of fear and governmentality perspectives and we consider the different imaginings of the citizen constructed by each of these approaches. The paper goes on to explore what each of these visions of citizenship implies for understandings of the structure/agency dynamic as it pertains to the question of reflexivity. In order to transcend uni‐dimensional notions of citizenship and to reinvigorate sociological debates about risk, we call for conceptual analyses that are contextually rooted. Exampling the importance of knowledge contests around contemporary security threats and warnings of the deleterious effects of pre‐emptive modes of regulation that derive from the ‘risk turn’ within social science, we argue for a more nuanced embrace of reflexivity within risk theorising in order to facilitate a more dynamic critique of the images of citizenship that such theorizing promotes.     

Effects of sex guilt and premarital sexual permissiveness on role‐played sex education and moral attitudes

Anne Fausto‐Sterling's suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late‐onset adrenal hyper‐plasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto‐Sterling's estimate of 1.7%.     

Critical Perspectives on Digital Health Technologies

Discussions of digital health technologies in the popular media and the medical and public health academic literature frequently comment on how these technologies might offer new or improved ways of delivering health care, conducting health promotion activities and monitoring public health. Following the presentation of an overview of the range of digital health technologies that are currently in use, I review the work of researchers in the field of critical digital health studies who have addressed their broader social, cultural and political dimensions. The discussion focuses on four major topics: health and medical websites and platforms; telemedicine and telehealth; the politics of digital health; and digitised embodiment. I end with identifying some important directions for future research in critical digital health studies.     

Health technology assessment between our health care system and our health

In this contribution, I wish to explore the potential of health technology assessment and ethics for increasing our capacity to pre-empt the shortcomings and undesired consequences of modern health care while maintaining its benefits. Central is the presumption that in case of some health problems this cannot be done unless we explicitly reconsider some features of the modern health care system, especially those related to its strong reliance on scientific rationality and the strong role played by medical professionals. So as to both maintain the benefits of advanced health care and ensure that it produces less reason for concern, we need to reconsider our approach to rationality—and maybe even the way in which we build our health care system around that rationality. That is, we need to introduce an element of reflexivity. Two types of circumstances are being explored in which such reflexivity may prove worthwhile: controversies on side effects, and persistent problems encountered in optimising health care. Drawing on brief discussions of typical cases, we explore the potential of reflexive HTA and its methodical prerequisites. We conclude that ethicists may contribute to reflexive HTA, if they combine a hermeneutic—and often also participative—methodology with a solid understanding of the relation between the health problem under scrutiny and more general critique of the health care system. Insights from the areas of science and technology studies, as well as from social philosophy may be critical items in their tool kit.     

Scientists,the Media,and the Public Communication of Science

The relationship between scientists and journalists has evolved in recent years with the advent of numerous sociocultural changes and drastic shifts within the media ecosystem. Media professionals have traditionally been the gatekeepers of scientific information, but new media technologies grant scientists more power than ever before to be proactive about their public communication. In this article, I provide an overview of the science–media relationship and scientists as public communicators. Specifically, I recount the relationship that has traditionally existed between scientists and media professionals, explain how this relationship has evolved over recent years, and highlight what I believe are some of the most salient and exciting areas for future research examining scientists' efforts to engage with the public.     

The Aporias of Reflexivity: Standpoint,Position, and Non-normative Childhoods

In social work practice and research, both researchers and practitioners are required to be self-reflexive in order to produce authorized knowledge. In this article I examine the aporias of reflexivity, using aporia as a concept for dealing with and discussing the dilemmas, limitations, and shortcomings of reflexive methodology. To examine in a concrete and detailed way related issues involving the aporias of reflexivity, this article describes a project focused on non-normative childhoods in which reflexive research practice raised many, often highly ambiguous, questions concerning the processes of marginalization and domination as well as ethical considerations.     

The Field of American Media Sociology: Origins,Resurrection, and Consolidation

This contribution is written against the backdrop of the historic dispersal of early American media sociology out from the core concerns of the discipline and into various importer academic disciplines (including communication, journalism, and media studies) and an ever‐growing pervasiveness of media in everyday life which is reflected by a resurgence of sociological scholarship in the United States since the early 2000s. The article divides the field in works that study media inwards – along the threefold dimensions of production and technologies, communication and discourse, reception and effects – and works that study media outwards. We argue that this latter perspective, examining broader theoretical, methodological, and substantive social implications of mass‐mediated communication, is the most promising one for a mature field of American media sociology. On this basis, we conclude with some suggestions regarding possible new, and as of yet understudied, lines of inquiry for future media sociologists.     

News‐Media and Terrorism: Changing Relationship,Changing Definitions

This article discusses two aspects that are important for understanding the relationship between Western news media and terrorism: the changing representation of terrorists and terrorist attacks in the media and, with it, the changing definition of terrorism. By calling attention to evolving news media practices in times of terrorism, I argue that advanced communication technologies and the emergence of global media ecology since the 1990s has made terrorism more visible in both national and international media landscapes. One result is that the more the news media expose terrorism to global audiences via the “front door,” the more controversial the use of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” become in social, political, and scholarly discourses. The paper addresses the evolving journalistic practices and their consequences as documented in previous studies on media reporting of terrorism in several national contexts, mostly the UK, the United States, and Israel.