Making Human Behavior Theory Real Through the Unreal: Fiction in the HBSE Classroom

This article examines the use of fictional literature as a method for helping students apply human behavior theory in competent practice. When students and educators read a poem, short essay, or novel, it allows them the opportunity to join together as an audience as they tease out teachable lessons from the story. The authors posit that when used in human behavior and the social environment courses, fictional literature allows educators and students to experience abstract content as more concrete. Following a brief literature review, we examine one novel through the lens of three different human behavior theories.     

Social analysis in the clinical setting

This essay examines the use of social analysis in clinical practice. Although the author is a psychoanalytically-oriented clinician, she advances the view of the self as both psychologically and socially constituted. When applied to therapy this concept of self leads to presenting a picture of reality that includes both social dynamics and psychodynamics. Based on clinical case material, the author demonstrates how social analysis contributes to psycho-analysis in changing client's self-concept and social identity. In addition, she identified conditions under which social analysis advances or retards the healing process.     

Participatory art within,against and beyond financialization: benign pessimism,tactical parasitics and the encrypted common

This essay examines three critical artists who orchestrate participatory spectacles and experiences as a means of challenging neoliberal financialization, an overarching paradigm and process that is reshaping economics, politics, society and culture. Critical art, I argue, can offer us a particularly insightful vantage point on these transformations. This is not, as it is usually supposed, because art has some lofty transcendental perspective above society; rather, it is precisely because art is already so deeply integrated into finance and financialization. Not coincidentally, “participation” appears as a keyword for the restructuring of both art and finance today, which I argue is key to understanding the challenges, limits and potentials of even avowedly critical participatory art, with lessons for cultural production more broadly. In order to analyse and draw broader lessons from the three artworks in question, I identify each with a strategic paradigm: benign pessimism, tactical parasitism and the encrypted common. These strategies, I argue, emerge within, against and beyond financialization and can help complicate our approach to its complex cultural politics.     

Reflections on Teaching—North Central Sociological Association 2015 John F. Schnabel Lecture: Tales from a Classroom Ninja: What Martial Arts Can Teach Us About Transformative Learning Experiences

The recipient of the 2014 John F. Schnabel Distinguished Contributions to Teaching award delivered this keynote address at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the North Central Sociological Association in Cleveland. The author outlines the lessons that sociology instructors can derive from the martial arts. Although the parallels between martial arts and university classrooms may not be apparent at first glance, Holtzman demonstrates that the primary lessons of Ninjutsu—to know your enemy, to persevere, and to embrace the unconventional—are also fundamental lessons for sociology professors.     

Issue Information

While engaged in research and teaching regarding racism in US organizations, members of the writing team have frequently found that conscientious humour and the meaningful lessons it can encode provide needed releases from the stress associated with social justice work as well as serve as an effective pedagogical tool. Taking inspiration from contemporary satirical humourists, including Robin Thede, Issa Rae, Dave Chappelle and Jordan Peele, who have used comedy to expose serious aspects of racism, as well as leading critical race theorists’ use of fictional chronicles about race we present a comedic chronicle centred around an African American protagonist who demonstrates a variety of coping and resistance strategies in conversations with a well‐intentioned yet culturally insensitive white male co‐worker who regularly engages her about her hair.     

Democracy as Textual Accomplishment*

By analysing a government commission's report, this essay demonstrates empirically the utility of ethnomethodology for ideological investigation and critique. In a liberal democratic society, publicly appointed investigative commissions must claim a non-interventionist stance toward opinions submitted to the commissions. This claim in turn furnishes the commissioners' display of having followed the due democratic processes in their objective reporting of the investigated situations. The ethnomethodologically informed analysis demonstrates that (i) commissioners cannot be non-interventionist and (ii) they necessarily discredit some segment of the public opinions by formulating these opinions as less than adequate in some ways, of which the formulation of “non-representativeness” is most readily available. Because of space limitations, this essay is only a precursor to the detailed analysis of “discrediting” practices in ideological production and reproduction.     

Saints or Sinners: Sociobiological Theories of Male Homosexuality

In response to Christian conservative political action, some gay rights advocates have embraced a biological argument. The argument maintains that because homosexuality may have a biological basis, homosexuals should be protected from discrimination. This essay questions the efficacy of this argumentative strategy. The essay demonstrates that biological theories about male homosexuality may not facilitate the efforts of gay rights advocates. In fact, the sociobiological theories analyzed in this essay represent male homosexuality as a state of effeminate pathology. Furthermore, because these sociobiological theories are underdetermined, they are particularly vulnerable to political manipulation. For these reasons, sexual minorities should be cautious about embracing biological arguments in order to secure greater social and political freedoms.     

Queer Intersections: Sexuality and Gender in Migration Studies

This essay examines the historical and theoretical development of sexuality in migration research. Noting gaps and omissions in the literature, the essay proposes a dual notion of sexuality including one that is produced by the intersection of other social identities such as class and race, and a queer studies‐derived idea of the sexual that goes against the normalizing of heterosexual institutions and practices. Utilizing a case study of Filipina migrant workers, the essay demonstrates the pivotal role of sexuality in the future of gender and migration research through a critique of the implicit normative assumptions around family, heterosexual reproduction, and marriage that abound in this body of literature, and how a critical notion of sexuality enables a more inclusive and accurate portrait of global gendered migration.     

Politics and Celebrity: A Sociological Understanding

Many social commentators have denounced the election of entertainment celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Venture, and Al Franken to political offices as indicative of American democracy’s collapse, treating the political victories by these celebrities as evidence of America’s preference for entertainment over political deliberation. This essay reviews the scholarly literature on celebrity and politics to provide a better understanding of this important topic. As the literature demonstrates, this conflation of celebrity and politics is not a recent phenomenon, as politicians have long employed dramaturgical elements to mobilize constituencies. Indeed, celebrities and politicians share many similarities. Both must construct public personalities appealing to their audiences and employ similar actors and strategies to help create these personalities. While some scholars working in this field agree with the concern that celebrity’s presence in politics inhibits serious political discourse, other scholars contend that the use of celebrity performances by politicians may actually attract a wider segment of society to meaningfully participate in politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that future works in this area should adopt a cultural sociology framework to empirically study the meaning of celebrity for different social groups in order to gain a stronger understanding of celebrity’s sociopolitical impact.     

“Everyone was Pounding on Us”: Front Porch Politics and the American Farm Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s

This essay analyzes agricultural politics and activism in the United States during the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Although journalists and social scientists studied farm activism at the time, historians have neglected it. As this article demonstrates, however, the farm crisis is valuable for analyzing why ordinary Americans mobilized as citizens and activists in a period of economic dislocation. Informed by the recent “emotional turn” in social movement studies, the essay frames farm organizing as an archetypal example of “front porch politics”. Mostly, farmers organized out of a sense of being wronged; the resulting sense of injustice fueled a rural uprising.     

Remaking public service broadcasting: Lessons from Allston-Brighton free radio

The role of communication in social movement theory is well observed. Considerably less attention has been given to the question of whether or not media reform efforts constitute social movements in and of themselves. In an effort to consider the efficacy of media reform initiatives and to evaluate their relevance to social movement studies, this essay examines the evolution of a so-called 'free radio' station in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The essay situates a discussion of 'free radio' in relation to the unprecedented consolidation of commercial radio and the attendant diminution of public service broadcasting in the USA. The lessons learned from Allston-Brighton Free Radio help to illuminate the local and particular dynamics of a global movement for communicative democracy.     

Rethinking a Case of Paranoia as a Workplace Complaint

This essay re-reads Freud’s essay “A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Theory of the Disease” (1963) through Marxist feminist writing on the division of labor. I approach the story presented in that essay as a workplace complaint and use it to meditate on sexual harassment as a haunting of the workplace.     

Writing Sociology,Personal Reflections on What the Arts Can Teach Us

Sociology has had classes on writing, a newsletter devoted to improving sociological writing, a remarkable number of books on writing, and special writing issues of sociological journals. Still, helping both sociology students and professional sociologists write more effectively continues to be seen as a major problem for the discipline. This brief essay suggests that four lessons drawn from the arts can improve the writing of sociologists and our students. First, sociologists must recognize the centrality of audience and develop their writing with specific audiences in mind. Second, a lesson drawn from the ceramics studio shows the power of sharply sculpting and focusing work. Third, understanding that research reporting is telling a story allows sociologists to draw on some traditional devices of storytellers to craft more powerful and effective writing. Finally, a phrase (“close enough for jazz”) from musical ensembles acknowledges the importance of avoiding unreasonable delay in presenting one’s work.     

'Samuel Bronston's Latest Epic': Spectacle,Heterogeneity and Nation in the Critical Reception of El Cid (1961)

Abstract

Although El Cid is now regarded by many as a classic, the New York Times was heavily critical of the film on its initial release in the US. This essay examines the contexts that shaped the film's reception in the early 1960s, and demonstrates that, although the New York Times was often explicitly critical of the spectacle associated with historical epics such as El Cid, its film critics were actually more concerned with the ways in which these films threatened cultural distinctions between popular and legitimate culture. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, although the New York Times was critical of historical epics during the late 1940s and the 1950s, it became far more hostile in the early 1960s, when El Cid was released, a period in which Hollywood was facing competition from film-makers working overseas such as Dino De Laurentiis and Samuel Bronston. The essay will therefore illustrate that, while the stated objection of the New York Times critics was to the spectacle of these historical epics, the vitriol that these films received from these critics was due to the way in which they not only threatened distinctions between high and low culture but also between Hollywood and European national cinemas.     

Issues management and inoculation: Tylenol’s responsible dosing advertising

Issues management developed as a long-term process interested in the continued health and success of organizations. This essay presents a contemporary issues management case that uses inoculation and a priori solutions as issues management tactics. The case study involving Johnson & Johnson’s responsible dosing campaign demonstrates that organizations perceived to have a high standard of corporate social responsibility are not above using deceptive tactics to protect their brand.     

Twenty years on: finding a place for the Rwandan genocide in education

The Rwandan genocide was perhaps the most paradigmatic human rights catastrophe in the post-Holocaust era, which challenged the mantra of ‘never again’. Yet as we approach the twentieth anniversary, it remains a relatively marginalised entity within mainstream English education. This paper argues that a study of the Rwandan genocide introduces a number of important issues, which are not emphasised within Holocaust education. It also draws upon a small-scale empirical study of 41 teachers’ attitudes in England, perceptions and experiences of teaching the genocide in a range of disciplines and demonstrates emerging patterns on how it is integrated into curricula and individual lessons. It concludes by advocating the study of the Rwandan genocide in its own right and the importance of students appreciating its contemporary relevance.     

The Ideology of Transference: Laplanche and Affect Theory

The growing interest in the work of Laplanche testifies to the many ways contemporary clinicians and theoreticians are attempting to circumvent some of psychoanalysis’ most abstract, rigid, and conservative formulations. An exemplary occasion of this effort, Avgi Saketopoulou’s essay, “To Suffer Pleasure: The Shattering of the Ego as the Psychic Labor of Perverse Sexuality” (2014) attempts to rethink “perversion” by offering a timely critique of psychoanalytic doxa. In my engagement with Saketopoulou’s essay, I focus on the use of Laplanche as indicative of the ways Laplanche’s radical challenge to traditional psychoanalysis can be recuperated by psychoanalytic conventions without forcing the critique that Laplanche enabled. My introduction of Affect Theory to Laplanche’s radical paradigm works to establish the foundations for a less erotophobic psychoanalysis and demonstrates why rereading Laplanche through cutting-edge theorizations of Affect Theory goes some way toward sustaining the “exigency” of Laplanche’s radical project.     

Native Dirt/Imperial Ordure: The Cholera of 1832 and the morbid resolutions of Modernity*

Abstract Why is India treated as the standing menace to the public health of the world? Is it something peculiar to Indian tradition which prevents India from enjoying the fruits of universal modernity? Or perhaps, is it the emergence of institutions and of other politically organized subjections in a history of colonialism which endowed India with a brand of colonial modernity? By using the cholera epidemic of 1832 and the efforts to rebuild and restructure everyday life in Europe and in India, this essay attempts to answer such questions. It is in the aftermath of the epidemic that various ideological positions are clarified, with the result that bourgeois culture demonstrates its limit in colonialism.     

A feminist perspective on COVID‐19 and the value of care work globally

The shared response to the COVID‐19 crisis demonstrates that the vast majority of society believes human wellbeing — not economic growth — should be at the centre of policy. COVID‐19 exposes the foundational role of care work, both paid and unpaid, to functioning societies and economies. Focusing on ‘production’ instead of the sustainable reproduction of human life devalues care work and those who perform it. Women’s physical and mental health, and the societies that rely on them, are at stake. When these policies are formulated, the field of feminist economics has valuable lessons for mitigating hardships as countries navigate the related economic fallout. A comprehensive response to the COVID‐19 crisis must recognize this gendered work as an integral part of the economic system that promotes human wellbeing for all.     

Xinjiang’s geographies in motion

Starting from the idea that places are socially constructed, this essay explores how a place is established and lived in Xinjiang by the members of the area’s two largest ethnicities, the Uyghur and the Han. This article demonstrates that there are differences in the ways Han and Uyghur imagine and ‘live’ Xinjiang.¹1. Xinjiang is not a very fortunate toponym to use here because it is a Han-language term (meaning ‘New Frontier’) that was imposed during the colonization of the region by the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). However, since there is no other term that comprises both regions of Tarim Basin and Dzungaria and also eastern Xinjiang, I am compelled to use it. For a discussion of the complex question of toponym-usage in this region see Millward, Eurasian Crossroads.View all notes At the same time it asserts that Uyghur and Han do not establish distinct spatial relationships just because of their ethnicity, but also to enhance ethnic solidarity and boundaries vis-à-vis the other. This essay also demonstrates that places are historically contingent, and discusses the ways in which the influx of temporary Han migrants and settlers – and Han capital – has generated new layers of spatial meaning and new power differentials.