Overview of the “state of the field”

The editors offer a short overview of the state of the field in the light of contributions to this special issue.     

Gendering the Politics of Migration 1

Although every aspect of the migration process is shaped by political factors and migration presents many political challenges on the domestic and international levels, the attention of political scientists in the United States and Europe has been limited to relatively few topics, including control over entry and exit, and issues of incorporation and citizenship. Work that considers the political aspects of migration from a gender perspective constitutes an even smaller body of work. In considering the contribution that political science might make to our understanding of gendered migration, this essay points both to some pioneering studies of gendered patterns of migration and incorporation, and also to the growing concern with gender among international organizations and policy makers. Interestingly, the essay shows that it is scholars in neighboring disciplines who have more often have taken up questions of governance and the development of gender‐fair policy towards migrants. The essay raises questions about the relationship between disciplinary boundaries and topical areas and also about the ways in which regional contexts shape the nature of scholarly inquiry by contrasting work on Asia with that in Europe and the United States.     

On the wealth of nations: Bourdieuconomics and social capital

Theory and Society - Why are some countries richer than others? We suggest in the line of political economy theory that traditional production factors cannot explain the observed differences....     

‘Over the Pond and Across the Water’: Developing the Field of ‘Gendered Organizations’

This article is concerned with the development of gendered organizations as a field of study. It begins by exploring some of the factors that militate against integrating organization studies and gender studies and gendered organizations scholarship over national/continental divides. Increasingly doubtful about whether traditional (mainstream and critical) organization theories will or can adequately address gender, we contend that scholars of gendered organizations should ‘strike out’ on our/their own, ‘boldly going’ into unfamiliar territory to create new, innovative theories, concepts and ideas. We make various suggestions about possible future directions for theorizing and research.     

Against the norm: the transitional symbiosis of ‘grassroots clientelism’ and ‘rural citizenship’

Clientelism has predominantly been represented in the literature as an expression of backwardness and corruption with little attention being paid to the question of how clientelism has changed over the years. In contrast, this paper examines the particulars of state intervention in the agrarian economy with respect to clientelism and exposes the illogicality of contrasting patron‐client relationships with citizenship. The historical focus is on the ways in which, in the course of post‐dictatorship consolidation in rural Greece throughout the 1980s, the transformation of traditional brokerage‐based clientelism into the bureaucratic clientelism of the political parties actually enhanced the institutions and practices of ‘rural citizenship’. Comparative qualitative research on the driving force of agrarian change shows how Thessalian villagers made the transition from being socially excluded subjects to socially included clients in two lowland village communities and the role played by a dynamic state bureaucracy.     

The nature of ‘schools’in the sociology of knowledge: The case of the ‘Chicago School’

The nature of 'schools’as a metascientific construct is reviewed. Tiryakian's (1979a) increasingly popular construction of a school of sociology is examined and the case of ‘The Chicago School’is considered in detail. The efficacy of a 'schools’approach to understanding the nature of the growth and development of scientific knowledge is called into question. It is suggested that schools, as used in the literature, tend to be convenient groupings of practitioners rather than metascientific categories and that they fail to adequately engage knowledge transformative processes.     

From the “strategy of truth” to the “weapon of truth”: The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, 1942

The aim of this article is to advance in a hidden part of public relations history: the Archibald MacLeish's ‘strategy of truth’ and its implementation to film industry to influence American public opinion. The attempts during the Second World War to fight the enemy through factual propaganda also found, in the film industry, the ideal medium to offset the enemy's propagandising audiovisual products, particularly Nazi propaganda. For this reason, the government drew up the Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry (1942) following the line established by the Office of Facts and Figures and Archibald MacLeish's ‘strategy of truth’. Thus, the Manual for the Motion Picture Industry became a good example of the use of ethical propaganda.     

Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of the Gap‐Overlap Task in 10‐Month‐Old Infants

Understanding the development of attention is key to understanding cognitive maturation. The gap‐overlap task can be administered at all ages and is widely used to study the development of overt visual attention. However, studies using the gap‐overlap task report different measures and little is known about the tasks’ psychometric properties, especially in infants. We tested the 1‐week test–retest reliability of two frequently used gap‐overlap measures of attentional disengagement in 10‐month‐old infants; the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and overlap condition and the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and baseline condition. Sixty‐seven infants performed the gap‐overlap task twice, of which 45 infants had sufficient data quality for further analyses. Test–retest reliability of the overlap‐gap gap effect was higher (r = .50) than the baseline‐gap gap effect (r = .29). Moreover, the shared variance between overlap and baseline saccadic reaction times was moderate to high across sessions. In light of these results and the methodological challenges and limitations of infant research, we consider the overlap‐gap gap effect to be a good measure to study the development of attentional disengagement in infants and suggest the exclusion of the baseline condition in future studies.     

The residents’ ‘images of the past’ in the architecture of Salt City, Jordan

In the preservation movement, the perception of older buildings by the residents of a city has received limited consideration. This paper reports on empirical research conducted in a small traditional city, Salt, Jordan. It examines ‘images of the past’ within a model of nonverbal communication of the meaning in the built environment. The objective of this study is to identify similarities among residents’ images of the past. A survey research design using multiple sorting techniques with open-ended questions was used to identify residents’ images of the past. These images were elicited through the observation of coloured photographs of a sample of older buildings from the city centre. Images of the past were examined within three content areas: knowledge of the past, date of construction of the building, and character of the past of Salt City. Findings suggest that older buildings in the centre of the city do evoke similar images of the past for residents, regardless of their length of residential tenure. From these similar images, a common image of the past focus on public or social use buildings along with residential buildings of the settlement era. Residents has associated these buildings with the past functions and development of the city. This study presents an approach for operationalizing the image of the past as a research variable (in terms of the scale of a city and of different cultures).     

Response to the "Abuse of the Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome"

No abstract available for this article.     

Maintaining the simulation model in the era of the ‘social’: The ‘inquiry’ system of Canadian workers' compensation, 1914–1984*

L'oeuvre des auteurs comme Foucault et Baudrillard a mis au défi les théories conventionnelles en sociologie quant au pouvoir de l'état et de l'économie politique. Malheureusement, la recherche au Canada ne s'est peu orientée vers ces études théoriques. Cette communication cherche à démontrer l'utilité des notions de “surveiller” de Foucault et de la “codification” de Baudrillard pour mieux comprendre les composants et les pratiques quotidiennes des commissions des accidents du travail au Canada. The work of theorists such as Foucault and Baudrillard has posed a significant challenge to more conventional sociological frameworks for dealing with issues of state power and political economy. Yet empirical work on the state-political economy relationship in Canada has, so far, made little use of these theoretical insights. In contrast, the specific aim of this paper is to display the usefulness of Foucault's concern with surveillance and Baudrillard's concern with codification so as to better understand the constitutive features and the mundane practices of Canadian workers' compensation boards.     

Representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the Discourse of Lafcadio Hearn Studies

The purpose of this article is to analyze representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the discourse of research on Lafcadio Hearn (“Hearn studies”) from pre‐war Japan. The nature and construction of nationality will be analyzed by examining where the representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” intersected. During the 1900s, researchers in the field of Hearn studies recognized that “Japan” lacked—and thus sought—a universality similar to what existed in “the West.” The tone of the discourse shifted during the 1910s through 1920s however, and what came to be emphasized was “Japan's” peculiarity. By the 1930s through 1940s, “Japan” aimed to show to “the West” a new universality that was different from what existed in Europe and America. Yet simultaneously, in order to legitimize its representation of its self, “Japan” portrayed “the Periphery” as an object that was both excluded and absorbed or appropriated into that image. On the one hand, “Japan” received and internalized the Orientalist viewpoint of “the West.” In fact, “Japan” was always conscious of its self‐image as something to display to “the West.” On the other hand, in order to create that self‐portrayal, both a representation of “the Periphery” and a reflection from that same “Periphery” were essential. While representations of “Japan” were produced, reproduced, and reinforced through interactions with “the West” and “the Periphery,” the intersecting behavior of these three entities also points to a residual ambiguity in “Japan's” nationality. By analyzing the discourse in Hearn studies, this paper reveals how the interaction between “Japan” and the two others of “the West” and “the Periphery” helped construct and destabilize its nationality.