Capital as the lens that Bourdieu Pierres through: Public relations,social theory,and rhetoric

In this paper, I explore the limitations of Bourdieu’s “capital” with the help of Burke’s four master tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Both Bourdieu and Burke were concerned with theoretical reductionism. I claim that Bourdieu could not help but be reductive insofar as his metaphor of capital became the totalizing lens through which he understood society. First, I review Bourdieu’s forms of capital, noting how capital serves as the sine qua non of his theory of practice. Second, I situate Bourdieu within the PR literature. Third, I read Bourdieu’s “capital” through Burke’s (1941) four master tropes. Reading Bourdieu through Burke enables PR scholars to better understand the limitations in Bourdieu’s terminology, which leads to debunking, materialist reductionism, and relativism. I conclude with implications for future research adopting Bourdieusian and Burkean approaches to public relations.     

The Dramaturgical Model of Behavior: Its Strengths and Weaknesses*

By means of the dramaturgical model we freshly illuminate social behavior as role-like “performances” in which persons manage the impressions that others get of them. This impression management involves the concealment of data in a “dramatic” struggle with those others who wish to penetrate one's “mask.” But the chief limitations of the dramaturgical model are that it excites the invalid inferences that offstage “roles” are more like stage actors' roles than they really are, and that the person is nothing but these “roles.” The differences between onstage and offstage behavior are kept in view when the metaphorical concept of “role playing” is re-connected to its source in role playing onstage. Through an analysis of theatre and the concepts of appearance and time we conclude that while we must appear to others in a “role-like” way offstage in order to be ourselves, we are nevertheless involved in world-time offstage in a way that fundamentally distinguishes our “role-playing” from an actor's role playing. We are our “roles”, but not just our “roles.”     

Old age and prosocial behavior: Social preferences or experimental confounds?

Experimental and field evidence indicate a positive link between social preferences and age, most strikingly between the elderly and young adults. However, it is possible that the seemingly positive link between age and preferences stems from confounds in experimental procedure. In a dictator game study we find that elderly participants do indeed transfer higher shares of their endowments to their peers than a standard sample of student participants. This result holds good even in treatments accounting for wealth differences and experimenter demand effects. However, we observe no difference in behavior when we compare elderly participants and students who have not previously participated in economic experiments. Accordingly, it is possible that the seemingly stronger social preferences of the elderly are due to confounds associated with lack of experience with economic experiments. In addition, when comparing incentivized and hypothetical transfer decisions, we observe a hypothetical bias in treatments with a “take” framing, but not in treatments with the standard “give” framing.     

Alfred Schütz — Ökonom und/oder Soziologe?

In 1996, Hartmut Esser published a rational choice model of the “Definition of the Situation” in this journal (KZfSS 48, 1996: 1–34). This work is based on his economic interpretation of the theory of Alfred Schutz, a co-founder of interpretative sociology. This paper analyses Hartmut Esser’s attempt to reconstruct the sociological concept of the definition of the situation by means of economic theory. It shows that Esser’s misinterpretations and abridgements of the theory of Alfred Schutz (this is especially true of the interactive aspects) lead to considerable discrepancies between Esser and Schutz in modelling the definition of the situation. In his economic modelling of the definition of the situation Esser fails to conceive the sociological essence of this concept (the construction of sense structures) because he formulates a model of rational behavior in accordance with the economic tradition. Schutz, however, advocates the construction of rational models of human behavior, which also includes “irrational” (not utility-maximizing) or “sense”-directed behavior.     

Yellow or blue ribbons: analysing discourses in conflict in the televized government-student meeting during the Occupy Movement in Hong Kong

In this commentary, the legal discourses in conflict evolving around the 2014 Occupy Movement in Hong Kong are analysed with Lemke’s theorization of textual semantics and Goffman’s participation framework. Specifically, I analyse the thematic patterns of “democracy” and “rule of law” in the televized meeting between the HKSAR Government officials and the representatives of Hong Kong Federation of Students on constitutional reform on 21 October2014. It is revealed that both sides not only construct dramatically different representation of “democracy” and “rule of law” but also show different orientational stances towards Hong Kong and China. I then propose a more plural understanding of each other and exploration of the other’s discourse histories as one strategy and the first step to going beyond binarism on the road of constitutional development in Hong Kong.     

Therapy with Infertile Heterosexual Couples: It’s Not About Gender—Or is it?

In spite of medical data that show males are equal to their female partners as a source of a heterosexual couple’s infertility, therapists face many unanswered questions about the extent to which gender influences each partner’s infertility experience in American culture. How is “hers” different from “his?” To what extent should the therapist strive to help the couple define the infertility issue as “ours”? This article explores how the therapist can elicit and be sensitive to gender issues while fostering resilience in the infertile couple.     

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare,Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter‐century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of “bureaucratic field” to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the “disciplinary society,” David Garland’s account of the “culture of control,” and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of “individual responsibility.” This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.     

Sociological Knowledge of the Other: Wolff’s “Surrender and Catch” Methodology

From a sociological perspective the “surrender and catch” expression derives, of course, from the experiential and existential basis of Wolff’s epistemology and hermeneutics.“Surrender” is connected with phenomenology, and Husserl’s (as well as Schütz’s) writings, besides Scheler’s idea of a “relatively natural world view”.“Surrender and catch” is also a “sociology of understanding” a definition which recuperates the German verstehende Soziologie though it makes a distinction between “surrender” and “surrender to”. It is not just a theory, it is a methodology too, in order to understand the otherness.Wolff was a multi-facetted scholar and this affected his conceptualizations. Furthermore, his surrender is something one experiences existentially in a number of fields, from the nature of empirical research to the art of theoretical reflection, from politics to poetry, from philosophy to history to sociology.It must also be pointed out that surrender and catch are a form of protest against the status quo.     

A Theory of Thinking: A Theory of Desiring

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on aspects of what is broadly known as countertransference in centering on the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion’s explicit theory of thinking as constituting an implicit theory of desiring. I make a distinction between the discursive terms “thoughts,” “thinking,” “desires,” “desiring,” “wants,” and “craving” and tease out their relationship to one another for clinical practice. I explore how thinking and desiring operate in and around frustration and suggest that the thinking apparatus is not just a mechanism for dealing with thoughts but also is a way of transforming wants into desires. I separate out desires and the desiring apparatus, as Bion does with thoughts and thinking, and argue that thinking is inextricably linked to desiring and thoughts to desires. The interpretative act, moreover, constitutes the analyst’s acting on desire, whereas acts of projective identification are bound up with craving. I demonstrate the potential uses of this theory by discussing it with reference to two published clinical examples.     

Turning Back

This response to Miri Rozmarin’s article, “Staying Alive” (this issue), focuses on the question of what it might mean to create a response to matricide and patriarchal violence that is grounded in the particularities of cultural and personal history. Rozmarin’s rendering of a possible response to matricide through the mother-daughter genealogy is illustrated in her analysis of the biblical myth of Lot’s wife. She claims that this story of destruction, punishment, and incest reveals “an option of nonmatricidal relations” (this issue, p. 248) and she gives a compelling account of how this could be so. In my response, I suggest that there are alternative “against the grain” readings that are grounded in the Jewish traditions and sensibilities in which such “mythic” material is embedded and from which it draws its vitality. I offer an example of this not to refute Rozmarin’s claims but to suggest that something more nuanced and even loving can be found in the specificity of this cultured and gendered encounter and that this better meets the conditions for “concrete” ethical resistance that she seeks.     

“It Takes a Man to Put Me on the Bottom”: Gay Men’s Experiences of Masculinity and Anal Intercourse

In anal intercourse between gay men, men who are typically insertive (“tops”) are often perceived as, and may identify as, more masculine than those who are typically receptive (“bottoms”). “Versatile” men, who may adopt either position, may be perceived as more gender balanced and may transcend the gender-role stereotypes associated with self-labeling as top or bottom. The aim of this study was to explore how gay men’s beliefs about masculinity were associated with their beliefs about the gendered nature of sexual self-labels and their behavior in anal intercourse. Individual semistructured interviews were undertaken with 17 UK-based gay men. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) identified that perceptions of tops and bottoms as gendered social identities varied depending on the extent to which gay men subscribed to the mandates of hegemonic masculinity, the dominant masculinity in Western society. The findings also suggested that some gay men differentiated between top and bottom as social identities and topping and bottoming as gendered behaviors. This had implications for gay men’s behaviors in anal intercourse. It is suggested that future efforts to engage with gay men about their sexual behavior should account for their beliefs regarding the gender-role stereotypes associated with gay sexual self-labels.     

Intergenerational interaction between old and young in creative task

By comparing intergenerational to same-generation interactions in creative activities, we aimed to reveal characteristic behaviors of older and younger adults in intergenerational interactions using a wooden block task. Four categories (“Proposal request”, “New proposal”, “Reactions to proposal”, “Assessments of partner’s behavior”) were extracted from conversations during task performance. In intergenerational groups, the ratio of utterances of “Proposal request” (encouraging a new proposal to partner) were higher than in same-generation groups for older adults. In intergenerational groups, older people assumed the role of encouraging younger people to suggest new ideas, and older people’s such empathic behaviors might provoke lively arguments.     

Psychosemantics of “One-China” Conception: Fourth-Dimensional Resolution of Taiwan-Mainland Political Deadlock1

The political conflicts between Taiwan and the Mainland have progressed, for over 50 years, from the historical “hot civil war” for the “exclusive ownership” of one China’s territorial sovereignty to the contemporary “cold rhetoric circularity” around the “geopolitical symbolism” of the one-Chinaprinciple. In the process, the United States has been intimately entangled in the disputes in terms of 3 alignment stages-from an “unambiguous pro-Taiwan” before the 1970s, the “ambiguous neutrality” in the early 1970s, to the contemporary “pro-Mainland China.” Despite the fact that during the past 3 decades the United States honored the arms sales and the Taiwan Relations Act commitments in Taiwan’s favor, and simultaneously conferred the “3 Nos” and 3 communiques in Mainland China’s favor, the cross-Strait tensions have persisted without the prospect of a definitive foreseeable resolution. Further, because of the lack of explicit conception of “one China,” the United States has to constantly resist the opposing persuasions of the 2 sides, and therefore must continue to rely on the “ambiguous dual deterrence strategy” for maintaining the “dynamics balance” over the Taiwan Strait. For such endeavors, the Clinton “4 frameworks” and the Bush “5 Taiwan policies” have proven to be very effective, but mostly to the extent of assuming a “passive” role in preventing military confrontations.     

Claiming Competence: Biographical Work among Victim‐Advocates and Counselors

Advocates and counselors at agencies that assist victims of domestic violence and sexual assault argue that they are especially suited to help their clients develop safe and practical strategies to protect themselves from further abuse. Yet the backstage of these agencies can depict a reality of confusion, doubt, and sometimes fear—especially when clients’ cases do not go according to plan. Data collected from in‐depth interviews and participant observation over fourteen months show how advocates and counselors engaged in “biographical work” (Gubrium and Holstein 2000) to construct coherent and consistent narratives as competent service providers in the aftermath of their clients’ unanticipated outcomes. Calling on different discursive strategies accessible to them according to their position within the agency, both groups were able to interpret negative results as beyond their responsibility. However, the counselor's rhetoric of “professionalism” proved more effective in this regard compared with the advocates’ “empowerment.”     

THE AMBIGUITIES OF EXTERNAL MINORITY PROTECTION

This article focuses on the special and prominent place that the “Jewish question” occupied in the general discussion about Russian modernisation in the pre‐1914 period, both in American society and in the arena of US–Russian relations. It analyses the role that anti‐Jewish violence in Russia had in effecting a dramatic shift in the way Americans viewed the Russian Empire, which was being depicted by the American Jews and the leaders of the crusade for a “Free Russia” as a barbarous oppressor of political dissent and a savage persecutor of religious, national, and ethnic minorities. American society’s reaction to anti‐Jewish violence in the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century helped, on the one hand, to shape the idea of the American belief that the United States bore special responsibility for carrying out reforms in Russia, and, on the other hand, to place relations between the two countries within such binary oppositions as “light and darkness,” “civilization and barbarity,” “modernity and medievalism,” “democracy and authoritarianism,” “freedom and slavery,” “the West and the Orient.” The article uses a broad range of verbal and graphic sources from the American press and new sources from archival collections. These sources help to illustrate one of the author’s principal tenets which holds that the United States’ view of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire was a result of the Americans’ projection of their own vision of the nature of the US foreign policy. In their official and public discourses, Americans considered Russia’s foreign policy an extension of Russia’s political regime. This study examines US foreign policy as a vital sphere in which national identity is redefined and reaffirmed and gives an opportunity to draw attention to the cultural and ideological dimensions of Russian–American relations, to understand the origins of dualistic American myths about Russia that have proven so enduring, and to demonstrate how a demonised Russia serves to revitalise American nationalism and how the Russian “Other” was used, in part, to construct the American “Self.”     

Rules or No Rules? Three Strategies for Engagement with Young People in Mandated Services

A qualitative study of 61 youth receiving mandated services (child welfare, mental health, probation) or services where there were no alternatives (residential care for homeless youth) explored worker-client relationships from the perspective of young people themselves. Findings suggest three different but related roles played by workers that successfully engage adolescent clients: (1) “Informal supporters” de-professionalize their role and flatten hierarchies, emphasizing empathy and enforcing few rules; (2) “Administrators” enforce rules that are in the child’s best interest but do so with little emotional engagement; and (3) “Caregivers” who hold reasonable expectations and impose structures but are flexible in their negotiations with youth when rules were broken. While youth spoke most positively about their workers when they acted as informal supporters, a deeper analysis of the data showed that youth also engaged well with workers who enforced rules when those rules were necessary for the child’s safety, applied flexibly, age-appropriate, and fit with cultural norms. Use of all three approaches to youth engagement may help workers create better therapeutic relationships with youth receiving mandated services.     

Aspects of conversational style—linguistic versus behavioral analysis

Skinner’s functional analysis of verbal behavior has been contrasted with formal linguistic analysis which studies the grammatical structure and “meaning” of verbal response-products, regardless of the circumstances under which they are produced. Nevertheless, it appears that certain areas of linguistic analysis are not entirely structural. In her recent books That’s Not What I Meant (1986) and You Just Don’t Understand (1990), the linguist Deborah Tannen purports to explain how people exhibit different “conversation styles”—that is, how they speak and achieve effects on listeners in different ways. There are indications, however, that the linguistic model may not be the most functional and precise one that could be used in analyzing conversational style. This paper takes concepts presented in Deborah Tannen’s book That’s Not What I Meant (1986), analyzes them from a linguistic and a behavioral perspective, and compares the relative utility of the two approaches.

     

The Medium Is the Danger: Discourse about Television among Amish and Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Women

This study shows how Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox women’s discourse about television can help develop a better understanding of the creation, construction, and strengthening of limits and boundaries separating enclave cultures from the world. Based on questionnaires containing both closed- and open-ended questions completed by 82 participants, approximately half from each community, I argue that both communities can be understood as interpretive communities that negatively interpret not only television content, like other religious communities, but also the medium itself. Their various negative interpretive strategies is discussed and the article shows how they are part of an “us-versus-them” attitude created to mark the boundaries and walls that enclave cultures build around themselves. The comparison between the two communities found only a few small differences but one marked similarity: The communities perceive avoidance of a tool for communication, in this case television, as part of the communities’ sharing, participation, and common culture.     

„The study of population offers something for everyone“

Despite a significant overlap between sociology and demography, “sociology of population” is not well-established in Germany yet. This is very distinct from the development in the US where research at the intersection of sociology and demography is united under the umbrella of “social demography”. This introductory chapter of this KZfSS Special Issue first explores the synergies of both disciplines. We then present the special Issue’s content of the volume. It is structured along demography’s core fields of “Fertility and Partnership” (Section I), “Migration and Mobility” (Section II) and “Mortality and Morbidity” (Section III). The volume contains furthermore a section on “Welfare State and Demographic Change” (Section IV) as well as cutting-edge research in the realm of “Sociology and Biodemography” (Section V).     

The First (and Only) Year of the May 3 Constitution

Isaak Babel’ is the author of two stories, “Iisusov grekh” [The Sin of Jesus], 1921, and “Pan Apolek,” 1923, that are written in the tradition of menippean satire. These stories are filled with the kind of blasphemy, profanation, and desacrilization Mikhail Bakhtin describes as salient characteristics of menippean satire. “Sin” is a graphic example of the menippean sub-genre of “fantasticheskii rasskaz” [the fantastic tale], and “Apolek” has clear affinities with the ancient genre of “Cyprian’s Supper.”

“Sin” and “Apolek” highlight prominent menippean features that pervade Babel’’s fiction. His Odessa stories are filled with carnivalistic, scandalous, and grotesque motifs that are very much in the menippean spirit. Babel’’s contribution to the menippea is his creation of a multiplicity of different, even conflicting plausible texts within the body of a single story. For Babel’, heretic and blasphemer, menippean satire is the perfect vehicle for expressing his contradictory relationship with the culture he lived in.