Accounting for Divorce: Gender and Uncoupling Narratives

Past research about uncoupling processes has focused on the differing narratives people offer to explain the end of their marriages, depending on whether or not they perceive themselves to have initiated the ending. This article extends previous work by adding gender to the analysis, exploring intersections between accounts of divorce and accountability to cultural assumptions related to gender. In this inductive study, we examine qualitative interview data—particularly discrepancies in the narratives of some men and women—and suggest that gender mediates how people talk about the process of uncoupling as well as their motives for divorce.     

Researcher Emotions: A Way Into The Experiences of Frail Older People

This paper explores the importance of the researcher's emotional experience in practice-near research. It details a journey towards positioning researcher emotions within a doctoral project exploring the everyday stories of older people deemed frail. Data from the experiences of interviewing and analysing the story of one couple are used to exemplify the emergent method. The method combines the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method with the psychoanalytically informed Tavistock Observation Method. The paper details the utilisation of the method and the frame it gives the researcher to move beyond the purely text based, cognitive responses of participant and researcher, to the less rational, and unspoken aspects of the research encounter.

The paper argues that the emotional experiences of the researcher as well as the participant are important data in understanding the experience of ‘being frail’. However, there is the need for an over-arching theoretical framework to give validity to these emotional processes. It argues that psychoanalytical approaches, which emphasise the quality of the emotions experienced and the internal psychological processes which mediate social experience, are helpful in underpinning both methodology and methods of practice-near research.     

Face,Accounts, and Schemes in the Context of Relationship Breakups

This article investigates account strategies that individuals employ to neutralize identity threats caused by breakups from romantic relationships. I distinguish three narrative frames for such accounts: dumper, dumpee, and consensus narratives. Individuals who employ a consensus narrative frame provide accounts by default: they deny that any harm was done to anyone. Dumpers dismissed the breakup's conflictuality, used externalization strategies, and depicted themselves as empathetic. Dumpees used externalization strategies and denials of injury, emphasized their agency, and pointed out valuable changes of self. I then analyze the results from a phenomenological perspective to identify connections between accounting practices and the structure of the self. I argue that accounting for traumatic breakups is important for the development of schemes that guide perception, action, and the interpretation of biography.     

Sharing of emotional memories with a listener: differences between adolescents and emerging adults

Research demonstrated a strong influence of personal narratives on emotions linked to memories. However, few studies considered shared narratives and the role of listener’s behavior, especially in adolescence and emerging adulthood. This paper aims to explore the impact of listening attitude on emotions related to memories in adolescents and emerging adults. A total of 157 participants were asked to choose a memory: in the experimental conditions (Attentive Listening, AL vs. Detached Listening, DL), they narrated it to a listener, in the Control Group, they internally reflected about it. Emotions linked to memory at the first time, to narrative/reflection, and to memory after 15 days were measured, as well as the perception of listener’s behavior. Results showed that participants perceived the differences of the listening, although adolescents perceived less listener’s detached stance. Moreover, among adolescents, positive emotions increased after narrative for both experimental conditions, instead, among emerging adults, only AL condition participants increased their positive emotions. Moreover, adults maintained the positive effects of narrative also after 15 days. Authors discussed the role of an empathic context and the adolescent egocentrism in shared narratives about personal memories.     

The emotional encounter with child welfare services: the importance of incorporating the emotional perspective in parents' encounters with child welfare workers

The child welfare service (CWS) in Norway represents a growing field. In 2011 about 52,000 children received help. Families mainly received supportive services in their homes while around 8000 children were taken into the custody of the CWS. Although most actions taken by the CWS are deemed to be supportive and have the consent of the parents, many parents find being assessed by the CWS to be distressing, and there is a widespread feeling that there is a stigma attached to receiving help from the CWS. This article discusses the importance of parents' emotions, and how these emotions can influence their cooperation with the CWS by using the concepts of recognition and trust. The data are based on analyses of 385 interviews with parents in which they describe their emotional encounters with the CWS. The results show that certain emotions can create a barrier between the family's need for assistance and the CWS's actions and initiatives. The article concludes by discussing how the emotional encounter challenges child welfare practice.     

'Being there': multidimensionality, reflexivity and the study of emotional lives

Emotional lives tend to be untidy. Yet despite a growing recognition of this, sociological research designs rarely mirror the multidimensionality they are striving to represent. This article takes as its starting point a recent study of beliefs and practices about emotional support and emotions talk in Britain, to illustrate how a methodologically mixed approach offers particular purchase on what passes between us in our everyday emotional lives and in research about these lives. The notion of 'being there' is drawn on to help make this argument. Moving between 'being there' as topic, a form of emotional support, and 'being there' as a methodological resource, the article concludes that the analytical claims we make about our emotional lives are strengthened through a methodologically mixed - and by necessity, reflexive - approach which explores, rather than smooths out, the ragged, sometimes indeterminate, edges between methods.     

Understanding public perceptions of genetically modified organisms in China: The role that heuristics play during digital media exposure

This study explicates the role that heuristics play in influencing Chinese public perceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMO) when they are exposed to digital media. According to the cognitive–affective continuum of heuristics, trust in scientists and negative emotions about GMOs are a cognition-oriented heuristic and an affect heuristic, respectively. The statistical results of an online survey (N?=?414) demonstrated that trust in scientists fully mediated digital media exposure and perceptions of the risks versus benefits of GMOs. In addition, negative emotions moderated the full mediation effect, showing that the indirect effect was stronger in individuals with low levels of negative emotions than in those with high levels of negative emotions. The mediating role of trust in scientists and the moderating role of negative emotions, the two heuristics applied in this study, indicated that when negative emotions were weak, laypeople were more likely to rely on scientists to judge the consequences of GMOs than systematically process the associated information by themselves. The findings have implications for reconsidering the importance of heuristic processing in building reasonable public perceptions of risk-laden technologies through the digital environment.     

The discovery of participatory research as a new scientific paradigm: Personal and intellectual accounts

The article presents considerations for the placing of participatory research in the practice of sociology. The changing conditions in contemporary society have compelled social scientists to rethink the way social theory has been conceptualized and has been practiced in relation to social change. Modernist social theory, of which sociology is a prime example, has been imbued with the biases of the Enlightenment that privilege the essentialized male rational actor set above the ordinary people. As a consequence it has produced narratives and practices that are not in the interest of the people, especially those who have been dominated and oppressed. In order to live up to the potential of sociology as a vehicle for the improvement of social conditions, it must include the interest and the wisdom of the people in its researching and theorizing activities. It is argued that participatory research provides an opportunity to follow this course in sociology. Participatory research, it is contended, will lead to a paradigm shift in the social sciences because it is based on an expanded conception of knowledge and because it changes the relationship between the researcher and the researched and between theory and practice. Arguments are drawn from the history of science, critical theory, and postmodernist and feminist critiques. Peter Park is currently on the faculty of the Fielding Institute.     

Coping with trauma in domestic migrant worker narratives: Linguistic,emotional and psychological perspectives

Trauma can be defined as an event that goes beyond ordinary modes of experience and linguistic representation. It represents a break not just with a particular form of representation but with the possibility of representation at all. Drawing on a large corpus of domestic migrant worker narratives, the article analyses trauma narratives in which migrant women share their experiences while working for abusive employers. The stories deal with unspeakable suffering and humiliation, and the article attempts to outline the narrative structures that characterise trauma storytelling: broken narratives with voids in the narrative flow. It also analyses the emotional component of trauma narratives focusing on crying, which is seen as an authentication of feeling and meaning. Finally, the article considers how the women make sense of their traumatic experiences, and how peer support becomes essential in the narrators' attempts to rewrite their life stories from victimhood to survival and beyond.     

Young people,emotional suspicion and the emergence of paediatric selfhood in Palestine

This paper explores young people's relationships to emotions and mental health care in Ramallah, Palestine. Palestinian young people—via public anger, sadness, or even joy—are often marked as emotionally other in familial, institutional and other public spaces as part of NGO-driven constructions of emerging paediatric selfhood. In response, they reproduce and/or reframe notions of emotional suspicion that underwrite these marginalizing processes. Thinking along such axes as possibility and impossibility; mobility and immobility; and the local and international, they simultaneously integrate and resist representational subjection, which is an important part of understanding broader post-Oslo Palestinian identity and community formation.     

European System of Accounts: The French Case

The 1995 European System of Accounts (1995 ESA), an adapted version of the United Nations System of National Accounts (1993 SNA), will be applied in most European countries. This research note shows that the empirical knowledge of the nonprofit sector is not improved in this change. We first review the treatment of the nonprofit organizations in 1968 SNA, and then discuss the 1993 SNA and 1995 ESA approaches, which do not clear up many conceptual difficulties. The classification of the private nonprofit institutions serving households by the French statistical office is also presented and criticized. A way forward through the use of a satellite account system is proposed.     

Moving Smiles: The Role of Dynamic Components for the Perception of the Genuineness of Smiles

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether the temporal dynamics of Duchenne-smiles influenced the perception of smile authenticity. Realistic computer-generated Duchenne-smiles that varied in their onset- and offset-durations (Experiment 1), or only in their offset-duration (Experiment 2), or in both their onset- and apex-durations (Experiment 3), were created using Poser 4 software. Perceived genuineness varied monotonically with the duration of each manipulated dynamic component. The results are in accordance with Ekman and Friesens (1982) observations regarding the duration of smiles of enjoyment, which suggest that each dynamic component has a distinct duration range that can influence the perceived genuineness of smiles.We wish to thank Jesse Spencer-Smith for sharing the AU morph targets that have been developed in the context of his research.     

Marital Conflict and Children's Emotions: The Development of an Anger Organization

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between anger‐based marital conflict and the development of an anger organization in children between the ages of 4 and 8 years old. Anger organization was defined as an adversarial approach to relationships demonstrated through (a) short‐term anger expressions during social interaction and (b) aggression in relationships. Seventy‐one children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, their mothers, and their teachers participated in the study. Mothers completed questionnaires on anger‐based marital conflict and on children's aggression. Sociometric ratings of anger and aggression were obtained from peers. Teachers supplied reports of children's aggression. Children's short‐term emotional expression and the circumstances that elicited emotions were observed during peer interaction. Anger‐based marital conflict was found to be strongly associated with peer, maternal, and teacher reports of aggression, but not with reports of internalizing symptomatology. Anger‐based marital conflict was also associated with short‐term anger expressions, but not with short‐term expressions of sadness. I argue that children develop an emotional organization in which anger predominates when they are exposed to high levels of anger‐based marital conflict.     

Political Narratives and the Production of Legitimacy: The Case of Corruption in Post-Mao China

China watchers have predicted that corruption would lead to a crisis for the ruling regime. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party has somehow managed to retain and even strengthen its political legitimacy. This article analyzes corruption not as a crime or a political problem but as a topic of political narratives, thereby revealing the political processes which led to this result. This study, based on interviews and archival data, examines narratives on the topic of corruption produced in the post-Mao era by the ruling regime and political dissidents in their struggle to influence the populace's views on political legitimacy. In the 1980s, disgruntled intellectuals drew upon the traditionalist collective narrative of corruption to teach citizens to blame the leadership and the structure of the government for social problems, essentially rewriting the narratives used to assess and judge the regime. In doing so, they successfully threatened the political authority of the Party-state. However, in the 1990s, China's leaders and the official media revised the story of corruption so that the Party-state battled corruption on behalf of its citizens in order to bring them economic opportunities, rising living standards, and social stability. In these new narratives, the role of the state was no longer that of ideological or moral leadership, but of economic management. Through these narratives of economic management, the regime managed to control the corruption crisis and recapture its political legitimacy, but was also forced to deal with the consequences of this new vision of state-society relations.     

Adolescent accounts of the UK National Lottery and scratchcards: an analysis using Q-sorts

The study examined adolescents' accounts of the UK National Lottery and scratchcards. Q-sorts were used to examine the views of 62 participants aged between 11 and 15 years of age. Findings identified four distinct accounts in relation to the National Lottery (Moral Opposition, Luck Seeking, Rationalist, & Uncertainty), and four distinct accounts in relation to scratchcards (Scepticism, Thrill-Seeking, Rationalist, & Libertarian). Some of the accounts identified described the UK National Lottery and scratchcards as bona fide forms of gambling. Reports indicated that adolescents were pessimistic about the chances of winning large sums of money, while other accounts demonstrated gambling misperceptions particularly in relation to their belief in luck and the laws of probability. It is argued that to fully understand why adolescents take part in these activities it is important to consider the diverse ways that adolescents represent these activities. These differing representations will have consequences for measures aimed at reducing, preventing, or treating adolescent problem gambling. The utility of Q-sorts as a technique for examining the views of problem and non-problem gamblers is also discussed.     

Cheong: The Socioemotional Grammar of Koreans

Based on the replies of 36 Korean university students, we analyzed the structural properties that underpin the culture-bound concept of Cheong. Cheong embodies the emotional links among individuals connected to each other by feelings of we-ness and exhibiting the humanistic side of their selves. It is concluded that Western models of the nature of persons and of social relationships are insufficient to account for the socioemotional characteristics of Koreans.     

Traveling from Feminism to Mainstream Sociology and Back: One Woman's Tale of Tenure and the Politics of Backlash

Within disciplines, the 1980s were an especially heady intellectual time for feminist graduate students. Not only did second wave scholarship prove to be inspirational for dissertation projects, but new books and articles published by women of color, lesbian feminists, postcolonial theorists and poststructuralists posed serious challenges to the ethnocentric assumptions of white, middle-class and Western feminism. Yet, despite over a decade of social movement activism and the creation of feminist institutions and organizations, this generation of feminist scholars worked against a cultural backdrop marked by a dramatic move to the political right. My personal narrative begins in this historical moment charting my political and intellectual trajectory from graduate school to the present. My positioning as a queer feminist between the second and third waves of feminist scholarship carried with it a rewarding intellectual legacy as well as a number of painful contradictions.¹ Further, I argue that these contradictions arose as a consequence of the uneven diffusion and reception of feminist scholarship, particularly the politics of backlash, within institutions and academic departments across the country from the 1980s to the present.