Feminist theorizing as 'transposed autobiography'

This piece considers personal investments endemic in academic writing, more specifically, in Lesbian Studies. Taking Elizabeth Bowen's phrase, "transposed autobiography," as a starting-point, the author briefly discusses the development of lesbian/straight feminist debates, and continues to explore the relative absence of lesbianism in current feminist and queer theorizing. Three 'moments' serve to explain the casting aside of lesbian desire: the subsidence of lesbian/straight feminist debates, the prevalence of 'race'/ethnicity in critical theorizing and the emergence of post-theoretical trends of thought.     

Pierre Bourdieu: theorizing the digital

ABSTRACT

Pierre Bourdieu is known for his research in the areas of education and cultural stratification that led to a number of theoretical contributions informing the social sciences. Bourdieu’s interrelated concepts of field, capital, and habitus have become central in many approaches to inequality and stratification across the social sciences. In addition, we argue that Bourdieu’s ideas also feature in what is increasingly known as ‘digital sociology.’ To underscore this claim, we explore the ways in which Bourdieu’s ideas continue to have a major impact on social science research both on and with digital and Internet-based technologies. To do so, we offer a review of both Bourdieusian theorizing of the digital vis-à-vis both research on the social impacts of digital communication technologies and the application of digital technologies to social science research methods. We contend that three interconnected features of Bourdieu’s sociology have allowed his approach to flourish in the digital age: (1) his theories’ inseparability from the practice of empirical research; (2) his ontological stance combining realism and social constructionism; and (3) his familiarity with concepts developed in other disciplines and participation in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. We not only reason that these three factors go some way in accounting for Bourdieu’s influence in many sociological subfields, but we also suggest that they have been especially successful in positioning Bourdieusian sociology to take advantage of opportunities associated with digital communication technologies.     

On theorizing the complexity of economic systems

Complexity challenges the “normal sciences” because they are based on logical neopositivist epistemologies and, therefore, have difficulty dealing with intelligible yet unpredictable phenomena. This problem is of particular concern to neoclassical economics. Empirical research is making it increasingly clear that economic systems are basically complex systems and, as such, cannot be understood by reduction and simplification. This article discusses a theory of modeling and reasoning about complex economic systems. It first examines “constructivist epistemologies” as a possible foundation for the modeling of complex systems, then presents an embryonic theory of the modeling of complex systems, based on constructivist epistemology. Two modeling tools-of organization by information and of intelligent organizational decision-are proposed. The arguments presented here suggest that economics will have to become a new science of organizational engineering in order to utilize and contribute to the emerging new sciences of complexity.     

Context collapse: theorizing context collusions and collisions

The collapsing of social contexts together has emerged as an important topic with the rise of social media that so often blurs the public and private, professional and personal, and the many different selves and situations in which individuals find themselves. Academic literature is starting to address how the meshing of social contexts online has many potentially beneficial as well as problematic consequences. In an effort to further theorize context collapse, we draw on this literature to consider the conditions under which context collapse occurs, offering key conceptual tools with which to address these conditions. Specifically, we distinguish two different types of context collapse, splitting collapse into context collusions and context collisions. The former is an intentional collapsing of contexts, while the latter is unintentional. We further examine the ways in which both technological architectures and agentic user practices combine to facilitate and mitigate the various effects of collapsing contexts.     

Reflections on repeated abortions: The meanings and motivations

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to answer three questions concerning women who have repeated abortions -Why do they do it?, What is being aborted?, and why do they need to repeat it? By exploring developmental factors in relation to clinical cases, ideas are formulated about the type of women who might be using abortion to act out problems of separation-individuation. I speculate that for some women abortion may act as a rite de passage from one self-image to another or from dependency toward independence. The act of abortion may be an unconscious way to touch or repair infantile developmental failure and to find a 'good enough' resolution.     

Standpoint theory and middle-range theorizing in International Sociology

This paper responds to Julian Go's Lecture “Thinking against Empire. Anti-colonial Thought and Social Theory.” It proceeds in two parts: I first follow Go's invitation to read and reread Mabel Dove Danquah and Frantz Fanon and explore what their work contributes to our understanding of state-forms. I then examine the terms of Go's invitation more closely. I contrast Go's juxtaposition of imperial sociology on the one hand and anti-colonial sociology on the other hand, with the broader range of theoretical traditions and methods, which a practice-oriented sociology of sociology and an international history of sociology would highlight. I raise the question what “standpoint” adds to the authors Go discusses and the broader range of scholars who have engaged with post-colonial contexts in their research at this point in time. Calling for consideration of the anti-colonial standpoint is a particular choice, which has a distinctive heritage in Hegelian-Marxian projections of the social whole and is in tension with either deep exploration of particular thinkers or the middle-range theorizing that Go also seems to endorse. Defined at a level of abstraction that is “above” (or underneath) actual conversations in a range of fields and subfields, it can appear as a “test” for scholars who have long engaged with post-colonial contexts, which can have unintended consequences when coupled with the institutional power and asymmetric insularity of Anglo-American academia.     

Ethnomethodology and Marxism: Their use for critical theorizing

Conclusion Each theory and, ultimately, school of theorizing exposes and criticizes the theorizing of others, and at the same time contains false or misleading statements. Theory as it is must rest on some presuppositions. Thus, Marxism exposes the flaws and lies of capitalism while positing another world view-Marxism—which it does not treat critically. Marxism also provides a critique of positivistic thinking. In The Grundrisse, Marx engages in a dialogue with economists and philosophers of his day. His theory emerges out of the rejection of their theory. Ethnomethodology can be seen as critique of positivism, too. It can also tell us something about Marxism, as some of its concerns are similar, although the methods are dissimilar. At the same time, ethnomethodology denies us certain information about itself. Theorists, then, question others and not themselves. Theory can be seen as a product of inquiry; the theorist shows only the product and hides what made the product. Indeed, just as the statistician reveals a correlation between two variables and omits all the common sense reasoning that went into the process (a method of theorizing ethnomethodologists criticize), so does the ethnomethodologist or Marxist omit, to a great extent, the process of theorizing involved.Thus, while neither form of theorizing, taken literally, can be critical (for to be critical, one must sometimes suspend belief in one's own theory, bracket it, or see it as strange), either form, if taken metaphorically (and in a way that is unfaithful to Marxism and ethnomethodology), can be used for critique.The ethnomethodological and Marxist critiques of social information, as in their processual framework and their emphasis on the thinking individual, provide critiques of contemporary society and an impetus to try to change it. Links between the two schools of theorizing would perhaps help overcome the deficiencies of each mode of theorizing. Taylor, Walton, and Young advocated (although they never carried it out) building a bridge in criminology so to speak, between ethnomethodology and Marxism. The advantage would be to enable us to escape from the straitjacket of an economic determinism and the relativism of some subjective approaches to a theory of contradiction in a social structure which recognizes in deviance the acts of men (men and women) in the process of actively making, rather than passively taking, the external world.Our special thanks to Ishna Abrams, Igor Freund, and Peter Schwarzburg for their tireless assistance.     

Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Empowered inclusion: theorizing global justice for children and youth

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that contemporary child and youth experiences of globalization call for retheorizing global justice around a new concept of empowered inclusion. The first part of the paper examines three case studies in globalization – child labour movements, child and youth migration, and young people’s organization around climate change – and shows how, in each case, young people, through their struggles against injustice, are simultaneously disempowered and empowered by their deep global interdependency. The second part proposes new theoretical advances in global justice that better respond to child and youth experiences through a childist concept of the empowered inclusion of both children and other marginalized groups. And the third part advances some preliminary suggestions about how a more child-responsive conception of global power and justice might be operationalized in practice across global policies, institutions, and culture.     

Time and aging--mechanisms and meanings

A recent European Molecular Biology Laboratory Conference on Science and Society entitled "Time & Aging--Mechanisms & Meanings" fascinated scientists from different research areas as well as nonscientists. Topics discussed included not only the biological aging process but also the psychological effects of aging and social influences that affect this process.     

The different meanings of corruption in the context of the Teamsters Union

Conclusion  TDU’s poor showing in the conventions misrepresented the attitudes of the union’s membership. This fact became clear after the government reached a court-monitored settlement to its RICO suit of the union. The settlement changed the political dynamics within the union, most importantly by providing for the direct election of national leadership. The new rules, combined with a factional split among the incumbents, allowed an insurgent slate, supported by TDU, to win the election in 1991. With a plurality of the membership’s votes, Ron Carey, a self-proclaimed reformer, became president of the union. I thank Bruce Kaufman, John Remington, Catherine Rios, Leah Vosko, Clifford Doerksen, and Robert Gregg for their help in reading this work and their many useful comments and suggestions.     

The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa

In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions. As has been the case in other post-authoritarian and postcolonial settings, the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up. This article interrogates the assumption that media are central to citizens’ political and civic engagements in a transitional society marked by persisting inequalities. This interrogation draws on empirical research with citizens to investigate the question that the media are central to constructions of citizenship and participation and engagement with democratic processes. Our research finds that young South Africans interviewed are disengaged from politics and find that the media does not speak to or connect with their everyday lives. They view the state on both national and local levels as not being prepared to listen to their experiences, ideas or conditions of life. While the respondents trust the media as credible institutions, they do not experience the media as being relevant to their lives. The perceived disinterest of the state and the lack of relevance of the media, work together to create a sense of powerlessness and inability to influence policy-making among the young people interviewed. For the media to intervene in this state of affairs, it would have to create more opportunities for young people to participate directly in meaning production through the media, starting by listening more closely to their experiences in order to respond to their concerns in a relevant way.     

The material and the symbolic in theorizing social stratification: issues of gender, ethnicity and class

Within most approaches to stratification gender and ethnicity are seen to pertain primarily to the symbolic or cultural realms, whilst class is regarded as pertaining to material inequality. This constructs gender and ethnic positioning as entailing honour, deference, worth, value and differential treatment (sometimes expressed through the notion of 'status'), but the social relations around these are themselves not seen as constitutive of social stratification. In this paper I will rethink social stratification away from the polarity between the material and the symbolic, and argue that material inequality, as a set of outcomes relating to life conditions, life chances and solidary processes, is informed by claims and struggles over resources of different types, undertaken in terms of gender, ethnicity/race and class. This formulation allows us to include these categorial formations, alongside class, as important elements of social stratification i.e. as determining the allocation of socially valued resources and social places/locations.     

Armed robbery and the meanings of money

In this study, we investigate the meanings active armed robbers give to money before, during, and after their crimes and how these meanings shape their offending. We do so by examining interviews undertaken from 1994 to 1995 with robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Prior to their robberies, the interviewees' desperation leads them to define money as essential to survival. Immediately following robberies and in looking back on them, they come to view this essential money in other ways as well—as too time-consuming to get, as “easy,” or as guilt-free. These meanings facilitate the contradictory way robbers see money as “fast” after offences. We discuss how these shifting meanings of money shape and are shaped by robbers' structural positions, cultural outlooks, and social relations. In doing so, we also help to explain how the shifting meanings of money play into criminogenic cycles of predatory offending.