From “Swinging Hard” to “Rocking Out”: Classification of Style and the Creation of Identity in the World of Drumming

This article takes a social constructionist approach to the study of a seldom considered subculture—the “world” of drumming. I describe this subculture from both the “etic” and “emic” perspectives, showing how drummers and drumming are perceived and experienced by the musicians themselves (insiders) as well as the “outside” public. The main focus is on the drummers' intersubjective “mental maps” of their world, specifically exploring how they create musical and personal identities by adhering to a rigid classification scheme surrounding “styles” of drumming. I demonstrate how drummers use drumming equipment, personal appearance, education, and “purist” attitudes to separate styles of drumming and to construct distinct social selves. Of special interest is how drummers are cognitively socialized into “thought communities” which teach and reinforce attitudinal and behavioral norms. I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of applying my analytical framework to other worlds of music and art, as well as some forms of occupational and avocational specialization.     

Negotiating Personal Experience over the Lifetime: Narrative Elasticity as an Analytic Tool

Sociology and neighboring disciplines have produced different analytic tools to examine the dialogical relationship between individuals and society (“narrative work,” “identity work,” “moral career,” “moral breakdown”). However, the question of how individuals negotiate the interpretation of personal experience over their lifetimes in a changing cultural context remains unexplored. This article introduces narrative elasticity as a feature of narrative work and as a time‐sensitive analytic tool for conducting inquiries into processes of temporal retraction and expansion of what storytellers conceive as the normal order of significance. The application of this tool to the analysis of mature and elderly Chileans' life stories shows how cultural change occurs at the individual level, considers factors that motivate and inhibit processes of reinterpretation of personal experience, and identifies different levels at which it operates.     

Humanitarian Crisis as Everyday Life

Contemporary scholarship understates the resilience of everyday life in humanitarian crisis. Disaster may seem like a fleeting moment—colloquially, we say “the world stood still” or “everything changed in a blink”—but in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, a predominately Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, people experienced calamitous tragedy accumulated over years of daily activities. Though they remained politically and economically “out of place,” residents constructed buildings and other ordinary material objects to forge a new lived environment. As residents engaged with this new lived environment—from building homes to managing rainwater—they regularly participated in moral boundary work that helped establish how “good” people ought to act in inhumane circumstances. Moral boundary work did not obviate inequality or conflict, but it did help mediate between immediate bodily needs and the wider social order. More broadly, the study documents the crucial role that seemingly mundane material objects play in moral boundary work. Material objects like signs, garbage cans, and homes can operate like sociospatial props in the stories that people tell about their daily lives. These stories reinforce the moral boundaries that divide “good” and “bad” people and ultimately help make a shared moral order possible.     

Musical Ties That Bind: Nostalgia,Affect, and Heritage in Festival Narratives

Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular music festivals. “MusicFest” embraces a tradition of “Red Dirt” country music through performance (music festival), whereas the “Walnut Valley Festival” embraces a bluegrass/folk musical heritage through performance and participation (musicians' festival). The symbolic importance of musical interaction is explored to highlight the experienced emotionality that leads to the affective ties that bind these otherwise temporary communities. This collective narrative reveals the various functions of nostalgia wherein collective sentiment both reflects and creates the perceived authentic experiences of festival attendees.     

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.     

Ideological Primary Groups in Contemporary Cultural Movements

Abstract

This paper argues that “post-modern” societies generate movements for cultural change in models “of” and “for” identity and consciousness, rather than traditional kinds of social movements aiming at structural changes in institutional arrangements. The distinctive and crucial unit in comtemporary cultural movements is what we have termed the “ideological group.” These groups are similar to the “ideological informal groups” which recruited members of traditional social movements on the basis of personal contacts and confidence, and which rested on shared “inner convictions.” Like other, earlier, ideological groups, they focus on the construction and legitimation of a shared symbolic interpretation, and ideology of a dissatisfying reality as well as their own personal and collective identity in relation to it. However, contemporary movement groups have been influenced considerably by the sensitivity training-encounter-group dynamics techniques associated with the intensive group movement. The result is a new interest in artificial primary relations among sociologically homogeneous peers for joining socio-cultural analyses with psychological interpretations of common personal experiences. The processes generated in these ideological primary groups lead to the collective construction of new or modified ideological interpretations of reality which contain different, more satisfying, models “of” and “for” personal and group identity, and “consciousness.”     

Exporting stimulus and “shared prosperity”: Reinventing foreign aid for a retroliberal era

The global aid world has changed, partly in response to the reconfigurations of geopolitical power and to the global financial crisis (GFC). Paradoxically, in the face of recession in most northern economies, collectively foreign aid contributions have not fallen. However there has been a qualitative shift in its narrative and nature. This new regime—which we term retroliberalism—projects the concept of “shared prosperity,” but constitutes a return to explicit self‐interest designed to bolster private sector trade and investment. Drawing evidence from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, we argue that aid programmes are increasingly functioning as “exported stimulus” packages.     

DIY Entrepreneurship? – Self‐reliance for Women Refugees in Australia

In this paper, we call for a re‐examination of the self‐reliance ideology based on a neoliberal perspective to make policies for refugee women's (self‐)employment and integration. We use a social constructionist perspective to conduct a narrative analysis of data from the lived experience of twelve women refugee entrepreneurs. Three prominent themes emerge from the women’s own narratives of their entrepreneurial journey – self‐reconstruction, social capital, and resilience. Our findings reveal the complexities of self‐reconstruction and socialization as experienced by refugee women entrepreneurs – for whom “push” factors take precedence over “pull” factors with the explicit understanding that the onus is on them to survive with their own resilience. We argue that offering people hope of a new life means offering them meaningful choices, built on forms of economic activity whose sustainability over the long term is evidenced by the positive supports available to make sure economic activity succeeds.     

Fiction Over Facts: How Competing Narrative Forms Explain Policy in a New Immigration Destination1

U.S. immigration has changed dramatically in the last 20 years: immigrants have increasingly gravitated toward “new destinations” and a growing portion are undocumented. In the absence of federal comprehensive immigration reform, states are proposing a patchwork of laws. While some laws encourage immigrant integration, most seek restriction. To understand this trend, this article analyzes Utah as a new immigration destination, exploring its transformation from an inclusive to a restrictive state. It focuses on a major debate: whether to allow unauthorized residents legal driving privileges. Because Utah initiated this law earlier than most, it leads this debate. To explain its evolution, this article analyzes 10 years of legislative debates and articles published on this law. Building on the narrative studies literature, I find that both sides of the immigration debate utilized a public safety and well‐being narrative. However, supporters of the driver license law relied on a “lower mimetic” narrative, characterized by logic and factual arguments. In contrast, their opponents wove a compelling, “apocalyptic” narrative to criticize the law. This narrative indelibly linked immigration to the dangers of crime and terrorism and thus paved the way for the passage of one of the most restrictive immigration laws in the United States.     

Fabricating Japaneseness? The Identity Politics of Young Designers and Artists in Global Cities

The present study explores the identity politics of young Japanese designers and artists working across national boundaries today. It addresses the following research questions: (i) Do young designers and artists aim to produce works with “universal” appeal or strategically make use of “Japaneseness”? (ii) Do they develop new transnational identities or regard themselves as “Japanese”? and (iii) Who do they think has the power to label their works as “Japanese” in the art worlds? For this purpose, I conducted in‐depth interviews with professional designers and artists who have migrated from Japan to London, New York, or Paris. The results show that most designers and artists who were interviewed indeed aim to produce works with “universal” appeal, while only a few respondents attempt to strategically express “Japaneseness” in their works. However, regardless of whether they make use of “Japaneseness” or not, all respondents regard themselves as “Japanese” without developing new transnational identities. Even so, they do not search for or hold onto Japaneseness; but rather the media, as well as a certain part of the art world, persistently attempt to emphasize “Japaneseness,” due to the structure of the art world, where whiteness continues to be the “norm.” While designers and artists are increasingly oriented toward creating works with new forms and values through the transnational production system, gatekeepers and legitimators of the art world continue to fabricate “the nation” and reinforce boundaries of national culture.     

“泛阿拉伯主义”在美国媒体的“帝国”意象

20世纪上半叶,面对阿拉伯人的统一诉求,有相当一部分人通过美国媒体,结合西方世界对伊斯兰教的刻板印象,将“泛阿拉伯主义”附会到中世纪的“阿拉伯帝国”,进而视其为西方文明的对立面。纳赛尔掌权后,美国媒体出于对埃及亲苏外交的敌视,纷纷指责埃及政府试图仰仗苏联支持,建立“阿拉伯帝国”。随着埃及(阿联)与苏联之间矛盾的加剧,美国舆论界仍继续敌视纳赛尔的“泛阿拉伯主义”,认为纳赛尔建立“阿拉伯帝国”的“野心”虽然导致其与苏联的纷争,但仍是西方的威胁。美国人对纳赛尔的敌视,虽然伴有强烈的冷战心态,但他们频繁以“阿拉伯帝国”或“穆斯林帝国”的历史意象,比附纳赛尔的“泛阿拉伯主义”实践,实际上是对“东西对立”叙事模式的延续,反映出西方世界长久以来对“伊斯兰征服”的历史记忆,并连带着对中东地区整合倾向的担忧。     

Japanese Contributions to Theory and Practice in Developmental Psychology

ABSTRACT

Despite the potential of digitally enhanced learning environments for supporting twenty-first-century learning and educational change, there is a dearth of research knowledge on students’ transformative agency in their use of digital technologies and media within these contexts. Transformative agency accounts for young people’s initiative and commitment to transform their activity and its context(s) for personal and/or academic ends. This paper reports an investigation of students’ transformative agency in a novel, student-centered design and learning environment, referred to as a makerspace. We present our empirical findings as a narrative, illustrating how transformative agency emerged and developed via three intertwined discursive and action-level manifestations of such agency, namely “deviating”, “switching”, and “transfiguring”, in the social activity of a group of four 5th grade students participating in the makerspace environment over one school semester. Our study makes an original contribution to the research on students’ transformative agency and its temporal unfolding in a novel digitally enhanced learning environment.     

Transporting Movement Ideology into Popular Culture: Right-Wing Think Tanks and the Case of “Virgin Chic”

This article argues that social movements can contribute to the development and integration of new narratives into the cultural stock by sponsoring new rhetorical frames and by sponsoring legislation, thus entering into policy debates. A case study of a new cultural narrative, dubbed “virgin chic,” shows the imprints of the American Right. Through analysis of the mobilizing efforts of right-wing think tanks, this article shows that the Right's development of the “family values” frame and its sponsorship of federal bills aimed at legislating morality resulted in “virgin chic.” Analysis of the origins and career of this narrative shows that it circulated widely (and continues to circulate, 20 years after its emergence in 1990), and that it successfully carries right-wing ideology into popular culture.     

Interpretative Freedom and New Combination: The Way in Which the “Middle Class” Has Been Narrated

The English words “middle class” have experienced much more connotations and denotations—typically “bourgeoisie,” “white‐collar,” and professional—than any other class‐referring word since the latter half of the 18th century. On the one hand, in response to such diverse narrations during about two and a half centuries, I partially agree with some of the nominalistic theories of class, in that the middle classes were not created until they were named by contemporaries. On the other hand, my view diverges from those theories, in my asserting that the contemporaries have had an interpretative freedom to recognize “middle classes” only within the bounds of plausibility on the side of the realistic social world. The typical middle class in each period has emerged in such a way that Schumpeter's new combination is performed in a stage of recession by new entrepreneurs, who will move into the “middle” strata and hold some cultural leadership but still obtain inconsistent statuses, to be recognized as “middle class”ex post facto in a boom time. Two Kondratieff's cycles have had one recognition of the typical “middle class.” The new combination is one of the pressures bringing middle classes into a modern society, contrary to the so‐called class decomposition into the two poles.     

“We're gonna get you through it”: The role of bonding social capital in the development of bridging social capital

Many programs that place low-income students of color in high-achieving college preparatory high schools seek to nurture bridging social capital, connections across class lines that provide leverage in the process of “getting ahead.” Bonding social capital, which focuses more on emotional support and “getting by,” is frequently characterized as less useful for social mobility. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with alumni from one such program, we challenge the notion of bridging and bonding social capital as discrete, countervailing forms of social capital, and demonstrate how the two may complement each other. Specifically, we find that bonding social capital served as a critical resource that students drew upon as they navigated their elite high schools in the face of racism and classism. In doing so, this bonding social capital ultimately facilitated the development of bridging social capital by encouraging student persistence at these institutions. Our findings support critiques of traditional accounts of social capital that devalue the capital possessed by marginalized communities and fuel deficit ideologies. Furthermore, they highlight the personal costs that youth may face in the pursuit of bridging capital, complicating the narrative of social mobility as an unmitigated good.     

Narrating political opportunities: explaining strategic adaptation in the climate movement

This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures.

     

The Social Dynamics of Technical Innovation in the Computing World*

The “computing world,” all those people and groups that collectively produce computers and computer-based services is an especially complex, dynamic and diffuse social world. Technical innovation is a dominant feature of the world. It is organized to provide a continuous flow of innovations from participants who specialize in innovation through many other participants to the final consumers of computer-based services. Technical innovations often flow across a large number of “markets” which are composed of only a few classes of participants such as “innovators” and “vendors” or of “users” and “consumers.” This paper identifies the major orientations taken on by participants in the computing world and examines some of the markets across which innovations are negotiated. The computing world is organized so that each market is biased in favor of innovations moving from suppliers to their customers. From this viewpoint, “innovation” is a dominant structural interest in computing around which participants organize their activities and to which they must continually adjust.     

Images of Success: How Illinois Farmers Define the Successful Farmer1

Abstract Farmers' views of farming success help frame their responses to information about farming, including alternative agriculture. A Q-analysis of 68 commercial farmers' subjective images of the successful farmer and the relative importance they accord different personal values and characteristics revealed four “model” images of the successful farmer. The Steward recognizes a moral responsibility to sustain land resources; the Manager succeeds largely by virtue of analytical skill; the Conservative's main goal is long-term preservation of the farm business; and the Agrarian values the rural life style and community participation. Farmers holding the Steward image tended to be older and to farm fewer acres; those with the Manager image included a large proportion of less experienced farmers. Approximately 40 percent of the farmers' views of success did not fit any of the four “model” images. Analysis of the findings suggests that images of success may be associated with life stage or generational differences in farming goals and values.     

Awakenings: Autobiography,Memory, and the Social Logic of Personal Discovery

Taking a formal, sociocognitive approach to narrative analysis, I explore autobiographical stories about discovering “truth” in political, psychological, religious, and sexual realms of social life. Despite (1) significant differences in subject matter and (2) conflicting or oppositional notions of truth, individuals in different social environments tell stories that follow the same awakening formula. Analyzing accounts from a wide variety of social and historical contexts, I show how individuals and communities use these autobiographical stories to define salient moral and political concerns and weigh in on cultural and epistemic disputes. Awakening narratives are important mechanisms of mnemonic and autobiographical revision that individuals use to redefine their past experiences and relationships and plot future courses of action while explaining major transformations of worldview. Awakeners use two ideal‐typical vocabularies of liminality to justify traversing the social divide between contentious autobiographical communities. Further, awakeners divide their lives into discrete autobiographical periods and convey a figurative interaction between the split personas of a temporally divided self. Individuals use this autobiographical formula to reject the cognitive and mnemonic norms of one community and embrace those of another. Advancing a “social geometry” of awakening narratives, I illuminate the social logic behind our seemingly personal discoveries of “truth.”