Public Accounts: Defending Contested Practices

Little attention has been paid to how actors account for controversial institutional conduct or contested practices. Relying on a content analysis of letters to the editor, I explore how actors operating in the Habermasian “public sphere” justify the contested practice of linking Native American symbols with sports teams, and suggest that in their rejection of challengers to their definitions of the situation, authors create public accounts. Consisting primarily of justifications rather than excuses, these accounts are of four types: “denial of injury,” “assertion of benefit,” “claim of authority,” and “rejection of challenge.” For those who wish to conduct comparative analyses of contested practices, these concepts may prove useful.     

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF , demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.     

Transnational migration: taking stock and future directions

Increasing numbers of sending states are systematically offering social and political membership to migrants residing outside their territories. The proliferation of these dual memberships contradicts conventional notions about immigrant incorporation, their impact on sending countries, and the relationship between migration and development in both contexts. But how do ordinary individuals actually live their lives across borders? Is assimilation incompatible with transnational membership? How does economic and social development change when it takes place across borders? This article takes stock of what is known about everyday transnational practices and the institutional actors that facilitate or impede them and outlines questions for future research. In it, I define what I mean by transnational practices and describe the institutions that create and are created by these activities. I discuss the ways in which they distribute migrants’ resources and energies across borders, based primarily on studies of migration to the United States.     

Issues of educational support in primary school and secondary education in disadvantaged suburbs in France

From a critical sociological perspective, this article advances the debate between global schooling with political incentives and local meanings with localized educational practices and supports. It focuses on the role of education policies in the pursuit of social inclusion and social justice, but also shows how local actors adapt and experiment in managing the socio-cultural diversity of the students and the school contexts. First, I show the issues of educational support policies in the French context with a historical background and their re-appropriation by local actors. Second, I present the theoretical framework of my research (2008 to 2013), the methodology and initial results. Last, I analyze the main qualitative results of my comparative research in order to highlight ‘good’ or ‘bad’ educational support practices according to various criteria, starting with interactional socio-cultural posture between different actors.     

Botswana’s beef global commodity chain: Explaining the resistance to change

In an era of increasing global agricultural trade, many firms and farms seek to upgrade their agricultural commodity chains to become better integrated into global markets. Utilizing a global commodity chain (GCC) approach, this analysis unravels the challenges to and the potential consequences of upgrading Botswana’s beef commodity chain. Specifically, the argument is made that political, economic, and cultural influences in the GCC contribute to distinctive driving factors that have prevented upgrading or niche marketing of Botswana’s beef. In comparison to two other countries in the region (South Africa and Namibia) that have upgraded their beef GCCs, Botswana’s producer driven GCC has not upgraded due in large part to the existence of three disparate producer groups: commercial feedlot, commercial extensive grazing, and communal producers. The diverse expectations, norms, daily practices and identities of the various actors in Botswana’s beef GCC contribute to contradictory policies and practices. This study reveals that cultural differences in a GCC can affect the capacity of the actors to upgrade the chain. Although culture does not drive or determine the action of actors in a commodity chain, it does shape the meanings associated with particular commodities and influences the ways in which actors think and behave. Moreover, if upgrading strategies are culturally alien or alienating to a significant segment of actors within the chain, upgrading efforts will be resisted by those alienated actors.     

Ecological modernization and the US Farm Bill: The case of the Conservation Security Program

This paper examines the debate surrounding the inception of the Conservation Security Program (CSP) under the 2002 US Farm Bill as a possible expression of ecological modernization by examining the discursive contributions made by official actors, social movement organizations, and producer organizations. Based on this analysis, the CSP embodies different expectations in terms of ecological modernization. Social movement actors view the program as a pragmatic solution to environmental problems created by productivist agriculture. Official actors and farm lobby representatives argue that the program should serve to create the pre-conditions for the eventual commodification of the natural resource benefits resulting from agricultural activity. These divergent discourses create multiple expectations of policies – reflecting both traditional productivist and post-productivist regimes. Using an ecological modernization framework allows us to see both the commonalities and differences in these approaches, and provides insight into the ways in which discourses surrounding global agri-environmental policies might play out in states' different political, social, economic, and ecological contexts.     

Bridging the Institutional Gaps: International Education as a Migration Industry

This article examines the education‐migration industry that has channelled students from China and Viet Nam into Japan over the past three decades and discusses the conditions for the emergence of such an industry, the major actors and the reasons for their changing roles and practices. It argues that the education‐migration industry in Japan emerged because of the discrepant institutional logics. Japan's reluctance to open the door for labour import, despite its acute labour shortage, has turned international education into a sanctioned channel of labour migration and thereby created opportunities for international education to become a thriving migration industry. As long as this institutional gap remains, government regulations will only create new sources of power and profits for brokers who can navigate complex regulations and employ illicit means to satisfy the legal requirements. The education‐migration industry is therefore a derivative of Japan's immigration regime and actively interacts with government policies.     

Political entrepreneurship in the field of Māori sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand

Individual actors have the potential to shape political outcomes through creative use of opportunities. Political entrepreneurship identifies how such actors recognize and exploit opportunities, for personal or collective gain. The existing literature focuses on individuals operating within institutional settings, with less attention paid to other types of actors. In this article, I argue for an expansion of the political entrepreneurship framework, by considering individuals in the electoral and protest arenas. An examination of the field of Māori sovereignty, or tino rangatiratanga, in Aotearoa New Zealand allows exploration of prominent actors’ innovative strategies and practices. The findings highlight the actors’ reliance on identity in mobilizing support within the community, to press claims. Broadening the application of political entrepreneurship demonstrates the roles of social, cultural and political capital in influencing outcomes, by identifying opportunities available to individuals embedded in the community and according to the context of the arena.     

Co-construction of agency and environmental management. The case of agri-environmental policy implementation at Finnish farms

One of the main challenges of European environmental policies is to recruit local-level actors to fulfil set targets. This article explores how targets of European agri-environmental policy have been achieved in Finland. It also analyses how implementation practices produce conditions for agri-environmental management and how policy success—or sustainability in general—relates to the different actors’ capacities to act. It is argued that we need to adopt a relational view in order to analyse the success and outcome of agri-environmental policy. This article assesses the ways in which the actor-network theory could contribute to this discussion by a notion of co-construction of agency. The empirical part of the article follows farmers’ sociologies. The practices and conceptualisations through which the policy goals are translated into farming practices are analysed, and it is shown how different forms of knowledge have become relevant stakes in the politics of agri-environmental management. It is argued, that the notion of co-construction of agency will help to open up the translation process and scaling between local and universal knowledge. Most importantly, it reveals the different forms of resistance deriving from farming practices. Finally the challenges that the notion of co-construction of agency poses for the agri-environmental policy are discussed.     

The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.     

Offshoring in the core: Russian software firms onshoring in the USA

Offshoring and outsourcing have become the buzzwords of the IT community and the popular media discourse about the current era of globalization in services. Acknowledging the geographic perspective expressed in these dominant terms, in this article I examine the processes and activities that are oriented in the opposite direction. Capturing this inversion, I develop the concept of ‘onshoring’ and use research material from fieldwork conducted with IT firms in St Petersburg, Russia and their affiliates, agents and clients in the USA to provide an empirical case study. Onshoring encompasses the corporeal, representational, material and legal practices of offshore firms developing a presence onshore, with Russia as offshore and the USA as onshore in this case. The lack of an established Russian professional diaspora in the USA created a context in which developing a recognizable onshore presence was necessary for firms based in Russia. By explicitly recognizing that the efforts, risk‐taking and experimental strategies of offshore firms to create connections, networks and contacts onshore in the USA are a constitutive part of offshore outsourcing, I document and examine the less acknowledged complex flows and practices of onshoring. I argue that although these actors and processes may seem marginal to the widely recognized narrative of offshore outsourcing, in fact, they are creative and strategic compensations that reveal how the globalization of services is enacted at the micro‐level.     

Objects,Meanings, and Role Identities: The Practices that Establish Association in the Case of Home‐Based Employment1

Contemporary social theory suggests that the meaning of any object differs by how we, as social actors, respond and relate to it. The challenge for sociology lies in exploring the different strategies and practices recursively and productively embedded in these relationships. In this article, I present data from in‐depth interviews with 20 home‐based employees to illustrate how these individuals interact with familiar objects in their surroundings to form anchor points for diverse lines of conduct. Although I draw from a number of sociological theories in my analyses, I further utilize cognitive theory to outline three micro‐psychological practices (i.e., routinization, goal targeting, and emotional alignment) that respondents apply in their attempt to establish the desired association between objects and identities. In this way, the article both extends previous lines of inquiry into the relationship between objects and actors, and makes a new contribution to the growing literature on culture and cognition.     

Women in War and Peace-building: The Roads Traversed,The Challenges Ahead

This article overviews the status of women and/in war and conflict literature and posits that the majority of it tends to view women as victims rather than as active actors, largely as a result of patriarchal structures. It is argued here that women in fact occupy a number of roles and create different fates for themselves, as war is also a site of potential change. The article presents the diverse situations and conditions of women in war, while arguing for the need to integrate women within processes of peace negotiations from the very outset. The manner of these inclusions,and the potential outcomes, are also presented and discussed. The article surveys some of the best practices with respect to both the analysis of women's roles and the inclusion of women working in conflict situations, with a view to encouraging international organizations in particular to seek actively to ensure that women are not only fighters and/or victims, but also negotiators in post-conflict futures. The overview thus extends from the visions as presented in literature, to practical considerations for those actually involved in the field of women in conflict.     

Scalar properties of the transnational field of human rights: Field effects and human rights in Bahrain

Whilst a body of work exists that has engaged with and conceptualised transnational fields, and in particular for this paper, the transnational field of human rights, more work needs to be done to elaborate on the effects of transnational fields, at the national level. Using Bourdieu's field theory, and more recent scholarship that focuses on scalar aspects of fields, this research focuses on a human rights field at the national level in Bahrain. The paper addresses two levels/dimensions of the transnational field of human rights: the transnational level and the national level, focussing on the field's vertical autonomy. Based upon nineteen in-depth interviews, the research retrieves the biographical trajectories of Bahraini human rights activists and activists from iNGOs with a specific remit that includes Bahrain. The paper argues that the vertical autonomy of the transnational field of human rights has demonstrable field effects at the national level, and that this has a number of implications. First, where transnational fields have greater vertical autonomy, the national level can operate with varying hierarchies, with actors adopting practices that diverge from those acting transnationally. Second, as a result of these scalar differences and the vertical autonomy of the transnational field, actors at the national level may have to adapt their practices, others can be side-lined as a result of ‘symbolic pollution.’ Third, in order for local actors to engage with transnational advocacy networks, they must be the right type of actor.     

Network Dynamics and Market Structure: The Case of Art Fairs

Annual art fairs are a crucial element of the contemporary art market. Art galleries represent artists and exhibit their work at fairs all over the world. These fairs expose the gallery and its artists and create and maintain relationships with key actors in the global art market. Using data recording artists and galleries presenting at art fairs alongside qualitative interviews with different actors operating in the art market, we study the development of the art fair network over three years, 2005–2007. Our findings suggest significant network and homophily effects regarding the status and age of artists at fairs. However, the internationality of fairs and geographic distances between them do not seem to have any effect.     

Anchors,Habitus, and Practices Besieged by War: Women and Gender in the Blockade of Leningrad

As war challenges survival and social relations, how do actors alter and adapt dispositions and practices? To explore this question, I investigate women's perceptions of normal relations, practices, status, and gendered self in an intense situation of wartime survival, the Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944), an 872‐day ordeal that demographically feminized the city. Using Blockade diaries for data on everyday life, perceptions, and practices, I show how women's gendered skills and habits of breadseeking and caregiving (finding scarce resources and providing aid) were key to survival and helped elevate their sense of status. Yet this did not entice rethinking “gender.” To explore status elevation and gender entrenchment, I build on Bourdieu's theory of habitus and fields to develop anchors: field entities with valence around which actors orient identities and practices. Anchors provide support for preexisting habitus and practices, and filter perceptions from new positions vis‐à‐vis fields and concrete relations. Essentialist identities and practices were reinforced through two processes involving anchors. New status was linked to “women's work” that aided survival of anchors (close others, but also factories and the city), reinforcing acceptance of gender positions. Women perceived that challenging gender relations and statuses could risk well‐being of anchors, reconstructing gender essentialism.     

Introduction: prendre au serieux la culture dans les relations internationales

Culture and international relations are related in all circumstances. On the one hand, if one refers to the discipline of International Relations, culture is an important parameter that influences knowledge production and paradigmatic elaboration. The discipline of IR is therefore culturally situated. On the other hand, when one is dealing with the phenomenon of international relations, it appears as if all social relations, international relations are orientated by the ways of thinking, beliefs and representations of its actors. At the same time, international relations create opportunities for cultural invention in order to regulate the interaction among actors.     

Making Media for Themselves: Strategic Dilemmas of Prefigurative Work in Independent Media Outlets

This article explores independent youth media outlets, one sector of the broader media democracy movement, to theorize the strategic dilemmas that actors negotiate as they attempt to prefigure the media change that they want to see in the world. The outlets operate as noncommercial spaces for youth to challenge the norms of mainstream media through the collective production of oppositional media. In this millennium, we see the increased presence of these outlets across the country and globally as youth are building nodes of communication through differing digital platforms. The article draws out a case study of one independent media outlet, Youth Media Action, in an urban area in the northeastern part of the United States to trace the dynamics of how these outlets attempt to prefigure or model media change through their structures, practices, and content with a changing cast of participating youth groups. I then analyze the tensions that actors confront as they seek to model an ideal (a more just media system) within a constrained environment (overextended staff and resources). The focus on these prefigurative practices and politics affords a closer view of the ways that these sites seek to build a more inclusive, egalitarian, noncommercial media system with limited resources and educational and political practices that do not always resonate with the participating groups and youth. This research contributes to social movement work that focuses on dilemmas that groups face as they look to themselves to build and model systems of social change.     

An institutional perspective of public relations practices in the Chinese cultural contexts

To respond to a recent call for a sociological turn to the promotion of institutional thought in public relations research, we propose a novel theoretical framework based on institutional work for studying PR practice in Chinese cultural contexts. Specifically, we attempted to stay away from the functional approach of examining PR outcomes, and focus on how institutional actors “navigate” the existing cultural contexts for institutionalising PR. We used triangulate methods based on 40 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document collections. We found that PR actors do not passively respond to institutional pressures, but rather creatively and reflexively interpret and incorporate existing cultural aspects, especially guanxi and harmony, to construct and transform their PR practices. These practices offer insights into why and how guanxi, as well as other cultural factors, are integrated and legitimised in PR practice in China.     

Local mobilisations and the formation of environmental networks in a democratizing Tunisia

ABSTRACT

This study examines the environmental protests that occurred in Tunisia after the 2011 uprisings. It analyses the factors underpinning the rise of the environmental networks during the period of transition (2011–2014). It details the mobilising strategies that were crucial for the networks’ growth or survival during this period of institutional instability. The study shows how networks leaders were able to bring together social and political actors from different backgrounds and ideological orientations. It is argued that the ability of networks to develop new distinctive collective identities was crucial for network sustainability. Those networks and actors who did not develop new clearly defined environmental identities and continued to rely importantly on pre-existing (authoritarian) structures and practices were more negatively impacted by ideological cleavages and political calculations. Empirically, the contribution builds on interviews and observations, as well as documents collected from Tunisian municipalities between 2013 and 2015. Conceptually, the research proposes a bottom-up perspective that highlights the interplay between micro- and macro-dynamics and strategies during a political transition. The analysis details the actors’ capacity to build alliances via interpersonal relations at the micro level, and their strategies to engage with institutional actors and processes.