Staking the claims of identity: Purism,linguistics and the media in post‐1990 Germany1

The paper examines one of the major metalinguistic debates in post‐war Germany: the debate about the influence of English on German, an issue which was raised in the 1990s in the German media and has dominated media discussions on language ever since. The analysis demonstrates that the debate is deeply embedded in current socio‐political discourses as well as in long‐term discursive traditions concerning, on the one hand, the socio‐political changes following German reunification in 1989/90, which involved a revision of the concepts of nation and nationalism, and, on the other, the genesis of the concept of nation, which is closely bound up with the history of the educated bourgeoisie and the process of standardisation as well as linguistic purism. It is argued that the debate on Anglicisms, as is the case in many other metalinguistic debates, cannot be regarded in isolation from the socio‐political environment and the context of historical usage within which it is embedded.     

Japanese Sociology in a Global Network. Internationalization,Disciplinary Development,and Minority Integration in the Road Ahead

The dual trajectories of Japanese sociology and Japan itself are poised at a watershed moment in their shared history. In recent years, Japanese sociology has enlarged its international presence in unprecedented fashion and the Tokyo Olympics have positioned the global spotlight on the entire nation of Japan, making it an opportune moment to reflect on the future of Japanese sociology in connection to Japanese society by way of internationalization. This article draws on the author's reflections on the latest 92nd Japan Sociological Society Annual Conference in the context of recent socio‐structural and intellectual transformations in counterpart sociological cultures in Anglo‐America. Drawing on three theorizations of disciplinary development by Abbott, Connell, and Burawoy, this article articulates two dimensions (socio‐structural and intellectual) with which to examine (i) what Japanese sociology can contribute to improve the internationalization decolonization, and pluralization of global sociology; and (ii) what global sociology can do to advance Japanese sociology's public contribution to improving and preserving LGBTQ minorities' societal well‐being.     

American-British Sporting Rivalries and the Making of the Global Sports Industry

Abstract

This article examines a key aspect of American sports history within a transnational context. Whilst the internal histories of American sport are exceedingly rich and voluminous, our general understanding of the nation’s contribution to the international, global scene is less well-known. The postcolonial rivalries between American and British sports communities fuelled the development of what became open, international cup competitions in such sports as tennis and golf which bolstered an emerging global industry in the first half of the twentieth century. The transnational process of initial American imitation and absorption of British models have been well documented within the scholarly literature and debates in American Studies for decades; however, the gradual reversal of this imitative process to a more reciprocal relationship has received far less attention (especially within sports history). The authors show how the Davis Cup competition is an example of the way in which Americans indigenised a cultural sporting import, namely tennis; created a nationalistic, international sporting competition; and effectively exported it back to Britain within the wider context of a burgeoning, imperial rivalry on the world stage between these two, rival sporting nations. This process not only expanded the worldwide consumption of sport but spreads a spirit of cultural emulation within twentieth-century global consumer culture. This transnational perspective also illuminates the thorough de-provincialising of the notion of “American Exceptionalism” within the field. When, for example, the respective imperial histories of the two nations are considered comparatively, the “American” story does not look so “exceptional” after all. Though American exceptionalism adapted some British sports to suit American sensibilities, the sporting cultures of the two nations and within their zones of influence remained similar in many respects. This was particularly true in amateur sports such as tennis, rowing and track and field (athletics to the Brits) as well as in the sport of golf. In the twentieth century, many sports adapted as focus shifted from nationalism and national worth towards professionalism and international spectacle.     

‘So few of us and so many of them’

Public protest against the Persian Gulf War in 1990–1 was only part of the story of US American women's resistance to war in general and to that war specifically. Although the gendering of war is seldom discussed outside feminist scholarship, the events of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath as well as all events and processes having to do with war are gendered events and processes. Both women and men participate in war in various ways, some of which, particularly in the case of women, are either not noticed, are deliberately ignored or made invisible. In this essay, the stories of some women who protested the Persian Gulf War are represented alongside questions that their narratives prompted about what constitutes anti-war work, and what the ramifications of such work are in the present international context.     

Sport and globalization: transnational dimensions

Abstract The aims of this special issue are to both raise the social scientific status of sport and to advance understanding of transnational processes through the role of sport in global change. The Introduction argues that sport, like globalization, can be understood in transdisciplinary terms, and the papers included contributions informed by sociology, anthropology, political sciences and history. As well as placing the issue in the context of recent studies of sport and globalization, the Introduction outlines the seven papers. Placed together they move from analyses of broader globalizing and multi‐sport issues towards consideration of how transnational processes impact upon individual sports – with examples from cricket, baseball and association football – ending with regional and national dimensions.     

Landed Gender: Rural Couples Caught Between Traditional and Contemporary Roles

The words ‘rural Australia’ summon images of big men in Akubras, CWA ladies with loaded plates of scones and cream, sheep‐dotted hillsides and summer's golden wheat. On the surface this is the good life, and even though many people are now aware that rural Australia is suffering, there is little said about what is happening behind closed doors. The couple relationship bears the brunt of the growing pressures on those who live on the land, but it has its own inner conflicts and can hardly sustain these additional pressures. These couples do not tell their story in public, they guard their privacy jealously, and only as a last hope will they come to counselling. The common theme that emerges is that of the meeting of old and new roles—the traditional expectations of relationship (typically held by the man and his family) encountering more contemporary expectations (typically held by the woman or ‘outsider’). Here is their untold story.     

The Information Environment of War

This article observes high levels of anxiety about war in the present era, although wars are in decline. It addresses this paradox by distinguishing ideal‐typical features of Industrial and Information War. Industrial War is fought predominantly between states over territory, harnesses industry and the military, and requires mass mobilisation of people as well as resources. Information War is the prerogative of a few advanced societies and has emerged in a context that has enabled the extension of market practices on a global scale (with America as a unipolar power). Information War transcends frontiers, is asymmetrical, and its hard side is manifest in digitalised technologies and small professional forces. However, its soft side evokes the expanded and fast‐changing information environment of globalised media, trans‐national networks and the Internet. Through these, media wars can be experienced intensely by civilians who are otherwise untouched: at once close up and far away. This contributes to heightened consciousness of war, although such spectators are removed from danger. Although interests try to control information flows from and about war, the information environment is huge, shifting and unpredictable. As such, it is impossible to control fully, thereby presenting opportunities for vigorous symbolic struggles involving anti‐war campaigners and others.     

The Self at a Time of War in Northern Sri Lanka

The article takes one young Tamil woman, Vasantha, and her account of growing up in the northern war zone of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Vasantha's narrative and her adolescence, like others of her generation, was framed by living at the margins of the Sri Lankan state (though under its bombardment) and under the control of a repressive quasi-state actor, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In this article, I twin Vasantha's fashioning of her life-story with a meditation on the ways in which the Sri Lankan war, specifically LTTE control over Tamil lives, has come to ambivalently frame and produce particular understandings of selfhood, articulations of collectivity and individuality. Here, I argue that individuation takes many different forms, and, specifically, that the ruptures of war produces individuation in unexpected ways. I take Vasantha's story to explicate the experiences of young people in northern Sri Lanka, and, as an illustration of the contraction and expansion of particular possibilities of selfhood in the midst of political.     

The Dialectic of Nation Building in Postcolonial Tanzania

The contradiction between capital accumulation in a global economy and political legitimation within the nation‐state has shaped the contentious politics of citizenship and exclusion in postcolonial Africa. A historical analysis of the early postcolonial, state socialist, and neoliberal eras in the African nation‐state of Tanzania reveals that this contradiction generated conflicts within the country's political elite over various public policies, which defined inclusion and exclusion from the community of the nation, and defined the rights of citizens and noncitizens. Political contention over these policies concerned who should be allowed access to citizenship, what rights should be granted to foreigners, and whether all citizens should be granted the same rights regardless of race. Although the institutional expression of the contradiction varied over time, a key divide was between central government administrators who prioritized economic growth in a global economy, and political party leaders and members of parliament (MPs) who were more focused on securing political legitimacy and electoral support within the nation‐state.     

Emotions and Nationalism: Armenian Genocide as a Case Study

Until recently, sociologists have paid surprisingly little attention to the relationship between emotions and nationalism. Existing accounts remain homogeneous, linear and nonrelational. To remedy this gap, this article compares public controversies in Turkey over the Armenian genocide at two historical moments: its semi‐centennial anniversary in 1965, and the publication of an article in 2004 by the Armenian‐Turkish journalist Hrant Dink that led to his assassination in 2007. It demonstrates that the genocide, and the conflicting epistemic structures that it incites, is a source of anxiety for Armenians due to their actual displacement within the nation. It is also a source of anxiety for Turks due to the perceived threat of displacement within the nation. These relational anxieties over the nation played an important role, during these two events, in reproducing hierarchical and exclusionary configurations, experiences, and representations of nationhood. During the 1965 semi‐centennial, Armenians reacted to the mainstream Turkish public's anxieties by pledging their loyalty to the state. Dink's assassination in 2007, on the other hand, showcases how an attempt by the excluded to redefine the what and who of the nation united otherwise separate social sections around a nationalist front.     

Plagiarism or Russian Symbolist Intertextuality? Hawthorne's 'the Snow Image' and Sologub's 'snegurochka'

Abstract

In early 1909, the Russian symbolist Fedor Sologub was accused of plagiarizing his short story 'Snegurochka' from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Snow Image'. For several months this case and others were discussed in the Russian press. A comparison of the two texts reveals that, while the plots are almost identical, Sologub's text contains a host of alterations that make it a truly 'Symbolist' work and, given the context in which it was created, make a charge of plagiarism difficult to prove.

For several centuries the concept of 'plagiarism' has been debated; many great authors — including several who influenced Sologub — have been accused of it, yet no definitive definition of his 'literary crime' has been reached. The Russian Symbolists were among the many who rejected traditional notions of originality; they instead actively engaged the literary past in various ways. Sologub perhaps was more active than most and made daring use of others' texts a cornerstone of his carefully crafted literary persona. While determining 'guilt' is most likely impossible, this episode does reveal much about Sologub and his literary methods.     

When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems

Scholars in a number of disciplines have sought to assess the power of reading or viewing a personal story to modify people's beliefs. However, the research, which has been pursued under diverse programs, has produced conflicting findings. We focus on the persuasiveness of personal stories about problems that are structural (rather than individual) and whose solution requires government action. Overall, the research suggests that although personal stories can overcome people's tendency to resist new information, they often do not do so. People's preexisting beliefs, assumptions, and stereotypes affect their willingness to be absorbed by a story, to empathize with the stories' protagonists, and to endorse the message communicated by the story. We argue also for a sociological perspective on narrative persuasion, one which, unlike the mostly experimental research conducted so far, pays attention to the context in which people encounter stories and to the norms shaping people's assessment of a story as credible, relevant, and important.     

Differentiating among penal states

This review article assesses Loïc Wacquant's contribution to debates on penality, focusing on his most recent book, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity ( Wacquant 2009 ), while setting its argument in the context of his earlier Prisons of Poverty (1999). In particular, it draws on both historical and comparative methods to question whether Wacquant's conception of ‘the penal state’ is adequately differentiated for the purposes of building the explanatory account he proposes; about whether ‘neo‐liberalism’ has, materially, the global influence which he ascribes to it; and about whether, therefore, the process of penal Americanization which he asserts in his recent writings is credible.     

Visual symbols of national identity: Slovene bumper stickers and the collective unconscious

During the struggle for international recognition of Slovenia as independent state, common people produced many visual symbols. These symbols functioned as a metaphor for the promotion of Slovene national independence, consistent with Jung's view that a myth consists of symbols which are created on the unconscious level. Many of the proposals for new coat‐of‐arms, flag, money and license plates of cars appeared on the streets and, as a special characteristic of the time, on the backs of cars. In this way the automobile became an advertising billboard of his owner's political opinion. This article exposes and analyses characteristic decorations as unique political graffi. Reading these visual signs monitors the whole story of Slovenia, the story of becoming an independent state, and the nature of the tragic Yugoslav conflict as well.     

Silencing the Good: Memory,Forgetting and the Belated Reputation of Giorgio Perlasca

The sociological analysis of the reputation of historical figures has rarely paid attention to temporal delays in the emergence of collective memory. This article focuses on a case of belated reputation as a particular reputational trajectory. I analyse the reputational trajectory of the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, who posed as Spain's representative in Budapest during the German occupation of 1944‐5, and saved thousands of Jews from deportation. Upon his return to Italy, his story was neglected, only to resurface forty years after the events. An analysis of these processes requires the consideration of three factors: the presence of agents who promote a reputation, the configuration of centre‐periphery relations, and the memorability of the figure. The consideration of how these three factors change over time offers an adequate account of processes of commemoration.     

British officialdoms and European Jewry during the 1940s

On the eve of the war in Europe, Whitehall, as part of its effort to appease the Arab states, retreated from its support of Zionism. Among other acts, Britain restricted the immigration of Jews to Palestine, which was the main potential haven for Jewish refugees during and after the war. A serious conflict evolved between the Zionists and the British over the immigration issue. British officials who dealt with the Palestine problem tended to regard the Jewish refugees as soldiers in the Zionist battle, and the illegal Jewish immigration to be solely politically motivated. Geo‐political priorities dominated the thinking of these officials, blinding them to the misery of the people involved and obstructing their consideration of the human consequences of their decisions. Anti‐Semitism as such played no meaningful role in the decision‐making process.     

The End of Football and Fiesta? Social Insurrection and National Identity in Twenty-First-Century Brazil

ABSTRACT

Carnaval and futebol (football) have both been central to the construction of Brazil in the imagination of global audiences. This includes contributing to stereotypes of Brazil as a country of peaceful, festive, and sensualized people, even though historically Brazilian Carnaval and football have always been sites of social contestation and popular participation in the construction of collective identity. In recent years, Brazil has burst onto the global stage as a key player due to its economic rise, its more proactive international diplomacy, and its venture as the host of major global sport events. Protest and political violence have erupted on the streets of Brazil in a manner quite at odds with the circulating reports on the ‘success story' of Brazil. A combination of the country's increasing global prominence and developments in media and communication technologies of the global era means that global and local audiences have access to more detailed, nuanced, and grounded information about Brazil than has ever been possible before. This moment of intensified visibility has brought Brazil's imagined identity (both within Brazil and within the global imaginary) to a turning point; one where national symbols such as Carnaval and football are declining in relevance. In this article we argue that due to this combination of forces, Carnaval and football, at least in their manufactured forms that are visible to global audiences, no longer have the popular potency within Brazil that they once did, but have rather become what Bakhtin would call ‘mere spectacles’. We consider Carnaval and football within historical and contemporary context drawing upon a variety of sources, including secondary literature and mainstream and alternative media reports.     

Briefly Noted

The biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference, sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance and held Nov. 7–9 in St. Louis, Missouri, was full of varying sessions on harm reduction and reform — 45 of them in all. An article by Filter editor Will Godfrey summed up his perspective — he was the only print reporter so far to have covered the entire conference. We asked him what his feeling was about the prospects for treatment and harm reduction working together, as they have in the past. “There's plenty of friction, but there can and should be rapprochement between the harm‐reduction and traditional treatment communities,” he told ADAW. “Many people in the harm‐reduction movement pursue traditional recovery, and there are treatment folks who support harm reduction. All should be trying to save lives and empower people. Harm reductionists' legitimate concerns about mainstream treatment include its coercive or controlling deployment, its frequent eschewal of evidence‐based practices and its promotion of abstinence at the expense of stigmatizing people who use drugs. Treatment advocates often overlook that most people who use drugs are fine. And in any case, everyone must be free to choose their own path.” But the fact that two approaches — one more radical than the other — coexist still is bound to make some treatment providers uncomfortable. After all, some of the speakers said that even supervised consumption sites are unfair to drug users, who have no need to be “supervised,” and instead should be free to use drugs. All viewpoints were there. “There's constant debate in the harm‐reduction movement about working to change systems that inflict harm from the inside, versus calling for radical reforms from the outside,” said Godfrey. “I think both approaches are simultaneously necessary.” Not everyone saw the conflict. “I have to say that I didn't see an anti‐public health movement there at all,” Maia Szalavitz, who is writing a history of harm reduction and is respected in both harm reduction and some, at least, treatment camps, told ADAW. “There has always, of course, been tension between activists and researchers and between people who want to fight within the system and those who want to tear it all down.” For the Filter article, go to https://filtermag.org/drug‐policy‐reform‐movement/ .     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.