Lacan Meets Freud? Patho-Analytic Reflections on the Status of the Perversions in Lacanian Metapsychology

This article analyzes the first edition of Freud’s (1905b) “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” and more particularly the status of the perversions as it appears in that book, demonstrating how this seminal text contains a radical critique of a “psychiatric style of reasoning” (Davidson, 2001a) that turns the perversions into a separate identity fundamentally different from other ?identities?. Freud’s insights are then confronted with the Lacanian idea of a “perverse structure.” It is argued that Lacan’s theories on perversion remain deeply influenced by the French psychiatric tradition on the topic (Dupré, 1925) and that they imply a return to the “psychiatric style of reasoning” that Freud tried to overcome. Finally, I formulate some suggestions with regard to a re-thinking of sexuality in psychoanalytic metapsychology.     

Immigrant Occupational Composition and the Earnings of Immigrants and Natives in Germany: Sorting or Devaluation?

In this article, the influence of immigrant occupational composition on the earnings of immigrants and natives in Germany is examined. Using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study and the German Microcensus, several relevant concepts are tested. The notion of quality sorting states that the differences in wages that are associated with the immigrant share within occupations are due only to differences in qualification requirements. Cultural devaluation assumes a negative influence over and above that of quality sorting. The findings indicate that both processes are at work. Additional analyses reveal that the impact of immigrant occupational composition is largely restricted to white‐collar occupations, which underlines the importance of considering historical differences between occupation types in classic migration destinations such as Germany.     

Unintended? The effects of adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act on nonprofit organizations

This article investigates the benefits and costs to nonprofit organizations emanating from the adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (2002). The act was intended to stem financial malfeasance in the for‐profit sector; nevertheless the article finds that about half the surveyed nonprofits adopted provisions of the act and experienced effects in proportion to the level of adoption. About one in four of the nonprofits attributed benefits of better financial controls and reduced risk of accounting fraud to the adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act. More than one‐third of the nonprofit organizations reported increased fees for external audit, and about 15 percent cited “reallocation of resources from program to administrative expenses.” This article discusses the unintended positive and negative effects of public policy on nonprofit organizations.     

The More Things Change,the More They Stay the Same? Reflections on the State of Sexism

Sociological Forum -     

Objectifying or Liberating? Investigation of the Effects of Sexting on Body Image

Scholars are divided as to whether sexting—an unprecedented sexual activity using digital media—is objectifying or sexually liberating. One notion is that sexting involves the representation of an individual’s sexuality in the presence of others and thus reinforces objectification. Another perspective contends that the self-portrayal of the body in sexting facilitates the exploration of sexual subjectivity and is, therefore, sexually liberating. By testing a model of sexting, objectified body consciousness (body surveillance, body shame, and body control beliefs), and comfort with nudity (indicator of sexual liberation) on 361 college students in Hong Kong, the current study revealed that, across genders, sexters demonstrated higher levels of body surveillance, body shame, and comfort with nudity than nonsexters. The results suggest that sexting is both sexually objectifying and liberating and that it has opened up a new sexual arena that combines sexual objectification and empowerment.     

Mothers of disabled children: in mourning or on the march?

A traditional psychoanalytic view of parenting a disabled child emphasises responses of shock, grief and depression. Parent activists and social model disability authors dismiss such accounts as destructive and prejudiced, foregrounding structural barriers to accessing services and resources. Further, psychoanalysis is criticised for its anachronistic, ideologically uncritical discourse. Each position brings valuable insights as well as silences. This paper seeks to overcome an assumption of mutual exclusivity by creating a new synthesis, drawing on the work of Winnicott and Kittay. Conclusions are that it is both possible and necessary to allow for ambivalent feelings within parents, while attending to the external, material realities of contextual factors.     

Ideological or religious? Contending visions on the future of Alevi identity

Establishing a coherent collective identity within the modern urban context among people who have different ideological, social and religious orientations, and social and economic backgrounds, is an ongoing struggle within the Alevi community in Turkey. This study tries to understand how alternative positions on Alevi identity dynamically construct the boundaries, moral contents and the new shape of Alevi identity in modern urban contexts through use of various discursive resources. At least two main contending ‘positions’ on Alevi identity try to institutionalise Alevi identity in modern urban contexts, which are ‘Ideological Position’ and ‘Religious Position’. Those discourse positions constitute different visions about the past and the future of the Alevi community as well as the cultural and the political boundaries of Alevi identity. More importantly, those positions resonate in ordinary citizens’ life stories as well as group narratives. This study utilises the analytical frame of ‘positioning theory’ to shed light on the complexities of identity negotiation.     

Share the Burden or Pass it on?

There are numerous explanations for why Tanzania withdrew from the CRRF (Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework). Being aware that the decision was the sum of multiple coinciding factors the article argues that the decisive features were, firstly, a failed dialogue about the basis and the goals of CRRF between the Tanzanian government and the UN (United Nations); secondly, a disillusion on the Tanzanian side related to the history of international cooperation on refugee issues; and thirdly, a perceived contradiction between the goals of the CRRF and domestic policies, specifically in relation to the agenda of national sovereignty propagated by the incumbent Tanzanian government. Numerous publications on the New York declaration, the CRRF, and the GCR (Global Compact on Refugees) have portrayed the evolution of ideas, principles, and political compromises in question. Yet few analyses highlight which core messages were received on the ground or what impact they had on the very people concerned. This article, therefore will touch only briefly on declarations and statements of the UN and instead focus on a bottom‐up perspective.     

‘A Direct Act of Resurgence,a Direct Act of Sovereignty’: Reflections on Idle No More,Indigenous Activism,and Canadian Settler Colonialism

Abstract

In the winter of 2012, the Canadian political scene was shaken by the emergence of ‘Idle No More', a collection of protests directed by and largely comprised of Indigenous peoples. Originally, a response to a variety of legislation that was being passed through the Canadian government at the time, Idle No More spread across the country and around the world. In this paper, I argue that, drawing from Indigenous nationhood movements that extend back through five centuries, Idle No More represents a renewed assertion of Indigenous sovereignty in opposition to settler colonisation. Through transgressive actions, Idle No More has brought online activism into alignment with embodied defences of land and place, challenging Canadian sovereignty and Settler identity in multiple and creative ways. However, settler colonial tendencies in Canadian politics have sought to reinscribe Idle No More within established, generic political binaries. This paper positions Idle No More as a ‘movement moment’ that reveals significant insights about Indigenous activism, conservative politics, leftist resistance, and persistent settler colonialism in Canada.     

Selectivity,adaptation, or disruption? A comparison of alternative hypotheses on the effects of migration on fertility: the case of Brazil

This study, based on Brazilian data from 1976, compared the fertility of migrants and stayers at both origin and destination areas. Observed patterns of fertility differentials were then analyzed in terms of 4 hypotheses of fertility behavior focused on processes of socialization, adaptation, selectivity, and disruption. In the study sample, 31% of migrants moved from rural to urban areas, 45% of moves were between urban areas, and 20% of moves were between rural areas. Among rural-to-urban migrants, only 1/3 moved from traditional to modern regions. To uncover the main patterns of migrant and stayer fertility differentials in the study population, the major flows of migrants by origin and destination were disaggregated by recency of migration, education, and age. The overall conclusions were as follows: 1) rural-urban migration flows need to be disaggregated into various modern/traditional cross-classifications (e.g., modern-rural, traditional-urban, frontier-urban) and greater emphasis needs to be placed on rural-urban, urban-urban, and rural-rural flows; 2) no robust quantitative measures of migrant-stayer fertility differentials held across migrant groups, implying that migrants differing in terms of age, education, origin, and destination are likely to behave in significantly variable fashion with regard to stayer standards of fertility behavior; 3) migrant groups with overall lower fertility levels, such as the young and better educated, are less likely to experience significant fertility reduction to bridge the origin/destination fertility gap; 4) rural-to-rural migrants do not appear to experience any lasting fertility reduction even when they move to areas with lower overall fertility rates; 5) urban-to-rural migrants tend to bridge a larger fraction of the uphill fertility gap than rural-to-urban migrants; and 6) there was evidence of partial adaptation for most migrant categories once disruption effects disappear and evidence consistent with the socialization hypothesis (no fertility reduction for at least 1 generation) was apparent for migrants originating in the least developed parts of Brazil, the frontier region, and the traditional-rural region.     

Whither Sociology? Some Reflections on the Ideas of ‘Globalization’ and ‘Social Capital’1

The history of the social sciences provides instructive instances of clairvoyance on the part of some of its principal luminaries as well as periods of general institutional myopia. The 30-year history of the ISA Research Committee on Sociotechnics itself is an interesting representation of the path sociology in its mainstream and less orthodox (or deviant—depending on the perspective of the observer—configurations has traversed in these last decades. I vividly recall meeting Adam Podgorecki first at the meetings of the International Sociological Association in Washington and again, in the spring of 1973, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. And I remember equally well meeting him again at the first meetings of the Research Committee on Sociotechnics at Loughborough University in England and at a later meeting in 1974, which was convened at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.     

Mother Died Today or Maybe Yesterday: Reflections of L'etranger on Team‐Based Forms of Work Organization

One of the most enduring images of late twentieth‐century popular culture was the individualist and iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘grumpy old man’ Victor Meldrew in the BBC television series One Foot in the Grave. Richard Wilson's portrayal of the recently retired security worker is the antithesis of everything that contemporary organizations require from the idealized vision of employee as ‘team‐player’. As one who revels in the way that the epitaph ‘Victor’ is thrown at me at regular intervals both by my partner and children, at times when I think I am behaving normally, I thought it would be interesting for me to reflect, in public, on my relationship to contemporary workplace relations. It is my contention that Meldrew's characterization is not wholly based around the age dimension but is equally based upon his portrayal as an individual ill at ease with the mores of gregariousness. The essay therefore is a self‐reflective piece in which the author places himself in a particular milieu—that of L'etranger and uses this ‘placing’ in order to discuss the relationship between what he defines as ‘the outsider’ and the issue of age discrimination in contemporary blue‐collar environments. It is suggested that whilst the outsider or L'etranger is accepted under certain conditions within the managerial labour process this same level of organizational tolerance is not afforded to older workers within blue‐collar areas. It moves from a reflective, even autodidactic exploration of the relationship between the author and cultural articulations of L'etranger and uses this to inform an analysis of the acceptance of L'etranger within some aspects of the managerial labour within team based manufacturing units. In exploring these issues the essay then attempts to develop a third narrative in terms of now L'etranger, approaching the age of retirement fits in to the new academic labour process.     

Design Contradictions in the ‘New Architecture of Aid’? Reflections from Uganda on the Roles of Civil Society Organisations

This article considers how changing trends in patterns and modalities of aid are affecting the roles of civil society organisations. It draws on research carried out in Uganda in 2001 to argue that donors are adopting an oversimplified conception of the roles of CSOs. In particular, by separating ‘service delivery’ from ‘advocacy’ roles, donors fail to appreciate a situation in which organisations play several roles simultaneously, and the vital synergy that can be created between roles. Furthermore, there is a danger that the changes in funding modalities will force a new dependence on government which will restrict CSOs’ ability to carry out the very role that donors are trying to enhance — that of ‘holding government to account’.     

Religion: friend or foe of the aging?

Religion can be a guide in the quest of older adults for a fuller understanding of their lives and purposes as they cope with the diminishments brought about by aging.     

The poverty of the Czech elderly--myth or reality?

"Poverty among the Czech elderly is considered from two perspectives: objective and subjective. Various indicators of objective poverty are analysed, such as the relation of average monthly income to average old-age pension, pension inequalities, the structure of household expenditures, and the structure of consumer durables ownership, as are representative survey data measuring subjective poverty. It is concluded that from the objective point of view the Czech elderly are as a whole well above subsistence poverty. However, their subjective poverty seems quite far-reaching, affecting between 30 and 50 percent."     

On the frontline or on the side-line? Homelessness care and care avoiders

Homelessness is a social problem that is subject to many definitional issues and problems. These problems can be discerned on both the conceptual and the practical level. Based on research carried out in Ghent, Belgium, this article deals with ways in which social workers involved in homelessness care construe the problem of ‘care avoiders’, who seem to be perceived as a separate category within the homeless population. We show that: (1) different categories of homelessness are created on an organisational and on an individual level (2) specific services have been developed for those who do not enter regular facilities and (3) a residual group has been created, which social work does not really know how to deal with.     

A help or a hindrance? The impact of job training on the employment status of disadvantaged women

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether welfare-sponsored, government-funded job training helps participants improve their employment status. The negligible effects found in prior studies may be due to design limitations or inherent flaws in job training programs and therefore do not necessarily contradict human capital theory. The present study uses longitudinal and representative data, dynamic modeling techniques, an appropriate counterfactual, and important contextual variables to assess the likelihood of obtaining employment for job training participants and nonparticipants. It also describes the types of jobs women obtain by examining wages, industry, occupation, and labor union membership. Whereas some of the results support prior research, the focus is on the unique contributions of this study, which include a differential training effect for full- and part-time workers and a detailed analysis of macro-structural variables, which are rarely included in studies of labor supply.     

The CLASS Act: is it dead or just sleeping?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established a voluntary public insurance program for long-term care: the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. In October 2011, the Obama Administration announced that the program would not be implemented because of the high risk of fiscal insolvency. Under the legislative design, adverse selection was a major risk and premiums would have been very high. This article discusses several CLASS Act design and implementation issues, including the design features that led to the decision not to implement the program: the voluntary enrollment, the weak work requirement, the lifetime and cash benefits, and the premium subsidy for low-income workers and students.