Being part of an enacted togetherness: Narratives of elderly people with depression

In this article, we explored how five elderly persons with depression engaged in everyday activities with others, over time, and how this was related to their experience of meaning. Repeated interviews and participant observations generated data that was analysed using a narrative approach. Analysis identified togetherness as an acted relation, "enacted togetherness", emphasising how the act of doing everyday activities with someone created togetherness and belonging, and being part of an enacted togetherness seemed to be a way for the participants to negotiate and construct meaning. Opportunities for doing things together with someone were closely associated to the place where the participants lived. Furthermore, engagement in activities together with others created hope and expectations of future acting. Findings from this research can extend our understanding of how participating in everyday activities is experienced as a social process including change over time, presenting the perspective of elderly people themselves. In light of these findings, we highlight the need to consider how opportunities to become part of an enacted togetherness can be created. Also, we aspire to contribute to the debate on how to understand the complexity related to social aspects of ageing and add to the emerging understanding of everyday activities as transactional, incorporating people and the environment in a dynamic process that goes beyond the individual.     

Young people's orientations to the future: navigating the present and imagining the future

This article discusses the findings of the Imagine Sheppey project (2013–2014) which studied how young people are ‘oriented’ towards the future. The aim and approach of the project were to explore future imaginaries in a participatory, experimental, and performative way. Working with young people in a series of arts-based workshops, we intervened in different environments to alter the space as an experience of change – temporal, material, and symbolic. We documented this process visually and made use of the images produced as the basis for elicitation in focus groups with a wider group of young people. In this article we discuss young people's future orientations through the themes of reach, resources, shape, and value. In so doing, we reflect on the paths that our young respondents traced to connect their presents to what is next, what we call their modes of present–future navigation. We explore the qualities and characteristics of their stances within a wider reflection about how young people approach, imagine, and account for the future.     

Collective Memory and Collective Fear: How South Africans Use the Past to Explain Crime

The past is a resource that individuals can draw upon as they try to make sense of the world around them, and scholars have long assumed that individuals internalize and utilize collective memories in their daily lives. Yet capturing and analyzing the deployment of collective memory has proven elusive. This paper offers a novel approach for tapping whether, and how, individuals selectively draw on their collective pasts to explain the present. Analyzing interviews with young South African managers and professionals, this paper demonstrates racial variation in how respondents organically introduce the country’s apartheid past as an explanans for current crime, and suggests how these differences are related to divergent levels of commitment by blacks and whites to the South African nation-building project. In so doing, the paper offers a method for examining how individuals selectively use the past to construct, justify, and explain their present-day attitudes and behaviors. The study further highlights the importance of attending not only to what people remember, but also to how they think through and with collective representations of the past.     

Disability,identity and disclosure in the online dating environment

This paper examines how disabled people construct self-identity and negotiate disclosure of impairment in the online dating environment. Grounded theory was used to code and analyze 108 responses to an online open-ended questionnaire completed by disabled people who engaged in online dating. Findings reveal that while the body and impairment may not be present in digital space, it plays an important role in how disabled people present themselves online. This paper suggests that the embodied/disembodied dichotomy that has been traditionally used to distinguish offline and online interaction is blurred in the online dating environment.     

Time,Knowledge, and Power in Psychotherapy: A Comparison of Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioral Practices

Time has long been recognized as a marker of professional control and a tool for the organization of work. Yet we know less about how temporality intersects with experts’ epistemic goals. This article illustrates how the patterning of time in psychotherapy shapes the construction of knowledge about mental illness and how this relationship is mediated by patients’ own interventions. I focus on psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral therapeutic practices and draw on data from ethnographic observations in an outpatient psychiatry clinic and in-depth interviews with psychotherapists. The article details the constitutive relationship between two dimensions of temporality: first, clock time, namely the length of treatment, the length and frequency of sessions, and the flow of the therapy hour, and second, the temporal epistemics of illness, its construction as a phenomenon with a past, present, and future. Clinicians in the two orientations attempt to construct particular temporal landscapes by integrating these two facets of their work. Yet they must always do so in response to patients’ own temporal interventions. By attending both to the organization of professional work and the temporality of illness, this article brings together two largely distinct literatures within medical sociology, namely scholarship on the profession of medicine and social scientific understandings of the temporal dimensions of illness. It shows that temporality is constitutive of how knowledge and power are negotiated in expert work.     

Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

Traditionally adulthood and citizenship have been synonymous. Yet adulthood is changing. In this paper we explore how young people's evolving understandings of adulthood may contribute towards an understanding of citizenship within the broader context of increasingly extended and fragmented transitions. The paper draws on a unique qualitative longitudinal data set in which 100 young people, from contrasting social backgrounds in the United Kingdom, have been followed over a five‐year period using repeat biographical interviews. We present first the themes that emerged from a cross‐cut analysis of the first of three rounds of interviews distinguishing between relational and individualised understandings of adulthood. We then present a model we developed to capture the ways that young people sought out opportunities for competence and recognition in different fields of their lives. Finally a case study that follows a young woman through her three interviews illustrates how these themes can appear in an individual trajectory. We offer the model and case study as a way of exploring a more subjective approach to citizenship in which participation is not deferred to some distant future in which economic independence is achieved, but is understood as constantly constructed in the present.     

The Temporality of Emotion: Constructing Past Emotions

Symbolic interactionists have developed a rich literature on emotion that has advanced our understanding of the socially constructed nature of emotions and has provided a wealth of understanding about emotions and emotional life. Left unexplored, however, has been the temporal nature of emotion. Similarly, interactionists' renewed interest in time and temporality has not focused on emotion. In this article I describe the implicit leads in these two literatures that need to be pulled together to make the linkage clear. Drawing on the work defining emotions as social objects and on George Herbert Mead's theory of the past, I describe how emotional pasts are used as foundations for situated actions. I also explain how we use the emotional pasts in four areas: the individual level, individuals in interaction, collective behavior, and the social structural level. This linkage provides insights for understanding how we use emotional pasts when we construct and enact behavior. I argue that emotional pasts are important tools used in the interpretation and construction of present emotions, to situate selves and others, and to construct the social order.     

Children's narratives of post-divorce family life: from individual experience to an ethical disposition

This article draws on interviews with 60 children and young people to explore how they construct narrative accounts of post‐divorce family life. Rather than seeking to describe children's experiences as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, the focus of the article is on how young people position themselves in their narratives and the ways in which they construct their past experiences. It is argued that these narratives are multi‐layered, often revealing ambivalence and contradictions. The conclusion turns to the question of whether these individual accounts can give rise to what might be referred to as an ethical disposition in which children's experiences can inform a broader social ethos on how to divorce ‘in the proper manner’.     

A Year Then Forever: Personal Resolution Making and the Temporal Bridge of the Near Future

Based on in-depth interviews and drawing exercises with 25 resolution makers, this paper explores the use of time in structuring and enacting improvement projects of the self. Resolutions are intentional, identity-laden moments when people bring the future into the present. They provide a window into the identity work of the “near future”—an underresearched but fascinating site where individuals transition between what they see as an immediate, controllable future to a more distant one that is less certain. In attempt to mitigate the emotionally and cognitively daunting prospects of the distant future, resolution makers enlist time as a form of capital, constructing the “temporal bridge” of the near future by engaging in three interrelated processes: structuring and remembering, being flexible, and maintaining optimism.     

Precarious leisure: (re)imagining youth,transitions and temporality

ABSTRACT

The precarity of young people’s transitions to work has been a longstanding focus in youth studies. As Furlong and others have demonstrated, processes of social, political and economic restructuring have led to a pronounced instability for young people entering the labour market. While the notion of labour market precarity has gained attention, the ‘contamination’ of precarity into other spheres of life such as leisure has been less developed. This article seeks to extend these debates through interrogation of the concept of ‘leisure precarity’. Drawing on a qualitative study of youth leisure in Glasgow, it argues that temporal anxieties have reframed young people’s experiences and understandings of leisure such that young people have come to fear ‘empty’ or unproductive time. The pressures of juggling work and study, or looking for work, meant that most participants in our research had limited time free for leisure, and temporal rhythms became fragmented between past, present and future. The paper argues that these multiple and contradictory leisure dispositions reveal new forms of individualisation and uncertainty, as well as traditional patterns of inequality, thereby bringing youth transitions into dialogue with the study of precarity in the twenty-first century.     

Homemaking,Temporality and Later Life

Abstract

While much literature has focused on the meaning of home, relatively little has been conducted on homemaking in later life. This paper demonstrates the importance of time in conceptualizations of home. Using an extensive case study from a multi-interview study with eight older people in England, it is shown that gardening can form the basis of a temporal framework which structures a life. Importantly, gardening can seem essential in homemaking and a reason not to move to residential living. This paper builds on literature that suggests home is a process and that people’s conceptualization and experience of home develop throughout their lives. As ageing and dying have become long and complicated processes, it is argued older people may find this challenging as this makes it difficult to prepare for the end of life.     

Belonging on the Move: Market Rhetoric and the Future as Obligatory Passage

Recent neglect of the concept of belonging may be traced to its subsumption under matters of locality or kinship (concepts that have left its theorising rather static and underdeveloped), as well as to theoretical understandings which try to keep distinct a logic of belonging from a logic of the market. In reworking a sociological tradition that formerly associated the work of managers with a specific responsibility to induce conditions of belonging, at least within bureaucratic organisations, the present study examines closely the rhetoric deployed in a large private sector organisation alongside its invention of 'internal' markets. Adopting a consumption perspective, the paper argues that a 'rubbishing' of the past within organisations may be being aimed at undermining aspects of members' belonging, especially matters of tradition, loyalty and custom. In so much as these aspects once offered themselves as 'resources' for managers' accounts (to themselves, their colleagues and their superiors), their effacement as resources can be understood as helping reframe accounts in ways that not only colonise the present and characterise the future, but sustain ambiguities vital to the imposition of pseudo-market relations, such as those between 'purchasers' and 'providers'.     

Mobile Phones and Entrepreneurial Identity Negotiation by Urban Female Street Traders in Uganda

Mobile phones have been posited as enhancing women's entrepreneurship and gender equality in developing countries, yet empowerment outcomes are unclear. This article considers how women in the gender‐segregated informal economy construct their entrepreneurial identity in relation to mobile phones and the discursive repertoires that marginalize and empower. Using data from interviews with six urban female street traders in Kampala, Uganda, it explores how these repertoires illustrate their sense of self, positioning and belonging to the business community. Normative representations and positioning of female traders can sideline entrepreneurial identity and over‐validate gender identity. But, participants also negotiate entrepreneurial identity construction in response to these marginalizing influences. Although the data demonstrate that participants are equivocal about their entrepreneurial identity or fit in business, some representations are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. The article concludes by highlighting the nuanced opportunities for social change their discursive repertoires may present.     

Time preference before and after a risky activity – A field experiment

This paper examines how a risky activity (e.g., skydiving) affects an individual’s time preference related to financial decisions (i.e., wanting to get paid before or after the activity). We found that prior to a risky activity, inexperienced people were more present-oriented, than they were afterwards. Interestingly, the more experienced individuals were, the less likely they were to demonstrate a preference for the present. Our findings suggest that engaging in activities that individuals might find frightening or thrilling (e.g., skydiving; driving faster than the speed limit; going to a mall) could make less experienced actors shortsighted when processing information (considering the present rather than the future), and lead to shortsighted financial decisions. We suggest that the attempt to regulate concerns associated with activities individuals might find frightening affects unrelated, important daily decisions due to a shift in their time preference.     

Internalities and paternalism: applying the compensation criterion to multiple selves across time

One reason to call an activity a vice and suppress it is that it reduces a person’s future happiness more than it increases his present happiness. Gruber and Koszegi (Q J Econ 116(4):1261–1303, 2001) show how a vice tax can increase a person’s welfare in a model of multiple selves with hyperbolic preferences across time. The present paper shows that an interself analogy of the compensation criterion can justify a vice ban whether preferences are hyperbolic or exponential, but subject to the caveat that the person has a binding constraint on borrowing.     

Populism and social media: how politicians spread a fragmented ideology

Populism is a relevant but contested concept in political communication research. It has been well-researched in political manifestos and the mass media. The present study focuses on another part of the hybrid media system and explores how politicians in four countries (AT, CH, IT, UK) use Facebook and Twitter for populist purposes. Five key elements of populism are derived from the literature: emphasizing the sovereignty of the people, advocating for the people, attacking the elite, ostracizing others, and invoking the ‘heartland’. A qualitative text analysis reveals that populism manifests itself in a fragmented form on social media. Populist statements can be found across countries, parties, and politicians’ status levels. While a broad range of politicians advocate for the people, attacks on the economic elite are preferred by left-wing populists. Attacks on the media elite and ostracism of others, however, are predominantly conducted by right-wing speakers. Overall, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of populism on social media. It shows that social media give the populist actors the freedom to articulate their ideology and spread their messages. The paper also contributes to a refined conceptualization and measurement of populism in future studies.     

Evil as Indexical: The Implicit Objective Status of Guns and Illegal Drugs

We use C.H. Mead's perspective on the meaning of social objects and his theory of the past and Harold Garfinkel's application of indexicality to describe how people respond to social objects as evil. Mead's notion of an implied objective past illuminates how social actors not only connect objects to past evils but also invoke an objective past to index evil in the future. Focusing on guns and illegal drugs, we maintain that responses to each draw on conceptions of the past in ways that attempt to make their connection to evil in the past and future justifiable. Such responses create meaningful categories that actors then use to anticipate future responses to objects. We note that while people appear to be comfortable using pasts and indexical expressions to define Schedule I drugs as evil in themselves, the attempt to make guns into evil objects has met with strong resistance and requires elaborate contextualization.     

Shame and (“managed”) resentment: Emotion and entitlement among Israeli mothers living in poverty

Of the range of negative emotional states, shame is commonly found to characterize experiences of people living in poverty. However, relatively little attention has been directed toward exploring other emotions that accompany the shame. Not exploring other emotions, the possibility that working-class mothers go through a struggling emotional experience in relation to their experiences of how authorities validate their belonging, is left out of scope. Exploring the notion of resentment creates a conceptual space for considering this possibility, as it flags the importance of belonging and entitlement for mothers living in poverty. I analyze these issues here, by applying “translocational positionality” which stresses how people take up positions relating to experiences of (non-) belonging and entitlement which are informed by struggles over inclusion and resources. As such, it stresses the links between struggles of belonging and struggles for securing access to resources. It affords the opportunity to identify the emotional/affectual dimension of struggles that would otherwise be implicit at best. A Resentment focused analysis of structured interviews conducted with 90 mothers, from seven ethno-national categories, living in poverty in Israel enabled me to analyze issues of belonging and entitlement as part of a continuous struggle for resources, pitched against welfare practices which ostensibly support mothers and families in need, but in fact apply means-tested and other exclusionary principles to leave mothers without the assistance that would protect them from shame.     

‘Fuck It,Shit Happens (FISH)’: a social generations approach to understanding young people’s imaginings of life after school in 2016–2017

ABSTRACT

This article uses a social generations approach to explore the lives of young people transitioning to life after schooling. Drawing on ethnographic research in England during the geopolitical uncertainty of 2016–2017, we track the trajectories and narratives of six individuals. The research begins with final year pupils in schools talking about their futures, during and after their A-Level exams. We then follow these individuals on routes to Higher Education and employment, exploring how they are socialised into imaginings of the future and/or struggle to inhabit these futures. A deeply ingrained, modernist, neoliberal reckoning of future time is normalised through experiences of schooling. However, this logic is troubled profoundly in the transition to life after school. Young people’s experiences in an unpredictable present run in stark contrast to the ordered trajectory of future action they have been socialised to expect. Amidst this uncertainty, ambivalence towards shaping the future (‘Fuck It, Shit Happens’) can in some ways feel like the most agentic stance to take. Furlong et al.’s (2011) social generations approach to understanding youth transitions reveals how we must critique the very concept of ‘the future’ if we are to understand the reality of youth transitions in the present.