Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox

Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature of the desire for self‐creation. Locating life coaching in the larger identity‐fashioning market, this article illustrates how the artificial nature of outsourced social relations reconciles two apparently contradictory desires: the “need for help” and “wanting to find it on my own.” Three mechanisms are involved: creating an independent social space where identities can be crafted away from significant others; deliberately deemphasizing the coach and intentionally underwriting personal authorship; and encouraging clients to root identities in the social world while promoting an instrumental view of sociality. The article discusses the blurring of boundaries between intimate social relations and utilitarian market logic, and the implications of the ongoing outsourcing of identity support that reinforces the privileged ideal of self‐made identities.     

The Boundaries of Professionalization: The Case of North American Funeral Direction

This article examines the relationship between occupational and individual professionalization through the example of funeral direction. It is based upon an ethnographic study of an accredited mortuary science program at a community college. It compares and contrasts the socialization of aspiring funeral directors in that program to previous case studies of socialization into other self-styled professions. This analysis suggests that the success of occupational socialization in fostering a personal sense of professional distinction depends not so much on an occupation's professional prestige but upon its definitive claim to a distinctive occupational jurisdiction.     

Professionalization of Police in Child Sexual Abuse:

No abstract available for this article.     

Communities of practice: Legitimacy not choice

Communities of practice has emerged as an alternative to other current sociolinguistic models such as speech communities and social networks, particularly in the area of language and gender. The valorization of non‐linguistic behaviours as adding further explanatory power to sociolinguistic models is timely: it has often been implicit in linguistic study (through ethnography) but rarely been given recognition. However, the types of self‐constituting communities of interest to sociolinguists are not the same as the communities of learning studied by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) . If this construct is to be useful to sociolinguists, then the mechanisms by which it models access, gate‐keeping and its internal hierarchy need development. Using Eckert's (2000) Belten High data, and other work on adolescent talk, it is argued that gaining legitimate peripheral participation is a matter of sanction from within the hierarchy. Individuals do not have open access to communities based solely on their desire to be part of that community and to take part in its practices. While practices may define the community, the community determines who has access to that practice.     

The Professionalization of Police in Child Sexual Abuse Cases

No abstract available for this article.     

The Professionalization of Medical Students: Developing Competence And A Cloak of Competence*

This paper describes how medical students in an innovative educational setting adopt a cloak of competence as a critical part of the professionalization process. Faced with inordinate and variable expectations to develop and display competence, students professionalize by distancing themselves from those they interact with and by adopting and manipulating the symbols of their new status. Students were observed to engage in impression management to convince others and themselves that they are competent and confident to face the immense responsibilities of their privileged role. The data were collected by means of participant observation and interviews.     

The Value of Seeking Financial Advice

Retirement planning data gathered from an online survey at a large university in October 2009 are used to examine differences in a variety of retirement planning measures between people who have and have not met with a financial advisor. Problems of self-selection and endogeneity are addressed through the use of propensity scores. The study’s major finding is that working with an advisor is related to several important financial planning activities, including goal setting, calculation of retirement needs, retirement account diversification, use of supplemental retirement accounts, accumulation of emergency funds, positive behavioral responses to the recent economic crisis, and retirement confidence. Use of a financial advisor was not related to self-reported retirement savings or short-term growth in retirement account asset values.     

Youth Development: On the Path Toward Professionalization

Youth development in the United States is making a transition from social movement to emerging profession. This article marks the path of this transition; charts achievements in developing core competencies and skill standards, training and education programs, career ladders, evaluations, and public awareness; and suggests the next steps in staff development that managers of nonprofit youth and human service organizations should consider.     

Legitimacy as Property and Process: The Case of an Irish LGBT Organization

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study provides insight into the changing normative judgements of civil society organizations over time through the...     

Seeking Justice: The Strategy of the National Social Action Program

Past efforts at law reform have taken years of consciousness raising. The resulting legislation has been ineffective in reducing men's sexual violence against women and children, in large part because most women are understandably reluctant to go to court. This reluctance comes from recognition of the fundamental failures of the legal doctrine. The judicial response to men's sexual violence can be reformed through the use of existing procedures (e.g., prosecution objections and appeals). This paper describes 3 local actions to start a fast and effective reform of the legal doctrine: Documenting the Outrageous, Challenging the Legal System, and Supporting Victims.     

Seeking Justice: The Strategy of the National Social Action Program

Past efforts at law reform have taken years of consciousness raising. The resulting legislation has been ineffective in reducing men’s sexual violence against women and children, in large part because most women are understandably reluctant to go to court. This reluctance comesfrom recognition of the fundamental failures of the legal doctrine. The judicial response to men’s sexual violence can be reformed through the use of existing procedures (e.g., prosecution objections and appeals). This paper describes 3 local actions to start a fast and effective reform of the legal doctrine: Documenting the Outrageous, Challenging the Legal System, and Supporting Victims.     

伊朗政治合法性与宗教合法性之构建

伊朗政治合法性和宗教合法性的构建一直受到重视,因为这有利于社会的长治久安。其政治合法性和宗教合法性的构建需要深厚坚实的基础,但处理好两者关系需要漫长的实践过程。本文以伊朗历史上具有代表性的政治制度和宗教为例,说明伊朗政治合法性和宗教合法性构建的意义、基础、途径、两者间关系及其过程。面对全球范围内的物质和精神的冲击,伊朗面临的问题是在当今国内外新形势下,如何重新构建和巩固政权的政治合法性和宗教合法性。     

Teratology: "Monsters" and the Professionalization of Obstetrics

Abstract  This article examines obstetricians' professionalization efforts, focusing on the "gradient argument" employed: that those who have jurisdiction over the margins of professional territory should control the entirety. That margin was the birth of "monstrous" infants with atypical bodies, studied under the rubric of teratology. An analysis of 235 teratological articles published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire from 1902–1925 reveals that they enhanced obstetricians' professional status but ignored health outcomes for mothers and infants. The normalizing, eugenic framework employed by obstetricians had negative implications for people with disabilities, some of which persist today.     

The Drivers of Voluntary Transparency in Nonprofits: Professionalization and Partnerships with Firms as Determinants

This research analyzes the drivers of voluntary transparency in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Particularly, we assess the influence of key internal and external resource providers—paid staff and business partners—on the extent to which NPOs make accessible relevant information about themselves for public scrutiny on a voluntary basis. First, we conceptualize transparency as one of the critical dimensions of accountability and explain how it has become a key issue for NPOs. Second, we discuss professionalization and business–nonprofit partnerships as business-oriented strategies directly connected to the main challenges (and controversies) NPOs face. Third, following institutional theory as core theoretical framework, we propose a set of hypotheses linking those strategies to transparency. Their influence will be measured through an empirical research based on a survey to a representative sample of 325 NPOs. Regression analysis and probit models will be used to test the hypotheses. The results confirm the positive effects of both professionalization and partnerships, although each strategy influences different dimensions of transparency.