Researching the gender division of unpaid domestic work: practices,relationships, negotiations,and meanings

The paper focuses on the potential of quantitative research methods for sociologists who research the gender division of unpaid domestic work. To begin, it reflects on the emergence of the sociological interest in unpaid domestic work and identifies an early core concern with making invisible work visible. It is argued that quantitative research methods provide us with the most valuable opportunities for ‘recognising’ unpaid domestic work since they facilitate larger scale representative projects. However the data in most of the large scale surveys are scant, and fail to reflect developments in the conceptualisation of unpaid domestic work. Four areas of concern to contemporary sociology are identified: domestic work practices, relationships, negotiations and meanings. Given the complex questions that these four sub‐topics raise, the paper proposes a range of sub‐areas as a focus for ongoing sociological research into unpaid domestic work. It is concluded that, despite the methodological challenges presented, detailed indicators of the multiple dimensions of unpaid domestic work need to be agreed so that valid information can be collected in large scale surveys as routinely as it is on paid work.     

Links between informal caregiving and volunteering in Sweden: a 17-year perspective

This article analyses informal caregiving and volunteering in organizations over 17 years in Sweden, with a focus on links between these two forms of unpaid activities. The discussion is based on results from a national survey that was repeated four times in the period 1992–2009. Links were found between the different types of activities. In all four studies a substantial group of the population was involved both in informal caregiving and volunteering. This group of ‘active citizens’ are commonly also engaged in informal social networks. This ‘double active’ group had increased over time and they provide a substantial amount of hours of involvement. Patterns outlined in this article demonstrate that unpaid activities represent a multifaceted phenomenon, and that the boundaries between informal caregiving and volunteering as forms of engagement may be more fluid than has previously been acknowledged. The results challenge the literature in which informal caregiving is viewed as a major obstacle to volunteering. At the same time, however, informal caregiving in general was found to be increasing. There might be reasons to be cautious about the possible risk that too much pressure on citizens for informal caregiving might jeopardize the type of double involvement that is outlined in this article.     

Research note: Promoting intercultural education through art education

Taking UNESCO’s proposal ‘learning how to live together’ as a starting point, we examined to what extent visual education can be used as a tool to promote the aims of intercultural education. We analyzed the power of using artistic images from different cultures to change students’ perception of cultural differences, thereby facilitating the development of attitudes of respect towards different ethnic/cultural groups. We also investigated to what extent this strategy could contribute to the integration of minority peers into a majority group. Students were assigned to either an experimental or a control group. The experimental treatment consisted of exposing students to several art object images associated with different cultures. Our measurement instrument was based on an adapted version of the ‘Draw‐A‐Person‐Test’, which we have called the ‘Draw‐Two‐Persons‐Test’. We also used a questionnaire to examine attitudes among subjects     

Researching Sexual Revictimisation: Associated Ethical and Methodological Issues,and Possible Solutions

This paper has been inspired by the processes of preparing for ethical scrutiny and seeking ethical approval for a series of studies examining causal mechanisms that might facilitate sexual revictimisation. The focus here is on just four of the issues that arose in the context of the first study: a web‐based survey. One of the aims of the survey is to test whether victims of child sexual abuse who experienced a period of psychogenic or dissociative amnesia demonstrate an exaggerated risk for adolescent/adult sexual assault during this amnesic phase. That is, cases where survivors report ‘suddenly remembering’ in adulthood that they were abused as children, but state that prior to this ‘remembering’ they had no prior knowledge of their abuse. The study design is considered to be the first ethical issue. To enhance the methodological robustness a strategy has been employed to reduce the erroneous inclusion of currently amnesic participants in the non‐abused comparison group. Secondly, consideration is given to the likely harms and benefits that might be incurred or bestowed upon the participants. Thirdly, problems of both re‐traumatisation and vicarious traumatisation in relation to the researcher are contemplated and juxtaposed against the possibility of the facilitation of post‐traumatic growth and a personal shift towards wisdom and generativity. Finally, the survey title was originally criticised as negating ‘fully’ informed consent and a defence is therefore offered that ultimately gained ethical approval. It is hoped that these deliberations and insights may prove useful to others in planning their own research and ethics proposals.     

Microbusiness, household and class dynamics: the embedding of minority ethnic petty commerce

Microbusinesses are embedded in wider social processes, and it is the nature of this social embeddedness that is the principal focus of the article. In particular,‘domestic embedding’ of petty commerce is crucial, and involves a mixture of competition, domination, negotiation, and custom (Wheelock and Mariussen, 1997). Furthermore, as a socio‐economic group, petty traders and producers occupy an ambivalent position in the class structure, as they are vulnerable both to upward and downward social mobility. While the petty capital class has the advantage of possessing property assets, many members lack significant symbolic and cultural assets. Nonetheless, property assets offer the most robust bases for class formation (Savage et al., 1992). In addition, the embedding of petty commerce can be both ‘identity‐sensitive’ and ‘identity‐neutral’(Sayer, 1995; 2000; Fraser, 1995). Extra‐ethnic factors are significant in this process. The research uses formal interviews and ‘quasi‐ethnographic’ methodology to explore the different contexts in which restaurateurs and market traders operated in Birmingham, UK. The article draws critically on several literatures on industrial organisation, economic sociology, family businesses and minority ethnic businesses. One aim is to give the rather indifferent concept of ‘embedding’ substantive content, and in this way to make an empirically informed contribution to ‘new economic sociology’.     

'Clinton faces nation': a case study in the construction of focus group data as public opinion

This paper analyses the way in which a particular newspaper report constructs ‘public opinion’ based on data from small‐scale qualitative research. Using as a case study a report of a focus group discussion of Clinton's grand jury testimony, we show how these data are ‘worked up’ as representative, generalisable, and valid. By capitalising on the advantages of focus group data, while attending to and countering their disadvantages, the newspaper report is able to suggest that the views of ten people in San Francisco offer an authoritative indication of public opinion about Clinton across the USA. Finally, we sketch out some of the implications of this case study in relation to the construction of facticity more generally.     

Understanding Vulnerability: From Categories to Experiences of Young Congolese People in Uganda

This article problematises the ‘vulnerables’ category that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees applies to groups of refugees. Drawing on 9 months’ qualitative research with young Congolese refugees in Uganda, it presents research subjects’ self‐identification and lived realities that do not correspond to the homogenous, fixed ‘vulnerables’ ideal. Moreover, it argues that the ‘vulnerables’ categorisation approach can provoke a number of counter‐productive effects, including a focus on symptoms rather than causes, inflated numbers of ‘vulnerables’ and undermining indigenous support structures. An alternative approach that interrogates and addresses the contextual and relational aspects of vulnerability is proposed.     

After ‘ethnicity’: Migration,identity and political economy

In an earlier article¹ I have argued that British ‘African Asians’ can not legitimately be described as an ‘ethnic’ community. This argument was made by means of a critique of sections from the 4th PSI Survey. I show that the attitudinal responses of British ‘African Asians’, as evidenced in the Survey, do not reveal any special emphasis upon the components of ethnicity (religion, skin colour, ‘extra‐British’ origins, ‘racial’ grouping) specified by the Survey's authors and that parental roles in marital decision‐making, thought by the Survey's authors to be important in maintaining ‘ethnic’ boundaries, and their attitudes towards ‘mixed marriages’, are now little different from the majority of Britishers. My chief objection to the ‘ethnicity’ paradigm, incorporating the notion of ‘ethnic identities’, is that, as with all analytical concepts, it inhibits those whom it embraces from inclusion within alternative conceptions: marking individuals and communities as ‘ethnically’ special robs them of parity with their ‘non‐ethnic’ neighbours.

In this article, in opposition to the current vogue for ‘ethnic’ labelling and in sympathy with Robert Miles's well‐known position, I contend that British Gujarati Hindus (who form a majority of British ‘African Asians') should be considered in the same analytical light as any other group of British citizens. The focus of the article is on those members of the Gujarati Hindu Patidar caste (commonly having the surname Patel), who settled first in East Africa and then, often not through their own choice, in Britain. I argue that their caste identity, the dynamics of their migrations and changes to their socioreligious culture are all fully explicable by non‐'ethnic’ political sociology.     

Diaspora mobilization and the politics of loyalty in the time of Ebola: evidence from the Sierra Leonean diaspora in the UK

Following the recent involvement of overseas diasporas and citizen groups in humanitarian crises, scholars are reconsidering how these groups mobilize and what distinguishes them from formal humanitarian organizations. In this article, I document the individual and collective mobilization of a section of the Sierra Leonean diaspora during the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak. I focus on the individual health‐related communications of Sierra Leoneans living in London, on a specific UK‐based diaspora association called the Kono District Development Association‐UK, and on efforts to coordinate the diaspora. Bolten (2012), and Van Hear and Cohen (2017), show that diasporic mobilization operates through ‘nested scales’ of loyalty to kin, association and nation, and that these different loyalties overlap and conflict. I argue that such overlapping engagements challenge policy orientations to ‘national’ diasporas and offer an alternative model of international humanitarianism.     

“You Can Help People”: Adolescents’ Views on Engaging Young People in Longitudinal Research

We sought to discover adolescents’ thoughts about participation in longitudinal research and identify recruitment and retention strategies that were meaningful to them. We conducted seven focus groups with 10–15‐year‐olds in two large rural centers in New South Wales, Australia, and all focus groups were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Adolescents discussed factors salient to their involvement in focus groups, as well as factors that may influence involvement in a longitudinal study. At the outset of the focus groups, adolescents had a positive view of “research,” but were reluctant to engage in research that involved biologic samples. Effective recruitment of adolescents requires an appreciation of motivators, and time and resources to extend potential participants’ understanding.     

Race,power and white siege cultures

A group's awareness of its own particular ‘identity (racial, cultural, ethnic, etc.) is heightened when it competes with other groups for power, privilege and resources. It is especially when a group (be it a dominant or subordinate group) perceives its culture threatened that it mobilizes its resources, articulates its beliefs and organizes its followers to assure its cultural survival. When its protective efforts are blocked or stymied, the group is transformed into what Smelser terms a ‘value‐oriented movement’. It becomes a culture under siege, and its development closely follows those characteristics and stages of collective behaviour that Smelser identifies. Continued stress or threats to a siege culture also lead to the transformation of the group's beliefs into what Rokeach identifies as a ‘closed belief system,’ characterized by dogmatic beliefs and, among its members, highly rigid and intolerant forms of behaviour. Where a group's racial beliefs are threatened, the group is readily transformed into a siege culture. This is evident especially in three historical/contemporary cases: White Southerners in the U.S., Afrikaners in South Africa, and White Rhodesians. Their cultural/racial beliefs (based on White superiority and White supremacy) threatened, the three groups became value‐oriented movements, their transformation and characteristics (closely paralleling each other) easily identified in terms of the analyses of Smelser and Rokeach.     

‘You Just Get Blocked’. Teenage Drinkers: Reckless Rebellion or Responsible Reproduction?

The purpose of this study is to challenge the discourse that underage drinking is inevitably ‘deviant’. Rather than imposing an adultist lens, the article draws upon focus‐group interviews with 14–15 year olds. The meaningful role of drinking is explored, along with the capability of peer cultures to manage some alcohol‐related ‘risks’. The data suggest that the prioritisation of adultist constructs over teenage subject experiences appears somewhat misplaced since teenage norms are not complete subversions of the adult world. Apparent transgression is better understood as alternative socialisation, since teenage peer groups creatively reproduce the wider culture.     

Occupational Cultures and the Embodiment of Masculinity: Hairdressing,Estate Agency and Firefighting

Drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded project, this article explores the implications of different occupational cultures for men's masculine identity. With a focus on embodiment and individual agency, it explores the argument that it is within ‘scenes of constraint’ that gendered identities are both ‘done’ and ‘undone’. In this article we examine embodied experience in occupational cultures commonly stereotyped as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (hairdressing, estate agency and firefighting), showing how men conform to, draw upon and resist the gendered stereotypes associated with these occupations. What we argue is that gendered conceptions of ‘the body’ need to be differentiated from individual men's embodiment. Instead, processes of identification can be shown to emerge via embodied experiences of particular kinds of gendered body, and in the ways in which men negotiate the perception of these bodies in different occupational contexts.     

Cosmopolitical Realism: On the Distinction between Cosmopolitanism in Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Abstract In the article I outline a wide range of challenges, both normative and analytical, that the rise of globalism represents for the social sciences. In the first part, a distinction is drawn between ‘normative’ or ‘philosophical’ cosmopolitanism on the one hand and an analytical‐empirical social science cosmopolitanism, which is no longer contained by thinking in national categories, on the other. From such a perspective we can observe the growing interdependence and interconnection of social actors across national boundaries, more often than not as a side effect of actions that are not meant to be ‘cosmopolitan’ in the normative sense. In the second part I focus on the opposition between methodological nationalism and the actual cosmopolitanization of reality and outline the various errors of the former. In the third and final part of the article I outline a research programme of a ‘cosmopolitan social science’ around four topics: first, the rise of a global public arena resulting from the reactions to the unintended side effects (risks) of modernization; second, a cosmopolitan perspective allows us to go beyond International Relations and to analyse a multitude of interconnections not only between states but also between actors on other levels; third, a denationalized social science can research into the global inequalities that are hidden by the traditional focus on national inequality and its legitimation; finally, everyday or banal cosmopolitanism on the level of cultural consumption and media representation leads to a growing awareness of the relativity of one's own social position and culture in the global arena.     

Correlates of Voluntary vs. Involuntary Part‐time Employment among US Women

This article presents a study of the extent to which type and duration of labour force attachment add to the explanatory power of psychological, demographic, and family household characteristics to predict voluntary (n=166) vs. involuntary part‐time (n=160) employment of women in the United States. We use the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to reflect the woman's choice in accepting to work in paid part‐time employment. In this context, voluntary part‐time work is not meant to be construed as charitable, non‐paid activities, but rather is construed as individuals who are working part‐time but who would prefer to be working full‐time, if a suitable job were available. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLSLME), we found that labour market attachment characteristics added little to predict part‐time employment status (involuntary vs. voluntary) and had virtually no effect on the odds of any other correlates on employment status. The major exception was number of years of unemployment. The longer working women were previously unemployed, the greater the likelihood they were involuntarily employed in part‐time jobs. In addition, we found that marriage and private sector employment decreased the likelihood of involuntary part‐time employment. Findings suggest that involuntarily part‐time employed women appear to be ‘settling’ for what they can get, namely, part‐time rather than full‐time jobs and that unmarried part‐timers may be viewed as a stigmatized or marginal group more likely to be employed in the public rather than private sector. Policy implications and future research are discussed.     

Aids prevention,Stigma and migrant status

This article discusses how stigma has been applied to disease and also to foreigners, especially during epidemics. Foreigners, or migrants, fit particularly well into AIDS stigma, being both objects and originators of the generalised reaction: ‘it's somebody else's problem’. Material is presented from a European Community Concerted Action assessing AIDS/HIV prevention which surveyed programmes for short‐ and long‐term guest populations and ethnic minorities in twelve European countries. It is shown how the potential for stigmatisation seriously hindered the establishment of AIDS prevention efforts directed towards migrants. Basic shifts of programme focus which help overcome stigmatisation problems concerning migrants are defined, including: 1) making fine differentiations amongst migrant groups rather than considering ‘migrants’ as a generalised ‘other’, 2) basing programmes on a universal right to know rather than on the notion of risk group, and 3) working in real and effective collaboration with minority communities rather than imposing top down programmes.     

Terrorism and lethal moralism in the United States and United Kingdom, 1970–2017

The current paper examines terrorism as a special form of moralistic violence, with several key features that distinguish such behaviour from other types of violence. The theory of lethal moralism highlights the importance of social polarization, characterized by vast differences in social space and inequality between adversaries as crucial to explaining deadly terrorist attacks. Where the differences are more permanent or chronic – and the groups in question define and justify their existence specifically in contradistinction to ‘other’ groups – then the polarization intensifies and attacks tend to be more lethal. In contrast, groups that appeal to broader audiences or the general public as potential allies more often use non‐lethal terrorism to their strategic advantage. The study examines the United States and the United Kingdom to classify each of more than 8,000 attacks between 1970 and 2017 in terms of their ideological orientations. The evidence highlights the arc of terrorism in relation to different types of groups, as well as confirms the more lethal nature of terrorism linked especially to radical Islam, right‐wing religious extremists, hate groups, ethno‐nationalist sectarian violence, and anti‐government anarchists. Yet apart from the extensive use of terrorism associated with ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the majority of terrorist attacks in the US and the UK have not produced deaths. Most terrorism instead has been perpetrated by groups aiming to rally support for a general cause and has been far less deadly on balance. The implications of these findings are discussed with a view toward developing more powerful explanatory models that focus on the socio‐cultural contexts and justification frameworks that inspire extremism and the use of lethal moralism to settle disputes.     

Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long‐distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first‐ and second‐generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in‐between‐ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross‐border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.     

Delinking of economic growth and materials turnover

National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information with respect to the operationalizalion of sustainable development. Both of these instruments are already employed in official statistics in Germany and Japan, and other countries—especially member slates of the European Union—are likely to follow suit. Because of the preparatory stages of work that have already been carried out, Austria is in an excellent position to assume a leading role in international concerted action. From 1970 to 1990 total materials flow through Austrian society has approximately increased by one third. As can be seen from changes in the amount of primary energy used during this period, economic growth in physical terms and value added in production decoupled slightly, and the same is true for the use of materials. Since 1970, materials input per unit of GDP (material intensity) decreased by 25%. This implies that relative gains in efficiency are compensated by the annual increases in the use of materials which, by and large, are caused by few yet massive ‘strategic’ material flows of steel, cement, wood, paper/pulp, sand, gravel and crushed stone. The empirical findings suggest that delinking of economic growth from the metabolism of human society should be discussed more carefully. The concept of ‘delinking’ involves two alternative perspectives of development differing from each other with respect to their ecological effects. The analysis may either focus upon absolute changes in materials throughput or on the relative changes of materials throughput per unit of output. It is strongly recommended, therefore, to distinguish clearly between relative and absolute productivity of resources. Branch analyses confirmed, once again, that the information contained in material indicators related to value‐added concepts is relatively insignificant when it comes to evaluation of the social ‘pressures upon the environment’.