Switching labels: The role of Weberian ideas in market change. A case study of the German wine market

How do cultural ideas shape market construction? What do ideas ‘do’ to actors in markets? The paper presents an empirical case study of the reconstitution of the German wine market following an EU legislative intervention. I use Bourdieu's theory of fields to analyse the actors’ economic, social and cultural capitals and the impact of these capitals on the actors’ positioning in the political debate. Sensitised by recurring problems in the empirical data analysis, I then, however, argue that Weber's notion of ideas, as presented in his famous switchmen metaphor, is better suited than, or indeed should serve as a complement to, Bourdieu's frame of analysis. It is better suited, I argue, because it refers to a unique and irreducible source of culture while Bourdieu's capitals remain ‘tools' in a struggle for power and dominance in the field.     

Revolutionizing the Social Work Curriculum

The social work literature provides ample evidence of the use of the systems paradigm and concepts. However, system ideas serve primarily as a sensitizing tool, suggesting important environmental factors but not describing precisely the links between them. Social work's failure to take the next logical step, to develop systems models, constrains practitioners’ understanding and ability to intervene. The authors describe system dynamics modeling and its benefits. Educating students in system dynamics modeling can improve social work interventions in the complex situations faced by practitioners.     

Experience of undertaking infant observation as part of the Post-Qualifying Award in Child Care

Enquiries into child deaths have pointed to the difficulty that social workers seem to have of 'holding the child in mind'. Undertaking 'child observation' can be a powerful way of understanding what these difficulties are about and how to work in a way that is child focused, whilst being attentive to adult considerations crucial to children's positive development. This is an account of an experience of undertaking a 10-week child observational study as part of the Post Qualifying Award in Child Care from a student's perspective. It suggests that developing observational skills and an understanding of psychotherapeutic ideas enhanced the practitioner's ability to work with uncertainty and make accurate assessments.     

Reordering Public and Private in Iranian Cyberspace: Identity,Politics, and Mobilization

The capacity of cyberspace to bypass some of the spatial divisions that underpin social inequality endows it with political significance. This article examines some of the ways in which cyberspace has contributed to redrawing the boundaries between public and private and some of the consequences of this for people, things, and ideas in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. It shows how cyberspace influences a wide range of political phenomena including political mobilization and censorship, intergenerational communication, identity formation, sexuality, sense of belonging, and forms and location of symbolic capital. The relationship between net users in the diaspora and cyberspace involves a circuit of reorderings of one's understanding of the diaspora, one's contact with it in cyberspace, of one's own ideas on the basis of what one finds there, and of social relationships established and maintained in cyberspace. Paradoxically, the very richness and diversity of the ideas and opinions found in Iranian cyberspace may undermine the idea of there actually being a single Iranian diaspora.     

Frozen Within,Frozen Without: The Experience of Viewing Nathalie Djurberg's It's the Mother

In this article, I explore my experience of shifting self-states while viewing Nathalie Djurberg's claymation video, It's the Mother. I also discuss ideas of witnessing, violence, and motherhood while describing how I move from an intellectualized understanding of the brutalizing action at hand to a parallel process of induced blankness.     

Culturally Competent Social Work Practice with Veterans: An Overview of the U.S. Military

Despite social work's longstanding history of serving veterans, few resources support culturally competent practice with this population. If social workers are to serve veterans effectively and efficiently, a basic understanding of the U.S. military is essential. This article presents a basic overview of U.S. military including its structure and history, the propensity to enlist in the armed forces, culture, and training methods and objectives. With an understanding of these aspects of military service and continued effort to learn about their client's military experience, social workers will be prepared to provide culturally competent services consistent with the profession's values and ethics.     

Sociologists of the unexpected: Edward A. Ross and Georg Sinimel on the unintended consequences of modernity

The modern increase in opportunities for social activities also brings with it unintended side effects posed by the liberating potential and the acceleration of modern life. In this paper it is argued that the views reflected in Georg Simmel’s formal approach and in American sociologist Edward A. Ross’ reformative sociology are (1) complementary and (2) offer fresh insights for our current sociological understanding of unexpected consequences in contemporary “high modernity” or knowledge societies. A long forgotten nexus between the ideas of Simmel’s and the work of Ross will be reviewed in order to point out affinities between the two authors’ takes on the unintended and sometimes tragic moments in modern culture and their relevance for sociology today. Based on these discussions a fundamental mode for framing the unexpected in modern society as a recursively-linked component to the intended is illustrated.     

Jazz in Social Interaction: Personal Creativity,Collective Constraint,and Motivational Explanation in the Social Thought of Howard S. Becker

Although symbolic interactionist studies are often thought to abandon motivational explanation in favor of a focus on social process, the interactionist tradition has usefully employed two deterministic themes. One is inherent in the appreciation of the actor's inescapable sense of interactional significance for behavior that will be socially witnessed. A second deterministic theme appreciates external constraints on the individual's perception and generation of social acts. The former shapes all work in symbolic interactionism. The latter has been developed most consistently in the work of Howard S. Becker. Without addressing the matter as such, Becker has worked with a series of ideas about constraint on individual motivation, ideas that are harmonious with the interactionist's understanding of personal creativity in social action. His writings invite a reconsideration of the supposed antagonism between the appreciation of interactive process and the understanding of motivational constraint. Becker's work on motivation is also notable for outlining a theory of increasing constraints through the life cycle, constraints which, if appreciated by the actor, carry paradoxically liberating implications. The distinctive interplay of personal creativity and collective constraint in his thought is succinctly captured by the metaphor of jazz in social interaction.     

Therapeutic Change and Anorexia Nervosa: Views of a Family and a Therapist

Answers to the question ‘Why do people change in family therapy?’ remain somewhat elusive and may to some extent always remain partial. However, the perceptions of important participants in the therapeutic system, namely family members themselves, seem somewhat under-utilised. A regular examination and integration of the families' views may lead to enrichment of our understanding of this complex area. In this paper the therapist's (and therapy team's) views of the possible catalysts of change in therapy are compared with one family's ideas twelve months after termination of treatment. The family had attended for family therapy because the middle daughter had been suffering from anorexia nervosa.     

A Re-examination of Defining Moments in Vygotsky's Work and Their Implications for His Continuing Legacy

This article argues for the idea of different moments in Vygotsky's work while highlighting combinations of ideas and concepts that were particularly emphasized in distinct moments of his work. After Vygotsky's death, these moments were not considered a theoretical system in development, either in former Soviet psychology or in Western interpretations of his work. Vygotsky's legacy seems to have been mostly reduced to one concrete focus of his work, mistakenly identified as cultural-historical theory. The overemphasis of selected aspects of Vygotsky's work resulted in an overshadowing of other ideas that have remained relatively “unknown” until fairly recently. In this article, previously underemphasized elements in Vygotsky's psychology, such as emotions, fantasy, imagination, personality, and the generative character of human psyche, are emphasized. A consideration of these elements offers new and refreshing alternatives to Vygotsky's legacy. These previously underemphasized elements are markedly represented in Vygotsky's first and third moments. Furthermore, in the third and final moment of his work, the category of sense opened up a completely new perspective for a systemic and complex approach to understanding the human mind.     

Manifest destiny,American exceptionalism,and the city on a hill seen through Winthrop,O'Sullivan,and Bush: Opportunities for religious peacebuilding

A dominant theme in the story of the American, city-on-a-hill experience is manifest destiny, a term literally expressing a sense of a rightful, westward expansion across the continent in the late 19^th century, but more broadly expressing a general entitlement granted, it is often understood, divinely to an exceptional United States of America. The origins, the political-versus-religious undergirding, and the implications of manifest destiny are widely discussed in the literature. Here I focus on three primary texts by John Winthrop, John O'Sullivan, and George W. Bush to argue that, even though Winthrop's and his fellow Puritan immigrants' understanding of their role in the new land was a far cry from that of O'Sullivan—who coined the term “manifest destiny” – the seeds of manifest destiny were brought with these first immigrants to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, later sprouting and blossoming in O'Sullivan's coining, and eventually bearing some of its many fruits Bush's foreign policy. Finally, I will discuss the sociological and other implications of the divine endorsement of such ideas.     

John Holland's Contributions: A Theory‐Ridden Approach to Career Assistance

Holland influenced practice and research in career development by contributing a clear theory useful in organizing information about individuals and career alternatives and for understanding individuals' entry and persistence in occupational and other environments. His theory was repeatedly revised in response to evidence. As Holland's own career unfolded in a succession of organizational environments, he used the research opportunities these environments afforded to conduct large‐sample tests of his ideas and assessment tools. J. L. Holland's (1970) Self‐Directed Search is intended to be a career intervention, and Holland developed it and tested it as such. In outlining Holland's contributions to career counseling, a précis of his theory and some biographical context are provided.     

Killing the Father: Childhood and Renewal of Self-Narrative in Dambudzo Marechera's Fiction

Abstract

The contradictory impulses that characterise writing on Dambudzo Marechera's life and times were foreshadowed a long time ago in 1971 in an obligatory testimonial by his high school principal, Father Daniel Pearce, an Anglican priest. I discuss briefly the ways in which he maps Marechera's life, and suggest that he prefigured so much of its seeming intricacy and mythical qualities. Subsequent critics of his writing have only elaborated the contradictory templates of Father Pearce's hagiographic writing. What his critics have often missed in these writings and readings is Marechera's own effort at renewing his own self-narrative in the face of such readings of himself. The source of this narrative regeneration is in his recollection and uses of childhood to reflect on a longing for self-capitalisation, which is achieved by setting aside the narratives of the father (in multiple symbolic senses). His ideas of self-writing should be gleaned from his understanding and uses of childhood.     

Global Governance and Universities: The Power of Ideas and Knowledge

Abstract

So as to advance understanding of global governance, one can pick up on Robert Cox's critical formulations. Best known for his insights on the interplay of material conditions, institutions, and ideas, he later developed his framework by giving greater weight to the ideational dimensions of intersubjectivity. Yet it is usually deployed with regard to the former phase of his work while the latter phase goes unnoticed or is neglected. Cox's more recent conceptualization may serve as a springboard for thinking afresh about global knowledge production and dissemination. His approach can be stretched by exploring specific spheres of authority at particular sites. Focusing on universities as one of them, this article suggests a research itinerary that maps clusters of agents and guides empirical digging into how these structures operate. A complex of actors and processes, detailed in the findings, is redesigning global knowledge governance. The connective tissue in a cross-continental web of educational restructuring is gradually spreading. Cox's theorization may be fruitfully expanded to analyze this dynamic.     

Distinguishing Between Mastery and Domination: Response to Discussants

Therapeutic impasse, while often heralding the destruction of the analytical treatment process, may provide an unexpected opportunity for setting it back into motion. While not deliberately sought after, the impasse sets the stage for both patient and analyst to shift sufficiently to forge a more meaningful dialogue and connection. Pizer's discussion highlighted the analyst's struggle to keep his patient in mind while maintaining a working grasp on his capacity for reflective, analytical thought. Ringstrom's contributions offered the framework of improvisational drama, allowing a greater range of experimentation and play between patient and analyst, facilitating their collaborative creation of new ways of connecting, while exploring what is mutually safe and manageable. Harris's thoughts on phallic potency provided clinically valuable insights into the patient's undercurrent of conflict between desire and dread/hatred, in his strivings for master y and a meaningful connection. The discussants' contributions also allowed a deeper understanding of the analyst's own conflicts over mastery and the self-protective urge to retreat.     

Inspiration Across Cultures: Reflecting Teams among the Métis in Canada

Métis Community Services on Vancouver Island exists to serve the Métis, one of Canada's three aboriginal peoples. I went there, hoping for an exchange of thoughts and ideas that I could apply to my work back home in Sweden. I was welcome to observe and participate in the work. I was asked to talk about something that I wanted to share with them. The result was a workshop about how to apply the reflecting team mode of working when counselling aboriginal families. The outcome of our exchange was a blend of the ethics and rules of behaviour among aboriginal people and the Scandinavian reflecting team mode of working.     

Family Therapy,Group Work and Psychiatry—Working Under the Influence

When people are admitted to a psychiatric hospital they are degraded in status by the admission process — a ceremony supported by structures built into the hospital/treatment system. This paper explores some aspects of this process and proposes systemic group work as one way of redressing the balance for process. Regrading of status begins when patients discover the important contribution they have made to their own recovery. The development and application of systemic group work is traced, and Jantsch's concept of co-evolution is invoked as one useful way of understanding the process. Co-evolutionary ideas are also important in understanding the processes which occur in the context of the hospital ward and the wider systems into which influence extends.     

Understanding Georg Simmel

Abstract

This paper makes two basic claims. First, Simmel was aware of the Als-Ob (“As-If”) before Vaihinger published his Die Philosophie des Als-Ob (The Philosophy of As-If) (Vaihinger, 1911 [1935]), and he used the As-If in his epistemology of the social sciences. It is difficult to understand Simmel's sociology without recognizing the role of the As-If. However, this essential part of Simmel's epistemology of the social sciences almost has gone unreported in the standard literature. Second, Simmel formulated a concept of relativity. This concept, too, is an important part of his epistemology, yet it is not understood well. Only through an appreciation of his view of relativity can Simmel's concept Wechselwirkung (usually translated as “reciprocal interaction” but more exactly translated as “reciprocal effect”) be interpreted properly. Without an understanding of his concept of relativity Simmel's form-content relation does not convey the sense intended. This paper demonstrates that the form-content relation as used by Simmel is, in current terminology, the theory-model relation. Finally, use is made of my explication of Simmel's epistemology to clarify some relations between Simmel's ideas and Durkheim's position.     

Silver Inflation and the Senate in 1933

Along with the ever-increasing racial/ethnic diversity in U.S. schools, researchers began to investigate the impact of racial/ethnic identity on young people's understanding of the nation's history. Compared to other racial minorities, Asian American students have received little academic and educational attention. This article seeks to address this gap through a qualitative study on Korean American youth. Drawing from in-depth interviews with twenty Korean American high school students, this article examines how Korean American youth make sense of U.S. history and how their sociocultural backgrounds affect their historical perspectives as well as their ideas and experiences of learning history historical perspectives.     

Hospitality in Family Therapy Practice: A Further Engagement with Jacques Derrida

Derrida's concept of hospitality has been proposed by some authors working from a collaborative perspective as an interesting tool to reflect on the therapeutic relationship as an ethical relationship in which the therapist develops a welcoming openness to the client. In this paper, we engage with this recent emphasis on the therapist's ethical position of welcoming the client's otherness and turn to Jacques Derrida's original texts with the aim of developing an in‐depth understanding of what exactly is at stake in this therapeutic position of hospitality. This reading evolves into an understanding of how Derrida's notion of hospitality invites clinicians to identify how the therapeutic position intricately intertwines healing and violence. The concept of hospitality calls on therapists to accept the complexity of therapeutic responsibility as a form of supportive presence that necessarily and simultaneously involves the violence of appropriation and power difference.