Racial,Ethnic, and National Boundaries: Sexual Intersections and Symbolic Interactions

Sex and race are strained, if not strange, bedfellows. Sexual depictions and denigrations of racial, ethnic, and national “others” and the regulation of in‐group sexual behavior are important mechanisms by which ethnic boundaries are constructed, maintained, and defended. Race, ethnicity, and the nation are sexualized, and sexuality is racialized, ethnicized, and nationalized. The sexual systems that prop up ethnic boundaries and define ethnic identities and communities tend to be inherently conservative blueprints for ethnosexual living. These systems stress endogamy, heterosexuality and reproduction under the rubric of traditional, often patriarchal family life for ethnic group members and tend to demonize and denigrate the sexuality of those outside ethnic boundaries or of those within ethnic communities who do not conform to heteronormative, heteroconventional models of sexuality. I present several examples of the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationalism, and sexuality/ies from U.S. and international settings, and I argue that the symbolic interaction between ethnicity and sexuality is central to their mutual constitution.     

Cultural Studies in Black and White

Political intervention is deeply etched in the history and theory of Cultural Studies. The vehicle of intervention is typically understood as textual and the measure of success as ‘has it changed the world?’ This graphic and textual essay argues for and enacts thinking of and practising intervention more innovatively and more modestly: as equally extra-textual, and as a site for experimentation in the folds among theory, practice, and the quotidian. The author’s original black and white charcoal and pastel images are paired with text to explore the potential for an articulation of the visual and the textual to engage, convey, actualize, and produce concepts and insights of Cultural Studies. In evocative images and accessible language it enacts a new mode of engaging the theory and practice of Cultural Studies, specifically engaging concepts of articulation and assemblage, movement and things, questions of identity, the importance of affect, the power of transformation, youth cultures and resistance, The Black Lives Matter movement and matters of race, the struggles of women, the challenge of overcoming culturally engendered hatred of difference, and the difficulties of negotiating change in the precarious circumstances of contemporary culture.     

"Disease Incarnate": Biopolitical Discourse and Genocidal Dehumanisation in the Age of Modernity

Abstract  This paper traces the development of the concept of the outgroup as a biological threat, and the relationship of this concept to the practice of genocide. The biopolitical discourse which emerged in the modern period made the practice of genocide conceivable, and constructed genocide as justifiable and as necessary. Two developments in the modern period are highlighted: firstly, the conception of the boundaried and ethnically homogenous nation-state, and secondly, new biological theories about race, and about the spread of disease. Discourse emerging from the biological sciences dehumanised outgroups both literally and metaphorically. This dehumanisation, in combination with the ideal of the homogenous nation-state and the new technologies of population, provided a justification and a motivation for genocide, and a model of implementation. Conceptions of the nature of dehumanisation as a process are examined, with specific reference to the role of language and metaphor, and to concepts of hygiene, purity and contamination. Particular attention is paid to eugenics and Social Darwinism, to the role of physicians in genocide, and to the relationship between medical and military vocabularies. The features of this discourse, its persistence, and its commonality in otherwise widely different genocidal episodes, are exposed through an examination of four twentieth-century genocides (Armenia, Nazi genocide, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia).     

Ghostly fogs in a decaying empire: disoriented and melancholy experience in Russia’s metropole

ABSTRACT

This article explores the disoriented affective experience of urban modernity in the Russian imperial metropole: obsessive portrayals, by writers both famous and obscure, of St. Petersburg as a place of alleged power and intense modernity haunted by loss and feeling lost, by fragmentation and decay, by feelings of standing on shifting ground, vague disenchantment, and melancholy. With a mixture of concreteness and intangibility, this was an affective perception embodied in haunting fogs. Fog was a ubiquitous fact in the material city and an inescapable metaphor in the interpreted city. If imperial modernity represented confident knowledge and forward movement, fog represented uncertainty and disorientation, even the unrepresentable. Not least, fog embodied and nurtured anxious feelings about historical time: the experience of the modern as discontinuity, fragmentation, contingency, precarity, instability, and looming disaster. But fog also evoked dreams and possibilities of the unexpected. Fog disrupted epistemological certainties and historical teleologies. Fog disoriented the present and thus the future. As such, fog opened up vague visions of possibility and even a radical other. This essay itself seeks to disorient familiar understandings of St. Petersburg and its famous cultural ‘text’ to see through its fogs, and in fog itself, not only unstable images of a decaying imperial modern, not only the off-centred experience of that history at the heart of imperial power, but also images of vaguely imagined and unpredictable possibility. As such, this is a story that can reorient how we understand the revolution that began in St. Petersburg in 1917 and shook apart an empire.     

Locating Footbinding: Variations across Class and Space in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century China*

In this article I look at footbinding as a social and cultural practice embedded in the daily life conditions of women and their families. I sketch a picture of variations based primarily on regional and class differences in nineteenth and early twentieth century practices of footbinding and in efforts to eradicate them. The period in question is one of interest precisely because it is a time of transition. I look simultaneously at footbinding as a practice and as a target of criticism, defense, and transformation. This allows me to consider the ways in which it was practiced by women to represent, shape, and constrain their own, their daughters,' and their families' cultural, social, economic, and political lives. Relying largely on missionary journals, personal histories, diaries, and travel writing, I examine the practice and the demise of footbinding in various social and spatial locations. Although sources which permit a close look at embedded social practices of footbinding are scarce, it seems clear that both the practice of various forms of footbinding and the process of its eventual demise involved strategies, conflicts, and habits which differed along gender, class, and geographic lines of distinction. I suggest that the variety of forms the practice of footbinding took in lived experience of women's social lives is not incidental to its conceptualization and meaning, but rather central to it.     

Gambling Type,Substance Abuse,Health and Psychosocial Correlates of Male and Female Problem Gamblers in a Nationally Representative French Sample

Many studies carried out on treatment-seeking problem gamblers (PG) have reported high levels of comorbid substance use disorders, and mental and physical health problems. Nevertheless, general population studies are still sparse, most of them have been carried out in the United States or Canada, and gender differences have not always been considered. Thus, the aim of this study was to describe the type of games, and psychological and physical correlates in male and female PG in a nationally representative French sample. The total sample studied involved 25,647 subjects aged 15–85 years, including 333 PG and 25,314 non-problem gamblers (NPG). Data were extracted from a large survey of a representative sample of the French general population. They were evaluated for sociodemographic variables, gambling behavior, type of gambling activity, substance use, psychological distress, body mass index, chronic disease, and lack of sleep. Overall, there were significant differences between PG and NPG in gender, age, education, employment and marital status, substance use disorders (alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, cocaine and heroin), psychological distress, obesity, lack of sleep and type of gambling activity. Although male and female PG had different profiles, the gambling type, especially strategic games, appeared as an important variable in the relationship between gender and problem gambling. This research underlines the importance of considering gender differences and gambling type in the study of gambling disorders. Identifying specific factors in the relationship between gender, gambling type and gambling problems may help improve clinical interventions and health promotion strategies.     

Book Reviews

Book Review in this article: The Constitution of Society, Anthony Giddens Michel Foucalt, Barry Smart. Making Sense of Marx, Jon Elster Michel Foucault, Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain Making Sense of Marx, Jon Elster Working the Work Ethic, Michael Rose Working Women in Recession: Employment, Redundancy and Unemployment, Roderick Martin and Judith Wallace Shop Floor Bargaining and the State, Steven Tolliday and Jonathan Zeithin (eds) Technologies of Freedom, Ithiel de Sola Pool Capitalism, Class Confliet and the New Middle Class, Bob Carter, Routledge & Kegan Paul Architects and Firms: A Sociological Perspective on Architectural Practice, Judith R. Blau The Politics of Socialism. An Essay in Political Theory, John Dunn A Preface to Economic Democracy, Robert A. Dahl The Semiotics of Culture and Language, Robin P. Faweett, M. A. K. Halliday, Sydney Lamb and Adam Makkai Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola Rachel Bowlby Postmodern Culture, Hal Foster (ed.) Habermas and Modernity, Richard J. Bernstein (ed.) Popular Fiction and Social Change, Christopher Pawling (ed.) How Conversation works, Ronald Wardhaugh Language, The Sexes and Society, Philip M. Smith. Private Violence and Public Policy: The Needs of Battered Women and the Response of the Public Services, Jan Pahl Women on Trial, Susan S.M. Edwards Education in Multicultural Societis, Trevor Corner (ed.) Home and School in Multicultural Britain, Sally Tomlinson Comparative Youth Culture, Michael Brake, Routledge & Kegan Paul The Loneliness of the Dying, Norbert Elias, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Basil Blackwell     

Multimodal Integration of Dynamic Audio–Visual Cues in the Communication of Agreement and Disagreement

Recent research has stressed the importance of using multimodal and dynamic features to investigate the role of nonverbal behavior in social perception. This paper examines the influence of low-level visual and auditory cues on the communication of agreement, disagreement, and the ability to convince others. In addition, we investigate whether the judgment of these attitudes depends on ratings of socio-emotional dimensions such as dominance, arousal, and valence. The material we used consisted of audio–video excerpts that represent statements of agreement and disagreement, as well as neutral utterances taken from political discussions. Each excerpt was rated on a number of dimensions: agreement, disagreement, dominance, valence, arousal, and convincing power in three rating conditions: audio-only, video-only, and audio–video. We extracted low-level dynamic visual features using optical flow. Auditory features consisted of pitch measurements, vocal intensity, and articulation rate. Results show that judges were able to distinguish statements of disagreement from agreement and neutral utterances on the basis of nonverbal cues alone, in particular, when both auditory and visual information were present. Visual features were more influential when presented along with auditory features. Perceivers mainly used changes in pitch and the maximum speed of vertical movements to infer agreement and disagreement, and targets appeared more convincing when they showed consistent and rapid movements on the vertical plane. The effect of nonverbal features on ratings of agreement and disagreement was completely mediated by ratings of dominance, valence, and arousal, indicating that the impact of low-level audio–visual features on the perception of agreement and disagreement depends on the perception of fundamental socio-emotional dimensions.     

Quality of Life of Afghan Immigrants in Tehran city

By 2015, there were more than two million Afghan immigrants, both legal and illegal, living in Iran. Although, over the recent years, there has been a growing interest among social scientists, policymakers and national and international institutes in investigation of the quality of life (QoL) of immigrants, research on the QoL of Afghan immigrants in Iran is still in its infancy. The present article aims to study the QoL of Afghan immigrants in Iran and identify its influential dimensions and factors. This study relies on a perception survey of 347 Afghan households in Tehran city. Based on the 5‐point Likert Scale, the mean of overall life satisfaction of the Afghan immigrants was found as 3.22, which shows satisfactory QoL of Afghan immigrants in Iran. The highest level of satisfaction, with a mean value of 3.96, is related to public transport access followed by satisfaction in social relations with friends, relatives and fellow immigrants living in Iran, and access to cultural centres such as the mosque, library, and cinema. The lowest level of satisfaction, with a mean value of 1.90, was seen at border services like entry and exit from Iran, followed by the Iranian government policy towards Afghan refugees, and saving abilities. In addition, the most important predictors of immigrants' QoL include indicators of health, security, work status, and income, which are closely interrelated with the main reasons for Afghans' immigration to Iran. After immigration to Iran, the QoL status of the immigrants has improved significantly, especially in the fields of security and education; nevertheless, their employment in jobs with low skill and income, along with the decrease in the economic growth of Iran over the recent years, have caused problems for the economic and financial status of the immigrants. The results and findings of this study will be useful for designing and implementing plans and policies necessary to improve QoL of Afghan immigrants in Iran.     

Emigration dynamics in Bangladesh

This study of emigration dynamics opens by noting that emigration is one of the most dynamic economic and social elements in Bangladesh. The history of emigration from Bangladesh is sketched, and the level and trend of emigration is described for various destinations (especially the UK, the Middle East and North Africa, and Japan) and in terms of the socioeconomic background of migrants, channels of migration, occupations, the potential level of emigration, and applications for US Visas. The next section of the report presents the economic and demographic setting in terms of the gross national and domestic products, quality of life, the size and distribution of the population, the labor force, literacy, unemployment and underemployment, urbanization, internal migration, poverty, and income distribution. The discussion then centers on the sociopolitical setting and such factors as unmet basic human needs, the demand for expatriate workers, and emigration policy. It is concluded that the desperate economic situation in Bangladesh has combined with the demand for expatriate workers and the development of institutions to facilitate emigration. The result is increasing interest in emigration, which is fueled by mass communication highlighting the differences between the quality of life in Bangladesh and abroad.     

中国青年文化景观的形成轨迹与引导理路

中华人民共和国成立以来,特别是改革开放以来,青年文化发展出现服从与反思、解放与迷茫、理性与矛盾勾勒的变迁图景,也反映出新时代青年文化的发展趋向。新时代的青年文化景观既具有青年文化的预见性与超越性、进取性和建构性、理想性和生活性等共性特征,又突出表现为雅俗共赏、进退有度、家国兼顾的时代特性。新时代,应注重从个人追求与社会理想的统一、独立思想与过硬本领的统一、青春热情与社会担当的统一几方面入手,突出政治引领、思想引领、责任引领在青年文化引导上的关键作用,推动青年文化持续向前发展。     

The majority legal status of women in southern Africa: implications for women and families

Women in many countries of southern Africa do not have majority status or have only recently gained this right. Majority status grants individuals adult legal status and the right to bring matters to court, own and administer property, have legal custody of children, and contract for marriage. This article summarizes the legal status of women in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Lack of majority status contributes to the ongoing risk of poverty for women and makes them overly dependent on men. Compounding the situation in these countries is the presence of a dual legal system. Improving the situation of women and their families involves targeting changes in the legal system, influencing implementation of laws, educating women about their rights, and giving women needed support to seek their legal rights. The legal status of women must be viewed in the context of historical changes in the economic, educational, political, and cultural developments of society.The research for this paper was conducted during her previous faculty affiliation with the University of Michigan, School of Social Work. Her research interests include the impact of social change on women and families, rural mental health services, and health and mental health linkages. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and her M.S.W. from the Columbia University School of Social Work.Her research interests are gender, work and family, culture and power, social transformations in rural and peri-urban communities, critical education, women and community politics, history of women, family and kinship issues, and community-based program development and evaluation. She received her M.S.W. from Dalhousie University, Halifax.     

Queer Domicide

ABSTRACT

This article examines lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) experiences of displacement, home loss, and rebuilding in the face of natural disasters. LGBT vulnerability and resilience are little studied in disaster research; this article begins to fill this gap, focusing on LGBT domicide—how LGBT homes are “unmade” in disasters. To do this, we critically read a range of non-government, scholarly, and media commentaries on LGBT experiences of natural disasters in various settings over 2004–12, including South Asia, the USA, Haiti, and Japan. Additionally, we utilize preliminary data from pilot work on LGBT experiences of 2011 disasters in Brisbane, Australia, and Christchurch, New Zealand. we find that disaster impacts are the first stage of ongoing problems for sexual and gender minorities. Disaster impacts destroy LGBT residences and neighborhoods, but response and recovery strategies favor assistance for heterosexual nuclear families and elide the concerns and needs of LGBT survivors. Disaster impact, response, and recovery “unmakes” LGBT home and belonging, or inhibits homemaking, at multiple scales, from the residence to the neighborhood. we focus on three scales or sites: first, destruction of individual residences, and problems with displacement and rebuilding; second, concerns about privacy and discrimination for individuals and families in temporary shelters; and third, loss and rebuilding of LGBT neighborhoods and community infrastructure (e.g. leisure venues and organizational facilities).     

后现代思潮对我国青少年的影响与对策

出于反思"现代性"而出现的后现代主义,目前已经发展成"带有西方色彩"的全球性社会思潮。它反对理性主义、整体主义、中心主义,主张多元价值取向,注重人文关怀,具有否定的全面性与不彻底性、价值取向的无中心性、传播形式的灵活性与多样性、行为表现的随意性等特点。后现代主义在一定程度上有助于培养我国青少年的批判性思维,有助于青少年的天性成长,但也往往易于模糊青少年的是非判断标准,侵蚀青少年积极有为的责任担当,诱使青少年养成享乐主义的生活习惯。为此,需要从强化社会主义核心价值观的引领作用、加强对西方后现代思潮的理论研究、加强人文精神和心理健康方面的教育、引领网络与大众传播方向等方面做文章。     

Urban Space,Belonging, and Inequality in Multi-Ethnic Housing Estates of Melaka,Malaysia

Through ethnographic inquiry, this article explores the dynamics of urban space and ethnicity in a multi-ethnic and predominantly middle-class neighborhood in Melaka, Malaysia. Chinese developers and Malay political officials contributed to the social production of the built environment in the neighborhood, including several housing estates, commercial shop lots, religious institutions, kindergartens, and day care centers. Indians, Malays, Chinese, and Christians mark and claim spaces with polysemous symbols entailing shared meanings of protection and representation of their respective categories. While the Malay-dominated government and Chinese capital have established stable religious institutions, Indians are struggling to maintain two unregistered temples. Chinese and Indians interact in many contexts producing a shared politically marginalized identity of Malaysian citizens. International students, mostly Arabs and Africans of various nationalities, produce a politically marginalized identity of non-citizen student-customers. Fluctuating and persisting aspects of identity schemata embedded in processes of social production and construction are integral to citizen and subcitizen struggles for life-space.     

Effects of migration on social change in the country of origin

This paper analyzes the consequences of migration for European countries of origin with a view to suggesting policies to resolve the difficulties of achieving equilibrium in balance of payments, regional development, increasing employment, reducing unemployment and inflation, raising productivity, and increasing the gross national product. Migratory flows are generally organized to meet immediate needs and solve latent socioeconomic tensions. Initially, the benefits for the 2 sets of countries (origin and destination) are considerable. Countries of origin manage to solve major problems in the areas of employment, undertake social and political efforts, and achieve equilibrium in the balance of payments through receiving remittances, which also contribute to the economic development of the regions of departure. For their part, receiving countries have reduced the shortage of cheap labor, a fact which, especially during the post-war recovery period, was instrumental in the recovery of their economies and the increased creation of wealth. From the demographic standpoint, many people have been deserting rural areas and there has been an increase in the aging of the population, with the resulting socioeconomic consequences. Emigration has also spread to women (family reunification), which in turn has led to a steeper decline in birth rates and made economic and social projections more difficult to assess. Social consequences have become obvious, emigration flows have led to a change of values and thus created a veritable cultural breach and disruption of rural societies. From the standpoint of employment, expectations have also been thwarted; despite their enormous experience, returning workers do not possess a high level of vocational training. For countries of origin, migratory trends may have some beneficial demographic, social, and economic effects if returns are carefully planned, prepared, conducted, and supported. There should be a considerable strengthening of relations between countries, effective cooperation and solidarity, and a shouldering of joint responsibility so as to define the correct policies for harmonious and more balanced world economic development.     

Single motherhood by choice: A parenting alternative

The experience of single motherhood by choice has become more prevalent in the last twenty years and yet the literature reveals a dirth of information about this parenting style. This article delineates the experience of choosing single motherhood utilizing artificial insemination by donor. Several issues are examined: (a) emotional factors and personality characteristics of the mother, (b) physiological factors related to artificial insemination, (c) ethical and legal considerations of artificial insemination and single motherhood, and (d) various economic concerns related to single motherhood.Ann Potter completed her Ph.D. in counseling psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is Assistant Professor of Nursing at Clarkson College of Nursing, 333 South 44th Street, Omaha, NE 68131. Her current research interests are children and families of alcoholics, nontraditional families including single motherhood by choice, and incest survivors.Patricia Knaub is Associate Dean of the College of Home Economics and Associate Professor of Human Development and the Family at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her address is 105 Home Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583-0800. She completed her Ph.D. at Nebraska and current research interests include stress and coping strategies of farm families, successful remarriages, and issues related to conception, including transference of myths and artificial insemination.     

DIALECTICS OF NORMS IN MODERNIZATION

The frequently lamented weakening of wakening of social and law norms in modern societies is examined. After some concern about norm erosion in classical sociology, empirical social research on mass communication, industry, the military, and urban life soothed earlier concerns. Yet criminological evidence on late modern and rapidly modernizing societies, qualitative research in the sociology of culture, and quantitative lifecourse research attest to a weakening of normative standards during the second half of the twentieth century. Their findings are propelled by communitarian discourses. However, long-term historical research and some studies in the sociology of law demonstrate the growing strength of norms that regulate interpersonal violence. Contradictory evidence thus suggests replacing one-dimensional and unidirectional ideas about the impact of modernization on the strength of legal and social norms by a dialectic understanding. A set of hypotheses is developed, based on diverse literatures on organizations and the economy, culture of life course, political and social movements, and crime and the law. The hypotheses concern the dialectic consequences for the strength of norms, of the growing size of social units, growing participation in labor markets. transition of economic forms, formal rationalization of law, and the shift from a noninterventionist state to an interventionist welfare state.     

On the coloniality of work: Commercial surrogacy in India

Relations of domination and subjugation in work manifest as class differentiation, but, more crucially, become intensified along lines of gender, sexual and racial difference. This circumstance, I suggest, is neither accidental nor incidental. It is a historical effect of colonial logic that postulates gender, sexual and racial Others as ontologically, and hence ethically, different. The articulation of difference as such legitimizes gender, sexual and racial Others as sites of domination and exploitation, and thereby naturalizes them as objects of subordination in work. This circumstance may be described through the analytic of coloniality. The aim of this paper, then, is to explicate the coloniality of work as a means to comprehend the persistence of inequality and subjugation in its global organization. Specifically, it underscores the imperative of confronting the ontological production of gender, sexual and racial difference in the creation of relations of domination and subjugation, and thus, in the institution and operation of work qua work. I demonstrate the political urgency of such engagements through a discussion of commercial surrogacy in India.     

On gambling research,social science and the consequences of commercial gambling

Social, political, economic, geographic and cultural processes related to the significant growth of the gambling industries have, in recent years, been the subject of a growing body of research. This body of research has highlighted relationships between social class and gambling expenditure, as well as the design, marketing and location of gambling products and businesses. It has also demonstrated the regressive nature of much gambling revenue, illuminating the influence that large gambling businesses have had on government policy and on researchers, including research priorities, agendas and outcomes. Recently, critics have contended that although such scholarship has produced important insights about the operations and effects of gambling businesses, it is ideologically motivated and lacks scientific rigour. This response explains some basic theoretical and disciplinary concepts that such critique misunderstands, and argues for the value of social, political, economic, geographic and cultural perspectives to the broader, interdisciplinary field of gambling research.