Defending illusions: the institution's struggle for survival

Based on participant observation and other qualitative data collected at 15 institutions for the mentally retarded, this study is directed to determining how institutional officials deal with outside criticism of their facilities. Over the past decade and a half, the legitimacy of institutions for the retarded has been challenged by professionals, courts, parent groups, and the media. Officials have reacted to outside criticism by developing new legitimating myths, increasingly sophisticated impression-management techniques, and detailed rationales for the all-too-visible discrepancy between goals and practices. Thus, this paper is concerned with the symbolic nature of the institution's struggle for survival.     

视障女性推拿技师的城乡流动与职业选择:性别与残障的交叉性研究

残障女性是中国女性的重要组成部分,她们具有残障者和女性的双重社会身份,是亟待关注的边缘群体.本研究通过对28名北京外来务工视障女性的田野调查,立足中国国情,探讨性别与残障以何种方式相互作用,造成对残障女性的多重压迫,从而使得农村视障女性通过向城市流动来摆脱不利处境,并形塑她们的职业选择.综合宏观、中观与微观层面的交叉性维度,本研究提出,残障与女性的双重身份在结构层面和表征层面相互交叠和制约,推动了视障女性的城乡流动,并在很大程度上将她们的职业选择局限于推拿行业.然而,立足于西方的交叉性理论多维度分析框架强调系统性压迫而忽略了权力对主体性的形塑,本研究在此基础上增加了微观层面的"认同交叉性"来解释农村视障女性的城乡流动与职业选择.     

Subculture wars: The struggle for the vape industry

Drawing on a 2-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its “other”, the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton's analysis of club culture to characterize the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminized, classed “other” is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.     

The struggle for citizenship: the case of disabled people

The notion of 'citizenship' has become a popular slogan of governments who espouse a commitment to democratic ideals. Such discourse tends to emphasise responsibilities with little serious significance being given to the question of rights. In this paper we explore the continual discrimination which disabled people experience and which militates against the realisation of meaningful citizenship. The struggle for citizenship is viewed as an affirmation of the value of choice, independent and control which disabled people conceive in terms of human rights.     

Black political mobilisation and the struggle for equality

One of the most interesting aspects of recent debates in Britain about issues of race and ethnicity is that increasing attention is being given to the political dimension. Within both academic and social discourses there is growing awareness that we need to examine the role of politics in shaping public debate about key aspects of contemporary racial relations in British society.     

The struggle of Batak Simalungun for their identity in Church organization in Simalungun,Medan, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research aims to find out the struggle of Batak Simalungun for their identity in church organization in Simalungun. This research uses a qualitative research approach, This qualitative research also uses an ethnographic approach. The qualitative research has at least five approaches and therefore can choose one of the five approaches. The results show about three demands of the Simalungun Batak movement over a special identity of Simalungun also include the church organization environment, where the entire Batak Church led by RMG touches on the original structures of Batak society and culture.     

The struggle for legitimacy: A study of contingencies and constraints in emergency medicine

This paper explores the organizational structure and the social work world of an emerging medical specialty area, the emergency medicine practitioner. In‐depth interviews were undertaken with a number of physicians practicing emergency medicine in an attempt to come to some understanding of the problems encountered by a new specialty area as it attempts to gain credibility with more traditional and well established specialty areas in medicine.

Key elements that appear to be critical in the struggle for legitimation by emergency room physicians revolve around such issues as income, power, autonomy, the referral system, specialized knowledge and commitment levels of active participants. The nontraditional organizational structure of emergency medicine was also found to be a factor in strained social relationships between emergency room physicians and their peers. This paper also documents the more commonly used interactional strategies employed by emergency room practitioners in their day‐to‐day interactions with physicians practicing in other specialty areas.     

The march for gender equality of Algerian women: The struggle for spatial and historical recognition

Social and political anti-government movements have been major headlines across the globe in recent years, with a noticeable participation of women. In the MENA region, such movements spanned Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Lebanon among others. Through an ethnographic inquiry into the Algerian pro-democracy movement Hirak (2019–2021), we delve into women's experiences of the Hirak to show how women remain marginalized politically, economically, and socially despite their heavy and praised participation. Using a recognition theory lens, we unveil dialectics of unity and division in the struggle for recognition among women in Algeria, a post-colonial context charged with conflicting ideological stances. We detect two structural dimensions of the struggle, a spatial/physical dimension and a historical/temporal dimension that help surface different gender positionalities and their dynamics as they vie for recognition. We stress the importance of not homogenizing women's political struggles, especially in the Global South.     

Narrative and interactional process for preventing harmful struggle in therapy: an integrative empirical model

Resistance or struggle in therapy looms large as a predictor of treatment outcomes. This study organizes the significant empirical data on struggle into a coherent, operational framework for use by therapists in preventing and/or ameliorating harmful struggle in therapy. First, we review the prevalence and significance of struggle. Second, we offer a historical and conceptual overview, with emphasis on a contemporary interactional/systemic perspective on struggle. Third, we provide a synthesis of peer-reviewed research, profiling struggle at speech-act and episode levels of interaction process and across assessment/joining, intervention, and integration-consolidation phases of therapy. Fourth, based upon this review, we propose a three-factor model--consisting of eliciting dialogue, enactments, and accommodation--for successful therapy process relative to the occurrence of struggle.     

New maps of struggle for gender justice: Rethinking feminist research on organizations and work

The 2018 Gender, Work and Organization conference was held in Sydney. That fact is relevant to the issues now facing feminist organization research. The journal was launched in 1994 in the global North, in the wake of the women's liberation movement but after a first wave of neoliberal politics. Gender studies has changed since then, especially with growing recognition of feminist thought and activism in the global South. There have been changes in the object of knowledge ‐ that is, work and organization ‐ especially managerial transformation of organizations and global economic restructuring. There are related changes in the political arena, most recently the rise of an authoritarian populism with new patterns of masculinity politics. Proposals are made for an agenda of feminist research in this field, relevant to the new circumstances and the continuing struggles for gender equality.     

Visually available order,categorisation practices,and perception-in-action: a running commentary

This article is concerned with perception and visually available order in running. It draws on ethnomethodological principles to analyse a commentary produced during a run through a city centre. In doing so, the article revisits and takes forward two articles previously published in this journal. The article discusses the radical ethnomethodological understanding of perception-in-action, before presenting an analysis of the running commentary that draws out the ways in which the describing of the commonplace scene exhibits the organisation of ‘seeing’ in terms of the practical relevance that elements of the visual environment have for the work of running. The analysis identifies various practices including, routing and navigation, the seeing of ‘assemblies’ of people and objects, and the categorial identification of individuals and groups. The article thus aims to demonstrate the local, categorial, and situated grounds of perception and the practical adequacy of observation in and through the work of a given activity.