What was Bitcoin,what will it be? The techno-economic imaginaries of a new money technology

In its first decade, Bitcoin has not proven to be a practical money form for most circumstances, but it has become a staging ground for debate around the cultural role of money in society. This debate is poised between two related but ultimately incompatible techno-economic imaginaries: infrastructural mutualism and digital metallism. Each offers a theory not just of money, but also of relations, identities, and the larger imaginaries we call ‘society’ and ‘the economy’. In particular, they offer distinct visions of what it means to be a ‘peer’ in a peer-to-peer money system, and perhaps, a peer-to-peer society. This article traces the pre-history of Bitcoin, as well as more recent developments, to inquire about its future, as well as the future of money more broadly.     

‘Maturing out’ as normative standard: qualitative interviews with young adult drinkers

Framed within a life-course perspective, this paper analyses the contents of the phenomenon ‘maturing out’ of adolescent drinking. We identify five dimensions of change that young adults’ drinking habits are expected to undergo when they reach their mid-twenties: using alcohol to maintain and develop existing relationships instead of building new relationships; drinking in differentiated ways instead of always to get drunk; controlling one’s intoxication instead of transgressing limits; considering the day after drinking instead of ‘living for the night’; and drinking to ‘chill’ and not to ‘cope’. Maturing out, as described by our interviewees, is only loosely connected with the taking on of adult roles and responsibilities (related to e.g. work and family). Rather, maturing out is a powerful social norm urging young adults to change their drinking habits, regardless of their individual life situation – a status-forcing mechanism casting those who do not adapt as deviants. The analysis centres on 24 qualitative interviews with Danish 25–27-year-olds identified as ‘heavy drinkers’ in a preceding population survey.     

The Influence of Attitudes toward Immigrants on International Migration

We investigate whether anti‐immigrant attitudes affect migrant inflows in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. Using longitudinal exhaustive data, we find that natives’ hostility, particularly natives’ propensity to discriminate on the labor market, reduces immigration. This effect is comparable to more conventional migration factors. We obtain robust results when we, for example, capture hostility with far‐right parties’ popularity instead and control for tighter immigration policies or multilateral resistance to migration. We find a stronger effect for EU‐to‐EU migrants, migrants from developed countries and linguistically close countries. Our results raise a challenge for policy makers when the demand for foreign workers and anti‐immigrant sentiment are present.     

Brexit and the Future of the Left

The referendum on British membership in the European Union divided not only the society in the UK but also the left both in Britain and all over the continent. This division however is produced not so much by this specific debate but by a deeper problem of the left capitulating ideologically and accepting neoliberalism as something objectively inevitable (even without publically recognizing it), replacing class struggle by ‘progressive’ cultural values that themselves form an essential part of the new capitalist hegemony. Leftist intelligentsia with its cultural critique of capitalism is no alternative to the current system, rather it is one of its pillars. While class division was very visible in the Brexit vote, with the working class and poor massively voting for ‘Leave’, most of the left either sided with the establishment or was wavering. Thus the success of the ‘Leave’ vote can be claimed by nationalists. Even after this political disaster instead criticizing itself leftist intelligentsia is blaming the people for being provincial and not accepting their progressive European values. However it was exactly the mass of common people in England who by voting for ‘Leave’ contributed to the formation of the new European agenda. Overcoming and unmaking bureaucratic, authoritarian, and neoliberal EU institutions is the only way to progress towards the making of a new democratic Europe.     

Framing the neoliberal canon: resisting the market myth via literary enquiry

ABSTRACT

There is widespread recognition that neoliberal rhetoric about ‘free markets’ stands in considerable tension with ‘really existing’ neoliberalizing processes. However, the oft-utilized analytical distinction between ‘pure’ economic and political theory and ‘messy’ empirical developments takes for granted that neoliberalism, at its core, valorizes free markets. In contrast, the paper explores whether neoliberal intellectuals ever made such an argument. Using Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as exemplars, our reading of canonical neoliberal texts focuses on author framing gestures, particular understandings of the term ‘science’, techniques of characterization, and constructions of epistemological legitimacy. This enables us to avoid the trap of assuming that these texts are about free markets and instead enquires into their constitution as literary artefacts. As such, we argue that the remaking of states and households rather than the promotion of free markets is at the core of neoliberalism. Our analysis has significant implications. For example, it means that authoritarian neoliberalism is not a departure from but actually more in line with the ‘pure’ neoliberal canon than in the past. Therefore, neoliberalism ought to be critiqued not for its rhetorical promotion of free markets but instead for seeking to reorganize societies in coercive, non-democratic and unequal ways. This also enables us to acknowledge that households are central to resistance to neoliberalism as well as to the neoliberal worldview itself.     

Multiplicity: anarchy in the mirror of sociology

ABSTRACT

Justin Rosenberg’s proposal of ‘multiplicity’ as a new grounding concept for IR aims at liberating the international from the perceived constraints of its dominant framing by Realism. Viewed from within the singular political entity, the international can only appear as absence and negativity, traditionally thematised in IR as ‘anarchy’. Recasting it instead as ‘multiplicity’, through a move from politics to sociology, is intended to change the understanding of the international from negative to positive: from conflict, tragedy and repetition to interaction, combination and development. This move, however, does not succeed in grasping the negativity of the international, and so as a result it remains within the limits that Realism enunciates: multiplicity complements anarchy sociologically rather than transcending it theoretically. A new concept of the international would result not from rejecting the negative in favour of the positive but from recognizing them as dialectically contained within each other.     

Believe it when you see it: Dyadic embeddedness and reputation effects on trust in cryptomarkets for illegal drugs

Large-scale online marketplace data have been repeatedly used to test sociological theories on trust between strangers. Most studies focus on sellers’ aggregate reputation scores, rather than on buyers’ individual decisions to trust. Theoretical predictions on how repeated exchanges affect trust within dyads and how buyers weigh individual experience against reputation feedback from other actors have not been tested directly in detail. What do buyers do when they are warned not to trust someone they have trusted many times before? We analyze reputation effects on trust at the dyadic and network levels using data from an illegal online drug marketplace. We find that buyers’ trust decisions are primarily explained by dyadic embeddedness - cooperative sellers get awarded by repeated exchanges. Although buyers take third-party information into account, this effect is weaker and more important for first-time buyers. Buyers tend to choose market exit instead of retaliation against sellers after negative experiences.     

Between and among the boundaries of culture: Bridging text and lived experience in the third timespace

Abstract

The anthropological notion of Culture is founded on the presupposition of a radical difference between self and other, here and there, Eurocenter and Third World. This conceptual foundation has increasingly been under challenge, as the Eurocenter is being forcibly relativized by national liberation movements from without and ‘new’ social movements from within. The relativisitc notion of cultures that are autonomous and bounded is now contested by a notion of historically grounded multiple subject positions. A jumble of cultural-political practices and forms of resistance have emerged that have variously been named hybrid, border, or diasporic. The most creative and dynamic of these resistances are located on the borders of essentialism and conjuncturalism. They refuse the binarism of identity politics versus post-modernist fragmentation, opting instead for what Sandoval terms ‘differential consciousness’. We name this terrain of practice and theory, this zone of shifting and mobile resistances that refuse fixity yet practice their own arbitrary provisional closures, the third timespace.

The third study of third timespaces aims to displace the canonical anthropological notion of Culture as well as to nudge Cultural Studies away from its text — a Western-centered focus. Such an undertaking will require a revision of the ethnographic distinctions between ‘home’ and ‘the field’. Fieldwork becomes ‘homework’, as differences between the ethnographer and the subject under study are broken down, as the ethnographer is incorporated into the text, and as theory and text reflect and participate in the multiply-positioned and fluctuating realities of quotidian life.     

Ideologies of dedication vs. blueprints of expedience 1

The motivating role of ideology seems central to the antagonists in a polarizing conflict. Apartheid is frequently associated with an elaborate ideology of puritan calvinist authoritarianism, aimed at legitimating white domination, at least in the perception of its beleaguered defenders. However, it may be argued that compared with the role of ideologies in other conflict situations and dictatorships, the defence of White privileges does not represent a fixed belief system or the self‐delusion of a false consciousness, which constitutes both the strength and weakness of white South Africa at the same time. By allowing for ideological cleavages and tactical splits among its ruling group instead of an encapsulating monolithic static ‘siege culture’, the South African system of pragmatic racial domination is rather flexible in accommodating pressure and adjusting to new situations outside dogmatic and rigid ideologies.     

The empowerment of marginals: strategic paradoxes

This article is about the disability movement in the Netherlands and its strategies for empowerment of disabled people. Only since the end of 2003 has the Netherlands enjoyed anti‐discrimination legislation for disabled people. But, how important actually is legislation for the empowerment of disabled people? To answer this question, we take a closer look at social movements and their involvement in empowerment and active citizenship. We criticise the disregard of differences and care in notions of active citizenship and propose instead the idea of a ‘varied society’ based on the notions of diverse and ‘careful citizenship’. One of our main arguments is that empowerment strategies necessary to create this kind of society are above all bottom‐up strategies. However, the highly organised disability movement in the Netherlands is confronted with strategic paradoxes that have ‘de‐powering’ consequences. Based on these paradoxes, five recommendations for the disability movement in the Netherlands are presented.     

Distorted integration: Problems of monolithic order

For generating a theory of integration in today's modem multicultural societies, we must go beyond reductionists’ ‘objective’ interpretations and instead use a concept of social solidarity based on individuals’ loyally to society and its values. The matter of integration cannot be reduced to a process of adoption of the host societies’ ‘norms’ and ‘values’ by immigrants. Such a process does not completely change the people's lifestyles, but it modifies them. One of the most important characteristics of integrated society has to do with the individuals’ active participation in the production and reproduction of their own life with little or no dependence on state subsidies.     

Omniscience at the Edge of Chaos: complexity,defences and change in a Children and Families Social Work department

ABSTRACT

This paper will explore a period of organisational change in a Children and Families Social Work team, applying ideas from complexity theory and psychoanalysis to explore the changes that occurred. In doing so it will critique the Newtonian concept of cause-and-effect linear causality, instead positing a nonlinear model of an organisation as a complex adaptive system in flux as it interacts with its environment. The paper will go on to posit that Bion’s psychoanalytic concepts of Omniscience and K Activity are self-organising forces in social care organisations, and when anxiety is not managed effectively, reductionist technical-rationale approaches to Children and Families Social Work dominate practice. It will conclude by outlining how the organisation’s effective management of anxiety through the creation of containment, created a series of organisational changes. These changes better supported the management of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in the social work task, raising possibilities of improvements in social work practice beyond the organisation.     

Vertical capitalism: Skyscrapers and organization

This paper employs the skyscraper to show how culture and economy are necessarily intertwined. I begin with the idea of the sublime, and then move on to consider representations of the tall building from the 1870s to the present day in order to illustrate what these artefacts are understood to ‘mean’. But skyscrapers are not merely symbols of modern organization, they are themselves forms of economic organizing and the second section of the paper notes the various ways in which the tall building, and the divisions of labour that enabled it, began by ‘making the land pay’ in cities with a burgeoning rental market for small firms. This shift involves partly displacing the architect and the corporation, and instead focussing on project organization and rental values. I conclude by suggesting that the term ‘organization’, because of its mutability, can provide a bridge between culturalist and economic representations.     

Male routes to a teaching career: motivations,market constraints and gender inequalities

The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the gender influence on teaching choice. We analyze a large-scale national representative sample of Italian teachers. The choice to teach seems to be more a long-term pathway for women, following their personal values and interest in the intrinsic and altruistic values of teaching. Men, instead, show a more adaptable pattern of choice: chance and switching career played a relevant role in determining their ending up in teaching. ‘Males in a feminized environment’ present an intermediate profile, characterized by stronger constraints due to previous studies and consequent weak labor market opportunities. Our analyses support the idea that men found their pathways to gaining satisfaction from the occupation of teaching, thanks to its flexibility. This is an ambiguous result from a gender perspective: reassuring but also worrying, considering that the adaptation could contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities within the teaching profession.     

Social identity and alcohol in young adolescence: the perceived difference between youthful and adult drinking

This paper examines the evolving social identities of young adolescents in regard to alcohol and drinking culture in Norway. Detailed analysis of 29 focus group interviews and 32 individual interviews with 12–13-year-olds reveal a thorough negative attitude towards alcohol, especially when enjoyed by young people. Young adolescents found young people to be too irresponsible and immature to drink, while adults were portrayed as capable of enjoying alcohol without losing control or experiencing other negative effects. Through symbolic boundary work, they distanced themselves from adolescents who drank. The young adolescents rejected the idea that drinking alcohol was a sign of maturity; instead, they exhibited maturity by distancing themselves from drunk adolescents. We discuss how these findings reflect the participants’ socio-cognitive development, and how symbolic boundaries are often drawn against those closest in social distance. We conclude that boundaries between ‘adolescents’ and ‘adults’ are fundamental when understanding emerging adolescent social identities, especially when it comes to drinking and drinking culture.     

Demonstrations against demonstrations: the dispiriting emotions of the Kremlin’s social media ‘mobilization’

This article proposes a new approach to understanding Russian pro-regime counter-demonstrations, arguing that starting from 2014, they have acquired a distinctively demobilizational outlook: whereas the opposition seeks to mobilize the population to action, what suits the regime best is a safely de-mobilized majority. This interpretation requires a perspective different from that used for studying opposition demonstrations: instead of seeing the regime’s social media strategy for promoting counter-demonstrations as attempts to attract maximum involvement, the message should be judged on its capacity to discourage large-scale collective action. To show how this works in practice, the two biggest recent pro-regime counter-demonstrations are analysed: their context and background and the promotion of them on their official VKontakte pages and in related Twitter posts by prominent pro-regime tweeters. What may appear as strategies to mobilize for counter-demonstrations emerge as efforts to engender emotions that serve the regime’s purpose of keeping the population apolitical and passive.     

Notes towards a ‘social aesthetic’: Guest editors' introduction to the special section

There is an emerging ‘aesthetic turn’ within sociology which currently lacks clear focus. This paper reviews the different issues feeding into this interest and contributes to its development. Previous renderings of this relationship have set the aesthetic up against sociology, as an emphasis which ‘troubles’ conventional understandings of sociality and offers no ready way of reconciling the aesthetic with the social. Reflecting on the contributions of recent social theorists, from figures including Bourdieu, Born, Rancière, Deleuze, and Martin, we argue instead for the value of a social aesthetic which critiques instrumentalist and reductive understandings of the social itself. In explicating what form this might take, the latter parts of the paper take issue with classical modernist conceptions of the aesthetic which continue to dominate popular and sociological understandings of the aesthetic, and uses the motif of ‘walking’ to show how the aesthetic can be rendered in terms of ‘the mundane search’ and how this search spans everyday experience and cultural re‐production. We offer a provisional definition of social aesthetics as the embedded and embodied process of meaning making which, by acknowledging the physical/corporeal boundaries and qualities of the inhabited world, also allows imagination to travel across other spaces and times. It is hoped that this approach can be a useful platform for further inquiry.     

Children’s Experiences of Completing a Computer‐Based Violence Survey: Ethical Implications

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about the ethics of research on children when studying sensitive issues such as violence. The empirical analysis is based on the accounts given by children (11 377) who completed a computer‐based questionnaire about their experiences of violence (‘The Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008’) and their reflections on the survey. We argue that experiences of violence should not be excluded from the research agenda on children due to ethical reasons, but that a more sophisticated practice should be developed instead to meet the needs and rights of children as informants. © 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

Bureaucratic encounters “after neoliberalism”: Examining the supportive turn in social housing governance

It is well established that encounters between welfare bureaucracies and their clients have been reconfigured under neoliberalism to address the problem of “welfare dependency.” Contemporary bureaucratic encounters therefore entail measures to activate clients’ entrepreneurial/self-governing capacities, and conditionality/sanctioning practices to deal with clients who behave “irresponsibly.” Despite the dominance of the neoliberal model, recent research has identified a counter-trend in the practices of housing services away from entrepreneurializing and punitive strategies and towards a more supportive approach. This paper examines this counter-trend and its implications for neoliberal welfare governance. To do this, it presents findings from research into social housing governance in Queensland, Australia, where the neoliberal focus on welfare independence, conditionality and sanctioning has been tempered by a new supportive approach focused on assisting vulnerable clients to maintain and benefit from access to welfare/housing support. Following Larner, we argue that this shift signals the emergence of an “after neoliberal” governmental formation, wherein key features of neoliberal governmentality are replaced by, or redeployed in the service of, progressive initiatives that address neoliberalism’s failings at the street level, but leave broader neoliberal policy settings undisturbed. We also challenge recent sociological accounts that construe supportive welfare practices as a function of an all-encompassing neoliberal project, arguing instead for appreciation of the contingency of these developments and the progressive political affordances that they entail.     

The Impact of Family Structure on Utilization of Preventive Care Services among Children under National Health Insurance in Taiwan

This study investigates the role of family structure in children’s access to preventive services in the context of a National Health Insurance (NHI) system. We analyzed the 2005 National Health Interview Survey in Taiwan to evaluate the impact of family structure on the utilization of preventive services, including well-child visits and non-free vaccinations. The extended family and single-father family were found to have a significant impact on care use in the unadjusted model even under NHI. However, after controlling for various health, demographic and socio-economic factors, our findings suggest that family structure does not influence the non-free use of vaccines, and financial constraints, instead, play an important role in making parents decide to have non-free vaccines. To further enhance the health and welfare of the children, our findings suggest that the NHI coverage of children’s vaccines might not be adequate and that non-free vaccines should be provided free to those families who cannot afford them.