Putting the “S” Back into Sexual and Reproductive Health

ABSTRACT

Sexuality is the most fundamental aspect of our lives and yet it has long been the silent partner in sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Growing awareness of the rights-based approach to health, the commitment of governments and international bodies to promote sexual health and well-being, and the failure of many of the interventions to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic are helping the reproductive health community put the “S” back into SRH even as the Millennium Development Goals fail to address SRH directly. The disconnect is due to the fragmented, non-holistic approach to reproductive health, short-sightedness in neglecting violations like gender-based violence, a lack of training for students and health care professionals in sexuality, a dearth of indicators and sexuality research and discrimination against vulnerable groups like youth and sexually diverse populations. Recommendations include reaching consensus about the nexus between sexuality and reproductive health and strengthening the commitment to gender equity, empowerment, sexuality and sexual rights among policymakers. Ensuring that explicit and positive references to sexuality are universal, especially in comprehensive sexuality education, youth-focused programs and the integration of HIV and other SRH programs, and strengthening the ability of program managers and service providers to work on sexual health issues are key to successful integration and program sustainability. Strengthening understanding, acceptance and competence in serving sexually diverse populations and improving the research and evaluation specific to sexuality are longer processes, but equally important in the paradigm shift to non-stigmatizing, gender-equitable, rights-based, pleasurable sexual health services.     

“Ghosts of Sociologies Past:” Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Era at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy

This embedded case study of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP) illustrates the development of disciplinary boundaries during a transitional period of professionalization in the social sciences, particularly for the fields of sociology and social work. Drawing on archival data (e.g., reports, scholarly and autobiographical writings, and correspondence) we first document sociological contributions of the community-based school, one of many progressive projects among social settlements and social gospelers of the day. Then using the lens of an intergenerational struggle reflective of the historical social movements of the period, we analyze the circumstances surrounding the 1920 merger of the CSCP with the University of Chicago. Succeeding their early social settlement mentors, Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons and Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop of Hull House, a second generation of social reformer protégés became a formidable force in this disciplinary differentiation. This case can be read as a micro-level illustration of a much larger macro-level political contest as professional social scientists vied for control of the definition of social science and its applied mission. The "ghosts of sociologies past" still haunt the discipline today offering important lessons for sustaining a science that joins theory with action to solve social problems.     

Community Colleges and the “Promise” of Public Sociology: A College President’s Perspective

Public sociology in a community college setting offers great possibilities for the advancement of our discipline. As open access institutions whose stakeholders range from high school students dually enrolled in college to retirees epitomizing the ethos of lifetime learning, community colleges attract a diverse populace whose stock of life experiences resonates with sociological concepts. In this article I discuss how a well-known sociologist impacted a diverse audience, illustrating both the promise and the pitfalls of sociology for the public. I then situate “public sociology” within the context of my role as a college president and discuss how I have utilized a sociological imagination to structure the central themes of a successful capital campaign.     

Alternative Food Networks and the Labor of Food Provisioning: A Third Shift?

Scholars have increasingly examined the sphere of consumption in alternative food networks (AFNs). However, research has largely overlooked women's experiences as food provisioners. This is problematic, as AFNs prescribe practices that could be expanding women's food provisioning labor. This article addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the physical labor of food provisioning varies for women engaged in AFNs relative to those not engaged in AFNs, and how diverse AFNs as well as socioeconomic status (SES) influence the labor of food provisioning for women engaged in AFNs. Using data from the 2012 Ohio Survey of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Issues, I demonstrate that women engaged in AFNs, relative to women not engaged in AFNs, exert more physical labor in food provisioning, that prioritizing local food systems involves more physical labor than prioritizing organic foods, and that women with lower household incomes who prioritize organic foods exert greater physical labor in food provisioning than women with higher incomes who prioritize organic foods. I conclude by arguing that women who prioritize local food systems are engaging in a third shift and that greater attention should be paid to the role of SES in shaping women's experiences as food provisioners in AFNs.     

Relations and Relationships: Clarifying the Terms of the ‘New’ Relational Economic Sociology

In economic sociology, relations and relationships have emerged as central yet poorly specified concepts. In this paper, I clarify these terms in a positive critique of the current state of the field. I then consider the ways in which the proposed framework can help analysts to bridge the divide between economics and sociology. Armed with techniques derived from formal network analysis, the new economic sociology offered the first sustained foray into economic territory, but sociological skeptics remain unsatisfied. Two broad rejoinders to this network-analytic approach emerged in the last two decades, but both correctives, nevertheless, leave the divide intact. In the last decade, however, a new paradigm is coalescing under the rubric of “relational economic sociology. While showing promise, it furthers the confusion surrounding the key concepts of “relations” and “relationships.” The proposed framework provides a foundation for constructive dialogue among the different traditions which constitute this new paradigm.     

Sociology of “primitive societies,” evolutionism,and Africa

Sociology of primitive societies has revised its earlier views about kinship, lineage, or lineage mode of production. It attempts now to show that lineage did not pervade African precolonial societies and that other relations, such as capitalist and class relations, were also present. This article seeks to reestablish, contrary to the revisionist view, the centrality of lineage in African precolonial societies to allow for a paradigmatic shift that repudiates evolutionism and brings precolonial societies back to the center of the African debate. Because in such a reoriented debate Africa ceases to be marginalized and on the fringes of other historical experiences, the shift allows, paradoxically, the integration of scholarship on Africa into universal social theory.     

The ‘New Institutionalism’ in Organization Theory: Bringing Society and Culture Back In

This investigation will discuss the emergence of an economistical perspective among the dominant approaches of organization theory in the United States since the inception of “organization studies” as an academic discipline. It maintains that Contingency theory, Resource Dependency theory, Population Ecology theory, and Transaction Cost theory analyze predominantly for-profit organizations within the context of the current economic environment. It further holds that the political and cultural environments, as well as the role of communities, are widely neglected by the economistical perspective. The New Institutionalism departs from this line of thinking and offers an implicit critique. With this focus, this article addresses a sociology of knowledge theme and aims to account for this theoretical limitation by drawing on social developments in the American economy, in American politics, and in the academy. Finally, this study argues that the economization of organization studies is strongly supported by the increasing proliferation of American business schools. Here the science of organization studies has found its new institutional home.     

The “Turkish Model” of Sociology: East–West Science, State Formation, and the Post-Secular

The field of sociology in Turkey has a history that is perhaps unique to Europe (and the “West”) in its co-founding with a modern nation-state, and yet its story is more central to the discipline’s general development than that of a marginal “outlier.” Positioned at an East–west crossroads, Turkey, and its sociological tradition, have been in an ongoing conversation between the two cultural poles. Drawing on Edward Said’s Orientalism, this article traces the discipline’s history through the lens of an East–west gaze. Touching on the lived public social questions that this story invokes, regarding ethnic relations, gender, migration, democracy-building, religion, and international relations, this article surveys the growth and present state of the discipline, including methodological trends and current issues.     

Sociology’s Sacred Victims and the Politics of Knowledge: Moral Foundations Theory and Disciplinary Controversies

The field of sociology has long been subject to critique for alleged ideological bias and left-wing groupthink linked to its social justice mission. Critics contend that the construction of “sacred victims” by progressive intellectuals hinders their ability to objectively appraise the circumstances of such vulnerable groups. To address this criticism, we survey 479 sociologists in national universities and colleges in the U.S. regarding three sensitive controversies: urban poverty in the black community; gendered differences in occupational choices; and immigration. We find significant patterns in the data. Commitment to the field’s “moral mission,” preferred research paradigm, gender, and especially political orientation are all significant predictors of sociologists’ views. The results, we suggest, can be understood by conceptualizing the field of sociology as an “emotive community.” In doing so, we draw upon current social psychological research on moral foundations theory developed by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues.     

Mapping the City: Innovation and Continuity in the Chicago School of Sociology, 1920–1934

This paper examines the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of the maps of the city of Chicago produced by sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1920 and 1934. I argue that the three mapping schemes produced in those years—the concentric zone map of The City (1925), the base map of 75 community areas and the census tract maps published in three volumes of Census Data of the City of Chicago (1920, 1930, 1934)—draw upon distinct historical antecedents and have distinct theoretical implications. The first scheme exhibits the strong influence of Johann Heinrich von Thünen’s location theory and maps produced by early Chicago city boosters, the second most clearly exhibits the influence of the Social Survey Movement and of pragmatist philosophy and the third, the influence of the financial and governmental interests of the organizations that made up the Chicago Census Committee. Literature on early urban sociology and mapping in Chicago has hitherto not adequately differentiated these three mapping schemes or problematized the implications of their differences for our understanding of the theoretical commitments of the “Chicago School.”     

“Live Social Work”: How to Bring Life Back into Social Work

Abstract

In this article I discuss how professional social work can entail critical, reflexive work. This is accomplished by adapting the concept of “live sociology”. It is mainly an exploratory article, trying to raise suggestions that can be adopted and be further developed. I argue that people coming into contact with contemporary social work are sometimes reduced to being “dead” objects, as they are pinned down into static categories. The demand for developing evidence-based social work risks substantiating this tendency even further. In contrast, I claim that social work needs to move away from these kinds of explanations and instead turn towards developing “live social work”; that is to say, social work where everyday life, agency, and what people do in what context needs to be the focus, not what people are.     

“A Bad Combination”: Lived Experiences of Youth Involved in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems

Youth with involvement in foster care and the juvenile justice system, often called dual-status youth, are at increased risk for negative outcomes as they transition into adulthood, including homelessness, and involvement in the adult criminal justice system. Increase of interest in the phenomenon of youth dual involvement within the last decade, reveals focus on challenges associated with the dual-status population, the importance of multi-system collaboration, and foster care factors contributing to juvenile delinquency. This study aims to build on the current literature, through exploration of how dually-involved youth make sense of their experiences in the juvenile justice and foster care systems; and what youth believe are their unique challenges of being in two systems? This phenomenological study engaged ten individuals in Houston, Texas, between the ages of 18 and 24 years old, and previously involved in the juvenile justice and foster care systems. Research subjects participated in-depth, semi-structured, and audio-recorded interviews, disclosing their experiences in two systems. Interviews were transcribed and entered in the qualitative analytical program, Atlas.ti, where common themes of participant responses were extracted. Accounts from participants highlighted three key experiences: (1) experiences of and leading to dual involvement, (2) traumatic experiences, and (3) absence of normalcy. Study results are categorized based on their pathways to dual-involvement. This current study offers rich insights into how dually-involved youth make sense of their experiences in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Implications for enhanced service provision among child welfare and juvenile justice professionals are offered.

     

“Drawn” into the community: Re‐considering the artwork of Latino adolescents

This qualitative study of drawings created by inner‐city, Latino, junior high school students examines how these drawings are made, how they are used, and how they are read by other Latinos as visual texts that encode and communicate culturally important information. The study is based on interviews with young Latino adults about the roles these drawings played during their adolescence. The interviews revealed that these drawings function as texts in a system of visual communication. They also illustrate how such drawings can be linked to cultural identities, and how their power derives not just from the imagery they include but from how they are used to shape and support social interaction.     

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography: Lillian Wineman and the Trade in Dakota Beadwork, 1893–1929

Qualitative Sociology - How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leave little or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that one...     

Forget “militarization”: race,disability and the “martial politics” of the police and of the university

This article investigates the limits of the concept of militarization and proposes an alternative concept: martial politics. It argues that the concept of militarization falsely presumes a peaceful liberal order that is encroached on by military values or institutions. Arguing instead that we must grapple with the ways in which war and politics are mutually shaped, the article proposes the concept of martial politics as a means for examining how politics is shot-through with war-like relations. It argues that stark distinctions cannot be made between war and peace, military and civilian or national and social security. This argument is made in relation to two empirical sites: the police and the university. Arguing against the notion that either the police or the university have been “militarized,” the article provides a historical analysis of the ways in which these institutions have always already been implicated in martial politics – that is, of producing White social and economic order through war-like relations with Indigenous, racialized, disabled, poor and other communities. It concludes by assessing the political and scholarly opportunities that are opened up for feminists through the rejection of the concept of militarization in favor of the concept of martial politics.     

Learning from Experience: Integrating Students’ Everyday Lives into the Urban Community College Sociology Classroom

Over 40 percent of today’s college students are enrolled at community colleges. While the institutions of community colleges have been gaining national attention given this growing statistic, we do not engage in large scale conversations about teaching practices that best benefit our local populations. This paper looks at the risks and rewards of incorporating students’ everyday life experiences into the classroom in an introduction to sociology course. This course is developed in an urban setting giving students tools both to see the world as sociologists and to critically analyze persistent inequalities in society. These goals are accomplished through challenging classroom conversations and culminate in a project where students collect data through their lived experience and analyze it as sociologists. While this style of teaching provides unique and often unexpected challenges, it creates a strong active learning environment in the classroom, confronts important social problems, and holds potential for consciousness raising and social change in the local community.