From “whom to blame” to “nothing to fear”: documentary narratives,voices, and “dependent destigmatization” of severe mental patients (SMPs) in Hong Kong

Media often stigmatize severe mental patients (SMPs) by portraying them as dumb, sluggish, or violent. Conversely, TV documentaries, as a particular media genre, have the potential to destigmatize SMPs by entrusting them with an authentic presence and a direct voice. Illuminated by Couldry’s (2010) discussion on voice and drawing on narrative analysis, this article examines the evolving and joint endeavor of media and mental hospitals in systematically destigmatizing SMPs and in promoting the rehabilitation mode of mental health care in Hong Kong. From 1989 to 2011, Hong Kong Connections produced three documentaries. Shifting the narrative from “whom to blame” to “nothing to fear,” the documentaries establish a destigmatization agenda jointly formulated by the media and mental hospitals. SMPs’ voices steadily increase in length and prominence in the narrative’s temporal line, yet they are strictly orchestrated within the sealed narrative that is subject to the institutional interest of promoting the rehabilitation mode of mental health care in Hong Kong. The voice/narrative inequality between SMPs and mental institutions leads to the “dependent destigmatization” that indicates a dependent power relation between SMPs and powerful institutions.     

“We have been thrown away”: surplus people projects and the logics of waste

ABSTRACT

This essay considers discourses of waste that include humans among the objects of discard: surplus/disposable populations in the Marxian tradition, or what Zygmunt Bauman has called “human waste.” Notions of “surplus people” have a long history in South Africa, and this essay traces a genealogy of their narrative and cultural forms. These forms can alternately mask and expose the “indispensable dispensab[ility]” of vulnerable communities treated as waste: devastated, depleted, discarded, disregarded. I situate the blockbuster film District 9 within a longer tradition of documenting the plight of people who recognise that they have been “thrown away,” in texts by Solomon T. Plaatje, Cosmas Desmond, Nadine Gordimer, and others. Attending to questions of geographic and temporal scale, I read between the historical example of South African apartheid and “global apartheid” as shorthand for the stratifications effected by neoliberal globalisation. How do these formations attend to the ideological violence, racial specificity, and enforced invisibility of surplus? This exclusion from the polity works through acts of un-imagining: in moments of crisis when they are pushed to the brink, the poor may have no recourse to the ethical and political grounds upon which they might claim the right to survival.     

“You have to do something”: Snoring,sleep interembodiment and the emergence of agency

Although the sociology of sleep is a growing subfield, little is known about agency in the context of sleep. This article contributes to the sociological literature by showing how different types of agency emerge as a result of sleep interembodiment (i.e., experiencing sleep partners’ bodies as intertwined). The study draws on qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with 70 snorers and 20 sleep partners of snorers. Interviews were conducted in Israel and were analysed following constructivist grounded theory principles. Results indicate that two types of agency coexist and, in fact, co-constitute one another: The first type, herein termed material agency, reflects the post-humanist tradition, which conceptualizes agents as entities (whether human or nonhuman) that alter a state of affairs by making a difference in another agent's action. This type of agency exists in both wakefulness and throughout periods of sleep, as the snorer’s body acts and interacts with a partner's body in ways that engender significant change in their lives, relationships, and actions. In contrast, the second type, herein termed reflexive agency, reflects the humanist tradition, which regards agency as individuals' creative and assertive capacities motivated by intentionality and reflexivity. This type of agency declines significantly during stages of deep sleep but re-emerges in response to partners' actions. The article adds to the literature by refining the concept of agency and elucidating its relationship to both accountability and interembodiment. In addition, the article provides much-needed empirical evidence showing how “personal responsibility” for health, as required by neoliberal discourses, is invoked within families, specifically with regard to sleep. This study therefore shows how certain macro-level structures of neoliberalism are enacted and reinforced within micro-level interactions.     

‘I don't have anything to hide,but … ': the challenges and negotiations of social and mobile media privacy for non-dominant youth

Drawing from interviews and focus groups with teens in a low-income and ethnically diverse high school in central Texas, this paper explores the unique social privacy challenges and strategies of low-income and non-dominant youth. Situating the research in a broader context in which non-dominant teens are increasingly surveilled, I demonstrate how teens manage social privacy in at least three ways. First, they negotiate liminal boundaries of what constitutes a communal or shareable mobile device, which are structured around financial constraints. Second, through nonuse, they actively resist the ways mobile and social media reconfigure social and physical spaces. Third, they deliberately use multiple platforms as a way to cope with evolving privacy settings, social norms, and technological affordances; this is a deliberate strategy intended to resist social convergence. Because low-income and non-dominant youth are increasingly surveilled by adults, peers, and institutions, it is imperative that they find spaces that afford greater freedom of expression, interest-based communities, and privacy.     

Ups and downs of art commerce: narratives of “crisis” in the contemporary art markets of Russia and India

This article develops an analytical framework to study the role of narratives in markets and argues that there is a relationship between the structure and composition of narratives produced by market actors and market dynamics. With respect to theory, the article bridges the perspectives that study markets as cultures and as fields and draws from the organizational studies approach to the analysis of narratives. Two empirical cases of the crises narratives in the emerging contemporary art markets of Russia and India illustrate the use of the framework. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with artists and art dealers as well as observations in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai conducted between April 2012 and June 2013. The article shows that there is a widely shared crisis narrative with a coherent structure in the Indian art market. In contrast, fragmented and contested stories that lack narrative structure dominate in the Russian art market. The analysis of the first case highlights the narrative structure and shows the productive work it does in the Indian market—it provides a moral justification of existing market norms and produces a perspective for the future. The analysis of the second case focuses on the context of narrative production and connects the conflicting interpretations of the crisis in the Russian art market to contested hierarchies and persistent uncertainty.     

The Status of Sociology within the Academy: Where We Are, Why We’re There, and How to Change It

We present data from a survey of deans at colleges and universities throughout the USA on the relative status of disciplines. Findings indicate that the relative status of Sociology within the academy is low, although there are several specific areas of high status—namely, concerning community involvement and engagement. Our analyses also investigate which areas of activity are most closely associated with the overall prestige of disciplines. Findings indicate that research-oriented activities are the most influential, while student-oriented activities have a more ambivalent association with status. Based on those findings, we offer suggestions for raising the status of the discipline, based on the cultivation of natural synergies linking research, community engagement, student training, and focusing on the benefits of establishing social science research centers associated with Sociology departments.     

“It's Not Dutch to Close the Curtains”: Visual Struggles on the Threshold Between Public and Private in a Multi-Ethnic Dutch Neighborhood

The front of the house functions as a border between the public and the private sphere. Different people have different customs in dealing with this area. Whereas some use it as a “front-stage,” on which they present themselves to the outside world, others block their windows with curtains or devote little attention to creating an attractive image. The practices of older Dutch inhabitants, rich decoration, and open curtains, are guided by social norms on tidiness and gender roles. The confrontation with other customs, often linked to other ethnic groups, is considered an intrusion in a space they consider to be theirs. Partly as a consequence of this, they are also retreating into their private sphere, reflected in changed practices at the fronts of their houses.     

“Soft Power” and the Negotiation of Legitimacy: Collective Meaning Making in a Teacher Team

This article interrogates the “soft power” of teacher teamwork by probing the ways in which authority conditions the appropriation of institutional motives through collective meaning making. The study analyzes the interaction of a teacher-leader and a science teacher team across two settings of professional development organized to promote curricular reform in their U.S. secondary school. The premise of the analysis draws on frameworks from cultural-historical theories, sociological perspectives, and social semiotics to view authority as the outcome of relations of power and control. The analysis reveals how the negotiation of legitimacy in interaction functions to open up or close down possibilities for acquiring motives appropriate to subject matter, teaching, and student learning in teachers' professional practice. The article makes a novel contribution to post-Vygotskian theoretical development in its presentation of authority as an attribute of the dialectical relationship of person and society in the production of institutionalized objects.     

“We,the polish nation”: Ethnic and civic visions of nationhood in post-communist constitutional debates

Theory and Society -     

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.     

Young Black women's resistance to the Canadian settler colonial state apparatus: Negotiating the complexities of “being part of the system that oppresses”

Young Black peoples encounter racism and discriminatory practices and policies through formal education and in the larger society (Creese, 2013; Dei & James, 1998; Kelly, 1998). As the experiences of the research participants—young Black women between the ages of 18 and 30—highlight, a formal education system that is structured to benefit and perpetuate the settler colonial state apparatus marginalizes Black youth, including those who are deemed “successful” through their acceptance into higher education as formal education and the labour market are structured according to the logic of settler colonialism. As such, these systems operate by imposing Euro-Western systems of knowledge, justice, and community on racialized peoples, and in particular, Black peoples. Yet, the research also shows that while injustice is the reality for young Black people, so too is resistance through a small yet powerful contingent who are refusing to remain complicit in perpetuating settler colonialism.     

“Freud,Male Homosexuality,and the Americans” Revisited: A Brief Contribution to the History of Psychoanalysis

Henry Abelove summarizes the main arguments of “Freud, Male Homosexuality, and the Americans,” a paper he wrote in the early 1980s. He also says that in writing it he aimed chiefly to challenge American moralism, which then was, and still is, both destructive and immensely influential.     

Land of hope and dreams: slavery and abolition in the Dutch Leeward islands, 1825–1865

The asymmetry of laws concerning the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves in the Atlantic world in the early-to-mid nineteenth century led to a range of responses on the part of inhabitants of the Dutch Leeward islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin. These ranged from activism, adaptation, accommodation to, as this article highlights, maritime marronage on the part of the enslaved population of these islands. The Dutch Leeward islands have been understudied in the historiography of abolition and emancipation but, as this article will argue, they should be included into the larger story of how abolition was experienced on the local, regional, Atlantic, and international stages.     

“Grandpa was fatally administered by the Bulgarians1”: Family narratives,national identity,and state history

Grandparents’ World War Two (WWII) stories are emotionally powerful, intimate accounts of firsthand experience that can shape grandchildren's ideas of state history, nation, and identity. This effect, I argue, manifests most intensively in critical times when national history and identity are threatened. Such was the case when former Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev relayed a controversial version of Macedonian national history and identity in a TV interview. In reaction, many Macedonian citizens shared fragments of their grandparents’ WWII stories. This study analyzes several more detailed versions of these grandparents’ narratives in order to ascertain the formative power of family WWII stories over one's personal sense of national identity. To do so, it will examine the positioning practices of the present-day narrators, the grandchildren of WWII participants, focusing on the manners in which they interactively reproduce their own sense of national identity vis-a-vis-these stories.     

More than profits? The contribution of the slave trade to the Dutch economy: assessing Fatah-Black and Van Rossum

We assess Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s analysis of the Dutch slave trade by detailing six 1750s voyages of the Middelburg Commercial Company. The costs of transporting captives from Africa to Suriname are explored along with their relation to the Dutch economy. We also examine the implications of the concept ‘gross margin’, which is central to Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s work. We find that, given the nature of the transport costs, the impact of the slave trade on the Dutch economy was minimal, and more generally that gross margin is not a useful measure for testing the Williams Thesis.     

Rocking the Cradle of Dutch Domesticity: A Radical Reinterpretation of Seventeenth-Century “Homescapes”1

In the light of a newly discovered source of thousands of seventeenth-century Dutch letters found in the English National Archive a case is made for a radical reinterpretation of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. These so-called “homescapes” feature in the historiography of the modern home as proof of the fact that seventeenth-century Holland was the cradle of female domesticity. However, the captured Dutch letters written to the home front by seamen sailing on the large Dutch mercantile fleet, as well as the women’s letters to their seafaring husbands tell quite a different story. Especially the letters from the home front narrate of dire circumstances and shed a new light on the subjects of the homescapes, more in particular on the subject of letter-reading and letter-writing females, and intimate mother-and-child scenes. The nineteenth-century revaluation of the glory of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in general and the homescapes in particular explains how the myth of Holland as the cradle of female domesticity came into existence.     

“Rather a manager and networker than a researcher”: converging technologies in the clinic

Technological developments brought about new approaches to and new insight into the functioning of the brain and neurological disorders. More specifically, advancement in the areas of neuroimaging, genomic technologies and molecular biology is conceived as a pathway to more differentiated diagnosis and appropriate treatment. In this regard, the convergence of technologies in the area of health care and medical research has significantly increased during the past two decades. The aim of this article is to better understand how the convergence of technologies in the field of neuroscience takes place at the micro-level of knowledge production, namely the clinic. It is based on the results of an ethnographic study conducted at an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit in Vienna. I start from the assumption that the convergence of technologies in the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy anticipates a specific means of knowledge production that impacts on the understanding and definition of neurological conditions and the identity of patients and medical doctors simultaneously. One important result concerns the scientization of the way that people with epilepsy perceive, explain and understand epilepsy and the brain. On the one hand respective narratives seem to support the scientific definition of epilepsy; on the other, the failure of seizure control tends to induce a specific understanding of the brain as having unpredictable and uncontrollable mastery over body, memory and soul.