Contested milieux: Small firms,unionization, and the provision of protective structures

Three trends in the workplace point to the importance of considering work relations as well as governance structures for the development of protective benefits such as pensions. The increasing concentration of employment growth in smaller firms, the general decline of unionization, and the changing composition of the work force constitute the new exigencies of worker-employer contracts. The 1983 Current Population Survey Pension Supplement is used in conjunction with certification data from the National Labor Relations Board to examine the interaction between firm size and the influence, as opposed to the prevalence, of unionization in the provision of pensions. Unionization is found to be more influential in the provision of pensions for workers in small firms despite the established prevalence of unionization in larger firms. The implications of these trends for labor market theory are discussed.This is a revised version of papers that were presented at the annual meetings of the Gerontological Society of America, November 1988, and the American Sociological Association, August 1989.     

Spheres,cubes and boxes: Graph dimensionality and network structure

This is an examination of a set of dimensional conceptions of graphs that might be used to shed light on the structural complexity of social networks. Problems of characterizing various conceptions are explored and computational methods are reviewed.     

Strategies,Action Repertoires and DIY Activism in the Animal Rights Movement

Following Tilly, this paper argues that a social movement is what it does as much as why it does it. This approach is particularly important in the case of the animal rights movement, which is often demonized as extremist and violent. Critics of the movement claim that animal activists use letter bombs, arson attacks and threats to intimidate those they see as animal abusers and that violent direct action of this kind is typical of the movement as a whole. The present paper argues that the mainstream animal movement – in the USA, the UK and Australia – is overwhelmingly non-violent and that its core strategies and tactics have two broad aims, namely to gain publicity for the movement and to challenge conventional thinking about how we treat non-human animals. This is achieved primarily by the deployment of the key tactical mechanisms of persuasion, protest, non-cooperation and intervention. These tactics may be deployed collectively or as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) activism which many grassroots animal activists – ‘caring sleuths’ to use Shapiro's apt term – seem to prefer. The paper focuses on demonstrations and pamphleteering as examples of publicity strategies or liberal governance strategies as well as critical governance strategies or interference strategies such as the hunger strike, ethical vegetarianism and undercover surveillance.     

Identity boxes: using materials and metaphors to elicit experiences

This paper considers the use of identity boxes as a data collection method to elicit experiences. Participants were asked to respond to questions using objects to represent their answers. The rationale for using identity boxes was to allow for a more embodied, less textual approach. The identity boxes were then also used to create an artistic installation as one form of data analysis. The reflection section in this paper shows that the approach posed potential risks around the emotional vulnerability of participants, with participants experiencing the project as cathartic and therapeutic. Some participants struggled with the process of thinking through objects as difficult. Although using a less conventional approach to research led to deeper, richer reflections and thus relevant, interesting data, concerns were raised around relevance, generalisability, and more generally the evaluation of the research. The paper concludes with a reconsideration of the identity boxes as a method.     

Hybrids,materiality, and black boxes: Concepts of actor‐network theory in data journalism research

Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) vocabulary offers meaningful sensibilities for explorations of data‐driven newswork. Concepts of hybrids, materiality, and black boxes are increasingly mentioned across digital journalism studies and appear to be particularly constructive to examine the relations between data, computation, and journalism practice, epistemology, reflexivity, and journalistic artefacts. After outlining central concepts of ANT, this literature review provides an overview of research agendas that propose sociotechnical dimensions, followed by a structured review of findings generated through ANT‐informed explorations of data journalism. In a closing summary, presented findings and limitations of ANT are discussed.     

Conspiracy culture,blame culture,and rationalisation1

This paper outlines an approach to conspiracy culture that attempts to resolve the conundrum posed by the parallel logics of conspiracy and sociological theorising, without reducing the former to an irrational response to hidden social forces. Rather, from a re‐crafting of Weber's rationalisation thesis as an analysis of the developmental logic of theories of suffering, it argues that conspiracy culture is an outcome of the means of moral accounting, or blame attribution, that inform mundane reasoning in modernity, as also are the human sciences. As part of this, the paper sketches a tentative framework of moral accounting in relation to the notion of ‘blame culture’ based in part on a distinction between a culture of blaming and the blaming of culture. This is used to argue that there is nothing irrational about conspiracy culture – or at least no more so than there is about sociology.     

Trade unions and productivity: Opening the harvard “black boxes”

Despite the now voluminous literature on unions and productivity, evidence in support of the Harvard thesis that unions can contribute to increasing productivity by giving workers a “voice” at the workplace and “shocking” management into better practices remains limited. In particular, the measurement of productivity and the empirical verification (or rejection) of the Harvard model is fraught with difficulties. This paper critically evaluates the Harvard model, in particular the neglect of union/worker objectives and management-labor relations at the workplace as they affect productivity outcomes. More detailed case study analysis is needed to explore these factors.     

Teaching culture beyond nationalist boundaries: national identities,stereotyping, and culture in language education

The authors take a critical language pedagogy approach to examining a 2011 controversy over disparaging comments towards Mexicans made by commentators of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s automotive show Top Gear. In particular, they focus on the characterization of groups and individuals according to their nationality and examine the ubiquity of nationalism and its ability to shape our conception of culture and in turn our understandings of others as members of ‘X national culture.’ The fact that humor is often a justification for national stereotyping and that these stereotypes are also connected to racist discourse are also explored. In the second part of the article, the implications of the stereotyping debate for language classrooms are considered. The authors argue that the controversy itself can be used as a tool for critical engagement that helps students deconstruct the underlying nationalist paradigm in L2 classrooms and build greater intercultural awareness.

Español: Los autores examinan, desde una perspectiva de la pedagogía crítica del lenguaje, la controversia que surgió en el 2011 debido a los comentarios nocivos hechos hacia los mexicanos por los locutores del show automotriz del BBC, Top Gear. En particular, se enfocan en la caracterización de los grupos e individuos de acuerdo a su nacionalidad, y examinan la ubiquidad del nacionalismo y su capacidad para darle forma a nuestra conceptualización de la cultura y, a su vez, nuestra forma de ver a otros como miembros de una ‘cultural nacional X’. Los autores también exploran el hecho de que a menudo se utiliza el humor como una justificación para los estereotipos nacionales, y que estos estereotipos también están conectados al discurso racista. En la segunda parte del artículo, se consideran las implicaciones para la enseñanza de idiomas del debate sobre los estereotipos. Argumentan los autores que la controversia en sí se puede utilizar como una herramienta para promover una postura crítica que ayude a los alumnos a deconstruir el paradigma subyacente del nacionalismo en el salón de lenguas extranjeras y fomente la conciencia intercultural.     

Globalization and difference: displacement,culture and homeland

Mechanisms particular to globalization and to the invention of contemporary socio-cultural dynamics are revealed through the analysis of the validation of displacement emphasized in socio-anthropological texts and in the media. Globalization occasionally activates the myth of homogeneity in social groups, yet it cannot ultimately control or even slow down intercultural exchanges.     

NGOs,gender, culture and multiculturalism: a Zimbabwean view

An African woman working for Oxfam in Zimbabwe considers the role of gender injustice in her own work and life. She has encountered discrimination among her colleagues, and she was introduced to the concept that women are inferior when she was in elementary school. When she worked as a nurse, she learned that oppression takes many forms and is maintained by social systems. Consequently, it is almost impossible to counter single-handed. Therefore, she undertook a program of study in adult education which emphasizes working within democratic frameworks in programs based on the concerns of the learners. This led her to realize that it is accepted that women are globally subordinate and that subordination is rooted in customs. Many women will, therefore, defend the injustice in their own lives by stating that it is "cultural." Whereas Northern activists may condemn a custom as barbaric and requiring immediate change, cultural change must progress gradually in order to give women the impetus to keep what is positive and reject what is negative in their cultures. This process of change can be fostered by popular education and by providing exposure to women who can act as role models. Popular education also takes multiculturalism into account and reveals the necessity to trust development workers. A multi-faceted approach is needed in order to challenge culture and promote social change.     

Theory,culture, and behavior: Object relations in context

The purpose of this article is to explore aspects of contemporary object relations theory in relation to sociocultural variations in family constellation, childrearing practices, and race and ethnicity. The theoretical framework for this exploration derives from Winnicott's concept of the potential space between person and environment as the location of cultural experience. The author argues that Winnicott's ideas provide a clinically useful way to think about transactions between the internal world of object relations and the external world of cultural diversity. The article concludes with some implications for social work practice.     

Asian Americans and Alzheimer's disease: Assimilation,culture, and beliefs

Because most successful interventions for Alzheimer's disease (AD) rely upon early diagnosis and implementation, it is important to understand the factors influencing dementia treatment-seeking behaviors. These include perceptions, beliefs, values, and feelings relating to AD, which may vary among and within ethnic groups according to the strength of culturally-based explanatory models and individual group members' ages and experiences. This study used ten focus groups drawn from Asian American communities representing different national origins (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) to examine the factors shaping attitudes toward AD in general, and treatment-seeking in particular, that may constitute barriers to timely diagnosis and treatment of AD among Asian Americans of various ages and cultural backgrounds. The results suggest that, while these communities share a keen awareness of AD, beliefs regarding the disorder may be influenced at least as strongly by folk wisdom and culturally acceptable partial truths as by scientific information.     

Symbols,sentiments, and stories: Urban culture and social problems

Cultural approaches to the study of urban life have enjoyed brief bursts of popularity within the social sciences over the past century. Although many urban sociologists acknowledge that meanings, symbols, narratives, and feelings, in other words local culture, help shape urban places, relatively few take this notion any further. In this article, I first lay out the foundations of cultural approaches to the study of urban life. Second, I argue for the continued significance of the distinction between space and place. Third, I describe a contemporary stream of urban sociology called the urban culturalist perspective. Fourth, I describe important insights gleaned from studies embracing cultural urbanist approaches to an area of urban research receiving increasing attention: gentrification. Fifth, and finally, I outline a few ways in which micro‐cultural investigations of urban phenomena provide useful opportunities for public sociology.     

Class,culture, and structure: Stratification and mechanisms of omnivorousness

In this article, I discuss cultural omnivorousness through a structural framework. Omnivorousness is one of two theoretical approaches to class and culture, together with homology. In its original formulation, the omnivore thesis postulates that diversity, rather than exclusion, becomes the principle of cultural distinction: while the upper classes combine legitimate and illegitimate tastes and lifestyles, the lower classes remain restricted to illegitimate culture. The recent literature conceptualizes and operationalizes omnivorousness in two ways: first, as indicators of cultural diversity, second, as the multiplicity of logics structuring cultural fields. Omnivorousness is stratified along lines of class, specifically, education and social mobility, age and generation, and gender. Lastly, omnivorousness is associated with major, yet ambiguous shifts in Western cultural and social structures, including transformations of cultural production, pathways to democratization, normative beliefs about cosmopolitanism, and educational expansion.     

The organizational shaping of collective identity: The case of lesbian and gay film festivals in New York

Using information gathered during fieldwork on New York lesbian and gay film festival organizations, this paper argues that scholarship on identity has not paid sufficient attention to the organizational mediation of collective identity. The shape of collective identity—how internal instabilities and diversities are accommodated, in this case—depends not only on the emergent characteristics of the “collective,” but also on the resolution of challenges particular to organizational fields. Two very differently conceived lesbian and gay festival organizations, sites at which decision making about collective identity is ongoing and self-conscious, are examined. The analysis traces how each responds to two related tasks: maintaining community legitimacy, which requires racial diversification, and surviving within an altered institutional environment. Rather than imposition from “above” or construction from “below,” the adaptive responses by organizations (to changes in both community expectations and the resource environment) transform the collective identity formulations reaching public visibility. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Colloquium Series of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York, 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, 1995.