Love the Sin—Pedagogy,Pupils, and Psychology Commentary on Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pelligrini

This article examines the author's reactions to teaching Janet Jakobsen's and Ann Pellegini's Love the Sin in a course titled “Contemporary Issues in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies” at Dartmouth College. He examines not only the students' reactions and the points at which they can or cannot grasp the book's arguments, but also his own responses to their reactions. At the center of the essay is his realization that the students, having been brought up in a liberal mode of “tolerance,” have little access to Jakobsen and Pellegrini's social or political concept of “sexual freedom”; and, while they completely eschew state regulation of sexuality, they do not view it as an essential human right, but rather as a private matter.     

Financial capacity and sustainability of ordinary nonprofits

This article divides financial issues into capacity and sustainability in two time frames: long and short. Long term emphasizes maintaining services; short term emphasizes resiliency. An organization's long‐term financial capacity is sustainable if its rate of change is sufficient to maintain assets at their replacement cost. A key contribution of this study is a sustainability principle that gives managers short‐term budget surplus targets needed to achieve this objective. The formulas are applied to national data to give a picture of the sector and establish benchmarks for “normal” practice. “Ordinary nonprofits” are active public charities without endowments that are not primarily membership associations or grant makers.     

Experimental Research As Practical Action: Stooge Detection And Bias*

A discussion of experimental research as practical action applies the ethnomethodological critique to research in experimental social psychology. While research on demand characteristics may meet some of the ethnomethodological criticisms, it may not provide a set of exemplars around which the practical activity of experimentation can be organized. “Stooge detection” is a practical problem often faced by experimenters. My data suggest that stooge detection may, in certain circumstances, be a member's strategy for dealing with a problematic experimental setting. This view has implications for notions of experimental “bias”.     

The primacy of mediated action in sociocultural studies

After a brief overview of the reasons for using “sociocultural,” as opposed to “cultural‐historical,” “sociohistorical,” or some other term, it is argued that an adequate account of the agenda for sociocultural research must be grounded in the notion of “mediated action.” Drawing on the writings of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and others it is argued that mediated action must be understood as involving an irreducible tension between the mediational means provided by the sociocultural setting, on the one hand, and the unique, contextualized use of these means in carrying out particular concrete actions, on the other. In this view, any attempt to reduce the basic unit of analysis of mediated action to the mediational means or to the individual in isolation is misguided. It is suggested that by using mediated action as a unit of analysis the human sciences will be in a better position to address some of today's most pressing social issues.     

On the Centrality of Action: Social Science,Historical Logics,and Max Weber's Legacy

This article draws attention to the fundamental centrality of “action” – i.e. symbolically constituted behavior – for the historical and social sciences. The work of Max Weber and contemporary American historian and theorist William H. Sewell, Jr. are examined, so as to shed light on the debate concerning social science's central subject matter as well as on the implications of this work for sociological and historical theory. The examination of Sewell's view leverages the importance of the concept of action underlying Weber's concept of “social action.” Weber's position on action and social action is of great interest not only to general theory but also to the field of cultural sociology, which has neglected to develop systematically upon the theoretical purchase Weber offers to it.     

“Good Manner of Dying” as a Normative Concept: “Autocide,”“Granny Dumping” and Discussions on Euthanasia/Death with Dignity in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the two characteristics of the way the issue of euthanasia/death with dignity has been discussed in Japan, compared with the situation in Europe and the USA. The two characteristics are: (i) that the concept of “euthanasia” is sharply distinguished from that of “death with dignity” in Japan in that the former only refers to the killing of a patient by administration of a lethal drug while the latter refers to letting a patient die by withholding or withdrawing life‐prolonging medical treatments; and (ii) that the view that it is sinful to commit suicide is not as common in Japan as it is in the West. In order to clarify these characteristics, I examine the nature of suicide and murder in relation to the issue of euthanasia and death with dignity while briefly reviewing the history of the debates in Japan in order to see how the characteristic understanding of “death with dignity” has generated. I also clarify, by giving examples, the structure of those narratives with regards to the “good manner of dying,” which excludes from society the elderly and people with incurable diseases and ones with motor and intellectual disabilities. In the end, I describe how biopolitics functions in the current Japanese situation.     

Homo colossus and the technological turn‐around

Unceasing technological advance is culturally defined as advantageous, but sociologists need to see it in ecological terms. Duncan's P.O.E.T notation heightens contrast between Ogburn's view of technology as a new environment and Park's attention to technologically extended people. Technologically colossal humans more rapidly exhaust carrying capacity—the maximum load an environment can sustain without undergoing degradation. Load has two dimensions (population, and per capita impacts). Until the industrial revolution reversed the effect, technology enlarged carrying capacity. Now technology enlarges per capita impacts and resource appetites. Homo colossus—man equipped with voracious technology—has reverted to hunting and gathering ("exploration and development") and his machines have become his ecological competitors. The number of people a finite world can support indefinitely is thus decreasing instead of increasing.     

LIFTING THE SPIRITS OF THE NATION: BRITISH BOXERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE NATIONAL SPORTING HERO AT THE TIME OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

In September 2003 a leading British broadsheet Sunday newspaper ran a leader headed “This Sporting Life” and “Cheers for two heroes of our time,” in which it acknowledged the ability of two current, young sporting heroes to “inspire hope” and “to lift the spirits of the nation.” Nearly 200 years ago, Tom Cribb, a pugilist, was similarly described as a “hero” and his exploits were described as having “national” significance after he had defeated a black pugilist from the United States. This essay uses contemporary sources to examine the life of Tom Cribb and the public response to him, and asks whether he was the first British national sporting hero and what characteristics he may share with modern sporting heroes. The National Sporting Hero (NSH) does not necessarily come from the same ethnic group that makes him a hero, but once acquired, the status is likely to last well beyond the normal sporting career and may last for life. A NSH will have had success against a formidable opponent and provoked feelings in the general public that develop from interest to admiration, pride, gratitude, and eventually affection and will also garner public recognition beyond those who normally follow sport and a willingness of the public to overlook personal flaws. This supports Richard Holt's view that unlike heroes from other spheres whose genius makes them appear “special creatures,” sporting heroes are seen to be “more like us.” Perhaps they give us hope and lift our spirits because we see in them ourselves, not perhaps as we are, but as we would like to be.     

Durkheim's cult of the individual as civil religion: Its appropriation by Erving Goffman

The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of the place of Durkheim's “cult of the individual” in Erving Goffman's sociology.¹ I have reviewed the most pertinent aspects of Durkheim's sociology of religion. This article discusses and/or analyzes the development of the cult of the individual primarily within the context of Durkheim's (1951) monograph on suicide; Durkheim's notions of sacred, profane, and ritual; Goffman's two‐pronged intellectual heritage; and Goffman's “Communication Conduct in an Island Community” (1953) with respect to several key Durkheimian concepts. Also discussed are several important secondary analyses—primarily those of Jurgen Habermas and Stanford Lyman—which help to further delineate the conditions of the Durkheim‐Goffman link. The final section applies Goffman's sociology to the case of Evangelicalism and “political civility.”     

Toward A Renewed Sociological Jurisprudence: From Roscoe Pound to Herbert Blumer and Beyond

This article, based on the Distinguished Lecture presented on August 21, 2001, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Anaheim, California, proposes a synthesis of Herbert Blumer's macrosociological perspective on the race question with Roscoe Pound's philosophy and science of law (i.e., his so‐called sociological jurisprudence), Joseph Tussman's and Jacobus tenBroek's juridical methodology, and Philip Selznick's sociology of responsive law. The compound so produced will help to establish a foundation for a praxiological sociology of American constitutional law. The article focuses on the problem of legislative‐made “classifications” and their relations to the legitimate public purposes entailed in the enactment of statutes, laws, and decrees. Such classifications become problematic when they are said to be “underinclusive,” “over‐inclusive,” or both in seeking to effect their aims. Strategic research sites for this issue are racial and ethnic classifications that single out one or a limited cluster of racial or ethnic groups for special benefits (“affirmative action”) or restitution (“reparations”). Calling for a reinvigoration of Pound's pragmatic approach to sociological jurisprudence, I show how Blumer's analysis of the “color line”—when seen in relation to the original intent of the makers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth post‐Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, using Tussman's and tenBroek's showing of how such categorizations might be both methodically evaluated and applied to the challenged classifications—provides grounds for reconsidering whether the latter are instances of “reverse discrimination” and, hence, violations of the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the law.” The science of law is a science of social engineering having to do with that part of the whole field which may be achieved by the ordering of human relations through the action of politically organized society. —Roscoe Pound, Justice According to Law We did not hold it necessary to wait for nature to put a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall not much longer hold it necessary to wait for nature to dig the legal canals that will give security to neglected human interests which clamor for recognition and protection. —Roscoe Pound, “Juristic Problems of National Progress”     

Interpretative Freedom and New Combination: The Way in Which the “Middle Class” Has Been Narrated

The English words “middle class” have experienced much more connotations and denotations—typically “bourgeoisie,” “white‐collar,” and professional—than any other class‐referring word since the latter half of the 18th century. On the one hand, in response to such diverse narrations during about two and a half centuries, I partially agree with some of the nominalistic theories of class, in that the middle classes were not created until they were named by contemporaries. On the other hand, my view diverges from those theories, in my asserting that the contemporaries have had an interpretative freedom to recognize “middle classes” only within the bounds of plausibility on the side of the realistic social world. The typical middle class in each period has emerged in such a way that Schumpeter's new combination is performed in a stage of recession by new entrepreneurs, who will move into the “middle” strata and hold some cultural leadership but still obtain inconsistent statuses, to be recognized as “middle class”ex post facto in a boom time. Two Kondratieff's cycles have had one recognition of the typical “middle class.” The new combination is one of the pressures bringing middle classes into a modern society, contrary to the so‐called class decomposition into the two poles.     

Rethinking Land Grab Ontology

The current bout of land annexation expresses a particular moment in modern history—specifically the condensation of a series of linked crises. Arguably the world is at an ecological tipping point, and how land resources are managed now is of paramount concern. Of course, land management has variable meaning, with quite different ontological consequences. The difference registers in the distinct visions expressed, for example, by the World Bank and the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur, Olivier de Schutter, regarding the implications of the land grab for global food security. While the bank proposes responsible investments in “land acquisition,” the rapporteur argues that this is a way of “responsibly destroying the world's peasantry.” The former, concerned with governing the rights of capital, expresses a form of neoproductivism, signaled in the concept of “sustainable intensification” increasingly underwritten by agribusiness. The latter, concerned with protecting the material rights of rural inhabitants, expresses an ontology centered on the sustainability of agroecological methods used by farmers who know and value their landscapes. More than simply alternative visions, these represent different responses to the combined food, energy, and climate crises, informing quite distinctive ontologies concerning the relationship between “food security,” environmental crisis, and land management, which I address in this article in terms of the “ecology of food security.”     

Max Weber's Science of Composition

Starting from the recently translated biography of Max Weber by Joachim Radkau, this essay re‐evaluates Weber's “science of reality” in relation to his personality, the cultural context of the early twentieth century, and the position of Weber's thought in the sociological canon. The argument progresses through sequentially enlarged analyses, which propose that Weber's general style of thinking is a type of dissonant composition that places emphasis on the many relationships between cultural reality and the concepts derived from it, and not as much on its content. The logic of such a compositional approach to reality is based on similar principles found in sound and music, which Weber in fact uses in a more latent as well as more active form, to pursue his aim of a style of thinking as “aesthetics of dissonance”. The latter is a sort of “methodological wedge” that pries open the many layers of reality. As such, Weber's “science of reality” is an early “classical” example of a recent and much needed call for a social science as the “art of listening”.     

How Do Heterosexual Undergraduate Students Define Having Sex? A New Approach to an Old Question

This study examined how people define having sex utilizing a new approach to this area of research. A total of 267 men and 327 women rated their degree of confidence that engaging in each of 21 physically intimate behaviors (e.g., penile-vaginal intercourse) counted as “having sex” and then qualitatively explained their reasoning. Separate ratings were made for each behavior when engaged in by the respondent and by his or her partner with someone else. Results showed that, as in previous studies, for both sexes, some behaviors (e.g., penile-vaginal intercourse) were far more confidently rated (i.e., “definitely sex”) than were others (e.g., oral-genital stimulation). Further, both men and women were significantly more certain that a behavior counted as “having sex” when considering their partner's behavior outside the relationship than when they considered their own behavior. Finally, the order in which the two scenarios (i.e., self versus partner) was presented significantly affected participants’ certainty. Qualitative results, paired with quantitative findings, suggest that individuals consider a variety of contextual factors when making these definitional decisions. The methodological and sexual health implications of these results are discussed.     

Three phase development of caring capacity in primary caregivers for relatives with Alzheimer's disease

Multiple, open-ended, qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 primary caregivers for relatives with Alzheimer's disease in order to describe caregiver self-development through the caregiving journey. Caregiver change is traced up to five years after the care recipient's death. Caregivers' capacity for caring was found to be at the core and to unfold in three phases: development of caring capacity for the care recipient, development of capacity for self-care, and development of caring capacity for others. The four elements of caring capacity (perception, motivation, competency, action) are expressed in relation to the care recipient, to the self, and to less familiar “others”. The caregiving experience tends also to prompt caregivers to become caregivers for humanity and to expand their sense of self. This may lead to the development of the altruistic self, which incorporates both a selfless concern for the welfare of others and a self-directed concern for one's own welfare.     

“Romancing with a Wealth or Detail” Narratives or Ernest Jones's 1906 Trial for Indecent Assault

In March 1906 Dr. (Alfred) Ernest Jones was put on trial for indecently assaulting two young “mentally defective” girls at a special school in South East London. Jones claimed it was “the most disagreeable experience in [his] life.” A detailed reconstruction of the trial, drawn from contemporaneous records, reveals significant flaws in Jones's autobiographical account. Reading those records in the light of early psychoanalytic theory and recent British “political” texts on child sexual abuse—from “Cleveland,” “Orkney,” and “Jason Dabbs” through to “Lost in Care”—helps illuminate the dominant medicolegal ideologies that informed Jones's trial. Adapting Leo Strauss's concept of persecution reveals how details of the children's allegations were occluded from the trial reports. A jigsaw reconstruction of these silences offers a restitutive narrative of the children's persecuted speech.     

The lobby as an arena in the confrontation between acceptance and denial of old age

In two anthropological studies on old-age institutions, the lobby is found to be an arena in which one may examine the styles that seniors use to cope with the end of life. The lobby seemingly symbolizes the socioexistential situation of today's elderly and gives us a credible view of two separate types of institutions: sheltered housing and the old-age home. The article examines three levels of context: the static “set” in the lobby, the traffic of tenants and others through it, and the extent of freedom in its access. The article concludes that each institutional context “promotes” a different style of coping. Sheltered-housing tenants cultivate a middle-aged identity in which they deny the fact that they are old; tenants of the old-age home accept the manifestations of old-age and conduct an overt discourse with death. The reality of life in an institution as one that forces people to cope with question of identity in old age creates an appropriate background for discussion of the costs and utilities of each style of coping.     

Coming Out of the Coffin: Life‐Self and Death‐Self in Six Feet Under

This article discusses how the dominant approach to life and death as binary structures in American society influences the social construction of the self. Through the analysis of the television series Six Feet Under, we identify two types of selves: a “life‐self” and a “death‐self.” Questioning this binary, we offer the concept of “transitory movements” to suggest instead that a “waltzing” movement between life and death endows the self with meaning and stands at the core of the self‐work of agents. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis for scholarship on the self and on the sociology of death.     

Ritual Power in Interaction*

Research (by a self-styled participant observer) into two fashions of persons—nurses and punks—lends unexpected significance to the ritual “frame” as this appears in Erving Goffman's thought. A new concept that was only implicit in Goffman's ritual frame is demanded by the research experiences. This is “ritual power.” Ritual power, especially when it is strong, is like “presence” or “possession”, and it may well exert a major claim on interactants' consciousnesses (whether the interactants are displaying it or appreciating it). Of course, it must follow that verbal forms which try to define ritual power will do so the more powerfully the more they arrest the reader's attention. So it may not be a good idea to use sociological rhetoric of any sort to suggest that punks and nurses are exemplary referents of “ritual power”, but this last possibility is only latent in what follows.     

Schooling a European Identity: ethno‐cultural exclusion and nationalist resonance within the EU policy of “The European dimension of education”

This article aims to explore how the role of education as an aide in the process of “European” identity formation is being articulated in the European Union's (EU) policy of “The European dimension of education”. After having located the EU's views on education in the context of the neo‐liberal discourse on economic globalization, the article goes on to trace EU discussions of the European dimension of education historically. Subsequently, it deliberates on the understanding of European culture and identity which the European dimension of education endeavours to advance. Here a critique is developed of the policy's ethno‐culturalism, thereby excluding delineation of a collective identity in the EU. Basing itself on a notion of cultural identity which, implicitly, includes only those who fit certain versions of European historical “roots” and cultural “heritage”, the policy, it is argued, impedes a discussion of how a trans‐ethnic identity formation could be created in today's EU. Towards the end of the article, a scrutiny of the European dimension's perception of the so‐called “language diversity” in the EU seeks to illustrate this issue further.