“The Guilt Thing”: Balancing Domestic and Professional Roles

Women’s representation in the workforce has increased dramatically over the past 30 years; yet, women “take a greater responsibility for the care of children” ( Equal Opportunities Commission, 2006 ). Research has suggested working mothers may experience guilt resulting from the social constrictions of a traditional model of intensive mothering ( B. Holcomb, 1998 ). Forty‐two audiotaped conversations of female teachers (n = 8) were collected in a British high school. Qualitative analyses of 3 conversations, in which 5 of the teachers discussed their professional and domestic responsibilities, demonstrated that the participants discursively aligned to 3 dominant interactional positions, accessibility, happiness, and separate spheres ( Y. Elvin‐Novak & H. Thomsson, 2001 ). The analyses also revealed the use of supportive conversational strategies such as co‐complaining and matching accounts.     

Education,Work and Family Decision Making: Finding the “Right Time” to Have a Baby*

Cet article étudie les liens entre les choix d'études et de carrière, et la décision d'avoir des enfants chez un échantillon de femmes ayant un diplôme universitaire. La recherche présentée ici tente d'inter-préter les résultats tirés d'une étude longitudinale sur les diplô-mées des universités de l'Alberta et du recensement de 1991, selon lesquels les femmes qui travaillent dans les secteurs traditionnels tels que l'éducation et les sciences infirmières sont plus nombreuses à avoir des enfants dans la trentaine que les diplômées dans des domaines plus nouveaux. L'article décrit les expériences d'un échantillon de femmes envisageant ou vivant la maternité dans divers milieux de travail, traditionnels ou non. Tout en reconnais-sant les effets probables de la socialisation des rapports entre les hommes et les femmes sur les choix professionnels et familiaux, l'article suggère que l'organisation du travail influe concrètement sur la décision d'enfanter. This paper examines the relationship between educational and occupational choices, and decisions about having children, among a sample of university-educated women. The research described here attempts to interpret the finding, evident in a longitudinal panel study of Alberta university graduates as well as in the 1991 Census, that a higher proportion of women in traditional fields like education or nursing have children by their thirties than do graduates of more non-traditional fields. The paper reports the experiences of a sample of women as they deal with the possibility, or the reality, of motherhood in a variety of traditional and non-traditional workplaces. While acknowledging the probable effects of gender socialization both on occupational choices and on family intentions, the paper suggests that the organization of work also materially affects reproductive decision making.     

Fear and Loathing on Reality Television: An Analysis of “America's Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries”*

From early newspapers to contemporary television drama, the media demonstrate a continuing fascination with crime. Two recent television programs, “America's Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” claim to offer a different treatment of crime in that these programs dramatize “real” crimes and encourage the television audience to assist in locating fugitives. Content analysis of the programs reveals that depictions of crime are consistent with television crime drama, and that these dramatizations resemble urban legends in which crime symbolizes the uncertainties of modern life. The programs convey an unpredictable world filled with unsafe people and places. This sense of modern danger justifies the programs' solicitation of audience participation through surveillance.     

Your Eyes Say “No,” But Your Heart Says “Yes”: Behavioral and Psychophysiological Indices in Infant Quantitative Processing

Behavioral indices (e.g., infant looking) are predominantly used in studies of infant cognition, but psychophysiological measures have been increasingly integrated into common infant paradigms. The current study reports a result in which behavioral measures and physiological measures were both incorporated in a task designed to study infant number discrimination. Seven‐month‐old infants were habituated to several sets of stimuli varying in object type, but of a constant numerical value (either two or three items). Although looking time to each of the test trials revealed no differences, differences in heart rate defined measures of attention revealed infants’ ability to discriminate number. These findings imply that the inclusion of indices other than behavioral measures should become commonplace in studies of infant cognition.     

“Sensory Ordering” in Nurses' Clinical Decision‐Making: Making Visible Senses,Sensing, and “Sensory Work” in the Hospital

The objective of this article is to present a study on the constitutive role of senses in clinical decision‐making. The methodology is based on a series of focus groups with nurses in various hospital departments. Based on a narrative approach, our study examines “sensory work” in clinical decision‐making in order to reveal its specificity in the clinical work of nurses. Nurses shared stories—in focus groups—about the influence of senses in clinical decision‐making. The analysis of clinical narratives helped to identify various situations revealing the “sensory work” that underlines clinical decision‐making. We put the emphasis on the spectrum of sensory activities and the interactions occurring during a clinical decision‐making. One specific contribution of our study is to make visible the “sensory ordering” at work as constituted by interactions between nurses during a clinical assessment.     

“Earn Your Penny Elsewhere”: Banishment,Migrant Laborers,and Sociospatial Exclusion in Sixteenth‐Century Ulm*

Abstract The town council in Ulm, Germany banished over a thousand offenders in the course of the sixteenth century. Examination of the banishment verdicts issued by these magistrates reveals how they used expulsion to regulate both the physical borders of their territory and inclusion in the urban commune. In banishment cases involving resident aliens, the local authorities sought to expel resident aliens who seemed to threaten the community's property or its purity, using purgation to police the margin between legal and physical inclusion and exclusion. Finally, the local magistrates used the public expulsion rituals that accompanied banishment to display their role in regulating these boundaries before their subjects.     

“FOI POR ACASO”*:

Everyone knows that most of the things that happen to them happen “by accident,” and this is particularly true of the things that are most important to us, like our choice of a career or a mate. Yet social science theory looks for determinate causal relationships, which do not give an adequate account of this thing that “everyone knows.” If we take the idea of “it happened by chance” seriously, we need a quite different kind of research and theory than we are accustomed to.     

“Revenge” and “Rescue”: Workplace Deviance in the Taxicab Industry*

This study explores taxicab drivers’ acts of “revenge” and “rescue,” some of which are expressive acts, while others are more instrumental. This article builds on earlier theories of workplace deviance, demonstrating how deviance can serve different purposes and expanding the concept of “deviance admiration” ( Heckert and Heckert 2004 ). It examines deviance in a circumstance—the taxicab industry—which introduces a tension between mandated conformity and necessary deviance: employees must conform to the employers’ rules and yet, to accomplish their jobs well, they need to abandon those rules occasionally. In addition to its theoretical contributions, this work has important practical applications for managers.     

“It's the Money,Honey”: The Economy of Sex Work in the Maritimes*

Cet article se fonde sur une série d'interviews menés auprès de 60 travailleurs du sexe dans trois villes des Provinces maritimes. Nous avons trouvé que ces travailleurs prenaient souvent des décisions prudentes entre les choix économiques, notamment le travail a salaire minimal ou le bien‐être social, ou entre le travail sexuel de maison ou de rue. Les interviews révélaient des modèles de résistance à l'endroit des structures économiques dominantes comparables aux modèles d'autres travailleurs des Maritimes. Comprendre les travailleurs du sexe comme travailleurs resistants nous permet de voir que beaucoup de leurs soucis tournent autour du maintien et/ou de l'augmentation de leur indépendance comme travailleurs, de leur capacité de maîtriser le rythme et le prix de leur travail, et de leurs conditions de travail. This paper is based on interviews with 60 sex workers in three Maritime cities. We found that sex workers often made careful decisions between the economic choices–including minimum‐wage work or welfare–and between indoor or street‐based sex work. Patterns of resistance to dominant economic structures that are comparable to other workers in the Maritimes emerged from the interviews. Understanding sex workers as resistant workers allows us to see that many of their concerns revolve around maintaining and/or increasing their independence as workers, their control over the pace and price of their labour, and the conditions of their work.     

Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work”

Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary‐work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.     

“Instinct” in Sport Journalism: A Case of Value-added Attribution*

In their roles of reality mediator and expert interpreter, sport journalists invoke the term “instinct” to explain successful athletic performances. This study of journalistic uses of instinct (N = 41) identifies three elements–ability, experience, and cognition–which comprise instinct. Theoretically, instinct is a journalistic attribution of stable, internally-located success, the elements of which can be combined into a value-added sequence. Insights from symbolic interactionism enhance understanding instinct in relationship to the broader, cultural significance of American sport.     

Shifting Worlds of Strangers: Medium Theory and Changes in “Them” Versus “Us”*

Macrolevel analyses of the influence of different communication technologies are more difficult to test and apply than the results of focused studies of particular media messages. Nevertheless, “medium theory” is of potentially great significance because it outlines how media, rather than functioning simply as channels for conveying information between two or more social environments, are themselves social contexts that foster certain forms of interaction and social identities. This article uses a medium-theory perspective to address one variable related to “technological communities”—the changing boundaries between “them” and “us.” The ways in which oral, print, and electronic modes of communication each foster a different balance between strangers and “familiars” are outlined.     

Community Policing and “John Schools”*

De nos jours, la police a déjà subi et continue de subir des changements dans sa philosophie et sa pratique fondamentales. Des zones de contrôle social auparavant laissées dans L'ombre par la police sont maintenant regroupées sous L'expression « police communautaire «. Le contrôle de la prostitution, bien qu'il soit traditionnellement axé sur les travailleuses du sexe, a récemment été ramené sous le parapluie de la police communautaire par le biais de méthodes parti‐culières. Cet article examine la police de quartier et son rôle élargi en prenant pour exemple les « John schools » ou programmes de traitement pour les clients de prostituées. Ces programmes, en tant que police communautaire en pratique, mettent en relief les difficultés de cette approche en général et, plus particulièrement, celles de la prostitution. Policing today has gone through and continues to undergo changes in its basic philosophy and practice. Areas of social control previously ignored by police are now included under the rhetoric of “community policing.” Control of prostitution activity, although an historical mainstay of policing directed primarily at female sex workers, has recently been subsumed under the umbrella of community policing through particular methods aimed at its control. This paper examines community policing and the expanded police role through the example of “John schools” or prostitution offender programs. As community policing in practice, such prostitution offender programs highlight the difficulties of the community policing approach generally, and the policing perspective on prostitution more specifically.     

Between “Here” and “There”: Immigrant Cross‐Border Activities and Loyalties

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the prevalence and determinants of cross‐state social exchanges and attachments among Latin American immigrants living in the United States. As we shall show, using data from a recent survey of Latin American migrants living in the United States, migrant cross‐state social action comes in a variety of types, with the direction of conditioning factors differing from one type to another. Moreover, social and political incorporation in the United States reduces affective ties and provision of material support, all the while facilitating other forms of cross‐state social action. Consequently, while international migrants regularly engage in trans‐state social action, the paper shows that neither transnationalism as condition of being, nor transmigrants, as distinctive class of people, is commonly found.     

“Canada's Most Notorious Bad Mother”: The Newspaper Coverage of the Jordan Heikamp Inquest*

Lcar;auteure de cet article se penche sur la couverture médiatique de l'enquête portant sur un enfant mort de faim dans une maison d'hébergement pour femmes sans‐abri, en 1997 à Toronto. Elle étudie l'utilité d'utiliser le discours sur les mères conjuguéà celui sur l'individualisation de la responsabilité pour comprendre pourquoi une certaine interprétation de ce cas s'est emparée de l'imagination du public et a imprégné les comptes rendus des médias. Examiner comment l'image de la mère de cet enfant a été construite en celle de la « mauvaise » mère aide à comprendre comment les notions hégémoniques de la « bonne « mère sont renforcées et perpétuées. Cependant, l'invocation des idéaux de la maternité nous empêche de voir la réalité des expériences des autres concernant la maternité ainsi que le fait que, pour plusieurs, il existe des barrières et des restrictions à l'idéal des bons soins maternels. This article is an examination of the media coverage of the inquest into the 1997 starvation death of an infant in a homeless women's shelter in Toronto. It explores the usefulness of using the discourse of mothering, intersected with the individualization of responsibility, to understand why one interpretation of this case seized the imagination of the public and informed media accounts. Examining how the mother of this infant was constructed as a “bad” mother helps to understand how hegemonic notions of “good” mothering are reinforced and perpetuated. The invocation of the ideals of motherhood, however, prevents us from seeing the reality of others' experiences of motherhood and the fact that, for many, there are barriers and restrictions to the ideal of good mothering.     

Making It “Count”: Mental Weighing and Identity Attribution

Research on identity suggests that a critical factor in identity concerns presentation or the behaviors actors perform in order to convince others of their identity. Yet identity also involves the attributions others make on the basis of these behaviors. In this paper, I argue that all acts do not fare equally in the process of attribution. Rather, individuals making attributions engage in a process of mental weighing as a way to determine which acts “count” toward identity and to what extent. While various components of the act contribute to its social weight—its presence or absence, markedness, frequency, context, and the manner in which it is performed—the lens through which the attributer views the act also influences the weighing process.     

Representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the Discourse of Lafcadio Hearn Studies

The purpose of this article is to analyze representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” in the discourse of research on Lafcadio Hearn (“Hearn studies”) from pre‐war Japan. The nature and construction of nationality will be analyzed by examining where the representations of “the West,”“Japan,” and “the Periphery” intersected. During the 1900s, researchers in the field of Hearn studies recognized that “Japan” lacked—and thus sought—a universality similar to what existed in “the West.” The tone of the discourse shifted during the 1910s through 1920s however, and what came to be emphasized was “Japan's” peculiarity. By the 1930s through 1940s, “Japan” aimed to show to “the West” a new universality that was different from what existed in Europe and America. Yet simultaneously, in order to legitimize its representation of its self, “Japan” portrayed “the Periphery” as an object that was both excluded and absorbed or appropriated into that image. On the one hand, “Japan” received and internalized the Orientalist viewpoint of “the West.” In fact, “Japan” was always conscious of its self‐image as something to display to “the West.” On the other hand, in order to create that self‐portrayal, both a representation of “the Periphery” and a reflection from that same “Periphery” were essential. While representations of “Japan” were produced, reproduced, and reinforced through interactions with “the West” and “the Periphery,” the intersecting behavior of these three entities also points to a residual ambiguity in “Japan's” nationality. By analyzing the discourse in Hearn studies, this paper reveals how the interaction between “Japan” and the two others of “the West” and “the Periphery” helped construct and destabilize its nationality.     

“His” and “her” marriage expectations: Determinants and consequences

This article uses couple‐level data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N= 2,263) to investigate factors associated with unmarried parents’ expectations about marriage and the association between their expectations and subsequent union transitions. In most couples, both partners expect to marry, and their shared expectations are the strongest predictor of marriage and separation following their child's birth. Although men's expectations are somewhat more consequential for union transitions, marriage and relationship stability are more likely when at least one parent expects to marry. Factors such as children from previous relationships, distrust, conflict, and shared activities are also associated with union transitions. Findings about how expectations and other factors relate to marriage and separation may inform new marriage promotion initiatives.