Jenseits des S?kularisierungsparadigmas?

Charles Taylor??s book A Secular Age is a widely appraised alternative to the classical paradigm of secularization theory. This article situates this alternative theory within the debate of sociology of religion on secularization and its sub-components. Three requirements are formulated that alternative conceptions would have to met. First, they need to understand why ?secularity?? became such a prominent category of self interpretation in modern societies. Second, they have to be able to integrate years of cumulative sociological research on sub-processes of secularization with findings on genuinely modern forms of religious vitality emphasized by the classical paradigm??s critics. And in light of on-going debates over multiple modernities, they would need to describe and explain the varieties of differentiation in societal and cultural comparison. In critical discussion of Charles Taylor??s contribution, the limits of culturalist theories of modern secularity as well as some tasks for historical-sociological research on religion in modernity are identified.     

Fragments of development: Nation, gender, and the space of modernity

Imagine any process of economic development. How do the social,political, and economic interact in your imaginary development?Who is active and who is passive? What stands in the way? Howis success or failure measured? Who is then credited or blamed?The ways that we think about development are at least partiallyreflective of essentialist constructions that have been producedby societal and theoretical discourses. Bergeron has examinedboth mainstream and critical bodies of literature and emergedwith a powerful set of observations regarding these constructions. The discursive analyses in Fragments of Development demonstrate     

Fragments of development: Nation, gender, and the space of modernity

Imagine any process of economic development. How do the social,political, and economic interact in your imaginary development?Who is active and who is passive? What stands in the way? Howis success or failure measured? Who is then credited or blamed?The ways that we think about development are at least partiallyreflective of essentialist constructions that have been producedby societal and theoretical discourses. Bergeron has examinedboth mainstream and critical bodies of literature and emergedwith a powerful set of observations regarding these constructions. The discursive analyses in Fragments of Development demonstrate     

Gender‐Related Violence and Young People: An Overview of Italian,Irish, Spanish,UK and EU Legislation

Do laws regarding violence against or sexual exploitation of young people recognise gendered and other power dynamics? Cross‐national comparison of legal texts can illustrate the benefits of framing issues of violence/gender/youth in certain ways and offer critical reflection on particular legal frameworks or cultural understandings. This policy review is based on an analysis of select laws regarding gender‐related violence (GRV) as relates to young people in Italy, Ireland, Spain and the UK. Here, GRV is defined as sexist, sexualising or norm‐driven bullying, harassment, discrimination or violence whoever is targeted. It therefore includes gender, sexuality and sex‐gender normativities, as well as violence against women and girls. A tension emerges between granting young people agency and recognising the multiple, intersecting power relations that might limit and shape that agency. This article draws out the implications for the UK in particular, highlighting the absence of preventative measures and the need for a broader approach to combat GRV.     

Age,religious beliefs,and sexual attitudes

Age effects on sexual attitudes were examined using the Hendrick and Hendrick (1987a) Sexual Attitude Scale. The study was cross‐sectional, including people from various age groups, from young adults to older adults. The religious beliefs variable, which covaries substantially both with age and sexual attitudes, was controlled. Three main questions guided the study: (a) Is the four‐factor structure (Permissiveness, Instrumentality, Communion, and Sexual Practices) previously identified in a sample of young students able to accurately account for data gathered over a full range of adult ages, (b) are older adults much less permissive and less instrumentalist than young people, and (c) to what extent are believers less permissive and instrumentalist than young people when age is taken into account? Factor analyses showed that at least five correlated factors were needed to account for the data; the fourth factor, Sexual Practices, divided itself into two distinct factors: Pleasure and Responsibility. Older adults and believers were shown to be less permissive than young people and nonbelievers, and this result held regardless of the participants’ educational level. As regards to instrumentality, however, the pattern of differences was extremely complex.     

Lesbian and bisexual women in Cuba: family,rights, and policy

This article draws on interviews with 17 self-identified lesbian and bisexual women living in Havana, Cuba, focusing on state support for their family relationships. It examines some of the tensions and contradictions between international and national policy, and societal norms, some of which support LGBT people, and some of which do not. In many ways, Cuba is progressive and has actively protected women’s rights. However, non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming women appear to have been somewhat overlooked in the gains of the Revolution, as there are few specific policies protecting their rights. The key policy points participants raised were the need for same-sex marriage and the lack of assisted reproduction for those in same-sex relationships. Nonetheless, Cuba’s traditional non-nuclear family forms also provide some social space for LGBT parents and queer families.     

Can the Secular Be the Object of Belief and Belonging? The Sunday Assembly

In public discourse and much sociological research individuals are considered secular if they do not hold religious beliefs or belong to any religious group. But can the secular itself become an object of both belief and belonging? Can secular people develop self-understanding and existential purpose in communal contexts that engage a religious model? To explore these questions I investigated the Sunday Assembly, a new network of secular congregations. Based on two years of research including fieldwork at the London, San Diego, and Chicago Assemblies, in-depth interviews with 21 Assemblers, and analysis of video-recorded Assembly services, this study examines the interactional, meaning-making dynamics of what I term communal secularity. I explore the broader question of belief, morality, and belonging in an increasingly complex secular-religious landscape through an analysis of the congregational activity of this newest iteration of the growing secular community. Having distilled thematic categories from an inductive analysis of the talk, practice, and other elements of congregational culture at the Sunday Assembly, this study reveals the social interactions, functions, and symbolic practices that frame participants experiences and express secular values and belief systems. I argue the secular can become an object of a nonsupernaturalist sacred, and that congregants engage interactions and meaning structures, both explicitly and implicitly, that parallel, coalesce with, and in several ways depart from, traditional religious congregations. My research reveals how secular beliefs can both function and fulfill in ways typically credited to religion. As such, the secular should not refer exclusively to the lack of religiosity, but should acknowledge the diversity of contemporary secular forms, some of which embrace a religious character. Implications of communal secularity for the broader community are discussed, and I suggest additional vistas of research as part of the emerging scholarly literature in this area.     

Community participation and inclusion: people with disabilities defining their place

Disability‐related public policy currently emphasises reducing the number of people experiencing exclusion from the spaces of the social and economic majority as being the pre‐eminent indicator of inclusion. Twenty‐eight adult, New Zealand vocational service users collaborated in a participatory action research project to develop shared understandings of community participation. Analysis of their narratives suggests that spatial indices of inclusion are quiet in potentially oppressive ways about the ways mainstream settings can be experienced by people with disabilities and quiet too about the alternative, less well sanctioned communities to which people with disabilities have always belonged. Participants identified five key attributes of place as important qualitative antecedents to a sense of community belonging. The potential of these attributes and other self‐authored approaches to inclusion are explored as ways that people with disabilities can support the policy objective of effecting a transformation from disabling to inclusive communities.     

An African-American woman with disabilities: the intersection of gender, race and disability

This qualitative study explores the educational experiences of an African‐American adult woman with disabilities. The intersections of gender, race and disability are theorized through the lenses of disability, feminist and critical theory. Specifically, I address the following three questions. What are the experiences of an African‐American woman with disabilities in schools? How might these experiences be theorized? Do these experiences offer new ways of understanding oppression that may contribute to empowering individuals labeled with multiple, intersecting identities?     

Intimate circuits: modernity,migration and marriage among post‐Soviet women in Turkey

The study of migration too often ignores the ways that labour migrants' emotional entanglements and complicated personal relationships factor into their experiences of being people on the move. In examining post‐Soviet migrant women's relationships with Turkish men and the ways these are regulated in Turkey, in this article I consider how intimate practices of marriage and performances of ‘love’ have emerged as key aspects of transnational mobility. These intimate practices both enable long‐term transnational circuits between post‐Soviet homelands and Turkey, and attest to the way global capitalism is redefining personal lives.     

One of a Kind,or All of One Kind? Groups of Political Participants and Their Distinctive Outlook on Society

Political participation can take shape in many types of participation, between which the overlap is low. However, the similarities and differences between various types of participants are surprisingly understudied. In this article, I propose to differentiate between four types of participants: institutional political participants, non-institutional political participants, civic participants, and political consumers. These types differ from each other on two dimensions: whether they are political or publicly oriented and whether they are formally or informally organized. Building on the matching hypothesis, I argue that we should differentiate those four types of participants by their outlook on society (societal pessimism, political trust, and social trust). Using data from the European Social Survey 2006, including participants from 19 countries, logistic regressions show that institutional political participants trust politics rather than people, non-institutional political participants are societal pessimists who trust other people, civic participants are societal optimists who trust other people, and political consumers are pessimists who do not trust politics.     

Uncompensated emotional labor,racial battle fatigue,and (in)civility in digital spaces

Emotional labor was originally theorized by Arlie Hochschild in the context of domestic labor. Since her early theorization, popular culture and social scientists have adopted the term to refer to emotion work that is exhibited in a manner of financially compensated social settings. Emotional labor refers to the process by which individuals are expected to conform to a set of societal guidelines, ensuring that their emotions conform to that performance. As the use of social media grows, emotional labor plays an increasing role in the lives of people of color—across media platforms. We frame the ever‐present negotiation involved in racialized interactions online as a type of uncompensated emotional labor that results in racial battle fatigue. Next, we position emotional labor as an intrinsic part of the experience for social media users of color because digital media is by default a White, racialized space. Lastly, we argue that current research on civility does not account for the emotional labor of people of color. We offer an original view of uncompensated emotional labor that is inclusive of cross‐platform, racialized emotional labor that can result in racial battle fatigue.     

Intergenerational Theory in Society

ABSTRACT

Now that the 21st century is underway, society is changing more rapidly than ever. People of all ages are facing new kinds of psychological and interpersonal issues. They are living longer and pioneering new kinds of family patterns and relationships. Given this, then, how can intergenerational programs and relationships both adapt to these new contexts and serve to help people better meet these new societal demands and changes? This article extends, deepens and elaborates upon earlier efforts by describing new societal trends that affect people in the life span, selecting some relevant concepts, exploring them, and suggesting how they might enhance our understanding. Given that this is the postmodern age in which there are questions rather than answers, the discussion of each concept ends with questions for future theory construction.     

Underground Markets as Fields in Transition: Sex Work in New York City

Most ethnographers visualize their fieldwork study vis‐à‐vis their long‐term commitment to a bounded sociospatial context—an “ecology.” In this manner, the majority of ethnographic studies are presented as studies not only of practices but also of recognizable physical ecologies that breathe life into the practices—for example, homes, ghettos, firms, schools, and so on. In the pages that follow, I consider the ways in which the status of place has shifted in urban sex work. The shifting commerce of sexual services in New York enables me to open up a set of methodological issues about the role of space in ethnographic work. One in particular is at the core of this paper: namely, because so many ethnographic labors begin with the selection of a field site, what conceptual issues arise that fieldworkers must pay attention to vis‐à‐vis that decision? For example, the field site may change, the field site may itself be shaped by wider societal forces, and it may be simply dissolve over time. How does any of this impact a technique that is premised on the dependability of “sitting” so that others may be dependably followed? I draw on the notion of “strategic action fields” to present an alternative analytic framework, one more useful for the challenges ethnographers face.     

Polarized Scientists? Exploring Political Differences about Religion and Science among U.S. Biologists and Physicists1

From the Texas textbook debate to the March for Science, visible displays of activism illuminate how deeply politicized the science‐religion interface has become. However, little is known about the extent to which scientists’ attitudes about science and religion are politicized. Using original survey data from 1,989 U.S. academic biologists and physicists, we examine the degree to which political views shape how scientists perceive the relationship between religion and science, religious authority, their personal religious identity, and views on dominant scientific theories. Findings suggest that, indeed, the science‐religion interface holds political meaning for scientists, but in different ways across the political spectrum. Specifically, for politically liberal scientists, atheism and the conflict narrative are particularly politicized belief structures, while politically conservative scientists emphasize religious identity to distinguish themselves from political liberals. Findings point to the critical role of politics in shaping scientists’ attitudes and identities, which may have implications for the scientific enterprise, both at the lab bench and in the political sphere.     

Resilience and risk factors associated with experiencing childhood sexual abuse

The effects of child sexual abuse are wide‐ranging and impact on children, families and health/social care systems. The authors review this literature, examining the shortcomings of the ‘victim–offender’ model, and consider the complex, multifactorial nature of this question. Factors associated with a progression from victim to perpetrator are explored and the prevalence of abuse in the general population is also discussed. Protective as well as risk factors are considered and the pivotal role of ‘personal reliance’ is considered as it relates to empowering damaged young people to become healthy adults. The authors also discuss implications for the treatment of young people who become abusers. Two case examples are brie?y reported upon and the article concludes with a consideration of ways to helpfully address the needs of children who become sexual perpetrators. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

'Learning Difficulties', the Social Model of Disability and Impairment: Challenging epistemologies

Critical researchers enter into an investigation with their assumptions on the table, so no one is confused concerning the epistemological and political baggage they bring with them to the research site (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1998, p. 265). A theory of disability as oppression recognises and, in the present context, emphasies the social origins of impairment. (Abberley, 1987, in Barton and Oliver, 1997, p176, my emphasis.) Identification with the label of 'learning difficulties' has contradictory personal and political implications for people so-labelled. While this identification has allowed people to organise collectively through the self-advocacy movement, pervasive understandings of 'learning difficulties' that permeate many societal settings tend to be framed in ways that directly confirm a personal tragedy model of disability and impairment. This paper argues for a reconsideration of impairment in relation to 'learning difficulties', to challenge pervasive assumptions in relation to 'learning difficulties' - at the level of epistemology - and to construct four inclusive epistemological foundations . The first, deconstructing impairment , draws upon a body of literature that has exposed the social nature of diagnostic criteria and destabilised naturalised notions of 'learning difficulties'. The second, impairment, as storied , brings in the accounts of people with 'learning difficulties' that locate impairment in, and as, personal and social narratives. Thirdly, reculturising impairment highlights emergent resilient cultures of people with 'learning difficulties' that re-culturise impairment. Fourthly, epistemological impacts , grounds the analysis by calling for an attention to the ways in which assumptions about the origins of 'learning difficulties' impact upon the treatment of people so-labelled.     

‘Scarier than another storm’: values at risk in the mapping and insuring of US floodplains

How do people respond to the ways in which insurance mediates environmental risks? Socio‐cultural risk research has characterized and analyzed the experiential dimension of risk, but has yet to focus on insurance, which is a key institution shaping how people understand and relate to risk. Insurance not only assesses and communicates risk; it also economizes it, making the problem on the ground not just one of risk, but also of value. This article addresses these issues with an investigation of the social life of the flood insurance rate map, the central technology of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), as it grafts a new landscape of ‘value at risk’ onto the physical and social world of New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Like other risk technologies, ubiquitous in modern societies as decision‐making and planning tools, the map disseminates information about value and risk in order to tame uncertainty and enable prudent action oriented toward the future. However, drawing together interview, ethnographic, and documentary data, I find that for its users on the ground, the map does not simply measure ‘value at risk’ in ways that produce clear strategies for protecting property values from flooding. Instead, it puts values‐beyond simply the financial worth of places‐at risk, as well as implicates past, present, and future risks beyond simply flooding. By informing and enlarging the stakes of what needs protecting, and from what, I argue that plural and interacting ‘values at risk’ shape how people live with and respond to environmental risks that are mediated by insurance technologies.     

An equal distance? Individualisation,gender and intimacy in distance relationships

Intimacy is usually thought to require physical proximity as a prerequisite, so how are intimate relationships maintained when partners do not live their daily lives in the same place? Couples who are frequently apart are not an entirely new phenomenon, but the dual‐career, dual‐household couples examined in this pilot study of contemporary distance relationships illustrate new ways of relating. This paper will explore these new ways of relating in terms of debates about the impact of individualisation processes on intimacy. It is argued that the extension of such processes to women has been limited. Ways of being intimate at a distance may offer alternative formulations of gender and power, but the rationalised timetabling necessary to maintain such relationships imposes new gendered constraints with bodily and emotional consequences.     

Professional Socialization as Embedded Elaborations: Experience,Institutions, and Professional Culture Throughout Teacher Careers

Across a wide range of studies on professional socialization, there is a shared assumption that people carry forward what they learn in formal training experiences and somehow bring it to bear on the subsequent organizational settings they enter. Yet we actually know very little about whether, and exactly how, people carry forward the meanings they develop as part of their professional socialization experience. We address this gap in the literature by examining professional socialization that unfolds over the teaching career. Combining interview data with public and private school teachers across career stages with ethnographic data of a university‐based teacher education program, we examine how the meanings people develop about their work are shaped concomitantly by accumulated experience and institutional settings. We develop a conceptualization of professional socialization that we call embedded elaborations, which attends to the ways that people's ongoing meaning making (or elaborations) is situated (or embedded) institutionally and temporally. We also show how embedded elaborations act as meaning‐making processes through which people in local settings actively produce and reproduce elements of a wider professional culture.