Primary Integration and Political Involvement

An attempt is made to establish primary integration as a major variable in explaining citizen involvement in political life. It is argued that a convincing case requires a demonstration that the variable is both empirically important and theoretically meaningful. The former is examined through data from a sample survey of an English city. Theoretical meaning is established through focussing upon the idea of sociable talk as a key factor in reality construction, including the construction of political events as a proximate world available for the interest and participation by the individual.     

ATTRIBUTIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF PROBLEM GAMBLING

There is a growing concern with identifying the behavioral components of problem gambling. Using clinical data, advocates of a compulsion model indicate that a big win stimulates an unrealistic optimism that eventually leads to destructive gambling. However, drawing upon ethnographic data from a natural gambling group, I demonstrate that a bad beat (a significant monetary loss resulting from a seemingly inexplicable turn of events) often is the catalyst for the development of problem gambling. The attempt to cope with bad beats can disorient perceptions and lead to a continuing pattern of financial loss. Attribution theory provides a useful framework for understanding this process.     

TOXIC CONTAMINATION AND COMMUNITIES:

The ecological-symbolic perspective posits that community response to toxic contamination is shaped by both the nature of the environmental disruption and the interpretive frames through which those disruptions are apprehended. Full utilization of this perspective has been hampered by the deterministic underpinnings of the current chronic technological disaster model, which presents local conflict as a virtually inevitable outcome of these events. We draw upon the more contingent framing of the ecological-symbolic perspective to analyze the experiences of two communities that displayed consensual response patterns. We identify ecological and organizational factors that facilitated an interpretive framing of "limited danger".     

THE PRESENTATION OF ETHNIC AUTHENTICITY:

Ethnic entrepreneurs in American society often carve out an economic niche by means of business enterprises and cultural events that are open to the general public and showcase ethnic culture. These locations depend upon a display of the ethnic culture that is simultneously seen as "authentic" and within the bounds of cultural expectations ("Americaized"). In a society that values toleration and cross-cultural contacts, many consumers desire a unique, yet comfortable experience, given their own cultural preferences. We focus on the presentation of ethnic food in four Chinese restarants in a small southern city. Ethnic tradition continues but in the context of a continuous process of adaptation. Authenticity is not an objective criterion but is socially constructed and linked to expectations. We contrast two broad classes of Chinese restarants—consumption-oriented and connoisseur-oriented—to describe strategies by which restaurateurs fit Chinese food into market niches. We conclude by suggesting some directions for the study of public ethnic culture.     

The black community of Salford and Hull 1919–21

Although some attention has been paid to the collective violence which occurred in Liverpool and Cardiff in 1919 other examples of racial violence at that time have been relatively ignored. This study concentrates upon events in two other centres, Salford and Hull. Moreover, by taking a three‐year time span it is shown that such violence continued after 1919. In other words ‘the riots of 1919 were not simply isolated incidents to be touched upon by historians as a convenient way to round off the war period in the history of Blacks in Britain’ but evidence of a persistent anti‐Black sentiment in British society which, at times, in specific circumstances, spilled over into violence.     

Two lives in transition: Agency and context for assisted living residents

This research uses data on two “focal case” individuals residing in one residential care/assisted living (RC/AL) facility, collected as part of a larger ethnographic study exploring later-life transitions, including those leading to the moves into housing and care settings. In-depth examination of the 10-year transition histories of these two women highlights the major erosion of autonomy with advancing frailty, illness, and relocation into supportive housing. A second major theme is that an understanding of the contemporary events and challenges for these two individuals is substantially enhanced by nesting them within the temporal context of earlier life events, including personal relationships, social events, and preferences. Individual history, elicited from resident, family, staff and professional views, serves to contextualize current choices and reactions to key events. As researchers, adding this temporal context moves our understanding of their identities well beyond a simplistic snapshot view as “resident” in AL.     

Engagements with the Past and Armenians' Settlement Journeys in Canada

Examinations of migrants’ experiences have traditionally been confined to host country experiences. More recent studies consider the homeland-hostland relationship as a dynamic one, while also paying attention to the impact of events that happen outside these two landscapes. This article seeks to build on these latter works by considering the homeland-hostland connection from a different angle and argues that, when it happens, the post-migration discovery of homeland communal and personal histories results in salient personal transformations. Moreover, these hostland experiences are largely facilitated by encounters with the larger ethnic community. The examination draws upon data collected on Armenian migrants from Turkey to Canada.     

Critical Theory, Information Society and Surveillance Technologies

This article offers an account of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that draws upon the tradition of critical theory, arguing that an application of the latter to the former can be categorized as a theory of 'cyber criticalism'. Its aim is not to provide an exhaustive theoretical analysis or any kind of literature review, but to suggest that such a theorization is possible because cyber criticalism (1) offers an account of social power and (2) suggests how and why alternatives to existing social practices and institutions can be formed. The first section relates the debate about information society to that concerning globalization and argues that two main theories square off against each other in the race to explain that society: one which, in Castells's terminology, emphasizes the power of flows and the other which emphasizes the flows of power. If the former is inadequate in crucial respects then the way is clear for critical theorists to explore the latter. Cyber criticalism is then sketched in outline and the article proceeds to identify information systems, the flows of power, as potential sites of resistance. The final section focuses upon biometrics and argues that the way forward for cyber critical theorists lies in exploiting the cultural insecurities of informatic capitalism. Ultimately, then, cyber criticalism is critical theory updated for the information age. Unlike those such as Castells it identifies flows of power and the intensification of those flows around the dominant nodes of the informational net. It insists that information systems constitute potential sites of resistance. Nevertheless, acts of resistance are still relatively marginal and fragmented events due to they way in which social problems are pathologized and criminalized.     

A gendered lens for building climate resilience: Narratives from women in informal work in Leh,Ladakh

In this paper, we critically examine the gendered impacts of climatechange related extreme events upon workers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Climate change impacts disproportionately affect the livelihoods of women engaged in informal work like weaving from their homes and street vending. Existing research suggests that women are more likely to be among the most vulnerable in such extreme events as well as are vital agents to develop climate resilience within their communities. We draw upon unique quantitative and qualitative data to critically examine the lived experiences of female informal workers from Leh, Ladakh (India). Drawing on the work of Duchek (2020),  we explore how women informal workers navigate their daily strategies of anticipating, coping, and adapting toward climate change. From this analysis, we offer novel empirical evidence about gendered climate resilience and suggest broad recommendations for building climate resilience within mountain communities.     

Mobility in urban social events: Towards organizational transvergence

The paper explores the emergence of territories that are constituted through spontaneous assembling of self-organized communities resulting in what we term urban social events. A concrete event is employed, namely Embros, an open occupation of an abandoned public building in the center of Athens, to highlight the dynamics that make urban social events transformative urban phenomena. By focusing upon the entangled mobilities of diverse agents, we explain how through differential, dis-continual assembling and creative collaborations, such urban social interactions institute unbounded and immanent modes of organizing. The paper contributes to organizational territoriality studies proposing that urban social events are mobile entanglements that institute practices of creative transactions with formal or informal communities. By doing that, it places the Arts, creativity and community participation at the center of transformative organizing.     

The Culture of Sports

In conversation with Orlando Patterson, the editors of this special issue reflected and speculated on the nature of the historical sociologist's task and challenge. We agreed that any historical sociology concentrated upon particular events or single sports, but overlooking comparative cultural and social contexts, was narrow and over-focused. Recalling early contributions, Patterson notes how in cricket in the Caribbean there could be found an “intense distillation of every kind of problem and emotional baggage” carried by a society at a particular socio-historical moment. Patterson advocates the dual focus upon time/place and socio-cultural historical influence that is at the heart of the historical sociologist's enterprise; and that shows how cricket, for instance, is both constituted by the legacies of a specific historical past, and constituting of a potentially different future.     

Expected Impact of Sex-Related Events on Dating Relationships

Students at a midwest university were asked to indicate their expectations concerning how their commitment to and the stability of their dating relationship would change as a result of severa1 sex-related events occurring. Subjects were told to imagine that these events had happened either to the self or to the partner (randomly assigned). These events were: testing positive on the AIDS antibody test, getting a full case of AIDS, having an heterosexual extrarelational affair, having a homosexual extrarelational affair, being raped, contracting herpes, getting pregnant, and having an abortion (the latter two were always presented as happening to the female partner). Subjects expected that most of these events would negative1 affect their commitment to their dating relationship and the actual stability of the relationship. The results from an ANOVA indicated that how subjects responded to some of the events depended on their gender and/or on whether the events were presented as occurring to the self or to the partner. These differences are discussed and suggestions are made for further research.     

Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression

Historical in scope, trenchant in tone, Feagin's latest contributionto the literature on racism sets out to develop a sociologicaltheory of oppression through which racial-ethnic relationshipsand events in the USA can be interpreted. Feagin's primary focusis the subjugation of African Americans from the slavery erato the present. His theory argues that white-on-black racismwas one of the principal bedrocks upon which the USA was founded,engendering an archetypal system of white privilege that hasbeen sustained to this day and that manifests itself in everymajor societal institution. The centrality of white-on-blackoppression to his conceptualization     

‘Don't you know. They're talkin' 'bout a revolution. It sounds like a whisper.’ For an anthropological reading of the ‘Arab Spring’

The paper analyses the common sentiment created around the so-called Arab spring, upon the basis of a narrative developed and disseminated by the mass media as well as in the specialist literature with regard to these complex, varied, and consequential events. It concerns a vision which gathers and promotes an awakening of social dignity through actions of popular revolt and protest, a demand for political change which has cost the peace and lives of too many people, of entire societies.     

The psychoanalytic structure of trauma: Spellbound

This essay engages in a close analysis of two films, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) and Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003), in order to examine their approaches to trauma, especially in relation to the psychoanalytic notion of Nachträglichkeit (“afterwardsness”). A complex notion of afterwardsness is proposed whereby it is predicated on a relationship between two events, but where the importance of afterwardsness is not seen to lie in the nature of the events but rather on what determines the relationship between the two events. This determining relation thus leads to a notion of the structure of trauma and the argument that the crucial factor in a psychoanalytic approach to trauma lies not in an uncovering of traumatic events, but rather on the structure that retrospectively makes events traumatic.     

Establishing therapeutic alliance across cultural barriers.

1. The therapeutic alliance is a mutually defined helping relationship that encompasses mutual respect and acceptance of ethnocultural variance, predicated upon empathic rapport. 2. Sensitivity to two psycholinguistic phenomena may help establish a transcultural relationship: the detachment effect (limited expression of affect and reduced access to developmental events between languages) and code switching (a complete or partial change of language or dialect within a single utterance or conversation). 3. Issues related to differing sociocultural expectations of nurses and clients will be increasingly encountered as ease of travel combines with economic and political unrest to produce increasing numbers of displaced persons.     

Civil Religion and Church and State*

Earlier conceptualizations suggest a socially integrative civil religion in the United States and define it as not infringing upon church and state separation. No published empirical evidence exists, however, of the alleged compatibility of these two beliefs in the minds of the citizenry. Because the idea of civil religion rests largely upon such an assumption, the relationship between civil religion and church-state separatism is tested in an analysis of data from over 3000 respondents to a state survey. The findings indicate no conflict between the two belief systems. Institutional and organizational implications of civil religion in relation to the legalistic notion of separatism are discussed.     

Social Problems Work: The Cases of Children and Youth

This article reviews the literature on social problems work concerned with children and young people. Social problems work involves assessing particular people, events and circumstances as instances of social problems. We focus on how social problems work is organized within discourses of childhood and youth, how it is a site for holding children and young people accountable, and how normalization is an aspect of social problems work. Our review brings together analytic themes in the literature on social problems and that on children and young people. We also point to topics that might be elaborated upon in future research on social problems work concerned with children and young people.