Labour is not a commodity: The content and meaning of work in the twenty‐first century

In his valedictory lecture before the Collège de France, Alain Supiot reviews his work on the transformation of labour in the twenty‐first century, highlighting the role of law and institutions in addressing the consequences of the digital revolution and environmental crisis. In his view, the moral, social and environmental bankruptcy of neoliberalism calls for us to reconsider the legal fiction of labour as a commodity and to re‐establish the truly “humane labour regime” envisaged by the preamble to the ILO Constitution, recognizing both the meaning and content of work. He uses the case of scientific research to illustrate his argument.     

Gendered constructions of Filipina teachers in Japan's Skype English conversation industry

Drawing on data from a larger project that includes blog entries and interview findings, this paper investigates the ways in which Filipina teachers working in Japan's Skype English conversation (eikaiwa) industry are constructed as intimate and romanticized entities through Japanese male learners’ discursive practices. The paper argues that these highly gendered constructions are never unrelated to the male learners’ desires to display their masculinity. The paper also points out that these desires stem from the long‐established sex‐mediated link between Japanese men and Filipinas based on their economic disparities. The paper concludes with a suggestion that the popularity of Philippines‐based Skype eikaiwa cannot be explained by the development of telecommunication tools or neoliberalism alone; rather, it should be understood as a trend that has emerged from the complicated intersection of all pre‐existent and current economic, socio‐political, cultural‐political, and technological components.     

The British armed services and the participation of minority ethnic communities: from equal opportunities to diversity?

This paper examines the commitments enshrined in the Strategic Defence Review White Paper to make the armed forces more genuinely representative of the British population, notably with respect to ethnicity. It identifies some conceptual problems associated with the way in which those commitments are presented and with the arguments usually deployed in support of their pursuit. It suggests that a fundamental re‐assessment is required of the concept of representativeness, which is at the heart of current policy commitments, if their planned practical outcomes are to be achieved. The paper asks whether a shift in focus from equal opportunities to diversity offers the prospect of resolving some of the dilemmas and obstacles identified. It concludes by suggesting that the concept of diversity is itself not unproblematic—particularly in a military context—and that it could offer a solution only if it were embraced hand in hand with a much more explicit acceptance of the diversity of the political community. This would mean nothing less than a reassessment of what it means to be British in the twenty first century and a more sophisticated grasp of what would be entailed in being representative of such a nation.     

Understanding the Alteration and Decline of a Music Scene: Observations from Rave Culture1

The sociological study of scenes—music and otherwise—has flourished in the latter twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries. Most research has documented a scene’s origins or its “evolution” into mainstream culture. Fewer studies have systematically addressed what leads to a scene’s alteration and decline, although many scholars have partially addressed it in authenticity studies anchored in the Frankfurt School’s claims about culture and economics. Are culture industries sufficient in explaining music scene transformation? The present article attempts to explain the cultural transformation of the Philadelphia rave scene and to articulate its relevance for other kinds of social worlds. Using a multimethod ethnographic approach, I show that five forces (generational schism, commercialization, cultural otherness/deviance and self destruction, social control, and genre‐based scene fragmentation) help explain the alteration and decline of the rave scene from its high point in the mid to late 1990s to its diminished and fragmented state presently. In describing these forces, I hope to move beyond culture industry narratives toward a broader explanation of cultural change, one that is lacking not only in music scene studies, but also in literatures on many other kinds of social worlds.     

Minutewomen,Victims, and Parasites: The Discursive and Performative Construction of Women by The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps

This study uses data from 40 interviews and 80 hours of participant observation to examine the discursive and performative (embodied, enacted, and nonverbal) position of women in twenty‐first‐century militia–nativist organizations, using the case study of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC). The case of the MCDC demonstrates that the organization produces competing narratives for understanding the role of white and migrant women in U.S. society. White American women are constructed as victims of immigration, while white women within the organization are viewed as capable colleagues. Migrant women are produced as both parasites on American society and victims of Mexican male sexuality. As this article shows, women's demands for agency, their political drives, their ascribed race, and their intentions shape their discursive production.     

Straight out the barrio: Ozomatli and the importance of place in the formation of Chicano/a popular culture in Los Angeles

Abstract

Ozomatli's history of formation, the multiplicity of its sounds, the role played by its music in enabling political activism and political coalitions illuminate the relations between identities and politics at the present moment. The group is grounded in Los Angeles contemporary Chicano/a culture and in the new social relations, new knowledges, and new sensibilities of an emerging global city in a transnational era. Speaking from the interstices between commercial culture and the new social movements, Ozomatli's music and political work offers us invaluable bottom‐up perspectives on the terrain of counter‐politics and cultural creation at the beginning of the twenty‐first century.     

Raymond Williams and sociology

The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant – at least in the USA – neo‐Durkeimian school of ‘cultural sociology’. In the second section, his cultural‐materialist programme is proposed as a powerful analytical framework for the study of culture and society today. In the final section, a key concept of Williams's cultural materialism, mobile privatization, is selected illustratively and proposed as a powerful analytical tool for studying the production and technological mediation of typical modes of communicative sociality in the early twenty‐first century.     

Children and the Modern Farming Movement

In the twenty‐first century, a small percentage of U.S. children have ties to family‐based agriculture. Yet with the rise of the modern farming movement that emphasizes local and family‐based production, new spaces may exist for involving children and youth in farming. This article focuses on the social value of children to family‐based agriculture in the contemporary era. Drawing on a qualitative study of families that farm in the capital region of New York—an epicenter for the modern food movement—we consider why families farm, how they involve children in their farms, and how they understand children's contributions. Interviews with 76 adult members of 50 families show children to be central to families' goals; they often rationalize farming as a lifestyle choice undertaken for the benefit of their children. Families also actively involve their own children—and other people's children—in their farms. By documenting the way families talk about children and farming, we shed light on the logic used to incorporate children into modern productive enterprises. The centrality of children, we argue, helps explain the success of the modern food movement and the persistence of family‐based agriculture despite conditions that make it economically difficult to accomplish.     

Did Growing Rural Poverty and a Disruptive Climate Spur an Expansion in Rural Sociology? A Comparative Historical Analysis

Rural sociology first gained wide recognition during the 1930s when the intersection of economic depression and environmental crisis underlined the suffering of rural peoples. The historical conjuncture of growing rural poverty and environmental crisis has reappeared in the twenty‐first century. What does this recurring combination of circumstances portend for rural sociology? Does it imply a revival of the policy‐oriented sociological analyses of the 1930s? A comparative historical analysis of rural sociology during the New Deal, the post−World War II period, and the contemporary era suggests a qualified answer to this question. The contemporary era resembles the 1930s in providing compelling rationales for engaged scholarship, but the cross‐class coalitions between government social scientists and the rural poor that characterized the 1930s have not materialized in the twenty‐first century. Despite this difference, some common themes, such as a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary research, a primary concern with rural poverty, and an increased interest in the distinguishing features of resilient communities, have characterized scholarship during both periods. These similarities suggest that the practice of applied and engaged scholarship, so prevalent in the rural sociology of the 1930s, has found new traction in dealing with the social and ecological problems of twenty‐first‐century rural communities.     

Examining the ‘Conservative Revolution’: Neoliberalism and Social Work Education

Within social work education, there may be a failure to adequately and critically examine neoliberalism and processes of neoliberalization. In this context, those seeking to grasp the meaning of neoliberalism should be attentive to at least six interconnected components: how we might define neoliberalism in relation to the ‘embedded liberalism’ it endeavoured to supplant or displace; the role of the state within neoliberalism; the concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ which illuminates how neoliberalism has constantly aimed to redistribute in favour of the rich; the centrality of insecurity and precariousness; the renewed and retrogressive faith in incarceration and, more broadly, what has been termed the ‘new punitiveness’; and how neoliberalism, in practice, is often at variance with the theory and rhetoric. It will be suggested that contemporary interpretations of neoliberalism by, for example, David Harvey and Pierre Bourdieu—along with the insights of Antonio Gramsci—might aid our understanding during a period of, now perhaps, faltering neoliberalization.     

Race,power and white siege cultures

A group's awareness of its own particular ‘identity (racial, cultural, ethnic, etc.) is heightened when it competes with other groups for power, privilege and resources. It is especially when a group (be it a dominant or subordinate group) perceives its culture threatened that it mobilizes its resources, articulates its beliefs and organizes its followers to assure its cultural survival. When its protective efforts are blocked or stymied, the group is transformed into what Smelser terms a ‘value‐oriented movement’. It becomes a culture under siege, and its development closely follows those characteristics and stages of collective behaviour that Smelser identifies. Continued stress or threats to a siege culture also lead to the transformation of the group's beliefs into what Rokeach identifies as a ‘closed belief system,’ characterized by dogmatic beliefs and, among its members, highly rigid and intolerant forms of behaviour. Where a group's racial beliefs are threatened, the group is readily transformed into a siege culture. This is evident especially in three historical/contemporary cases: White Southerners in the U.S., Afrikaners in South Africa, and White Rhodesians. Their cultural/racial beliefs (based on White superiority and White supremacy) threatened, the three groups became value‐oriented movements, their transformation and characteristics (closely paralleling each other) easily identified in terms of the analyses of Smelser and Rokeach.     

The 1990s Shift in the Media Portrayal of Working Mothers

A cultural theme of distressed working mothers depicts working mothers as caught between the demands of work and family in an unforgiving institutional context. Susan Faludi first identified this theme as a conservative backlash against feminists' attempts “to have it all.” But a similar narrative helps support demands for more flexible work–family policies and more significant housework contributions from fathers. We explore the actual trends and prevalence of this distressed working mothers theme by coding 859 newspaper articles sampled from the 1981–2009 New York Times. Articles discussing problems for working mothers increased in the mid‐1990s and have continued increasing into the twenty‐first century. Other themes about problems and benefits for working mothers show quite different trends. There is also an unexpected mid‐1990s shift in attention from problems working mothers are having at home to problems at work. The increase in the distressed working mother theme coincides with the mid‐1990s stall in the gender revolution. The simultaneity of the cultural, economic, political, and attitude trends suggests that the rise of the distressed working mother theme and the stall in the gender revolution may have mutually reinforced each other over the last two decades.     

The Politics of Migration,Church, and State: A Case Study of the Catholic Church in Ireland

This article investigates the ways in which a shift from post‐colonial nation building to neoliberal state restructuring has shaped church and Irish state relations regarding migrant welfare. It develops the extensive work of Bäckström and Davie (2010) and Bäckström et al. (2011) on how majority churches in European countries are reclaiming a social welfare role as the state relinquishes this responsibility: first, by examining the domain of migrant welfare which is not developed in their work; and second, by arguing that majority church pro‐migrant service provision, as it has evolved in recent decades, can be understood in relation to an emergent neoliberal mode of collective responsibility for migrant welfare. It suggests that in spite of other factors and forces that undermine Irish Catholic Church authority, the marketization of more domains of life in the first decades of the twenty‐first century has given new significance to Catholic Social Teaching and pro‐migrant church initiatives.     

‘Another Europe is possible’? Labour and social movements at the European social forum

The first European Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence, Italy from 6 to 10 November 2002 brought together a diverse array of so-called ‘anti-capitalist’ movements including trade unions, new, radical unions and social movements to contest the agenda of neoliberalism as it is presented within and beyond processes of European integration. This article evaluates the ESF and the possibilities for cooperation between labour and social movements in forming joint strategies against neoliberalism. It is often assumed—rather than demonstrated—that established trade unions are an obstacle to more radical contestatory practices of direct-action social movement resistance. With detailed empirical analysis, the article assesses whether there was a continuation of reformist practices within unionist activities at the ESF allied with a focus on the often-contrary sensibilities of social movement opposition. The activities and joint strategies of labour and social movements at the ESF are therefore examined, not least their resistance to both neoliberalism and its ultimate extra-economic enforcement through military power as evidenced by the war on Iraq. Whilst conclusions about the efficacy of future cooperation are cautious it appears that the horizons of resistance are expanding not only within Europe but also at the global level.     

Selling slumber: American neoliberalism and the medicalization of sleeplessness

Sleeplessness is an ancient and cross‐cultural phenomenon that is socially structured and restructured against a backdrop of ideology and inequality. In an effort to make sense of sleeplessness, some scholars have invoked the medicalization framework, which highlights consumerism, managed care, biotechnology, and physicians as key “engines” that foster the transformation of this formerly “normal” condition to one that people view as a medical problem. However, this burgeoning literature has not answered the call of medical sociologists to situate the medicalization process in a political economic context. In this article, we employ the case study of sleeplessness and the creation of the “Sleep Industrial Complex” to expand the medicalization framework and illustrate how American neoliberalism creates an ideal environment for the primary engines of medicalization. We identify three critical features of American neoliberalism—enhancement culture, commodification of health, and a “productivity imperative”—that act in concert with the driving engines to foster an environment wherein medicalization not only survives but also thrives.     

Beyond hookup culture: Current trends in the study of college student sex and where to next

A prominent body of sexuality research on college‐enrolled students in the twenty‐first century focuses on “hookup” culture, marked by the prevalence of sexual encounters between students with no expectation for a relationship to develop. This article will review and respond to current themes in the literature on hookup culture on college campuses. I argue that this literature privileges the White, middle‐class heterosexual experience, although less is known about how students who cannot or choose not to participate in this culture experience sexual relationships on college campuses. I place studies of hookup culture in conversation with those attentive to the effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality on access to, and experience of, hookup culture. I conclude with suggestions for future research, to include a renewed interest in sexual relationships forged outside of hookup cultures.     

Uneasy passages between neoliberalism and feminism: Social inclusion and financialization in Israel's empowerment microfinance

This article focuses on feminist non‐governmental organizations advocating for economic empowerment of women (EEW) through microfinance, using Israel as a case study. Through fieldwork, interviews and documents, we investigate the institutional practices, cultural discourses and struggles that EEWs develop in order to expose the particular ways in which feminist organizations interact with the world of finance and state institutions. Our analysis points to the complex power dynamics of mediation, suggesting that there are ‘uneasy passages' between neoliberalism and feminism, ones that help re‐signify the meaning of financial discourses while re‐politicizing women's social and economic exclusions. Simultaneously, however, this relation induces a series of compromises, whereby EEWs adopt neoliberal modes of governance. Rejecting the notion that contemporary feminism has simply been co‐opted by neoliberalism or the perception of EEW microfinance as a mere expansion of neoliberal rationalities, we reveal new sites and ways in which feminism both colludes and collides with neoliberalism.     

Black Neofascism? The Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa

This article argues that twenty‐first century fascism is variegated and shaped by complex socioecological conditions. While enabled by the specific conditions of contemporary capitalist crisis, it is actually different from its antecedents. This requires actual in situ case studies. Hence, this article focuses on the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa and explores its emergence in the conjuncture of hegemonic crisis faced by the ruling African National Congress. Moreover, the article challenges current liberal classificatory discourses that seek to define the EFF in South Africa's democratic order and also revisits the history of fascism from a decolonial perspective. It is argued there where two moments of fascism in the twentieth century, interwar fascism, and militarized fascism in the peripheries supported by U.S. imperialism. The EFF does not share anything in common with these twentieth century fascisms and therefore has to be analyzed and explained on its own terms.     

Cohabitation and U.S. Adult Mortality: An Examination by Gender and Race

This study is the first to explore the relationship between cohabitation and U.S. adult mortality using a nationally representative sample. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey‐Longitudinal Mortality Follow‐up files 1997–2004 (N = 193,851), the authors found that divorced, widowed, and never‐married White men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting White men, and never‐married Black men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting Black men. In contrast, the mortality rates of nonmarried White and Black women were not different from those of their cohabiting counterparts. The results also revealed that mortality rates of married White men and women were lower than their cohabiting counterparts and that these mortality differences tended to decrease with age. The authors found no significant mortality differences when they compared married Black men or women to their cohabiting counterparts. The identified mortality differences were partially—but not fully—explained by income, psychological, or health behavior differences across groups.