Dishing the dirt: gossiping in organizations

In an exercise in social theory, rather than an empirical investigation, we concentrate on the role of gossip – spreading ‘news about the affairs of another’ – in relation to the dynamics of power in organizations. Gossip has often been seen in functional terms, as both positive and negative for the organization. In this paper we challenge this functionalist approach. Gossip can be associated with what Freud called the narcissism of minor differences: the gossipers tend not to be too dissimilar from those gossiped about in terms of proximity. Propinquity may increase the animosity of gossip. We see formal organization as a self‐regulating system that constantly refines its boundaries, and gossip is the dirt that trickles in and out of these boundaries, illegitimate, formally disdained and often destructive. The writer who has done most to encourage and clarify thinking about the nature of dirt is Mary Douglas, the anthropologist, especially her notion of expressive pollution. The paper concludes with some implications for ethics in practice viewed through power relations.     

C. elegans gives the dirt on aging

The worm Caenorhabditis elegans has become a popular model organism for the study of mechanisms involved in aging. The C. elegans life span is controlled by several pathways that have been extensively characterized at the molecular level. These include pathways that regulate metabolism and development (namely, the insulin/IGF-1 pathway), nutrition, mitochondrial activity, and reproduction. Presentations at a recent C. elegans conference add to the growing body of knowledge about the genetic networks that control the complex process of aging and suggest new avenues for further investigations.     

Accumulating history: dirt,remains and urban decay in Nairobi

Abstract

In anthropology and related fields, “ruin” and “decay” are terms that are often used interchangeably. By paying close attention to the materiality and politics of dirt and decay in a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, Kenya, this article argues for their uncoupling. Instead of implying loss or oblivion, decay is explored as a process of accumulation: an excess that constitutes a material history. Remains, rubbish and dirt continue to be active in the present, effecting and constraining certain atmospheres, attitudes and politics. Drawing a distinction between “urban decay” as a policy category and as a material process, the article also considers what happens if these remains are wiped away in schemes of urban renewal. The loss usually associated with ruination may emanate not so much from decay as from its elimination.     

The power of dirt: an exploration of secular defilement in Anglo-Canadian culture

Dans cette communication nous établirons que les seuils culturellement établis distinguant le pur de l'impur constituent une dimension centrale de la construction d'identités et leur maintien. De plus, dans des cultures caractérisées par des formes structurées d'inégalité, ceux qui occupent des positions avantageuses sont positionnés de manière à réaffirmer leur situation au moyen de la gestion de violations d'identité, c'est-à-dire de souillure. Afin de développer cette thèse nous examinerons attentivement la dynamique des relations culturelles impliquées par les relations entre les sexes et l'inégalité des sexes. En particulier nous présenterons des données qui nous permettront de définir des seuils de répugnance par sexe.
In this essay we contend that the culturally defined boundaries distinguishing the pure from the impure constitute a central dimension of identity construction and maintenance. Moreover, in cultures characterized by forms of structured social inequality, those occupying positions of advantage and domination are positioned to reaffirm their situation through the management of identity violation, i.e. defilement. To develop this thesis we focus on the cultural identity dynamics of gender relations and gender inequality. In particular, we present data which permit us to define thresholds of repugnance and finicality by gender.     

Gypsy fetish: music,dirt, magic,and freedom

This article offers a reading of Transylvania (2006) directed by Tony Gatlif. It makes evident Gypsy identity’s unconscious dynamics when it occupies the position of a fetish within the cinematic story and in the interaction of the viewer with the exotic images on the screen. This specific reading argues that Gypsy fetish signals and covers over a site of psychic pain for the protagonist as well as for the viewer. Our argument insists that as a fetish Gypsy identity props up the social order. In this sense Gypsy identity is not addressed as it often is as a symptom, or more specifically as a challenge to the social order, but instead the analysis renders it to be a concealment of the lack around which the symbolic network is articulated. The article further explores Gypsy identity’s music, magic, dirt, and freedom as its key characteristics which conserve a potential access to what was disavowed and covered over – a lost enjoyment.     

Surplus,excess, dirt: slavery and the production of disposability in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Centuries before apartheid, South Africa was fundamentally shaped by 176 years of slavery, a period of racialised and gendered brutality that lasted from 1658 to 1834. Enslaved people were brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company from African and Asian territories around the Indian Ocean, and eventually came to constitute the majority of the population of the Colony. Françoise Vergès (2005 Vergès, F. 2005. “One World, Many Maps.” Interventions 7 (3): 342–345. doi:10.1080/13698010500268155.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) asserts that slavery in South Africa generated “processes of disposability” that transformed enslaved people and indigenous Africans, the majority of the population, into “surplus” and expendable objects. The scale of this expendability is difficult to discern today because of the invisibility of slavery in conceptions of the country’s history. In this article, I use the lens of “dirt” to render such “processes of disposability” visible. I do so by analysing two texts in which African bodies are portrayed as filthy, menacing and contaminating – the novel Unconfessed and a television advertisement titled “Papa Wag Vir Jou” (“Daddy’s Waiting for You”) – which I situate within a discussion of South Africa’s extraordinarily high rates of incarceration and sexual violence. I point to the seamless continuity in industrial levels of imprisonment employed by the colonial and the modern South African state.     

Human waste/wasting humans: dirt,disposable bodies and power relations in Nigerian newspaper reports

Abstract

This study examines four newspaper reports and analyses the ways that “dirt,” “waste” and “garbage” function within a range of intersecting sanitation and social contexts where people and materials figure as disposable objects. My main premise is that when scoop reports in newspapers deal with the issue of “dirt” and sanitation, they often leave undertones that reveal or imply a contest for power in which actual dirt and contamination or their images and vocabularies are employed to justify exclusion from certain social privileges and positions and also to protest such exclusions. I argue and then proceed to show that when “dirt,” “waste” and “garbage” are stretched beyond the domain of health, they can offer a lens with multiple focal positions from which we may view and analyse complex political, social and economic behaviours and make sense of them. I focus on Nigerian urban spaces and analyse the reports to show how the terms have come to mark ways that literal and figurative entropy commingle to reveal the dynamics of power and social relations.     

Screening dirt: public health movies in colonial Nigeria and rural African spectatorship in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

From the inception of colonial film-making in British West Africa in the early 1930s, dirt and the cinema were closely connected. Numerous educational movies were produced to show Africans the economically, physically and morally degrading consequences of “dirty habits.” By the early 1940s, the Colonial Office had come to realise that, within the cinema spaces created by mobile health units across Africa, intended audiences processed images and messages through their own aesthetic, spiritual, moral, economic and political value systems. These systems exceeded colonial projections and defied assimilation into colonial categories of dirt. This article focuses on the complexity of intended audiences’ responses to the simple ideological formula of colonial health and hygiene films. It argues that the presence of local aesthetic tastes and values in media archives on public health and hygiene in colonial Africa represents a vital space of mediation that must be considered alongside film content and film-makers’ intentions.     

大学校园里的“大负翁”

随着人民生活水平的进一步提高,以及西方发达国家某些观念的渗入,父辈那种“省吃俭用,努力存钱”的观念在当代大学生的头脑里逐步淡化。追求名牌、时尚已成为当代大学生的生活目标,以至于越来越多的大学生加入“大负翁”一族。     

Women in Politics in Norway

This paper attempts to explain how and why women in Norway have achieved unusually high political representation. The study, based on forty-three personal interviews with female politicians and persons familiar with Norwegian political culture, found that certain favorable social and political preconditions existed in Norway that encouraged women's entry into politics. However, it was the strong and effectively organized women's movement which was responsible for the significant increase of women in politics. A number of environmental opportunities and threats facilitated the formation of a successful coalition between establishment and new feminist factions of the women's movement. This coalition then used effective strategies to get more women into politics.     

Consanguineous Marriage in Turkish Families in Turkey and in Western Europe

The paper compares the prevalence and development of consanguineous marriages between Turkish migrants in Western Europe and stayers from the same regions of origin in Turkey. Analyses draw from three‐generational family data of the 2000 Families study. Findings suggest a decline of kin marriage over generations and time in both groups, but a higher prevalence of kin marriage among migrants. Parental impact was influential, but effects of transmission were lower among migrants. Kin marriage was strongly linked with cross‐border partner choice. The results support previous findings and indicate the specific effect of migration on seemingly traditional patterns of marriage.     

Equity in Education Expenditure in Thailand

This article analyses the distributional effects of education spending across regions of Thailand, a country that purportedly seeks to reduce regional welfare disparities through decentralisation. It finds that public expenditure on education is neither progressive nor pro‐poor, although there are sizeable regional differences, driven by the pro‐rich distributional profiles of public tertiary education spending and public transfers to private education. Policy‐wise, these results suggest that the current decentralised allocation of educational spending is not consistent with an equity‐enhancing goal.     

Women in Public Administration in India

No abstract available for this article.     

Difficulties in Diagnosing Sexual Abuse in Children with Condyloma Acuminata in Turkey

Human papillomavirus is responsible for anogenital warts and could be regarded as an indicator of possible sexual abuse in children. A genital wart was detected during an investigation of anti–hepatitis C virus positivity in a four-year-old male patient. No pathological findings of another sexually transmitted disease were found except complete cleft palate and circumferential lesions in the perianal region. No family member was anti-hepatitis C virus positive, but the patient's uncle and his wife had genital condylomata. Although detailed physical examination uncovered no other findings indicative of sexual abuse, suspicion of abuse could not be eliminated. Therefore, we wanted to draw the attention of health professionals to the association of anogenital warts and sexual abuse.