Resisting Smoking When a Best Friend Smokes: Do Intrapersonal and Contextual Factors Matter?

This longitudinal study examines individual differences in the tendency to initiate (N = 4,612) and escalate (N = 2,837) smoking when adolescents gain a best friend who smokes. Potential moderating factors include self-esteem, depression, problem behavior, school and family bonds, and household access to cigarettes. In addition to acquiring a smoking best friend, initiation was predicted by trouble at school, household access, poorer grades and delinquency, whereas escalation was predicted by depressive symptoms. There was little evidence that the examined individual difference factors moderate the association between gaining a smoking best friend and increased adolescent smoking. Results point to the challenges of identifying factors that may lead adolescents to be more or less susceptible to the influence of pro-smoking friends.     

“A Black Benefit”: Racial Prejudice Among White Welfare Recipients in a Low-Income Neighborhood

Welfare has been stigmatized as a benefit for poor African-Americans, in particular for blacks accused of sexual promiscuity and a weak work ethic. Stigma has been found to demoralize welfare recipients, alienate middle-class voters who resent tax expenditures for public assistance, and fuel conservative support for legislation limiting welfare. This article describes another aspect of the stigmatization of welfare as a “black benefit”—the belief by some poor whites that they have experienced racial discrimination when trying to access cash assistance and other benefits. Drawing on data gathered as part of a larger, 18-month qualitative study, this article examines how impoverished whites in Philadelphia view welfare receipt and race. Ugly racial epithets and stereotypes were typically used when describing frustration over lack of access to welfare and other social services.     

Does Reconciliation and Racial Justice Necessitate a Struggle against White Supremacy?

Several literatures including those focusing on settler colonialism, critical antiracism as well as ethnic studies and sociology more broadly often position racial injustice and genocide as a struggle against whiteness and white supremacy. Here I use my own positionality to illustrate what might be unseen in the current thinking about the meaning of what whiteness entails. Then I propose the preliminary workings of a nonbinary approach to thinking about racial justice and reconciliation that still centers the specific experiences of oppression but that does not also entail blaming a particular group as oppressor. While I focus on Canada and responsibility for Indigenous genocide and, to some extent, anti‐Black racism, my hope is that the theoretical logic will also be of utility for thinking about moving forward on issues of racial justice and genocide in other contexts.     

Running in Circles: My Best Friend’s Wedding After 19 Years

ABSTRACT

This essay revisits My Best Friend’s Wedding (Hogan, 1997) 19 years later. It compares its way of combining laughter and tears with 2 genres of literature: Marivaux’s (1964) 18th-century comic theatre and the 19th-century novel of adultery, with its overtones of classical tragedy. In each, an outsider observes, envies, and seeks to destroy a “happy couple”: the 2 genres end, respectively, in a wedding or in death. How do 3 women view this film, and its ending, in 2016?     

Whose photo? Whose voice? Who listens? ‘Giving,’ silencing and listening to voice in participatory visual projects

This article examines participatory visual projects that aspire to enable social change by providing communities with a platform through photography. It argues that projects are sites for negotiating rather ‘giving’ voice and calls for practitioners and researchers to be transparent and reflexive about these negotiated processes. Examining two sets of participant-produced images by refugee youth, one of which was shown publically and one of which went unseen, this article explores issues of control and the biases that shape editorial decisions in NGO-linked participatory visual projects. It demonstrates how voices that do not fit into dominant visual frames tend to be silenced. It is argued that this negates the critical potential of participatory visual work to enable political listening and undermines the plurality of unheard voices that participatory visual work aspires to facilitate. The article raises the central question of listening to the conception of ‘voice’ in participatory visual initiatives. It argues that the political and ideological promise of these projects relates not only to the voices they give rise to but to the kind of listening they enable.     

What about Rural Blight? Housing and Neighborhood Conditions in Southeastern Small Towns

Though the concept of blight clarifies housing and neighborhood changes in rural and small towns experiencing disinvestment and decline, the term is rarely examined outside of urban discourse. This study explores the extent of rural blight and its relationship to community characteristics using survey results from elected officials and staff members of small towns in one southeastern state. We examine the historical background of blight, including its connections to urban renewal, racial bias and stereotyping, and the broken windows theory. Among the small towns in the study, economic blight, particularly dilapidated housing, was prevalent. Social blight, which includes behaviors that are thought to be threatening or criminal in nature, was less common but correlated moderately with economic forms of blight. While social disorganization and collective efficacy theories link a range of demographic characteristics to physical and social disorder, our findings pointed only to a significant relationship between communities with a higher portion of the population who are black and multiple forms of extensive blight. More research is needed to understand the relationship, both observed and perceived, between economic and social blight in rural small towns and how these issues may be remediated through local collective action.     

Whose problem? Disability narratives and available identities

In this article, the author demonstrates that contemporary culturaldisability discourses offer few positive resources for peoplewith impairments to draw upon in constructing positive personaland social identities. Examining the emergence of the DisabilityArts Movement in Britain, consideration is given to alternativediscourses developed by disabled people who have resisted thepassive roles expected of them and developed a disability identityrooted in notions of power, respect and control. It is suggestedthat these alternative discourses provide an empowering ratherthan a disabling basis for community development and communityarts practice and should be embraced by workers in these fields.     

Whose Advice is Credible? Claiming Lay Expertise in a Covid-19 Online Community

Qualitative Sociology - During the initial months of the Covid-19 pandemic, credentialed experts—scientists, doctors, public health experts, and policymakers—as well as members of the...     

Neighborhood Scale and Collective Efficacy: Does Size Matter?

The theory of collective efficacy emphasizes the role of the neighborhood as a unit of social control that can deter crime. The neighborhood unit is most often defined as a census tract or a similar administratively defined measure. These neighborhood definitions are not always sociologically meaningful. That is, administratively defined geographical areas do not necessarily align with residents' perceptions of their neighborhood's boundaries, which incorporate the familiarity with an area and interactions with other residents. Officially defined neighborhoods often present an inaccurate representation of collective efficacy, as these areas are not likely to function as a cohesive social unit. An alternative measure of “bespoke” neighborhoods is presented in geographical research. The bespoke neighborhood identifies a neighborhood area as the distance from a specific point or the number of people situated nearest to a specific location. This concept takes into consideration each resident's unique definition of the neighborhood. In addition, the bespoke neighborhood can be assessed on different scales to identify the most appropriate neighborhood size, where patterns of behavior are most meaningful. Bespoke neighborhoods can be used to identify sociologically meaningful neighborhoods that can inform the theory of collective efficacy.     

Whose ‘wee country’?: identity politics and sport in Northern Ireland

This article responds to calls in this journal for increased attention to identity, culture, power and sport. It explores, for the first time, the lived realities of identity politics in a divided society, through interviews with 12 self-declared Irish nationalists and republicans that represented Northern Ireland. Important insights are revealed into national eligibility decisions for either Irish team, motivated mainly by ‘shop window’ visibility and being seen as the best of a peer group. Political and sporting nationalisms were not necessarily analogous. A significant original finding is that the lived experiences of being closer to ‘the other’ resulted in an overall reinforcement rather than dissolution of difference. Visual and oral ‘national’ symbols such as flag, and especially anthem, delineated such difference, being symbolic walls of the mind. ‘Our wee country’ was thus a polarised and polarising fantasy shield. The article concludes by reconsidering the role of sport as a lens through which to examine identity and its’ place as part of the ‘problem’ and ‘solution’.     

What About a Sociology of Ethnicity in France? A Foucaldian Reading of Racial Violence

In 1995, the publication of “Theories of ethnicity” by Philippe Poutignat and Jocelyne Streiff-Fenart pointed out the new interest of French sociology for this theme. Since that time, the number of research about ethnicity has been gradually increasing. Yet, certain questions remain unsettled. In France, sociology of ethnicity does not constitute a full-fledged field. In parallel, ethnicity works are still inspired by Anglo-Saxon research. Eventually, contrary to what happened in the United States, sociologists did not draw on the Foucaldian library to nourish close and relevant fields such as subaltern or postcolonial studies. On the basis of a research regarding the immigration policy and the racial violence perpetrated against North African migrants in France during the 1970s, this article adopts a critical perspective with the aim to restore the failed dialogue in France between the Foucaldian analysis of State racism and the study of ethnicity.     

Friend or foe? Examining the relationship between news portals and newspaper sites in Taiwan

Newspapers worldwide often serve as content providers for news portals, but portals outperform most newspaper sites in audience share. Whether this is a zero-sum game or a win-win scenario deserves scholarly attention, because the phenomenon constitutes a unique case of intra-media competition. Based on empirical data collected through a large-scale survey, this study systematically examines the delicate relationship among and between news portals and newspaper sites in Taiwan. The results document non-competitive relationships among most news sites, with the exception of Yahoo! News. Such counter-intuitive findings carry theoretical and strategic implications for the study and practice of online journalism.     

Looking for the Best and Brightest? Deservingness Regimes in Italian Labour Migration Management

It is often maintained that contemporary foreign labour recruitment programs have taken an increasingly selective stance and that skills are increasingly crucial in granting migrants easier access and stronger welfare and residency rights in receiving countries. The paper provides a retrospective account of the evolution of Italian labour migration management, paying attention to the changing selection criteria reflected in some of its “front, back and side doors”. It will be shown that Italian labour migration management is increasingly embracing a bifurcated regime of deservingness. Despite some recent tentative signs of change towards an increased evaluation of high skills as a selection principle embedded into a competitiveness‐driven frame, over the last decades labour migration management has been largely dominated by the recruitment of a low‐skilled workforce. The paper discusses the emergence of a specific construction migrants’ deservingness placing Italy in a peculiar position in a European context.     

Reliability and Validity of the IPAQ-L in a Sample of Hong Kong Urban Older Adults: Does Neighborhood of Residence Matter?

This study examined reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Long Form (IPAQ-LC) in Chinese seniors, including moderating effects of neighborhood walkability and socioeconomic status (SES) on reliability and validity. The IPAQ-LC was interviewer-administered (n = 96), accelerometer and 7-day walk-diary data were collected (n = 94), and the IPAC-LC was readministered (N = 92). Acceptable reliability was found for all measures of physical activity (PA) overall and across different types of neighborhood. Participants from highly walkable neighborhoods were more reliable at estimating walking for transport. Participants from low-SES areas were less reliable at estimating leisure-time PA and sitting but more reliable at estimating transport-related walking. IPAQ-LC walking was significantly related to light- but not moderate-intensity accelerometry-based PA. It was moderately to strongly related to a 7-day diary of walking. The data imply slow-paced walking, probably due to age, climate, and terrain. The findings suggest that the IPAQ-LC's reliability and validity are acceptable in Chinese seniors.     

Is “Best Interests” a Solution to Filling Potholes in Child Custody Planning?

ABSTRACT

The role of the child custody evaluator and the principle of “best interests” have been well contemplated in the literature. This article suggests that the “best interest principle” serves the purpose of providing fill for gaps in the court systems engaged in the work of child custody planning. Using sociologist Dorothy Smith's research approach, Institutional Ethnography, the writer unearths the purpose of these potholes using a concept Smith coined as “Ruling Relations.”     

Are pregnant women happier? Racial and ethnic differences in the relationship between pregnancy and life satisfaction in the United States

This paper examines the relationship between pregnancy and life satisfaction for US women of childbearing age using a large sample from the 2005 to 2009 waves of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. The results show strong differences by race and ethnicity. Pregnancy has a significant positive correlation with happiness for Whites and Hispanics, but no relationship for Blacks. This differential in the marginal effect of pregnancy is in addition to a general decrease in satisfaction for Black women, independent of being pregnant. The results cannot be explained by differences in other demographics such age, income, education, or physical health status. Within each racial/ethnic group, the results are consistent across different categories for all these characteristics. Racial and ethnic differences in the effects of pregnancy on support from others can partly explain this result. For Whites and Hispanic women, pregnancy increases their feelings of social and emotional support from others, while pregnant Black women report lower levels of social and emotional support than non-pregnant Black women.