The 2005 French Urban Unrests: Data-Based Interpretations

The French 2005 riots in the urban outskirts were the most numerous, widespread and violent France has experienced since the beginning of the 1980s. In The Politics of Collective Violence, Charles Tilly refused the term ‘riot as a scientific idiom’ because it embodies a political judgment rather than an analytical distinction. Authorities and observers label as riots the damage‐going gatherings of which they disapprove, but they use terms like demonstrations, protest, resistance or retaliation for essentially similar events of which they approve (2003, 18). Our aim here is to discuss this assertion. How far is violence an act of protest? How far can the authors of collective violence acting in the French deprived urban areas in November 2005 be described as ‘rioters’ or rebels? The following contribution mainly focuses on empirical data (quantitative and qualitative) in order to fulfil this aim. We will leave the root causes and contextual aspects by one side (economic deprivation, urban segregation, conflicts with police forces, etc.) and concentrate on immediate data produced in the wake of the riots, in the little research produced afterwards.     

The CB Handle: An Announcement Of Adult Identity*

The CB handle is used as a means of exploring voluntary identity-making among adult CBers. While only an exploratory study, gender appeared to be the most deeply embedded adult identification. Other, apparently less deeply embedded, identities were found in occupation (white- versus blue-collar workers and truckers versus non-truckers). Sexual identifications seemed to have increased in importance with time, with ethnic identifications decreasing in importance. Finally, Turner's (1976) distinction between impulse and institutional anchoring of the real self was used to suggest that white-collar workers and new CBers had significantly more impulse-based handles than blue-collar workers and “old-timer” CBers.     

Facts Of The Moment: The Study Of News*

Reviewing past research on news and mass media, this article charges it is “administrative” research which accepts the presuppositions of the media being studied, particularly their emphasis on “facts” as discrete and objective phenomena. It also suggests that there are epistemological problems implicit in such concepts as “bias” and “refraction” used in gate-keeping studies. The article offers an alternative paradigm, described as “serious work on the sociology of knowledge as a junction with the sociologies of organizations and occupations and professions.” Some studies using that paradigm are described.     

The Phenomenon Of The Public Wife: An Exercise In Goffman's Impression Management*

Approaching the topic of American leader-image from the perspective of politics-as-theater (political communication as exchange of symbols), this paper examines a taken-for-granted visual symbol which a national political leader is invariably expected to present: a wife. Her contributions to her husband's “impression management” techniques (Goffman, 1959) are studied in Goffman's “defensive” categories of dramaturgical loyalty, dramaturgical discipline, and dramaturgical circumspection. This analysis suggests that the visible presence of a wife in public leadership rituals offers the public voter or viewer important reassurances or symbolic guarantees about her husband's “morality”—and, therefore, his appropriateness for public trust. She has become a necessary partof his public performance because of our everyday need for “cultural absolutes” (Furay, 1977) in the image of our leadership figures.     

Making Sense of Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes*

Using ethnographic research, this paper explores the experiences of elite women athletes on a Division‐I college soccer team. I draw on existing literature in the sociology of sport, sociology of the body, and interactionism to inform my analysis. With this approach, I illustrate the complicated relationship women athletes have with their bodies in relation to physical competition and dominant notions of femininity today. Key reference groups influenced the players’ self‐perceptions and encouraged the women to closely monitor their own appearances and actions. While undoubtedly affected by these inter‐actions as well as their place in the gender hierarchy, many women athletes subtly resisted notions of idealized bodies and constructed their own meanings about their bodies and experiences. Investigating the day‐to‐day body awareness and negotiations of women athletes reveals the gendered nuances of sport and the complicated relationship between cultural ideals and female embodiment.     

Political Activist As Participant Observer: Conflicts Of Commitment In A Study Of The Draft Resistance Movement Of The 1960's*

In studying the draft resistance movement of the 1960's the author combined sociological observation with active and politically committed participation in the movement. The resulting conflicts of loyalty were rooted in basic characteristics of the movement, and of field research as a way of being in and experiencing the world. There were conflicts between political and research goals in daily decisions about how to allocate time and energy, and in larger choices about whether to take risks and to more fully join the community of fate of the movement. The role of researcher became a retreat, expressing limits to involvement and risk-taking, and providing a point of outside leverage which full participants lacked. The movement's ways of defining and interpreting experience ran counter to the more detached and routihizing perspectives of sociology. Conflicts between being a committed participant and an observing sociologist culminated in a sense of betraying the movement, and raised basic questions about uses, organization, and types of knowledge.     

The Intcractionist Study Of Social Organization: A Note On Method*

A symbolic interactionist approach to the study of social organizations is specified. Materials are drawn from an on-going investigation of the American liquor industry, which is treated as a fragmented organization. The core actors, activities and interactional locales of the industry are identified. The problems of establishing a historical baseline for a case study are discussed, as are the problems of confronting archival data, locating informants, and establishing interactive linkages. The stages in writing a case history of an organization are presented and illustrated with examples drawn from the American liquor industry.     

The Admission of the Whole Family in a Child Psychiatry Setting: A Follow-up Study*

This paper describes a follow-up study of 40 consecutive whole family admissions. One hundred and forty three families have been admitted over the past three years. The reasons for admission are described as well as some explanation of the factors contributing to the 80% successful outcome based on independent therapist and parent reports.     

Network Analysis in East Africa: The Social Organization of Urban Transients*

Des analyses sociologiques de villes en Afrique de l'Est et ailleurs, indiquent qu'elles peuvent être décrites de façon utile en tant que composantes de réseaux sociaux. On a cherché, récemment, à classifier les propriétés structurales de plusieurs genres de réseaux. Cependant, on a négligé l'analyse de facteurs sous-jacents à la persistance de ces réseaux. Cet article est centré sur la mobilité géographique que l'on conçoit comme l'un ces facteurs. De cette manière, on est non seulement amenéà mieux comprendre les réseaux sociaux urbains mais aussi à suggérer une complète refonte de la théorie sociologique urbaine classique. Sociological analysis of towns in East Africa, and elsewhere, indicate that they may be usefully described as composites of social networks. Recently much discussion has been directed towards a classification of the structural properties of various kinds of networks. However, less attention has been paid to an analysis of the factors underlying the persistence of these networks. This paper focuses on geographical mobility as one such factor, not only as a means of understanding urban social networks but also to suggest a rethinking of classical urban sociological theory.     

Newcomers' Biographical Explanations: The Self As An Adjustment Process*

The newcomers' situation necessarily involves change and a variety of adjustment processes. In this situation the self may come into question and become an object of conscious reflection and definition. This paper focuses on the processes of change and continuity in the newcomer's self-concept during the first year after moving to a new locale. Data are drawn from a broader longitudinal study of 30 newcomer families in an Australian city and are interpreted from a symbolic interactionist perspective.     

Biography Building To Insure The Future: Women's Negotiation Of Gender Relevancy In Medical School*

In this paper I focus on how women in their first year of medical school build biographies of fitness as a means of negotiating the status of peer in a male-dominated group. Their goal is to negotiate a master status and primary identity as medical student. They do this by making gender, a key characteristic, both irrelevant and relevant. I also discuss the technique of using interview data to provide a particular perspective on the medical students' situation and their use of the interview as a vehicle for identity building. I conclude that women's apparent success in maintaining identities as successful people and in negotiating barriers to the collegia! status stem both from their numbers and from using situationally appropriate vocabularies of motives to build past and future biographies of fitness.     

The Status Attainment Paradigm: An Application of a Kuhnian Perspective*

A Kuhnian approach to the structure of scientific research is used to examine the historical development of the status attainment paradigm in sociology. A content analysis of applications, critiques, and alternatives to the status attainment model over the last decade illustrates the “life-cycle” phases of a scientific research area that are suggested by Kuhn. The analysis reveals an extension or elaboration of the paradigmatic research effort throughout early years of the decade. However, the perception of “anomalies” by critics of the research tradition, coupled with the increasing exploration of alternative approaches, suggests the onset of a crisis stage for status attainment research.     

The Spacing of Births Among French-Canadian Families: An Historical Approach*

Utilisant la généalogie d'une seule famille-souche canadienne-française de 1650 à 1950, l'auteur compare l'intervalle entre les naissances dans la branehe canadienne et dans la branche américaine de cette famille. Indépendamment de la taille des families, l'intervalle s'accroit au cours des ans du côté américain. Une croissance de l'espacement ne se produit pas, par ailleurs, du côté canadien. II appert done que l'espacement progressif des naissances ne se produit que parmi les couples américains et que le comportement de ceux-ci diffère de celui des couples canadiens. La présente recherche a pour but secondaire de mettre en lumière l'utilité des généalogies en démographie, particulièrement dans l'étude de la fécondité. La comparaison des résultats obtenus ici avec ceux qui proviennent d'autres études de l'espacement des naissances illustre l'usage que Ton peut f aire de telles données historiques: on a utilisé en l'occurrence les régistres ayant trait à une seule famille pendant trois siècles. Cette famille n'est pas nécessaire-ment représentative de la famille canadienne-francaise. II s'agit plutôt de l'étude démographique d'un cas familial dans le temps et dans l'espace.     

“The Sigh of the East”: A Sense of Empire and Other Lingerings*

L'étude des récits de voyageurs qui sont allés à Singapour au XIXe siècle révèle de quelle manière l'odorat, le toucher et le goût ont influé sur la subjectivité des voyageurs occidentaux et sur I'idée qu'ils se faisaient de Singapour et de la Malaisie britannique à cette période. Souvent, le même endroit suscitait différents sentiments: soit une admiration pour la nature, soit un dégoût pour l'état de délabrement qui régnait, et parfois même un sentiment ambivalent. En s'appuyant sur des fictions et sur plusieurs récits, cet article démontre que, si l'Orient a été orientalisé par les expériences de ces voyageurs, les identités de ces mêmes voyageurs se sont construites dans la sensualité de leurs relations avec le milieu. An examination of travellers' accounts of 19th-century Singapore reveals how smell, feel, touch and taste impacted upon the subjectivities of Western travellers and their conception of 19th-century Singapore and British Malaya. Often the same location would evoke different conceptions: either a celebration of nature or disgust with the dilapidated conditions, and sometimes even ambivalence. The paper argues, through the use of fiction and several narrative accounts, that as much as the East was orientalized through such travellers' experiences, the travellers' identities were constituted by their sensuous interaction with their environment.     

Culture And The Court: The Judiciary As An Arbiter Of Cultural Disputes In The USA

The law has enormous cultural significance; it creates many of the roles and statuses that structure people's lives, represents a society's values, establishes rights of cultural expression, and places restrictions on these rights. The cultural dimensions of the law are especially important for marginalized groups, as the law can act as a barrier to political and social inclusion or offer protection from discrimination. This essay argues that cultural studies of the law have overlooked the significance of the different sources of law. In the USA, culturally significant laws and legal interpretations can come from the judiciary or the legislature. Laws that are recognized by the judiciary or established by it through common law have a much different cultural significance from laws that are passed by legislatures. Judicial decisions are more symbolically meaningful, but may have a more limited power to produce deep cultural changes. Some major judicial decisions on minority rights, such as that in Brown vs. Board of Education, have even incited backlash. Legislative decisions tend to be seen as more legitimate and more reflective of the popular will, yet it may be more difficult for minority groups with limited resources to act through the legislature. Moreover, the legislature can also be used to by larger groups to block minority groups' attempts to gain rights. This essay illustrates the differences between these two sources of law and their comparative power to influence culture with key examples drawn from the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement.     

The Mainstream of Consciousness: An Interactions Analysis of a Phenomenological Concept*

William James' concept of a personal “stream of consciousness” was carried in a phenomenological direction by Alfred Schutz, who showed that people create their individual and interpersonal reality through selective attention to one another. This idea is discussed here from a symbolic-interactionist standpoint, wherein the various “streams” become one “mainstream” of social thought, consciousness and action. Fundamental concepts of interpretive sociology such as the self, meaningful objects, interpersonal encounters and relations, and social reality, are examined through observations of a jazz ensemble during rehearsals, using James' original ideas and their further development by Schutz.