The Sociology of Celebrity

The sociology of celebrity (and its cousin, fame) is a relatively young field, despite having identifiable classical roots. While the topic was ignored by sociologists for many years, it has recently been taken up by both theorists and empirical researchers in sociology and a variety of related fields. In this article, I evaluate the current state of the field, and identify two major themes – celebrity as pathology and celebrity as commodity – that currently dominate the literature. In addition, I suggest additional research directions that I believe will help the field develop and mature; in particular, empirically grounded and meaning‐oriented research that reflects the lived experiences of those who swim in the sea of celebrity culture everyday. What does celebrity mean to the people who produce it, consume it, engage with it and live it? To the extent that researchers take up these questions, the sociology of celebrity will continue to be a vibrant and vigorous area of study.     

The Global Compacts on Refugees and for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration: Introduction to the Special Issue

In December 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted two Global Compacts: The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). These two compacts, while non‐binding and aspirational in nature, offer the first widely‐accepted new normative frameworks on the movement of people since the ratification of the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol. This special issue of International Migration aims to analyse the way in which these two compacts were negotiated, examine their potential impact in a number of areas, and compare the way they deal with common themes such as gender, civil society and security. This introductory article describes the background and the process of negotiating the global compacts, provides a short summary of the articles included in this special issue, and highlights gaps in the two compacts that are not elsewhere discussed herein.     

Tagging for activist ends and strategic ephemerality: creating the Sex Work Database as an activist digital archive

The Sex Work Database project is an interdisciplinary collaboration, currently based in Canada, to research and design digital activist archives of “born digital” and digitized academic research, print and visual media, grassroots activism, and commemorative responses related to missing and murdered women and sex work. This paper discusses the project’s development over its first few years, and discusses the complexities of organizing and representing digital/digitized information using a feminist anti-violence framework. In doing so, we introduce and examine two challenges we have encountered to date: designing a tagging system that expresses the activist frame of the Sex Work Database, and the ethics and efficacy of strategic ephemerality for materials produced by sex worker activists.     

Role-Taking Accuracy in Medical Encounters: A Test of two Theories

Abstract

This paper tests five hypotheses derived from two contrasting theoretical perspectives on role-taking accuracy: a social contact theory and an institutional resource theory. We investigate how well doctors and patients perceive one another's perspectives in a medical encounter. The cumulative weight of the data supports the proposed social contact theory. Increased contact between residents and patients, as reflected in physician's year in residency, contributes to more accurate role-taking on the part of physicians. Conditions of social compatibility between doctors and patients vis a vis gender or race lead to more accurate role-taking. Finally, personal characteristics are better predictors of role-taking accuracy than institutional status variables such as type of residency training program or doctor's year in residency status.     

Rolling with the shakes: an insight into teenagers’ perceptions of recovery after the Canterbury earthquakes

Natural disasters are harmful worldwide events that inflict multiple psychosocial impacts on disaster-exposed individuals. A significant proportion of affected individuals are teenagers (13–18 years old) who, compared with adults, have been historically overlooked in disaster research. The literature is particularly sparse concerning teenagers’ recovery from natural disasters, specifically what recovery means to them and the contributing factors towards their positive recovery. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to gain deeper insight into this largely unexplored area by conducting five focus groups with teenagers (16–18 years) who experienced at least one of the Canterbury, New Zealand, earthquakes since and including the initial September 2010 earthquake. This study directly asked teenagers about their recovery over the three years after the initial earthquakes, with data being analysed using thematic analysis. Two main themes were identified: (1) perceptions of recovery, with three sub-themes (i) knowledge and being less frightened, (ii) talking about the earthquakes and (iii) shift in perspectives; and (2) contributing factors to recovery, with three sub-themes (i) participation in the community response, (ii) returning to school and (iii) the rebuild of Christchurch. These factors provide insight into how we can better support the recovery process for disaster-exposed teenagers to reduce long-term distress.     

A common-features analysis of Amsterdam and London financial markets during the eighteenth century

We examine the financial linkage between the London and Amsterdam financial markets using stock prices recorded in each market over the period 1723-94 in conjunction with tests for common trends, cycles, and regime shifts. These tests reveal a surprising degree of integration between the markets as their prices move together in both the short and long run. Moreover, shocks to the assets translate quickly and accurately between markets. It also appears that Dutch investment did not destabilize London markets and stock prices in London were the primary determinant of prices in Amsterdam.     

Adolescents' Civic Engagement: Concordant and Longitudinal Associations Among Civic Beliefs and Civic Involvement

Associations between adolescent civic and organized activities (volunteering, standard political, social movement, school/community, religious) and civic beliefs (comprised of should, obligation, and respect judgments) were examined. Cross‐sectional models (N = 703, M_age = 15.87) indicated domain specificity between adolescent civic beliefs and behaviors. Longitudinal models (n = 219, M_age = 15.39) indicated that adolescents' standard political beliefs predicted greater levels of standard political involvement one year later, and school/community activities predicted greater standard political beliefs a year later. Youth volunteering predicted lower standard political beliefs, and standard political involvement predicted lower community service beliefs one year later. Findings support the assessment of adolescent sociomoral civic beliefs and demonstrate how civic experiences and civic beliefs can mutually promote each other during adolescence.     

Improving homeless persons' utilisation of primary care: lessons to be learned from an outreach programme in The Netherlands

Elissen AMJ, Van Raak AJA, Derckx EWCC, Vrijhoef HJM. Improving homeless persons' utilisation of primary care: lessons to be learned from an outreach programme in The Netherlands Faced with rising homelessness, countries around the world are in need of innovative approaches to caring for those without shelter, who, more often than not, suffer from severe health problems. We conducted a case study of an innovative Dutch Primary Care for the Homeless (PCH) programme to gain insight into clients' demographic characteristics, health problems and service use, and to develop an explanation for its success in increasing the latter. Our analyses are based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. The results of the study suggest that the success of the PCH programme can be explained by the providers' pragmatism and will to adapt their mode of care provision to the behavioural patterns and needs of their homeless clients.     

Transmitting Ideals: Constructing Self and Moral Discourse on Loveline

Loveline is a late‐night radio advice show currently airing on progressive rock stations in the United States. Callers present their most intimate troubles to the show's DJ–doctor advice‐giving team, revealing themselves to an audience of faceless millions. I analyze three distinct interactional phases through which Loveline callers and hosts symbolically transform troubled selves: with each problem revealed, each embarrassing joke made, each specific recommendation given, a moral discourse is constructed. Loveline incrementally builds a distinctive way of conceptualizing right and wrong, closely tied to standards of a whole, happy, healthy selfhood. And while the notions of a moral discourse and an ideal self are fundamentally modern, Loveline's distinctive combination of mass‐mediated anonymity, intimate subject matter, satiric tone, and fragmented interaction patterns conveys these modern concepts over the radio waves and into a postmodern world.