Sparks and Ashes

The conditions for liberal democracy – by any operational definition of that concept – include some minimum level of knowledge. We can assume everybody knows something about local matters. But total ignorance of non-local matters must make people incompetent to deliberate about those issues. If a majority of citizens know nothing about such problems, are they ready for non-local democracy? This question has been raised by scholars with reference to the pace of democracy in developing countries. But it is equally relevant for some developed countries where widespread ignorance is demonstrable. Some theorists argue that ‘democratic ignorance’ is not harmful because electoral democracies are actually run by well-informed elites. The problem with this model of elite politics is that ignorant citizens vote (even if their voting rate is lower),1 For an estimate of the relation between political knowledge and voting in the US, see Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why it Matters, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 227. View all notes and are sampled in political polls. Elections and polls are used to legitimize both policies and rule by particular elites. Ignorance, therefore, has consequences. There is no democratic society where a majority of the electorate are completely ignorant about non-local matters. But large proportions of the population in some countries are uninformed to the point of ignorance. What is the minimum level of non-local knowledge which should be the goal of a democratic society? This abstract question has implications for education, for political citizenship, and for the evolution of democratic politics in developing and developed countries.     

MIND THE GAP: Religion and the Crucible of Marginality in the United States and Great Britain

Comparisons between the United States and Great Britain reveal many similarities in broad‐based religious concerns and values. Nonetheless, surveys over the last 40 years document a widening gap between the two countries in individual‐level religious commitment. This article suggests that the residual effect of prior marginalization of certain groups and the way they responded to the crucible of marginality is a critical variable to consider. The structure of the religious market in Great Britain kept peripheral groups from turning to religion for support or encouragement in their resistance to the establishment; this, however, was not the case in the religious economy of the United States. Using data collected in the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, I show that higher levels of religious commitment among particular groups with a history of marginalized status—namely African Americans and Southerners—in the United States and the lack of similar levels among similar groups in the British context—ethnic minorities and residents of Scotland and Wales—explain part of the gap in religious commitment between the two countries.     

Representations of the ‘Damaged’ Child: ‘Child Saving’ in a British Children's Charity ad Campaign

This article discusses the representation of abused children as ‘damaged’, drawing on a series of three advertising campaigns for a British children's charity. The pictures and text of the advertisements seek to elicit readers’ concern for abused children by portraying them (a) as passive agents in their development and (b) as signifiers of the dangers of the world and the safeness of the home. The portrayal of abused children in the advertisements serves to reinforce a perception of the vulnerability of all children and the need for adult supervision and ‘care’. Without seeking to dismiss the seriousness of abuse or of the work done by children's charities, the article questions the implications of these representations of childhood and ‘damage’, and argues that the dominant representation of abused children drawn on in such campaigns oversimplifies many complexities in the worlds and the lives of children who have been abused.     

The Care–tech Link: An Examination of Gender,Care and Technical Work in Healthcare Labour

Despite the dramatic increase of technology in the healthcare field, little is known of how care work and technical work are related. Examining substitute healthcare providers offers a useful illustration of the care–tech link because nursing (care) and medical (technical) models often merge. Forty‐two interviews with men and women (nurse practitioners, nurse anaesthetists and physician assistants) were conducted in the USA. The results showed that the gendered nature of care–tech boundaries has shifted in small but important ways and that the gendering of work influenced the shape of these boundaries. Men often encountered barriers when moving too far into the care realm and attempted to overcome this by ‘caring cautiously’ and emphasizing problem‐solving care. Women faced similar barriers from the ‘old boys network’ when they entered highly technical areas. There is also evidence that men and women challenged existing care–tech boundaries and moved beyond their traditional roles.     

Toward a New Conceptualization of Settlements for Demography

It has long been recognized that where people live and work can be a relevant factor in helping to explain demographic behavior, yet the treatment of location in censuses and surveys remains surprisingly crude. Emphasis is still being given to the urban–rural dichotomy based on definitions that most countries around the world introduced 40 to 50 years ago and have modified little since. Given the increase in the complexity of settlement systems in recent decades in less developed as well as in more developed contexts, this simple classification is no longer adequate for examining the role of settlement in demographic processes. The time has come to rethink how settlement should be differentiated in population data collection and analysis. Contemporary technologies and methodologies make it possible to analyze spatially referenced data in ways that are more rapid and sophisticated than could have been imagined when the conventional approach was devised.     

“Taking Back a Little Bit of Control”: Managing the Contaminated Body Through Consumption

In this article, we explore the lived experience of avoiding environmental chemicals through safer consumption, such as buying “eco‐friendly” products. Using focus groups and in‐depth interviews involving 50 subjects, we investigate how individuals become aware of environmental chemicals and how they adapt to this awareness. Our participants describe being surprised or alarmed to learn that chemicals are present in food and commodities that they believed were safe. They respond by developing a set of heuristics rendering the “dangerous” consumer landscape into a space that is amenable to personal control. They learn to read an ingredient label and look for organic certification seals on product packaging. We develop the idea of the “contingent boundary” to describe how participants perceive personal control as uneven: they believe they can activate a protective boundary in local and familiar contexts, but outside these contexts, they believe the boundary dissolves. They accept this contingency as normal and describe having to ignore some chemical exposures, for fear of becoming too “crazy.” We conclude that the individuals in our study accept that inverted quarantine (Szasz 2007) is out of reach, and instead try to impose order upon a ubiquitous risk.