The Relationship Between Self and Activity in the Context of Artists Making Art

Art is an activity that has historically invited self-reflection, self-immersion, and self-exploration—for example, in self-portraits, exhibitions, experimentation with media—and that as such may open a window onto the relationship between self and activity. In this article, we describe two cases studies involving observation of and interviews with two artists to explore what it feels like to invest oneself in an activity emotionally, cognitively, sensuously, and reciprocally to “make oneself” through this activity. These case studies highlight the importance of authenticity in both the activity of making art and the making of self through making art. The implications for agency, emotion, and ethical activity are analysed and some of the implications for a sociocultural approach to activity discussed.     

Social Stigma and Homelessness: The Limits of Social Change

We examine the issues around the stigmatization of homelessness and how it links to capitalism. Society focuses on the individual as the cause of his or her own state of homelessness, blaming the victim rather than focusing on the larger antecedent social and economic forces, such as unemployment, limited affordable housing, and breakdowns in kinship networks. Social stigma occurs in situations where there is unequal social, economic, and political power and there is an opportunity to label, stereotype, separate (us versus them), lose status, and discriminate. Stigmatization is due, in part, when people feel threatened by another group. Society categorizes people who are homeless as no longer “useful” and/or “functional” members of capitalism, since they do not actively work and support the system. The paper ends on a discussion of the limits of social change in a capitalist society.     

Say it Loud: The Obama Effect and Racial/Ethnic Identification of Adolescents

The current study examined how self-reported racial/ethnic identification of adolescents living in poverty may be related to significant societal events and seminal public figures. Data from a multiple cohort longitudinal study, conducted in Mobile, Alabama between 1998 and 2011, were used to examine the impact of Barack Obama's nomination and presidency on racial/ethnic identification. The results show that significantly more adolescents changed their self-reported racial/ethnic identification from White or Mixed-Race to Black or Mixed Race after the election than before. These results suggest that a distant public figure can serve as a role model with observable effects for adolescents.     

JEWISH STUDIES IN LITHUANIA

A Massive Cover‐up

Frank Ellis, Vasiliy Grossman: The Genesis and Evolution of a Russian Heretic, Oxford/Providence, USA, Berg 1994. xiv+239pp. Index. Bibliography. £34.95. ISBN 0 85496 830 X

John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman, New York, The Free Press 1996. xxvi+437pp. Illustrations. Index. Bibliography. ISBN 0–684–82295–4

Living with an Open Wound

Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Karski. How One Man Tried To Stop The Holocaust. New York/ Chichester/ Brisbane/Toronto/Singapore: John Wiley and Sons 1994, xvi+316pp. Glossary of names. Bibl. Notes. Ind. Illus.

Cultural Politics of Inter‐war Romania

Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London 1995), 340pp. Bibliographies. Index. ISBN 0–8014–2445–3. Cloth £35.50

Files from the ‘Soviet Ministry of Truth’

Arlen V. Blum, Evreysky vopros pod sovetskoy tsenzuroy, 1917–1991 (The Jewish Question under Soviet Censorship, 1917–1991). St Petersburg: St Petersburg Jewish University 1996. 185pp.

Failure of an Ideal

Antony Polonsky, Israel Bartal, Gershon Hundert, Magdalena Opalski and Jerzy Tomaszewski (eds.), Jews, Poles, Socialists. The Failure of an Ideal. Studies in Polish Jewry. Polin, Volume Nine. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 1996. 346 pp.     

Using QSR‐NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: an account of a worked example

This paper demonstrates how the software package QSR‐NVivo can be used to faciitate a grounded theory approach. Recent research evidence has questioned the methodological quality of many studies that claim to utilise grounded theory. This paper argues that qualitative data analysis software can be used to encourage good quality grounded theory research by facilitating many of the key processes and characteristics associated with this approach. To achieve this, the paper identifies a number of grounded theory characteristics, common to all revisions of the methodology. It then describes the development of a recent study, which examined how people successfully maintain long‐term physical activity behaviour change. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how different functions of QSR‐NVivo may be used in conjunction with the key grounded theory characteristics. In summary, QSR‐NVivo is a powerful tool that, if used appropriately, can facilitate many aspects of the grounded theory process from the design and early sampling procedures, through to the analysis of data, theoretical development and presentation of findings.     

Seeing beyond the datasets: the unexploited structure of electoral and institutional data

We propose relational data modeling as a tool for replacing the ad hoc and uncoordinated approaches commonly used throughout the social sciences to gather, store, and disseminate data. We demonstrate relational data modeling using global electoral and political institutional data. We define a relational data model as a map of concepts, their attributes, and the relationships between concepts developed using a formal language and according to a set of rules. To demonstrate the methodology, we design a simple relational data model of six concepts: countries, parties, elections, districts, institutions, and election results. Furthermore, we introduce a data model to solve the particularly vexing issue of party discontinuity (party splits, mergers, and alliances). We show how the solution facilitates computational tasks, such as the calculation of core measures of political phenomena (ex: electoral volatility). Ultimately, a relational data approach will play a central role in collective investments to develop advanced data capabilities, and thereby advance the accuracy, pace, and transparency of scholarship in the social sciences.     

Advertising images as social indicators: depictions of blacks in LIFE magazine, 1936–2000

One of the most important prerequisites for building a more visual social science is demonstrating that visual data provide answers to research questions, which are not addressed satisfactorily by the use of more conventional, non‐visual, methods. In this article the author argues that a systematic analysis of the images in print advertisements not only accounts for patterns in contemporary American race relations as reliably as findings derived from national surveys like the General Social Survey (GSS) and the US Census, but also illuminates questions that are often raised by, but seldom resolved with, quantitative data. These questions include, for example, consideration of what factors might encourage respondents to espouse some attitudes – or to make certain choices – but not others. More specifically, a close examination of trends in advertisements published in Life magazine between 1936 and 2000 reveals that, while the white commitment to racial integration appears to have taken longer to develop than survey data suggests, this commitment seems to be much firmer than findings based on census data imply. Nevertheless, the trend in advertising images also shows that, even with a steadily growing white commitment to racial integration, there are still areas of social life where whites are wary of blacks and find it hard to imagine scenarios that exemplify relations of moral equality.