Home as a risk environment: Negotiating the boundaries of homes and social relationships in services for people using illicit drugs

This study focuses on how clients using illicit drugs are supported in managing the boundaries of their homes to avoid the risks that social relationships may have on their daily lives at home. The data consist of 14 client–worker encounters audio-recorded in 2017 in a Finnish home-based service for people using drugs. Discursive interaction analysis and geographies of home were applied to examine how boundaries of homes are negotiated in relation to social relationships and how the home is constructed as a risk environment in the interactions of the service. The results highlight that the tensions between home and social relationships can be complex in the context of illicit drug use. Managing the boundaries of the home and social relationships deserves special attention among welfare services to promote their client's right to privacy and attachment to a home environment. This is also important for preventing the risk of homelessness.     

Decompartmentalizing the sociology of activist commitment. A critical survey of some recent trends in French research

This article is a critical survey of a field of research that for 20 years has been particularly active in France and is once again gaining momentum: the sociology of activist commitment. An outcome of this sociological current was the inter-actionist paradigm, i.e. how activists’ careers are embarked upon and evolve. The notion of how to reward activism has been refined and reconsidered. Theoretical debates relating to the surfacing – or not – of “new forms” of activism – or even “new activists” – are replaced in perspective and the two challenges that confront research today stressed. Both concern the social division of labor: how to account more thoroughly for the link between macro-social transformations and individual commitment, on one hand, how organizations are instrumental in formatting activism, on the other.     

What explains frontline workers' views on poverty? A comparison of three types of welfare sector institutions

The study analysed views on poverty among Finnish frontline workers in three welfare sector institutions. Two different institutional logics, universal and selective, and two sectors, the public and the voluntary, were represented. A nationwide survey among social security officials, municipal social workers and diaconal workers was utilised (N = 2,124). The methods applied included factor analysis, the examination of means and multivariate analysis of variance. Frontline workers were found to support structural reasons for poverty regardless of institutional affiliation. Analyses, however, also revealed significant differences between the institutions, but not of the kind expected. Social security officials, working in a universal institution, were less likely to endorse structural factors and more likely to endorse individualistic poverty explanations than were social and diaconal workers. Type of education and personal political ideology, respectively, were also found to be of significant importance for poverty perceptions, independent of institutional logic.     

Not so cheap talk: costly and discrete communication

We model an interaction between an informed sender and an uninformed receiver. As in the classic cheap talk setup, the informed player sends a message to an uninformed receiver who is to take an action which affects the payoffs of both players. However, in our model, the sender can communicate only through the use of discrete messages which are ordered by the cost incurred by the sender. We characterize the resulting equilibria without refining out-of-equilibrium beliefs. Subsequently, we apply an adapted version of the no incentive to separate (NITS) condition to our model. We show that if the sender and receiver have aligned preferences regarding the action of the receiver, then NITS only admits the equilibrium with the largest possible number of induced actions. When the preferences between players are not aligned, we show that NITS does not guarantee uniqueness, and we provide an example where an increase in communication costs can improve communication. As we show, this improvement can occur to such an extent that the equilibrium outperforms the Goltsman et al. (J Econ Theory 144:1397–1420, 2009) upper bound for receiver’s payoffs in mediated communication.     

Gender Minority Stress: A Critical Review

ABSTRACT

Past studies that compare cisgender to transgender (or trans) and gender diverse people have found a higher prevalence of mental health problems among the latter groups. This article uses Testa’s gender minority stress framework, which is an expansion of minority stress theory, to assess minority stressors that are specific to the experiences of trans and gender diverse people. The concept of cisnormativity, an ideology that positions cisgender identities as a norm, is used in relation to the gender minority stress framework to describe the marginalizing nature of social environments for trans and gender diverse people. This article provides a critical review that integrates and expands on past theoretical perspectives on gender minority stressors and protective factors. Specifically, this article demonstrates the relevance of cultural and ethnic backgrounds to complement the application of intersectionality in research on health disparities experienced by trans and gender diverse people.     

‘Why Do All the Women Disappear?’ Gendering Processes in a Political Science Department

The article provides an in‐depth analysis of the gendering processes among PhD candidates in a political science department. It uses Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations operating through four dimensions: the gendered division of labour, gendered interaction, gendered symbols and gendered interpretations of one's position in the organization. The article combines this approach with theories of hidden discrimination. The key theoretical aim is to contribute to gendered organizational theory by examining the ways in which hidden discrimination and the gendered organization work together. This generates detailed and differentiated knowledge about the mechanisms of hidden discrimination that produce gender inequalities in the department. The findings presented in this article point to the role of gendered division of labour and the lack of information about departmental practices. PhD supervision by men is a particularly strong structural barrier for women because of the gendered nature of interaction in supervision and the difficulties that female PhD students have in a male‐dominated environment. The article further contributes to debates on gendered organizations by focusing upon the gendered symbols of expertise in political science. These symbols reproduce the man as the political scientist norm and result in women interpreting their own position as marginal or as outsiders.     

Quite an encumbrance? Work-related obstacles to Finnish fathers’ take-up of parental leave

ABSTRACT

An ideal of involved fatherhood has become popular in the developed countries, but even countries like Finland that have introduced an individual father’s quota to parental leave are far from gender equality in parents’ leave practices. Lack of support and negative attitudes at workplaces or pressure at work are among the obstacles to fathers’ leave take-up. The study used survey data from fathers and interviews at workplaces to explore the role of work and workplaces among the many aspects related to fathers’ possibilities of taking leave. The results showed that fathers’ income and workplace characteristics were associated with taking leave. Few fathers mentioned employers’ objection as a hinder. Father’s recent unemployment and anticipated difficulty of taking a long time off played a more important role. At workplaces, the obstacles to taking long leave were related to fathers’ ideals about a committed worker and to the nature and organizing of work. Additionally, the leave exceeding fathers’ quota might not be understood as ‘for fathers’. The spouse’s situation and fathers’ gendered perceptions about parental responsibilities were also important for leave practices. The findings suggest that policy development towards a longer father’s quota could make fathers’ care responsibilities visible also at workplaces.     

Where are the children? Exploring the boundaries between text and context in the study of place and space in four different countries

In this article, we demonstrate how the cultural conceptions of a team of five researchers from different cultural and national backgrounds can be used as a source of knowledge during a collective, self‐reflexive analytical process. While collectively analysing texts describing daily life produced by first‐grade children and their parents in China, Norway, South Africa and the United States, the research team engaged in a collectively negotiated analytical process, which we refer to as an ‘analytic negotiating method’. The strength of this process rests on the ability to examine critically the boundaries between the researcher's contextual conceptions and conceptions derived from the texts. Engaging in this kind of negotiated analytical process contributes to scholarship by working towards a level of self‐reflexivity that makes the link between empirical data and researcher interpretation more transparent and produces a sensitivity to context that allows insights into the conceptions of childhood that operate cross‐culturally.     

Cannabis Use and Antisocial Behavior among Youth

Despite the numerous efforts to curb substance use and abuse through legislation and interventions, marijuana consumption continues to be a major social problem, particularly among young adults in the United States. We provide new information on the relationship between cannabis use and antisocial behavior by analyzing a sample of young adults (aged 18–20) from the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). We examine a broad set of cannabis use patterns and multiple dimensions of antisocial behaviors and test the empirical importance of two prominent criminological theories—general strain and social bond—in explaining associations between cannabis use and antisocial behavior. We include important socioeconomic, demographic, health and health behaviors, and contextual information in all regressions to control for confounding factors. Our results imply that cannabis use is positively and significantly related to antisocial behavior among young adults, and general strain and social bond theories cannot fully explain our findings. As expected, the estimated association with antisocial behavior is stronger for more frequent cannabis users.     

The puzzles of daily life: The temporal orders of families when parents have non-standard work schedules

This article investigates the temporal orders of families as the daily rhythms and schedules when one or both parents work non-standard hours. Our focus is especially on the often asynchronous times of non-standard work, on one hand, and of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services and other institutions, on the other hand. The data consist of semi-structured qualitative interviews of Finnish parents with a four-year-old child. The results show that the asynchronous times generated by non-standard working hours cause a wide range of collisions both in relation to childcare and ECEC and to the division of labour between parents. The parents are ‘wrestling’, not only because of the asynchrony of their own work but also because of the ‘pedagogical rhythm’ created by ECEC professionals. However, the parents also find ways to manage time, facilitated by workplace flexibility or spousal negotiations over the sharing of responsibilities.