Groups and individuals: conformity and diversity in the performance of gendered identities

The nature and role of social groups is a central tension in sociology. On the one hand, the idea of a group enables sociologists to locate and describe individuals in terms of characteristics that are shared with others. On the other, emphasizing the fluidity of categories such as gender or ethnicity undermines their legitimacy as ways of classifying people and, by extension, the legitimacy of categorization as a goal of sociological research. In this paper, we use a new research method known as the Imitation Game to defend the social group as a sociological concept. We show that, despite the diversity of practices that may be consistent with self‐identified membership of a group, there are also shared normative expectations – typically narrower in nature than the diversity displayed by individual group members – that shape the ways in which category membership can be discussed with, and performed to, others. Two claims follow from this. First, the Imitation Game provides a way of simultaneously revealing both the diversity and ‘groupishness’ of social groups. Second, that the social group, in the quasi‐Durkheimian sense of something that transcends the individual, remains an important concept for sociology.     

Socioeconomic differentials in the transition to first cohabitation in Norway

Using Norwegian data this study examines the impact of individual as well as parental socioeconomic resources on the timing of the transition to first cohabitation. The analyses show that the entrance into a first cohabitation is positively affected by individual level of education, whereas school enrollment delays first cohabitation. Further, respondents whose parents have a secondary or tertiary education start their first cohabitation later than those with lower educated parents. There are, however, important gender differences in the association between socioeconomic variables and the timing of first cohabitation. First, there is a stronger positive association between level of education and timing of first cohabitation for women than is the case for men. The positive effect of income, on the other hand, is more pronounced for men. Lastly, the delaying effect of having a tertiary educated father is stronger for the female sub-sample.     

My Life in Huddersfield: Supporting Young Asylum Seekers and Refugees to Record Their Experiences of Living in Huddersfield

A project was undertaken with the aim of developing resources that would improve service delivery to asylum seeker children and young people by improving social worker training within the new social work degree. Funding was acquired to work with a group of children and young people. The workers engaged with them in a range of activities, designed to enable the expression of feelings in relation to immigration and asylum seeking. Participants were told they would be working towards producing resources for the training of health and social care staff. This became a strong motivating factor in the engagement of the young people and resulted in the production of teaching resources and a number of changes to the degree curriculum at the University of Huddersfield.     

Journal reviews

Although studies of Pan‐Africanism and African nationalism have indicated that black people found London in the 1920s a suitable place to gather to discuss their future, this focus has blurred our perspective on those residents of African descent who are known to have assisted such visitors. An examination of contemporary newspapers and interviews with veterans show that there were many contacts between black Londoners in 1919 and the article attempts to indicate that these contacts were organized, regular, and extended over a number of years. The two elements in common were African descent and residence in London, suggesting that there was a black community in London in 1919.     

University of Queensland diploma in social studies

“… Your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O, that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves!” (Coriolanus, Act II, Scene I.)     

Death and Transfiguration: The Final Hours of Muscovite Monks

The aim of this article is to draw attention to certain theological and liturgical factors that enter into the composition process of hagiography, and in particular, in the depiction of the death scenes of Muscovite monks. The monks who wrote the major portion of medieval Russian literature did so from a particular cultural context in which theological and liturgical texts played a prominent role. The article looks for evidence of this monastic culture in the memorials written to honour deceased members of monastic communities. It outlines some features of the monastic culture that produced the vitae, rehearses previous investigations into the production of Russian medieval hagiography and offers a detailed analysis of four texts from the Muscovite period. The Dormition and Transfiguration are important foundational motifs underlying death scenes in particular. Attention to liturgical and theological principles in other saints’ lives and biographical sketches will enhance our appreciation for the artistry of medieval Russian authors, who appropriate a lengthy Christian tradition in the production of their texts.     

Isaac Julien's looking for Langston: Hugues,biography and queer(ed) history

This writing ‘performs’ theory and ‘embodies’ writing as it questions specific psychoanalytic theories of the phallus, the mirror and jouissance in the context of ruminations of what it means to make art and judge it. Art, theory, and blackness are at once essentialized and fragmented in the pull between Lacanian notions of phallic power and the notions of a black woman needing to respond to the changing demands of truth and creation. Noir, a woman, troubled by resentments of the popular and of cultural critics, writes letters to her friend and next door neighbour, Oedipus Rex, in her search for the truth of affective/effective creation. Oedipus Rex as a prevailing taboo, a universal symbol, and a cornerstone of the psychoanalytic is recast into a‘silent’ respondent as Noir contemplates desire, the phallus, and the alchemy of black women in the gothic film Eve's Bayou. That Oedipus is ‘not read’ through his own letters, but only through the letters of this black woman is an oblique repositioning of subjectivity and voice.