Moral reform and the anti-abortion movement

Throughout the 1970s protest against abortion was organised by two main pressure groups, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child and the LIFE organisation. This paper considers the rhetoric employed by the anti–abortion movement during this period by focusing on the campaign literature, the evidence submitted to various committees of inquiry and public statements made by leading anti-abortionists. The findings from a study of a small sample of anti-abortion protestors are also reported. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by sixty-four members of two local branches of the two national pressure groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with local campaign activists. In the subsequent analysis the anti-abortion movement is depicted as adopting a position of cultural fundamentalism in the face of changing social mores and moral values. Protest against abortion is placed within the wider framework of moral reform. In studying the movement and its supporters use is made of the analytical distinction between assimilative and coercive reform (Gusfield, 1963).     

In Celebration of Virginia Olesen's Uncanny Sociological Eye

Symbolic interactionism dwells deep in the intellectual bones of Ginnie Olesen, manifest in sundry ways across a long and ambitious academic career. Here, we briefly sketch her background and then trace her scholarship featuring her interactionist and feminist contributions in four main areas: professional socialization, women, health and healing studies, qualitative methods/feminist methodologies, and the sociology of emotions/interactionist social psychology of illness. We conclude with cherished memories.     

Multiple Book Review: Four Perspectives on Human Natures: Genes,Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Paul R. Ehrlich. Washington,DC: Island Press, 2000, 531 pp.

Population and Environment -     

The challenge of inclusive coproduction: The importance of situated rituals and emotional inclusivity in the coproduction of health research projects

Previous studies highlight that coproduced research initiatives are influenced by how individuals interact together and that group inclusivity amongst diverse members is crucial. However, it is not fully understood how inclusivity is sustained over time, particularly through routine encounters. Our study examines how coproduction occurs through routine and ritualistic patterns of everyday practices, which have the potential to facilitate sustainable and inclusive research initiatives. Using ethnographic data with four applied health research projects, we explored how everyday rituals generate and sustain inclusivity. Informed by interactional ritual change theory, we identify two types of interlinked inclusivity: relational, individuals routinely engaging together; and emotional, the feeling of being included. The process of producing and maintaining both types requires ongoing reflexivity from members. Groups with sustained inclusivity build interpersonal momentum through situated practices that enable them to mitigate external pressures and internal disagreements. Where groups experience a breakdown in inclusivity, they also experience a loss of momentum that makes them vulnerable to disintegration and collapse. Building and sustaining inclusivity are worked out through everyday interactions and operate as a feedback loop that sustains the cohesiveness of the network and supports coproduction of knowledge.     

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.     

Unless you go online you are on your own: blogging as a bridge in para-sport

Since its inception, the Web has been described as a liberating technology permitting individuals with disabilities to surmount barriers that otherwise prevent full societal engagement. Subsequent studies of Web-based communication have instead reported that disabling conditions are reproduced rather than challenged online. This paper uses interviews with 25 para-sport participants to provide an empirical account of how the affordances of the Web are leveraged in disability sport networks. Our findings suggest that individuals with disabilities are using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of online communication to find information, engage in advocacy and outreach projects, and form strong networks that extend online and offline. We discuss our findings in light of Putnam’s conceptualization of bridging and bonding social capital, and describe how individuals and groups use weak ties to disseminate information and strong ties to foster a sense of belonging.