Towards a sociology of transgendered bodies

The articulation of a generic social process of 'body femaling' presented in Ekins (1993) and elaborated in Ekins (1997) is further developed in this article to provide a conceptual framework for a sociology of trans-gendered bodies. Transgendering refers both to the idea of moving across (transferring) from one pre-existing gender category to another (either temporarily or permanently), and to the idea of transcending or living 'beyond gender' altogether. Following Plummer's (1995) work on sexual stories, we distinguish a number of contemporary transgendering body stories which we consider in terms of four major modes or styles of body transgendering: those we identify as 'migrating', 'oscillating', 'erasing' and 'transcending'. We give illustrative examples of each mode with reference to the binary male/female divide, the interrelations between sex, sexuality and gender, and the interrelations between the four main sub-processes of transgendering, which we identify as 'substituting', 'concealing', 'implying' and 'redefining'.     

Processes of Religious and Spiritual Influence in Adolescence: Introduction to a Special Section

This paper serves as the lead article introducing the special section of the Journal of Research on Adolescence focused on processes of religious and spiritual influence during adolescence. The purpose of the special section is to review prior theory and research on the processes by which religiosity and spirituality might influence youth outcomes, present original cutting‐edge theory and research on processes of religious and spiritual influence, and point to the most fruitful directions and methodological approaches for future work in the area. The special section is guided by eight research questions which push researchers to go beyond mere bivariate associations between religion/spirituality and youth outcomes to unpacking the processes of influence at work.     

Men's Aging Amidst Intersecting Relations of Inequality

Men age under the pressure of age relations and their intersections with such other inequalities as gender, race, class, nation, and sexuality. We review findings of research on masculinity, inequalities, and social gerontology, and argue that a theoretically informed combination of all three offers the best understanding. We theorize that many men are privileged by their claims on occupational niches and family care and that age relations disrupt those privileges. Age relations exacerbate inequalities among men and reverse many claims to high status. Old men find themselves doing more care work, with less recognition, and suffering effects of the activities that had maintained status in younger years. Economic dependency, loss of status, declining health, isolation, and increasing invisibility shape old manhood even as other relations shield many from the lowest status.     

Patterns of nonresident father contact

We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY79) from 1979 to 2002 and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY) from 1986 to 2002 to describe the number, shape, and population frequencies of U.S. nonresident father contact trajectories over a 14-year period using growth mixture models. The resulting four-category classification indicated that nonresident father involvement is not adequately characterized by a single population with a monotonic pattern of declining contact over time. Contrary to expectations, about two-thirds of fathers were consistently either highly involved or rarely involved in their children’s lives. Only one group, constituting approximately 23% of fathers, exhibited a clear pattern of declining contact. In addition, a small group of fathers (8%) displayed a pattern of increasing contact. A variety ofvariables differentiated between these groups, including the child’s age at father-child separation, whether the child was born within marriage, the mother’s education, the mother’s age at birth, whether the father pays child support regularly, and the geographical distance between fathers and children.     

Courtship at the coroner's court

This article examines the nature and conduct of nineteenth-century courtship through the prism of the largest sample of coronial court records ever assembled. These records deal with unexplained or violent deaths and often involved the extensive gathering of testimony from witnesses and other community stakeholders. A surprising number of cases were either directly connected to courtship, or witness statements provide evidence on courtship practice and custom. Focusing particularly on records for the English Midlands, we offer a new model of typologies of courtship experience running across a spectrum from serene and unproblematic through to the obsessive relationship that ended with murder or violence. Dealing in more detail with individual cases, we illustrate the value of the material for understanding the lived experience of courtship and address three broad questions. What range of actors (family, friends, neighbours, employers, lodgers, etc,) was involved in courtships among the labouring classes? What was the emotional context within which the courtships of ‘ordinary people’ were played out? And how did ordinary people experience the human journey of courtship? We suggest that it was possible for men and women to construct completely different versions of courtships, that relationships were fragile, and that the capacity for individual agency in courtship was much more circumscribed than has often been allowed for this period.     

China’s first priority in post-war state building: A wealthy state,or a strong army?

This analysis examined causal links in China’s defence–growth nexus in 1960–2016. The results show that better growth significantly reduces military-civilian ratio and propels military reforms. The unidirectional threshold causality from growth to defence shows that the military impact on a positive change in China’s growth is little in the long term. Conversely, the growth impact of a positive change in defence has accelerated after it reaches the threshold year in 1987. This finding explains why Chinese economy stagnated when defence was prioritised and why China has risen dramatically in the Far East after three decades of fast economic growth.     

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Within the last several years, sociology has witnessed numerous emerging interests, two of which are clinical sociology and teaching sociology. Although these two movements appear to have little in common, beneath the surface a great deal of commonality exists. This paper examines the similarities and dissimilarities between these movements. In particular, the discussion presents the factors leading to the emergence of these movements, the basic issues articulated by each, and the organizational format developed to address their concerns. The issues that these movements address have implications for the future of sociology. These movements offer the possibility that sociology may become a more applied discipline, a discipline closer to the phenomena it studies, and a discipline confident that it has something to offer.