“This will help your children”: Service providers’ experiences with military families during cycles of deployment

ABSTRACT

Military families face not only the same challenges as other families, but also unique issues due to their military involvement. Parenting programs for civilian families can be helpful, but they do not generally cover the specific issues faced by military families. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather information from a focus group of eight service providers about the types of issues that affect military families, such that content and delivery of workshops at a social service agency could be formed to specifically cater to military families. This study utilized a phenomenological approach, and analyses revealed areas for social service involvement around the cycle of deployment. Specifically, social services could be helpful by using psychoeducational and normalization techniques around the five major themes that resulted from this study: (1) the issues of servicemembers psychologically withdrawing before deployment, (2) family cohesion and connectedness during and after deployment, (3) family stability during reintegration of the service member, (4) military families experience many of the same challenges that nonmilitary families do (such as domestic violence and financial issues), and (5) utilizing a military culture framework for all military family programs.     

Employee communication,job engagement,and organizational commitment: A study of members of the Millennial Generation

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between job engagement and two key components of employee-organization relationships (EOR). Findings from a survey of members of the Millennial Generation (N = 539) in the United States indicate that job engagement mediates the relationship between employee communication and organizational commitment. It is concluded that when employees are engaged in their work, their commitment to the organization is strengthened and the likelihood of them leaving the organization decreases. Furthermore, an argument is made in light of the study’s findings that engagement and commitment work in concert to strengthen EORs overall. To foster engagement, organizations should remove obstacles to internal information flow and provide ongoing feedback to employees about individual and organizational issues.     

Poking a sleeping bear: the challenge of organizational recruitment for controversial topics

ABSTRACT

Researchers often approach employers to investigate employees’ work and family experiences. Organizational willingness to grant access to employees can vary, especially when the research topic is seen as controversial or contentious for the employer. This paper explores this methodological challenge using a research example from Manitoba, Canada, which explored the use of parental leave by male employees and the impact of managerial attitudes and corporate culture on usage. Sixty large employers were recruited with only seven of those organizations agreeing to participate. In this paper, the reasons organizations gave for declining to participate and the implications of their decisions for the research are examined. Although the final sample included 905 managers and employees, participating organizations tended to be employee-focused and family-friendly employers. Organizations declined participation for a variety of reasons: avoiding raising the issue with unions, awareness that their policies unfairly benefited female leave takers, and simply not seeing the relevance of a topic relating to men’s work–family experiences. A dialogue often absent from the literature, it is important to understand how employers can limit researchers’ access to employees on controversial topics. The existence of such barriers suggests alternative avenues to recruit participants directly when topics are contentious for employers.     

Keep the hope alive: young Indonesian musicians’ views of the future

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores hopes for the future of young Indonesian musicians. The young people are seen to consider their future trajectories in multiple, hierarchical music fields. The article also takes into account the ontological insecurity of jobs as a professional musician, arguing that there is continuous reproduction of a doxa, namely ‘survival of the fittest’ in Indonesia. Yet despite abundant risks to livelihoods, young Indonesian musicians expressed optimistic views about the future. The analysis of data below bridges the gap between the traditionally separate youth studies fields of youth transitions and youth cultures. Our interpretation critically contextualises the dialogue between these two fields based on the experiences of young Indonesian musicians as a part of the Global South.     

Understanding ethnic visibility through language use: the case of Taiwan Hakka

This study investigates how the ethnic visibility of Taiwan Hakka is improved through language use. The usage of a unique Hakka symbolic code <nganggiang stiff neck> is focused on. Based on data from the four Taiwan major newspapers, an analysis with text techniques shows that the code emerges along with social-political developments in Taiwan, with its meaning turning from negative to positive connotation. Its frequency is highly correlated with major political events in Taiwan, with peaks during the two or three years before presidential elections. It illustrates semiotic innovation, extending from Hakka to Hakka non-human, to non-Hakka, and to non-Hakka non-human frames. The salient image it creates increases Hakka ethnic visibility and enhances their ethnic identity. A significant implication is that minority ethnic groups can employ a unique symbolic code, empowering it with positive connotation. Through extensive language use, its representation can raise their ethnic visibility and enhance their ethnic identity.     

Identity Work,Techniques of Neutralization,and Deviance: Exploring the Relationship Among Older Adult Gamblers

This study investigates the value of techniques of neutralization in understanding how people involved in marginal to widely deviant behaviors perform identity work. Based on 33 in‐depth interviews with older adult gamblers, we show how techniques of neutralization are used to align personal and social identities. We describe the techniques of neutralizations our participants use along a continuum of gambling involvement, showing how techniques differ in variety and content and are contingent on larger narratives about appropriate behaviors, identities, and selves operating in contemporary society. Our research helps to refine sociologists' understandings of relationships between levels of involvement in deviant behaviors and identity work.     

Human rights through the paradigm changes of the social communication theories

Human rights (HR), from the perspective of interest and thematic selection, are recognized in the topics of the communication. In general, there is considered to be a positive relationship between the media and its function of mediation with citizenship in reference to the declared general principles since inception in 1948. With this approach, the paper deals with providing an updated reflection of that connection and its main difficulties, such as the crisis of credibility in the information in the context of the European Union and within the framework of the paradigm changes that has derived in the knowledge society of the so-called third environment. The precepts of those recognized as generations of HR survive in the informational stories, of which, due to their current relevance in recent decades, those related to migratory movements, inequality, and poverty stands out. Moreover, the paper explores and discusses how a new generation derived from the implementation and intervention of technology gets involved as an essential characteristic in the relations between the members of society.     

Demands and Devotion: Cultural Meanings of Work and Overload Among Women Researchers and Professionals in Science and Technology Industries

How do cultural meanings influence how people experience work‐life demands? Much research, especially quantitative research, on the effects of structural work and family conditions does not account for employees’ cultural beliefs about the meaning of work in their lives. This article uses unique survey data to investigate the effects of employee embrace of elements of the “work devotion schema”—a cultural model that valorizes intense career commitment and organizational dedication—on their sense of “overload,” an experience that includes feeling exhausted and overloaded by all one's roles, net of actual hours on the paid job and family responsibilities. We argue that by cognitively, morally, and emotionally framing work as a valued end, the work devotion schema reduces feelings of overload. Using a case of senior women researchers and professional service providers in science and technology industries, we find that those who embrace work devotion feel less overloaded than those who reject it, net of work and family conditions. However, this effect is curtailed for mothers of young and school‐aged children. We end by discussing implications for flexibility stigma and gender inequality.     

Fragments of Modernization: Domestic Spaces Indicating Traditional Dialects in a Modern Speech

This article examines the change in Turkish domestic space through modernization and, in particular, the artifact of lace, as a nonchanging object in Turkish home in its relationship with the “traditional” and the “modern” domestic settings. Thereby it investigates how traditional and modern settings are defined in Turkish society and, this leads to a further analysis of the modernization process in Turkey within the scope of Turkish house and its domestic settings. The aim of the article is to analyze lace as an agent, which is an actant of the change in domestic settings, to read the connection between the daily life of people and social lives of artifacts. Therefore, examining the dialogue of lace with traditional and modern domestic settings provides to deconstruct the network of the artifact, the house and the individual during the modernization process that Turkish society has been through. The theoretical perspective of the article relies on a material‐semiotic approach with an emphasis on Latour's Actor‐Network Theory and, the methodology of the article is based on ethnography: It includes observations and semi‐structured interviews conducted with people from different social environments focusing on the meaning and the use of lace in domestic environment.     

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.