Spectacles of intimacy? Mapping the moral landscape of teenage social media

This paper explores young people's expressed concerns about privacy in the context of a highly mediated cultural environment, mapping social media practices against axes of visibility and participation. Drawing on interdisciplinary conceptual resources from both the humanities and social sciences, we use ‘spectacles of intimacy’ to conceptualise breaches of privacy, mapping an emergent moral landscape for young people that moves beyond concerns with e-safety to engage with the production and circulation of audiences and value. The paper draws on data from a methodological innovation project using multi-media and mixed methods to capture lived temporalities for children and young people. We present a model that captures a moral landscape shaped by emotional concerns about social media, the affordances of those media and affective discourses emerging from young people's use of the media.     

Using Geographic Information Systems to Reconceptualize Spatial Relationships and Ecological Context

In this article, the author demonstrates how geographic information system (GIS) software can be used to reconceptualize spatial relationships and ecological context and address the modifiable areal unit problem. In order to do this, the author uses GIS to (1) test an important category of spatial hypotheses (spatial proximity hypotheses), (2) overcome methodological problems that arise when data sets are not spatially comparable, and (3) measure ecological context. The author introduces a set of GIS variable construction techniques that are designed to accomplish these tasks, illustrates these techniques empirically by using them to test spatial proximity hypotheses drawn from the literature on environmental inequality, and demonstrates that results obtained using these techniques are methodologically superior to and substantively different from results obtained using traditional techniques. Finally, the author demonstrates that these techniques are the product of an alternative conceptualization of physical space that allows sociologists to develop new ways to think about and measure spatial relationships, ecological context, and place-based social inequality and that gives them the ability to reconceptualize spatially based methodological problems that have confronted them for years.     

“Stuck in the Middle with You?” Supervisory Level and Anger about Work

Although sociologists have long been interested in the stratification of emotions, the occupational stratification of anger has been investigated in only a few general population studies. Through analyses of data representative of workers in Toronto, we evaluate the hypothesis that workplace hierarchical position, defined by supervisory level, has an inverted u‐shaped association with the frequency of anger about work. We also evaluate the more specific hypothesis that the difference in work‐related anger between front‐line supervisors and nonsupervisory workers will be relatively larger among workers in the commodified services sector than other sectors. Results are generally consistent with our hypotheses. We find that both front‐line supervisors in the commodified services sector, and secondary supervisors in all employment sectors, report more frequent anger about work than do nonsupervisory workers. In contrast, higher level supervisors report anger about work at about the same frequency as nonsupervisory workers. These associations are only slightly reduced by controls for work stress and stressors. We discuss how supervisory relations might explain differences in anger about work among workers at different levels in organizational hierarchies.     

Gay guys using gay language: friendship,shared values and the intent‐context‐effect matrix

This article draws on in‐depth interviews with 35 openly gay male undergraduates from four universities in England to develop an understanding of the changing nature of language related to homosexuality. In addition to finding a diminution in the prevalence of homophobic language, we demonstrate that participants maintain complex and nuanced understandings of phrases that do not use homophobic pejoratives, such as ‘that's so gay’. The majority of participants rejected the notion that these phrases are inherently homophobic, instead arguing that the intent with which they are said and the context in which they are used are vital in understanding their meaning and effect. We conceptualize an intent‐context‐effect matrix to understand the interdependency of these variables. Highlighting the situated nature of this matrix, we also demonstrate the importance of the existence of shared norms between those saying and hearing the phrase when interpreting such language.     

Models of the Joint Structure of Domain-Related and Global Distress: Implications for the Reconciliation of Quality of Life and Mental Health Perspectives

Research on subjective wellbeing includes studies of both domain-related and global distress. The mental health literature, though, focuses almost exclusively on global distress. This seems to be partly due to a common belief that psychological distress, and the moods that comprise distress, necessarily lack referential content. However, if that were the case it would make little sense for any study to ever focus on domain-related distress. The research presented in this report clarifies the relation between global and domain-related distress. We compare confirmatory factor analytic models of the joint relationship among symptoms of global distress with affective symptoms of distress about work, home, and physical appearance. Data are from a general population telephone survey. In the best-fitting models domain-related distress and global psychological distress are related but distinct latent variables. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of the models, and model choice.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

‘When you're boxing you don't think so much’: pugilism,transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members

This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young men's dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.     

Overcoming “Crisis”: Mobility Capabilities and “stretching” a Migrant Identity among Young Irish in London and Return Migrants

We bring into dialogue the migrant identities of young Irish immigrants in the UK and young returnees in Ireland. We draw on 38 in-depth interviews (20 in the UK and 18 in Ireland), aged 20–37 at the time of interview, carried out in 2015–16. We argue that “stretching” identities – critical and reflective capabilities to interpret long histories of emigration and the neglected economic dimension – need to be incorporated into conceptualizing “crisis” migrants. Participants draw on networks globally, they choose migration as a temporary “stop-over” abroad, but they also rework historical Irish migrant identities in a novel way. Becoming an Irish migrant or a returnee today is enacted as a historically grounded capability of mobility. However, structural economic constraints in the Irish labour market need to be seriously considered in understanding return aspirations and realities. These findings generate relevant policy ideas in terms of relations between “crisis” migrants and the state.