Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representating Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism

Projecting essence onto a social category means to think, talk, and act as if the category were a discrete natural kind and as if its members were all endowed with the same immutable attributes determined by the category's essence. Essentializing may happen implicitly or on purpose in representing ingroups and outgroups. We argue that essentializing is a versatile representational tool (a) that is used to create identity in groups with chosen membership in order to make the group appear as a unitary entity, (b) that outsiders often draw on a group's essentialist self-construal in their judgements about the groups, (c) that judgements about members of forced social categories are often informed by essentialist thinking that easily switches to discrimination and racism, and (d) that under certain historical and political conditions members of social categories and groups may contest their essentialized identity, such as parts of the feminist movement, or that they may attempt to reconstruct an essentialized identity, such as parts of the homosexual movement or the largely defunct European nobility. Besides explicit political and power interests, we see communication processes and language use as a tacit force driving essentialization of social categories.     

Rum, policy, and the Portuguese: or, the maintenance of elite supremacy in post-emancipation British Guiana

Cette recherche en géographie historique, en Guyane Britannique au dix-neuvième siécle, étudie les raisons qui ont amené un groupe d' immigrants Portugais de Madère à dominer le commerce au détail à la fin de l' esclavage. Un recours à la théorie d' une société pluraliste nous indique la marche à suivre pour expliquer le ‘pourquoi’ de cette domination. Certains indices orientèrent notre recherche. Nous nous sommes demandés ‘pour qui’ cette société pluraliste était-elle si nécessaire et qui d'autres, en plus de Portugais, bénéficiaient de ce contrôle du commerce au détail. Nous avons la preuve évidente que les Portugais avaient reçu l'appui de l'élite europiéne, d'autre part les planteurs avaient tout intérêt à garder les Noirs comme ouvriers sur leurs plantations, les privant ainsi de leurs droits. Une importante immigration de main-d'euvre indienne engagée sous contract et l'appui des planteurs permit à l'élite de maintenir son contrôle de la colonie en établissant et en perpétuant les divisions ethniques sur les plans économique, social et géographique. The central questions of this research on the historical geography of nineteenth-century British Guiana are how and why an immigrant group from Madeira (the Portuguese) came to dominate the post-emancipation retail trade of the colony. A recourse to plural-society theory suggested where one should inquire. By asking for ‘whom’ the creation of a plural society was so necessary; and ‘who’ else, besides the Portuguese, benefited from Portuguese control of the retail trade, one received sufficient clues and direction to know where to look. Evidence was uncovered which established that the Portuguese initially received help from the European elite. This support and substantial indentured immigration from India enabled the elite to maintain its control of the colony by establishing and perpetuating ethnic divisions in the colony's economy, society, and geography.     

Expanding transnational care networks: comparing caring for families with caring for homes

Although many factors may motivate a migrant to own a house in their country of origin, significant practical labour is needed to maintain it, as both a material structure intended for shelter and as a symbolic object reflecting attachment to a place of origin. Most research in this area focuses on the significance accorded to transnational houses by their owners and families connoted by the ‘myth of return’, but little attention has been given to how the labour of ownership – constructing, maintaining, overseeing and improving the house – is accomplished. In the light of emerging studies on the care labour that remittance houses require, this article suggests a theoretical framework for studying networks of transnational house maintenance on three dimensions of care – trust, communication, and remittances – observed in networks for transnational family care provisions. A review of literature on transnational home ownership indicates that these dimensions are also present, with some differences in application.     

The (Parlous) State of German Unions

We trace the profound decline in German unionism over the course of the last three decades. Today, just one in five workers is a union member, and whether this degree of penetration is consistent with a corporatist model built on encompassing unions is now moot. The decline in union membership and density is attributable to external forces that have confronted unions in many countries (such as globalization and compositional changes in the workforce), to some specifically German considerations (such as the transition process in post-communist Eastern Germany), and to sustained intervals of classic insider behavior on the part of German unions. The "correctives" have included mergers between unions, decentralization, and wages that are more responsive to unemployment. At issue is the success of these innovations. For instance, the trend toward decentralization in collective bargaining hinges in part on the health of that other pillar of the dual system of industrial relations, the works council. But works council coverage has also declined, leading some observers to equate decentralization with deregulation. While this conclusion is likely too radical, German unions are at the crossroads. We argue that if they fail to define what they stand for, are unable to increase their presence at the workplace, and continue to lack convincing strategies to deal with contemporary economic and political trends working against them, their decline may become a rout.     

CODE CREATION IN ENDOGENOUS MERGER EXPERIMENTS

We study the conflict that can occur in a merger due to firms' use of specialized language, or “code,” and whether participants accurately forecast this difficulty. After creating a shared code to describe different pictures accurately, subjects bid for extra payments to join a merged group. The two lowest bidders are placed in the merged group. Values inferred from two different bidding procedures indicate fairly accurate general appraisals of the cost of the merger, but the values of those subjects who bid the least, and choose to join the merged group, are too optimistic, reflecting an “organizational winner's curse.” (JEL D23, D83, G34, L21, M14)     

The Fallacy of Misplaced Intentionality in Social Representation Research

This paper argues that social representations cannot be used as independent variables in causal explanations of social behaviour. It is shown that the structure of investigations often follows a causally explanatory design despite explicit statements to the contrary by the researchers. This fact is analyzed with three investigations. It is argued that verbal data used to assess the contents of a representation as independent variable are logically equivalent to data obtained from the "dependent" overt behaviour. Therefore these two kinds of data must be seen as two illustrations of the same representational contents. The researchers'preference for using verbal data to assess the independent variable and the tendency to introduce a causal relationship between representation and behaviour is shown to result from misplacing folk-beliefs. Folk-beliefs about intentional causality, it is shown, pertain to the same level as other beliefs about the world on the part of the subjects. Hence they are part of the folk-representation itself and must be treated as such; their use in scientific accounts of the belief-action relationship is not implied by data on rational belief systems. It is suggested to conceptualize social representations as integral units of beliefs and action which may be used to explain causally subsequent contingent social events. The function of folk-beliefs in intentional causality for the self-concept of rational people and for social accountability is discussed.