The hybridization of organizational culture in tokyo disneyland

Tokyo Disneyland (TDL), a licensed version of the American theme park which was re-made in Japan, is a unique cultural, organizational and consumerist junction where “Japan” meets “America.” Offering an ethnography of this meeting, I focus here on the appropriation of the “Disney Way” into TDL's socialization practices of hiring and training. TDL's organizational culture is divided between an American influence that relates to part-timers and a Japanese tradition that applies to regular workers. It is discussed how local culture facilitated the successful transfer of the Disney Way to Japan while also promoting a modification of specific elements.     

Gender,aging, and the economics of “active aging”: Setting a new research agenda

The world is aging, and the percentages of older people are on a dramatic ascent. This dramatic demographic aging of human society is not gender neutral; it is mostly about older women. One of the key policy approaches to address the aging revolution is known as “active aging,” crystalized by the WHO in 2002 by three pillars: participation, health, and security. The active aging policy has financial and economic aspects and affects both men and women. However, as argued in this article, a gender-based approach has not been adopted within the existing active aging framework. Therefore, a new gender-specific research agenda is needed, one that focuses on an interrelation between gender and different economic aspects of “active aging” from international, comparative, cultural, and longitudinal perspectives.     

Recentering the world: the quest for ‘elective’centers in a secularized universe

The various ‘quests for meaning’of the ‘decentralized’contemporary Western youths are interpreted as so many attempts to ‘recenter the world’around new ‘elective centers’. Rather than being centers of the contemporary world into which the individual is born, such centers are located outside it, and freely chosen by the seekers. Four such elective centers are discussed: (1) traditional religious conversion, (2) the occult, (3) science fiction, and (4) tourism. Each of these elective centers is first briefly described and then analysed in a comparative framework, focused on six principal questions: (a) the social and cultural conditions which engender the contemporary ‘quest for a center’, (b) the nature of elective centers, (c) mechanisms of election and rejection of alternative elective centers, (d) extent of involvement with elective centers, (e) elective centers and the wider social framework, (f) the institution-building potential of the elective centers.     

Rituals of Exchange in the Social World of Israeli Beggars: An Exploratory Study

Based on a fieldwork in a central bus station in Israel, this study offers a novel consideration of the symbolic interactions underlying processes of communication, social exchange, and status attainment among beggars. The case study presents a possible alternative to sociological analyses of beggary as “deviant activity” by drawing upon the constructs of social-world perspective and symbolic types.     

A Symbolic Interactionist User's Guide to the Answering Machine: 22 Reflections on Vocal Encounters in an Emerging Social World

This article offers a sociological analysis of a new communication technology—the answering machine. A general semiotic model of “machine talk” is suggested and connected, through the social world perspective, to forms of sociability that involve the fragmentation of time and space. The symbolic meaning given to the answering machine in literature, television, the cinema, and everyday language, as well as its use at home, are examined. Drawing on such disembodied discursive practices as speciality and simulacra, the conclusion provides a Baudrillardian look at “machine talk” as reflecting the postmodern shift from face-to-face interactions to telecommunications.     

The Older Sandwich Generation Across European Welfare Regimes: Demographic and Social Considerations

European Journal of Population - The lengthening of the amount of time adult children depend on their parents’ support and rising longevity have pushed scholars to devote increasing attention...     

Doing gender in segregated and assimilative organizations: Ultra‐Orthodox Jewish women in the Israeli high‐tech labour market

Ultra‐Orthodox Jewish (haredi) women in Israel, who are traditionally expected to be both mothers and breadwinners so as to allow their husbands to immerse themselves in religious studies, are recently entering the high‐tech labour market in both segregated and assimilate organizations. This segmented labour market allows the constructed and intersectional character of doing gender in organizations to be examined, which in turn may also effect the ways in which such labour segmentation continues to develop. In 2014–2015, we administered a questionnaire to 119 haredi women working as computer programmers in assimilative and segregated organizations, and interviewed 42 of them as well as 16 of their managers. We describe the emergence of a dual pattern of employment with its benefits and disadvantages regarding pay, satisfaction, commitment and burnout. Findings are presented concerning the balancing of work and family as well as the professional/social conflict that is accentuated by working in an assimilative organization. Our findings show how the intersection of work, religiosity, class and gender is central to women's labour trajectories and identities, highlighting both the boundaries of gendered arrangements and their negotiability. We conclude by discussing how specific strategies of doing gender in segmented labour markets play out in/against ‘global’ norms of work and professionalism.