Changing Gender: The Discursive Construction of Equal Opportunities

This article provides a discursive perspective on the dilemmas of sameness and difference feminisms and their consequences for change projects. It explores how equal opportunity officers dealing with gender issues and introducing equality legislation in practice construct the meaning of equal opportunities. The analysis of the interpretative repertoires and ideological dilemmas drawn upon in ten interviews shows the highly context‐specific use of four different repertoires constructing gender equality: the sameness, difference, bandwidth and deconstructive repertoire. Interpreting the shifts between repertoires from the perspective of the ideological dilemma, new avenues for change are explored. The article concludes that the simultaneous use of all possible theoretical perspectives might be a worthwhile objective.     

Depoliticising literature,politicising diversity: ethno-racial boundaries in Dutch literary professionals’ aesthetic repertoires

Although still a neglected area, over the years a growing body of sociological research on the position of ethno-racial minorities in Western artistic fields has emerged. With this article we aim to contribute to this research area by focusing on ethno-racial diversity in the Dutch literary field. Through in-depth interviews, we analyse how gatekeepers mobilise specific cultural repertoires and by doing so draw ethno-racial boundaries when discussing acquisition, assessing quality and positioning themselves in the literary field. We argue that literary publishers and other professionals (selectively) employ an ‘old school’ modernist repertoire that especially values the formal aspects of literary products, by which non-white writers and publishers concerned with diversity are often positioned in an identity politics framework. Their work is said to take in a less prestigious ‘political’/’subjective’ position rather than a ‘literary’/‘universal’ one. As such, this paper informs on how gatekeepers’ practices shape the position of non-white authors in the Dutch literary field.     

数字资本主义在数字健康领域对公共利益价值内涵的重构

近年来,所有主要的大型消费科技公司都进入了健康研究领域。这种谷歌式数字健康引出一个问题,即在研究中,公共利益如何得以维系?只有将谷歌式数字健康置于数字资本主义的政治经济中,才能更好地突出公共利益和公共价值问题。以往的研究通常把谷歌式数字健康框定在一个双重的、不可通约的分析逻辑中,其中：私人利益与公共利益是对立的,经济价值与社会价值是对立的。虽然有助于揭示数字资本主义的剥削潜力,但是这种分析逻辑是有缺陷的,因为它只承认关于公共利益的一种理解。通过借鉴博尔坦斯基和泰弗诺的价值理论分析框架,可以发现：谷歌式数字健康对公共利益的价值内涵进行了多重塑造,不仅包括公民价值(为社会做好事),还包括市场价值(创造更多财富)、工业价值(提高生产效率)和项目价值(创新和实验)以及活力价值(促进生命健康)。如果把治理方案看作是一系列价值准则的组合,那么就可以设计出实现和保障公共利益的治理方案。基于此,提出研究进路：探索和构建更丰富的体现公共利益的价值准则体系,对其进行批判性评估,最终制定出能确保“公民”价值的可行治理方案。     

Interventions: Dynamics of Contention

This profile looks at the indigenous mobilization against government attempts to open up the Peruvian Amazon to increased foreign investment. It draws parallels between the events in Peru and conflicts in countries such as Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador. It identifies the main similarities as the causes of the conflict (neoliberal reform), the action repertoire deployed in the protests, and the successful outcome of the action for the indigenous groups involved. We also look at the sources of support for the struggle, focusing in particular on the role played by political leaders such as Ollanta Humala and Bolivian President Evo Morales. We conclude by analysing the consequences of the protests for the wider political situation in Peru.     

Strategies,Action Repertoires and DIY Activism in the Animal Rights Movement

Following Tilly, this paper argues that a social movement is what it does as much as why it does it. This approach is particularly important in the case of the animal rights movement, which is often demonized as extremist and violent. Critics of the movement claim that animal activists use letter bombs, arson attacks and threats to intimidate those they see as animal abusers and that violent direct action of this kind is typical of the movement as a whole. The present paper argues that the mainstream animal movement – in the USA, the UK and Australia – is overwhelmingly non-violent and that its core strategies and tactics have two broad aims, namely to gain publicity for the movement and to challenge conventional thinking about how we treat non-human animals. This is achieved primarily by the deployment of the key tactical mechanisms of persuasion, protest, non-cooperation and intervention. These tactics may be deployed collectively or as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) activism which many grassroots animal activists – ‘caring sleuths’ to use Shapiro's apt term – seem to prefer. The paper focuses on demonstrations and pamphleteering as examples of publicity strategies or liberal governance strategies as well as critical governance strategies or interference strategies such as the hunger strike, ethical vegetarianism and undercover surveillance.     

Covert repertoires: Ecotage in the UK 1

Ecological sabotage (ecotage) has been a feature of the more radical parts of the environmental movement in the Western world for several decades. While it may be perceived as being the preserve of underground cells of 'eco-terrorists', in the UK those who carry out small-scale acts of sabotage are also often engaged in relatively conventional political activity; view sabotage as a complement to other action, not as an end in itself; and are committed to avoiding physical harm to people. Drawing on ethnographic data from research with British activists, this article seeks to define ecotage and to explain its place in the repertoires of the environmental direct action movement in the UK. It is argued that the self-limiting form of ecotage in the UK has its roots in cross-movement debates that have developed over several decades and that national traditions remain important in understanding the development of social movement repertoires.     

Legalism and creativity: tax non-compliance in the eyes of the economic elite

This paper analyzes elite tax compliance from a sociological perspective in order to examine how different tax behaviors are justified or how they embody different taxpayers’ subjectivities. Drawing from the case of Chile and using a qualitative approach based on 32 interviews conducted with members of the economic elite, it is argued that forms of non-compliance -such as evasion and avoidance- are grounded in different ‘repertoires of evaluation’ while denoting a plurality of distinctions and criteria of evaluation which relate to the legal culture in which the tax system operates. Findings show that legalism -a literal conception of the rules- does not always favor tax compliance and that it may even go against the purpose of tax collection when a creative use of the law prevails. Furthermore, legalism and creativity allow for the main justifications for challenging tax payment as well as the perceptions and beliefs that underlie the everyday relationship between taxpayers and the state to be understood.     

Older audiences in the digital media environment

Relying on Jensen and Helles’ model for studying the Internet as a cultural forum, this study aimed to explore the extent to which traditional media are displaced by innovative communication practices within the older audience of new media. The study was based on a cross-European survey of 1039 Internet users aged 60 years and up. Results indicated that older Internet users are significantly more inclined to use traditional mass media than new social media and prefer synchronous to asynchronous mass media. This audience, however, is not homogeneous, as four subsegments were identified. These groups differed in their media repertoires, sociocultural background and leisure preferences. The findings suggest that despite the increasing percentage of older Internet users, this audience tends to adhere to familiar media practices, with only a minority making intense use of new practices. With very few cross-national differences, this tendency appears to be universal, suggesting overall media use traditionalism and a second-level digital divide among the older audience.     

This Is What Democracy Sounds Like: Protest Performances of the Citizenship Movement in Wisconsin and Beyond

This article is a case study of an ongoing singing protest in Wisconsin, the group that calls itself Solidarity Sing Along (SSA). An offshoot of the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising, for the first 15 months of its existence SSA was an important nexus of local activists working to recall Republican state senators and the governor. After the recall's failure the group not only continued to carry on but quite effortlessly reoriented its claim making and centered its protests on the freedom to assemble and petition the government, which had been an important cause from early on. Maintaining its pro-labor orientation, SSA has become part of a broader movement for democratic citizenship rights. Situating the group in musical practices of the Wisconsin protests and social movements more generally, I show that how SSA makes and performs its music makes it a part of the citizenship movement. This case study reveals a novel form of claim making within the repertoire of contention practiced by social movements: SSA is a ‘part-time occupation’ and as such has potential to be more resilient and durable than ‘permanent’ occupations à la Occupy Wall Street.