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  Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
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Sociology
Journal Prestige (SJR): 1.807
Citation Impact (citeScore): 3
Number of Followers: 174  
 
  Hybrid Journal Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 0038-0385 - ISSN (Online) 1469-8684
Published by Sage Publications Homepage  [1176 journals]
  • What Future for the Sociology of Futures' Visions, Concepts and
           Methods

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      Authors: Susan Halford, Dale Southerton
      Pages: 263 - 278
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 263-278, April 2023.
      Questions about the future, and futurelessness, have attracted wide-ranging attention in recent years. Our article explores what Sociology offers. We reflect on the apparent contradiction that the future was bracketed off from the discipline in its early history, yet also offers rich theoretical, methodological and empirical resources for futures research. We demonstrate this through an analysis of the contributions to this Special Issue, each of which draws on explicitly Sociological theories and methods to consider futures in a range of fields. Finally, we explore further developments necessary for a Sociology of the Future. We argue that Sociology can and should be more directly involved in claiming what futures might be, should be and in materialising these claims. This means moving beyond Sociology – as a distinct set of resources – towards expansive engagement with other future-making actors. This may challenge and change Sociology but may also be key to its future.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:23Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231157586
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Futures Imperfect: A Reflection on Challenges

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      Authors: Barbara Adam
      Pages: 279 - 287
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 279-287, April 2023.
      Social lives are lived prospectively with intent and visions of what will, could and should be. Importantly, this social futurity is not merely hoped for, expected or anticipated but it is also enacted continuously in everyday and institutional practices. To encompass this central feature in studies of social life poses significant challenges for all evidence-based knowledge systems, given that the future is not yet and as such not considered factual. This means it cannot be known with certainty. Knowledge about it therefore tends primarily to be constructed, calculated and modelled from past-based evidence. In my reflections I examine some of the difficulties and anomalies that arise for engagement with the full complexity of this fundamental aspect of existence and explore alternative modes of engagement.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:16Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221113478
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Real Utopia as a Method' Utopian-Sociological Paths from Jameson’s
           Universal Army to a Postcapitalist Post Office

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      Authors: Martin Greenwood
      Pages: 288 - 304
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 288-304, April 2023.
      This article uses Frederic Jameson’s An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army as the inspiration for a utopian-sociological method that brings together aspects of Erik Olin Wright’s ‘Real Utopias’ project and Ruth Levitas’ ‘Imaginative Reconstitution of Society’. It argues that these different approaches can be bridged through presenting fictional sketches of imagined futures of potentially socially transformative institutions alongside more conventional sociological analysis of such. Two concepts associated with the discipline of Utopian Studies – education of desire and concrete utopia – are used to suggest that the British Post Office might perform a better utopian role than Jameson’s chosen vehicle of utopian transformation: the US Army. To further build this case, and to demonstrate one possible application of this method, the history, current condition and an imagined future of the Post Office are explored and some concrete steps in the utopian directions suggested by these are noted.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:20Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221133205
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Sociological Futures and the Importance of the Past

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      Authors: Tim Strangleman
      Pages: 305 - 314
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 305-314, April 2023.
      This article argues that in order to engage sociologically with the future the discipline needs to rediscover its historical imagination. It makes three main points. First is the idea that sociology needs to be more historical and to illustrate how this has been done well before. Second, it explores ideas, concepts and theories used in thinking about the past, which are in turn useful in organising how we imagine the future – in particular nostalgia, and especially that surrounding industry. Finally, it offers ways of thinking about the sociologically mediated relationship between past, present and future through the burgeoning field of deindustrialisation studies.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:26Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221119093
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Historical Perspectives on British Sociology’s Future: An Interview
           with John Scott

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      Authors: Graham Crow, Linda McKie, John Scott
      Pages: 315 - 324
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 315-324, April 2023.
      John Scott’s career as a sociologist spans more than 50 years, during which time he has written or edited more than 40 books among a total of more than 200 publications. The breadth of his interests and his service to the discipline in various roles including as President of the British Sociological Association and chair of the Sociology sub-panel for the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework make him particularly well-placed to comment on sociology’s history and its trajectories. His 2020 book British Sociology: A History presents a painstakingly researched account of the discipline’s shifting fortunes in which its practitioners have responded to intellectual opportunities and practical challenges to promote vibrant and multifaceted debate about the nature of social structures and the direction of social change. In the interview that follows he responds to questions from Graham Crow and Linda McKie to argue that knowledge of the discipline’s history has a key role to play informing today’s sociologists of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221107490
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Sociological Imaginations for Anti-Racist Futures: An Interview with Dr
           Prudence Carter

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      Authors: Johanne Jean-Pierre, Prudence Carter
      Pages: 325 - 333
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 325-333, April 2023.
      In this interview, Dr Prudence Carter, 2021–2022 President-Elect of the American Sociological Association, discusses how sociology can contribute to anti-racist futures across national contexts. Her insights point to the need for greater self-awareness in sociology regarding race and racism, for clarification of our aims and for better articulation and translation of popularized theoretical concepts, such as structural racism, to the general public. To achieve radical inclusion in the future, she highlights the importance of engaging in public and policy sociology, by explaining and substantiating policies and practices derived from our research. She also underscores the significance and value of comparative cross-national and multidisciplinary collaborative research. Most importantly, she brings to the fore the necessity of imagining new epistemological and methodological approaches to study the conditions that will enable our societies to attain equitable and anti-racist futures. Fundamentally, this involves extending our sociological imaginations.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:27Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122432
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Asset-Based Futures: A Sociology for the 21st Century

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      Authors: Lisa Adkins, Gareth Bryant, Martijn Konings
      Pages: 348 - 365
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 348-365, April 2023.
      This article engages with the question of whether the COVID-19 pandemic can be understood as an event that is moving us towards a new era. Highlighting the paradox that this question has emerged in the context of the stoppages and shutdowns associated with the pandemic, we suggest that any assessment of social change and the futures such change might unfold must be situated on the terrain formatted by the temporal logics of capitalism. At our current juncture this requires that sociology as a discipline understand these logics as asset rather than commodity based. Drawing on state responses to the pandemic in Australia, we show how mundane payments play a critical role in these logics, operating as differentiating technologies of time. We suggest that for sociology to build a sociology of futures that is relevant for the 21st century, it must come to terms with the time machine of the asset economy.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129145
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Intersectional Socialism: Rethinking the Socialist Future with
           Intersectionality Theory

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      Authors: Charles Masquelier
      Pages: 366 - 381
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 366-381, April 2023.
      Intersectionality theory can achieve more than an examination of mechanisms of power and oppression. It can also, shed light on what things might become. Drawing on this particular application of intersectionality theory, I argue that it can be deployed to imagine a socialist future and, in so doing, restore socialism’s utopian energies. This is achieved by tackling a distinctively socialist issue – the future of work – and showing the kind of conceptual innovations intersectionality theory can help develop. The future of work thus imagined is conceptualised as a dialogically coordinated production of life.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:16Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221131143
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Future-Making in an Uncertain World: The Presence of an Open Future in
           Danish Young Women’s Lives

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      Authors: Justine Grønbæk Pors, Sharon Kishik
      Pages: 398 - 414
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 398-414, April 2023.
      Reporting from a three-year longitudinal study following 16 young women through their upper secondary schooling, this article explores the lived experiences of future-making. By unpacking the striking finding in our material that for these young women, future-making consists in an ongoing labour to keep the future open, we complement studies showing how ideals of success in education affect young women’s everyday life. Our analysis reveals that although this mode of future-making induces anxieties and cruel labours, young women also navigate and negotiate their uncertain conditions. We show how they manage to (partly) escape extreme performance demands and how they connect to collective futures, thus challenging the individuality of neoliberal subjectivity. We contribute to a sociology of the future by demonstrating an approach to studying the future that zooms in on the practices and affective experiences, through which futures exert agency and organise the everyday lived present.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:18Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231156065
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Slower Sociologies for the Sociology of the Future

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      Authors: John Goodwin
      Pages: 415 - 420
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 415-420, April 2023.
      In this article the use of old photograph techniques is considered as a way of ‘slowing sociology down’ in order to have more thoughtful and immersive engagement within the field. This is contrasted with contemporary methods and their emphasis on speed, efficiency and perfection.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221127106
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • Recalibrating Everyday Futures during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Futures
           Fissured, on Standby and Reset in Mass Observation Responses

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      Authors: Rebecca Coleman, Dawn Lyon
      Pages: 421 - 437
      Abstract: Sociology, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 421-437, April 2023.
      This article contributes to sociologies of futures by arguing that quotidian imaginations, makings and experiences of futures are crucial to social life. We develop Sharma’s concept of recalibration to understand ongoing and multiple adjustments of present–future relations, focusing on how these were articulated by Mass Observation writers in the UK during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three key modes of recalibration: fissure, where a break between the present and future means the future is difficult to imagine; standby, where the present is expanded but there is an alertness to the future, and; reset, where futures are modestly and radically recalibrated through a post-pandemic imaginary. We argue for sociologies of futures that can account for the diverse and contradictory ways in which futures emerge from and compose everyday life at different scales.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-25T01:44:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231156651
      Issue No: Vol. 57, No. 2 (2023)
       
  • The Hidden Strains of ‘Cool’ Jobs

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      Authors: Aaron Delgaty, Eli R Wilson
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      A growing number of workers today are drawn to jobs that offer symbolic and cultural rewards but not necessarily stable employment or livable wages. Existing literature posits the exploitative nature of this labor arrangement, where workers must weigh the ‘cool’ aspects of their jobs against other less desirable aspects. Yet what happens when both these dimensions of work are deeply intertwined and subject to changing perspectives' Drawing on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews with US craft beer workers, we show how ‘cool’ aspects of brewery jobs are experienced as significant sources of material, social, and work identity strain that cause some workers to grow estranged from their jobs over time. We suggest a broader framework for understanding the hidden strains of jobs that appeal to workers for symbolic reasons, and advocate for shifting jobs in the new economy away from cool-yet-precarious employment bargains and toward more sustainable forms of employment.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-25T09:55:21Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231172129
       
  • Minority Ethnic Staff in Universities: Organisational Commitments,
           Reputation and the (Re)structuring of the Staff Body

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      Authors: Roxana D Baltaru
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article problematises whether organisational commitments impact the representation of ethnic minorities in the university workforce. In doing so, it considers the institutional context and the broader restructuring of universities’ personnel. The analysis is based on a longitudinal dataset of 120 universities, including university-level indicators of organisational commitments, institutional characteristics and ethnic minority staff numbers. The findings reveal that while on average, universities that are members of the Race Equality Charter exhibit higher shares of minority ethnic staff in higher-level contracts compared with those universities that are not members, joining the charter does not make a university more inclusive. Importantly, the share of minority ethnic staff is substantially lower in elite universities compared with all other universities, which indicates tensions between inclusion and university reputation. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to sociological institutionalist and organisational theories, and to higher education policy.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-18T05:43:26Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231163107
       
  • No Substitute for In-Person Interaction: Changing Modes of Social Contact
           during the Coronavirus Pandemic and Effects on the Mental Health of Adults
           in the UK

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      Authors: Patrick Rouxel, Tarani Chandola
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Life-course theories on how social relationships affect mental health are limited in causal claims. The restrictions in social contact during the coronavirus pandemic provided a natural experiment that modified the frequency of in-person contact and allowed us to estimate the effect of changes in in-person social contact frequency on mental health in four large nationally representative age-cohorts of adults living in the UK. There was consistent evidence of a small but statistically significant effect of less frequent social contact on anxiety-depression. Online modes of social contact did not compensate for the restrictions in in-person social contact during the pandemic. Young adults who increased their online social media frequency during the pandemic experienced a deterioration in mental health. Life-course theories cannot ignore the importance of the mode of social contact for social relationships, especially during young adulthood.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-15T12:57:02Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231172123
       
  • A Sociological Conversation with ChatGPT about AI Ethics, Affect and
           Reflexivity

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      Authors: Andrew Balmer
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This research note is a conversation between ChatGPT and a sociologist about the use of ChatGPT in knowledge production. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model, programmed to analyse vast amounts of data, recognise patterns and generate human-like conversational responses based on that analysis. The research note takes an experimental form, following the shape of a dialogue, and was generated in real time, between the author and ChatGPT. The conversation reflects on, and is a reflexive contribution to, the study of artificial intelligence from a sociology of science perspective. It draws on the notion of reflexivity and adopts an ironic, parodic form to critically respond to the emergence of artificial intelligence language models, their affective and technical qualities, and thereby comments on their potential ethical, social and political significance within the humanities.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-05-03T12:24:06Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231169676
       
  • Can Work Time Fragmentation Influence Workers’ Subjective Time Pressure'
           The Roles of Gender and Parenthood

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      Authors: Zhuofei Lu
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article investigates how the fragmentation of work time influences subjective time pressure, and how this relationship varies across gender and parenthood status. This is an important question that has been neglected by previous studies. Using the latest UK time-use data (N = 620) from 2020 to 2021 and Ordinary Least Squares regressions, the study finds that work time fragmentation generally predicts more subjective time pressure. Specifically, work time fragmentation is found to increase subjective time pressure more among women without children than mothers. However, this effect is inverted among men, as the fragmentation of work time predicts more subjective time pressure among fathers but not among men without children. These findings provide a nuanced understanding of the adverse consequences of ‘role switching’ and ‘work schedule instability’ and their interaction with gender and parenthood. Accordingly, future research should consider work time fragmentation as a vital indicator of job and life quality.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-24T05:52:50Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231166893
       
  • Is Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Owned by the Political Right'

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      Authors: Inna Leykin, Anastasia Gorodzeisky
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In political and social scientific discourses, the link between right-wing political orientation and anti-immigrant sentiment is often presented as a universal social fact. Based on a systematic examination of the association between left–right political orientation and attitudes towards migrants, the article demonstrates a clear inconsistency in the strength and direction of this presumed association in postsocialist European countries. We provide two analytical explanations for this inconsistency. The first challenges the western-centric idea that people leaning towards the political right tend to hold conservative views that shape their tendency to express anti-immigrant sentiment. The second explanation pertains to the limited relevance of the left–right political orientation scale for postsocialist subjects, making it difficult to attribute anti-immigrant sentiment to specific political orientations. In conclusion, we discuss specific social identities of the holders of hostile attitudes towards outsiders in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, which western-centric analytical models do not capture.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-19T11:12:23Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231161206
       
  • Exclusionary Logics: Constructing Disability and Disadvantaging Disabled
           Academics in the Neoliberal University

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      Authors: Jennifer Remnant, Katherine Sang, Tom Calvard, James Richards, Olugbenga (Abraham) Babajide
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Contemporary academia features managerialism and neoliberal thinking, consequent of an increasingly dominant market logic. This article draws on interviews with disabled academics, line managers, human resources professionals, estates staff, health and safety staff, and trade union representatives, alongside university policy documents, to discuss the impact of this logic on the experiences of disabled academics. Understandings of disability across professional groups were divorced from institutional rhetoric of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, aligning more clearly with market logic, manifest in performance management and idealised notions of academic work. Unlike students, disabled academics are required to navigate hostile policies and procedures. Their diagnoses are used in points of dispute relating to performance, or as an obstruction to dismissal tolerated out of legal obligation. This article illustrates the need for a change in university institutional logics to undo the damaging limitations of following market models of education.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-18T08:54:39Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231162570
       
  • Are Right-Wing Attitudes and Voting Associated with Having Attended
           Private School' An Investigation Using the 1970 British Cohort Study

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      Authors: Richard D Wiggins, Samantha Parsons, Francis Green, George B Ploubidis, Alice Sullivan
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article addresses the question of whether attending a private school affects voting behaviour and political attitudes in adulthood in Britain. The analysis is based upon the British Cohort Study, a nationally representative cohort of children born in one week in April 1970. The ‘effect’ of attending a private school on the tendency to vote Conservative in four consecutive General Elections, and on the expression of conservative attitudes in mid-life is assessed using path analysis. The model includes multiple indicators for a range of antecedents: social origins at birth, cultural and material capital, academic achievements and early social class destination. Once these antecedents are included in the model, for both men and women a direct positive relationship remains between attending private school and voting Conservative and holding right-leaning attitudes. The main significance of these findings follows from the high proportion of private school alumni in influential positions in public life.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-07T07:01:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221141386
       
  • Knowledge Hierarchies and Gender Disparities in Social Science Funding

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      Authors: Julien Larregue, Mathias Wullum Nielsen
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article examines the relationship between knowledge hierarchies and gender stratification in research funding. Through a mixed-methods study combining data on 5460 funded and unfunded social science applications submitted to a research council in Western Europe, and nine interviews with current and former council members, we explore how applicants’ disciplinary, thematic and methodological orientations intersect with gender to shape funding opportunities. Descriptive analysis indicates that women’s proposals are underfunded, with a relative gender difference of around 20%. Using computational text analysis and mediation analysis, we approximate that around one-third of this disparity may be attributed to gender differences in disciplinary focus, thematic specialisations and methodologies. The interviews with council members allow us to make sense of these disparities and expose the disciplinary hierarchies and power struggles at play in the council, sometimes resulting in a devaluation of qualitative methods and, more broadly, interpretive, descriptive and exploratory approaches in proposal assessments.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-03T12:34:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231163071
       
  • Reproduction and the Expanding Border: Pregnant Migrants as a
           ‘Problem’ in the 2014 Immigration Act

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      Authors: Gwyneth Lonergan
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article explores the construction of the UK National Health Service as a ‘bordering scape’, and the depiction of pregnant migrants as an especial problem, in policy documents and Parliamentary debates around the 2014 Immigration Act. Migrant women’s reproductive practices have long been an object of state anxiety, and a target of state intervention. However, this has been largely overlooked in recent scholarship on the proliferation and multiplication of internal bordering processes. This article addresses this gap and contributes to conceptualisations of bordering processes as situated and intersectional, arguing that discourses and anxieties around the reproduction of the nation-state play an important role in informing the construction of the proliferating internal border. These discourses and anxieties, which are heavily gendered and racialised, interact with the specificities of individual bordering sites in shaping both bordering processes, and the production of different individuals and groups within these processes.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-04-03T12:32:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231157987
       
  • Book Review: Heidi A Campbell and Ruth Tsuria (eds), Digital Religion:
           Understanding Religious Practice in Digital Media

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      Authors: Mahmud Yunus Mustofa, Mamnunah, Marina Rospitasari
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-27T12:55:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231161228
       
  • Virtues or Talent among Brotherless Daughters: A Study of How Patriarchal
           Gender Ideals Affect Gender Role Attitudes among Women from the One-Child
           Generation in China

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      Authors: Ye Liu
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Are women from the one-child generation in China gender egalitarians' Despite extensive studies on gender role attitudes from structural and cultural perspectives, limited research has explored the significance of gender role attitudes in Global South contexts, like China, which have unique demographic and cultural characteristics. This study focuses on the talent-and-virtue gender ideal – a classic set of patriarchal gender norms in which men are judged by their talent but women by virtues. Using 82 individual interviews with siblingless women, this study argues that women’s accumulation of socio-economic, geographical and financial (dis)advantages through the life course, particularly in relation to their husbands, drives their divergent gender role attitudes. Findings reveal the limitations of structural and cultural perspectives in explaining divergence and conversions of gender attitudes. A life-course accumulation and relational positionality lens offers an opportunity for scholars to assess the complexity of gender attitudes in Global South contexts and to analyse persistent gender inequalities in patriarchal cultures.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-27T12:54:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231160033
       
  • Better Than the Markets: Mutual Fund Managers’ Perceptions of the
           Rich

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      Authors: Hanna Kuusela
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article investigates the cultural perceptions and the common sense held by Finnish mutual fund managers on the very wealthy and the rich in times of growing inequalities and increased wealth accumulation at the top. By studying the financial intermediaries on the shop-floor level, who embody the promises of popular finance, the article describes how fund managers working for the small investors make sense of the inequalities caused by financialization. In the research interviews analysed in the article, the mutual fund managers perceive the rich as a necessary and salutary part of the contemporary economy, whose function is to be and behave better than the financialized markets. This common sense concerning the rich helps to legitimize increasing wealth accumulation at the top, so that the fund managers’ perceptions of the rich embody an ideological coalition between the working financiers and the super-rich rentiers, a coalition that contrasts starkly with the promises of popular finance.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-27T12:52:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231159001
       
  • How and Why People Use Mobile Phones Near Bedtime and in Bed: Israelis’
           Narratives of Digitally Enabled Sleepful Sociality

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      Authors: Dana Zarhin
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Although prior studies have examined the impact of smartphone use on sleep and there is a growing interest in the interface between mobile phones and society, researchers know little about how and why people use mobile phones before bedtime and in bed. The current research explores this question by drawing on data from sleep diaries and in-depth interviews with 66 Israelis. The results show that the human–mobile phone sleep assemblage generates agentic capacities that allow individuals to engage in a digitally enabled form of what I call sleepful sociality – a sociality marked by sleep. Through the use of mobile phones, individuals create, maintain and/or detach from social relations and fulfil social obligations near bedtime and during sleep, while also trying to facilitate and protect their own and their bed partner’s sleep. These findings enhance the understanding of how technology is enmeshed with sociality and creates new ways of being social.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-27T12:51:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231157560
       
  • Give My Child a Label: Strategies of Epistemic Corroboration in
           Case-Building within Child Mental Health Assessments

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      Authors: Michelle O’Reilly, Nikki Kiyimba, Victoria Lee, Ian Hutchby
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Child mental health services are in rising demand, but increasingly overstretched and difficult for families to access. This article examines rhetorical techniques used by parents seeking a mental health diagnosis for their child. Using recordings of consultations from a child mental health clinic (UK) with 28 families, analysis focuses on the use of ‘epistemic corroboration’, a strategy by which third-party candidate diagnoses are reported to support the parents’ case. That is, parents draw upon the expertise of non-present professional persons to strengthen their proposed diagnostic claims. Conversation analysis shows how this epistemic corroboration is reported by parents and received by mental health practitioners. Conclusions illustrate that mental health diagnosis for children is actively pursued by parents as they navigate labelling. This has implications for understanding the dilemmas created for families of possible medicalisation of their child to achieve the levels of support being sought.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-27T12:49:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221147144
       
  • Cleansing Frames: How Digital ‘Consumer Reports’ of Cannabis and
           Psychedelics Normalise Drug-Taking and Neutralise its Counter-Cultural
           Potential

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      Authors: Isak Ladegaard
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Electronic drug markets enable calculative, impersonal trade between faceless strangers, but also intimate interaction between pseudonymous users. In this space, do people treat banned drugs as ordinary consumer products that can be purchased from anyone' Or do drug-takers frame their consumption as a counter-cultural activity' To answer these questions, I use qualitative and computational research methods to analyse 3788 electronically published consumer reports of cannabis and psychedelic drugs from the period 2011–2017. I find that report writers emphasise product quality, customer service and transaction value, and devote less attention to the social and political sides of drug-taking. Discussions about legality, morality and counter-cultural ideas are completely absent from the texts, even in psychedelic reports, which detail profound effects. These findings suggest that drug e-commerce is primarily a normalising force, and that widening access to banned drugs is unlikely to disseminate counter-cultural perspectives.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-25T06:04:21Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231160470
       
  • Maternal Occupation-Specific Skills and Children’s Cognitive
           Development

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      Authors: Katherin Barg, Markus Klein
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article hypothesizes that maternal occupation-specific skills are associated with children’s cognitive development over and above parents’ other human, financial and social capital. Data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study on 13,543 children were complemented with occupation-level data (n = 79) from the British Skills Surveys on aggregate measures of mothers’ occupation-specific skills (literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, verbal and physical). We did not find any association between maternal occupation-specific skills and children’s non-verbal ability (inductive reasoning, spatial awareness) at age five when conditioning on covariates. However, mothers’ verbal skills (e.g. presentation skills) were positively associated with children’s verbal ability (Naming Vocabulary) over and above other parental resources. By contrast, mothers’ physical skills (e.g. use of physical strength) were negatively associated with children’s verbal abilities. Albeit effect sizes are small, maternal occupation-specific skills contribute to social stratification in children’s verbal development net of human, financial and social capital.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-23T12:26:39Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231159005
       
  • Gendered Consequencesof Social Mobility: Second-Generation Immigrants’
           Work–Care Considerations in High-Status Occupations in Norway

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      Authors: Marjan Nadim, Arnfinn H Midtbøen
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Across Europe, children of low-educated migrants are entering high-status occupations. While the research literature has accounted for the determinants of this social mobility, few studies have explored how social mobility affects the lives of second-generation immigrant men and women in different ways. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 62 descendants of migrants in high-status occupations in Norway, this article asks how second-generation women and men experience their gendered opportunities and constraints after achieving upward social mobility. The analyses show how social mobility brings the second generation into social milieus where their majority Norwegian colleagues become their most relevant references for how to do work and family. Both the second-generation women and men share a strong dedication to work, however, while this requires the women to challenge gender-complementary expectations, the men largely rely on gender-complementary arrangements. The analyses thus suggest that social mobility changes the lives of women more than those of men.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-23T12:17:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221139682
       
  • Changing Temporal Opportunity Structures' Two Cohorts of Young Women’s
           Thoughts about Future Work, Family and Education

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      Authors: Ann Nilsen
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article seeks to explore if and how period specific conditions affect young women’s thoughts about their future lives. A contextualist analysis is done of a small sample of biographical interviews with Norwegian women in two cohorts born 1970–1975 and 1990–1995 interviewed 20 years apart when they were in their early 20s. The focus is on their thoughts about future education, work and family. Theoretically the article relates itself to concepts of time and temporalities in life course theory. Inspired by Ken Roberts’ concept of opportunity structures, the notion termed ‘temporal opportunity structures’ emerged from the analysis. The analyses demonstrate how wider period specific circumstances and standards of timeliness form a landscape that young women navigate when they envisage future options and opportunities. Findings indicate differences between the two cohorts in biographical timing in that standards of timeliness and temporal opportunity structures appear to have narrowed.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-06T05:45:20Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231157593
       
  • Money, Debt and Finance: Reclaiming the Conditions of Possibility in
           Consumption Research

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      Authors: David M Evans, Nicky Gregson
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article provides an argument for why the sociology of consumption should be reorientated towards a money and finance sensibility. Proceeding from the observation that the rise of financialised capitalism has gone largely ignored in in the field, we suggest that the conditions of contemporary consumption – shaped by austerity, inflation and an energy crisis – render this neglect untenable. In omitting money, the field not only elides its conditions of possibility but also abandons understanding of credit and consumer society to other fields that do not adequately acknowledge the dynamics of consumption. The article offers: (1) an account of why money has been absent from the sociology of consumption; (2) an auto-archaeology of data from our previous studies of household consumption in the UK, but reinterpreted and read through the lens of money and finance and (3) an indication of future research priorities and pathways for a reorientated sociology of consumption.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-06T05:43:40Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231156339
       
  • Beyond ‘Imagined Meritocracy’: Distinguishing the Relative Power of
           Education and Skills in Intergenerational Inequality

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      Authors: Satoshi Araki
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Scholars argue the dominant discourse of meritocracy legitimises intergenerational inequality and the winner–loser divide. However, is our society really meritocratic' If yes, the relative power of educational qualifications per se should be smaller than that of skills/abilities in the labour market. Using the standardised data in the United States, structural equation modelling shows (1) the contribution of family background to educational attainment is as large as that to skills acquisition; but (2) the economic return to education is substantially larger than that to skills; and consequently (3) the role of education outweighs that of skills in forming social stratification. This suggests that contemporary USA is a typical credential society, where credentialism prevails over skills-based meritocracy. Nonetheless, people may misbelieve the society is meritocratic – imagined meritocracy – by conflating the levels/influences of education and skills. It is essential to distinguish these two traits and understand the credential/meritocratic nature of our society.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-03-06T05:41:52Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385231156093
       
  • Young Low-Income Mothers’ Identity Work around Infant Feeding in the
           UK

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      Authors: Emma Banister, Margaret K Hogg, Mandy Dixon
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article focuses on young low-income mothers’ engagement with, and management of, potentially conflicting discourses within the context of maternal foodwork. Findings from qualitative, longitudinal interviews with 13 UK women illustrate the performance of identity and family work, in relation to infant feeding and wider maternal practices. Each participant was interviewed twice, once prior to, and then following, the birth of their first baby. We identify three rhetorical strategies. Adopting and resisting allow for the acceptance or rejection of prominent infant feeding discourses. Under reframing, young women transform the encouragement to breastfeed, subverting or reversing official discourses. Reframing thus provides an alternative means to appropriate and deploy versions of good motherhood, drawing on women’s lived realities and local maternal cultures, alongside wider experiences of building and managing family relationships.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-25T11:56:59Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221140701
       
  • Racial Bias in Fans and Officials: Evidence from the Italian Serie A

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      Authors: Beatrice Magistro, Morgan Wack
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Recent scholarship studying the impact of race-based prejudice has emphasized its rampant persistence throughout all aspects of modern society, including the world of sports. Prior research from American leagues has shown that even referees, trained officials intended to enact neutral judgements, are subject to bias against Black and dark-skinned players. To extend these studies and inform policies aimed at combating racial bias in public spaces more broadly, we report results from a unique dataset of over 6500 player-year observations from the Italian Serie A to examine whether these biases persist in European football. Our results show that darker-skinned players receive more foul calls and more cards than lighter-skinned players, controlling for a range of potential confounders and productivity-relevant mediators. By exploiting an absence of fans induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, we also present preliminary evidence that fans may play a key role in inducing poor calls against darker-skinned players.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-18T12:27:22Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221138332
       
  • Inter-Risk Framing Contests: The Politics of Issue Attention among
           Scandinavian Climate NGOs during the Coronavirus Pandemic

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      Authors: Thyge Ryom Enggaard, Annika Solveig Hedegaard Isfeldt, Anna Helene Kvist Møller, Hjalmar Bang Carlsen, Kristoffer Albris, Anders Blok
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      In this article, we study the framing activities of Scandinavian climate-active non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during the early phases of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Building on theories of focusing events, crisis exploitation and Ulrich Beck’s global risks, we develop and apply the concept of inter-risk framing contests to the case. Empirically, we analyse all climate- and corona-related tweeting activity of a broad selection of green NGOs in Denmark (17 NGOs, 874 tweets), Norway (22 NGOs, 2575 tweets) and Sweden (15 NGOs, 920 tweets), respectively. Methodologically, we employ quantitative text analysis to map socio-symbolic constellations of NGO-term relations using principal component analysis, while complementing this via online ethnographic observation to increase interpretative validity. Overall, the analysis demonstrates similarities and differences in how green NGOs have variously responded to the ambiguous challenges and symbolic opportunities of the coronavirus event, in ways resonant with path-dependent dynamics of the three national green civil societies.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-06T12:12:03Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221150379
       
  • Measuring Public Attitudes Towards Immigration: A Critical Discourse
           Analysis of Social Survey Questions

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      Authors: Josephine Biglin, Kingsley Purdam
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Public attitudes towards immigration and immigrants, captured through social surveys, are widely reported in the media and used to inform political decision making. However, it is important to consider whether public attitudes are being accurately measured. This article uses critical discourse analysis and critical race and post-colonial theories to examine questions in leading social surveys. The article also draws upon interviews with survey managers and methodologists. In many high-quality surveys a ‘white’ identity is often framed as the norm alongside negative narratives of identity and difference. For example, in one survey question attitudes towards immigrants are asked about alongside attitudes towards alcohol and drug use. The objectivity of the framing and language of many survey questions needs to be reviewed. In the context of evidence of increased levels of racial discrimination, a new discourse is required to more objectively measure and understand public attitudes towards immigration and immigrants.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-06T12:10:07Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221147146
       
  • Book Review: Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin and Stephen Turner (eds) The
           Future of Sociology: Ideology or Objective Social Science'

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      Authors: Judith Glaesser
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-06T12:08:08Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221146883
       
  • Machine Learning and Postcolonial Critique: Homologous Challenges to
           Sociological Notions of Human Agency

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      Authors: Christian Borch
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article discusses two seemingly unrelated but homologous challenges to established sociological thinking, namely machine learning technologies and postcolonial critique. Both of these confront conventional human-centric sociological notions. Where the rise of machine learning should prompt sociologists to take the agency of nonhuman systems seriously, postcolonial critique challenges the idea of Eurocentric human agency. I discuss whether this dual agency challenge can be addressed through Latour’s actor-network theory and Luhmann’s sociological systems theory – both of which explicitly aim to transcend classical human-centric approaches. I argue that Latour’s work can align with postcolonial sociology. However, despite broadening the notion of agency, his actor-network concept remains strongly human-centric. It merely expands the range of actors with which humans engage rather than analysing interactions among nonhuman actants, such as machine learning systems. In contrast, such interactions can be understood through Luhmann’s theorisation, which, however, can be subjected to postcolonial critique.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-03T05:21:37Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221146877
       
  • The Aftermath of Death in the Continuing Lives of the Living: Extending
           ‘Bereavement’ Paradigms through Family and Relational Perspectives

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      Authors: Jane McCarthy, Kate Woodthorpe, Kathryn Almack
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      While there is a significant interdisciplinary and international literature available on death, dying and bereavement, literature addressing responses to death is dominated by assumptions about individuality, framing ‘bereavement’ and ‘grief’ in terms of the inner psychic life of the individual. Scholarly literature tells us little about how the continuing aftermath of death is experienced in the everyday, relational lives of the living. Inspired by research from Majority Worlds, we consider literature that might enable a more ‘relational’ sociological approach, and explore what that might involve. We set out the potential for family sociology to provide an intrinsically (if variable) relational lens on the aftermath of death, along with examples of radical relational theorising more generally. We argue for a reframing and broadening of the dominant ‘bereavement studies’ of Minority Worlds towards a much-needed paradigm shift in understanding the continuing aftermath of death in the lives of the living.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-03T05:17:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221142490
       
  • ‘I Hadn’t Realised That Change Is Not a Difficult Thing’: Mobilising
           Football Fans on Climate Change

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      Authors: Jennifer Amann, Mark Doidge
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The damaging consequences of anthropogenic climate change are well documented. In order to engage the public on the serious question of climate change, there is a need to use different approaches to connect climate change with other concerns. This study is the first to understand how football fans engage with climate change and how a campaign should engage with them. It does this through an analysis of fans’ engagement with a campaign to engage fans (Pledgeball). It is situated within the literature, which argues that climate change communication needs to engage with the culture, values and worldviews of the target audience. It argues that football fans could be a significant form of collective behaviour to engage with climate change; and that aligning with the identity and worldview of fans, as well as the broader culture of football, can promote engagement and possible social change.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-02T05:37:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221142211
       
  • From 100-Year-Old Women’s Motoring Masks to Contemporary PPE: A
           Socio-Political Study of Persistent Problems and Inventive Possibilities

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      Authors: Kat Jungnickel, Katja May
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, personal protective equipment became central to daily news. Face masks may have been critical, but they were clearly not equally designed or distributed, compelling many health workers to make their own. These issues are neither new nor specific to health-oriented fields. We offer insights from another case of individuals taking personal protective equipment into their own hands. We analyse patents for women’s motoring face masks invented in the USA, Canada, England and France (1900–1925). Our findings suggest that women invented and wore face masks not only to drive safely, but to position themselves as legitimate motorists and as citizens with equal rights to technology, public space and resources at the turn of the last century. We propose that a study of historic motoring face masks might offer insights into persistent problems and inventive possibilities relating to contemporary personal protective equipment.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-02T05:33:26Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221143654
       
  • Remembering and Narrativising COVID-19: An Early Sociological Take

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      Authors: Peter Manning, Sarah Moore, Jordan Tchilingirian, Kate Woodthorpe
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      How the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths that occurred during the acute phase of the pandemic (2020–2021), will be remembered is yet to be determined. Writing from a UK perspective, this short article reflects on the way in which memory, narratives and death are constructed, contested and (re)produced. Drawing on the authors’ respective sociological sub-fields, it makes a case for an ongoing sociological appraisal of emergent COVID-19 narratives, that can encompass and intertwine understandings of temporality, accountability and loss.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-01T05:31:08Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221142503
       
  • Book Review: Nancy Fraser Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring
           Democracy, Care and the Planet – and What We Can Do about It

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      Authors: Katie Morris
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-02-01T05:29:31Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221146880
       
  • Racial Biofutures: COVID-19 and Black Futurity Otherwise

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      Authors: Nadine Ehlers
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Through a consideration of COVID-19, this article offers a series of provocations in thinking about racial biofutures. First, it suggests that looking backwards through a lens of recursivity only allows us to see the same anti-black futures mapped out again and again, the repeated production of predictable futures – always – already precarious. Second, along with many others, I argue that we know this story of recursivity and that naming these repetitions is analytically reductive and politically deficient: this is a recursive trap. Third, the article argues that sociology must instead address productions or remakings of life that are embedded within (but move out of) these recursive logics: it must prioritise and elevate those practices and voices that labour to actualise living alternative futurity now.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-01-19T06:47:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221137551
       
  • Trading Blame: Drawing Boundaries around the Righteous, Deserving and
           Vulnerable in Times of Crisis

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      Authors: Jordan Foster, David Pettinicchio, Michelle Maroto, Andy Holmes, Martin Lukk
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Symbolic boundaries shape how we see and understand both ourselves and those around us. Amid periods of crisis, these boundaries can appear more salient, sharpening distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and reinforcing inequalities in the social landscape. Based on 50 in-depth interviews about pandemic experiences among Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions, we examine how this community distinguishes between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’, and how emotions related to blame and resentment inform the boundaries they draw. We find that people with disabilities and chronic health conditions drew boundaries based on unequal health statuses and vulnerabilities and between those who are and are not legitimately entitled to government aid. Underlying these dimensions are a familiar set of moral tropes that respondents use to assert their own superiority and to inveigh their frustrations. Together, they play an important role in solidifying boundaries between groups, complicating public perceptions of policy responses to crisis.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2023-01-19T06:36:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221137181
       
  • Enemies in Iraq, Human Beings in Norway: ‘Multilocal’ Boundaries
           between Radicalised Sunni and Shi‘a Muslims

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      Authors: Uzair Ahmed
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article employs symbolic boundary theory to investigate how a sample of radicalised Sunni and Shi‘a Muslims in Norway make meaning of their views, behaviour and interactions with denominational others. It draws on 23 interviews with individuals who legitimise violence or are willing to use violence themselves to achieve political change. Research on boundary construction shows that the relative importance of boundaries varies across geographical contexts for different individuals. This article introduces the concept of ‘multilocal’ boundaries, which vary across contexts for the same individuals. The findings suggest that despite the boundaries being firmly agreed upon, their impact is limited by participants’ avoidance of religion and politics, their need to stand together as a minority and the enforced laws in Norway. At the same time, these boundaries can remain largely undiluted in another context. The war in Syria and Iraq seems to strengthen the influence of boundaries.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-26T01:09:47Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221136076
       
  • Hunger Bonds: Boundaries and Bridges in the Charitable Food Provision
           Field

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      Authors: Filippo Oncini
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Building on a field perspective, this article adopts a relational approach that lets us make sense of food charities’ interconnections, relationships and social positioning. I analyse how food charities working with different models of provision do boundary work and resolve the cognitive dissonance arising from simultaneously competing and collaborating. Making use of several semi-structured interviews, I illustrate how Trussell Trust food banks, independent food banks and pantries’ directors mark symbolic boundaries when illustrating their models of provision vis-a-vis other models (e.g. pantries vs food banks) but build symbolic bridges when discussing the ultimate ends of charitable food provision. This strategy lets them resolve the tension arising from two contradictory stances and is representative of what I call ‘hunger bonds’: relationships of cooperation and mutual help that also permit positional returns to be obtained and strategically advance a specific vision of the field order.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-26T01:08:16Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221139024
       
  • Displaying Difference, Displaying Sameness: Mixed Couples’ Reflexivity
           and the Narrative-Making of the Family

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      Authors: Francesco Cerchiaro
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Drawing on qualitative research involving Christian-Muslim couples in Italy, France and Belgium, the article explores the concept of mixedness by employing Finch’s concept of ‘displaying family’ to reach two goals: how the concept of mixedness bears multiple meanings and how the narrative tool of display works in the life story approach. The analysis distinguishes three main dimensions partners deploy to articulate the concept of mixedness. These are: (1) mixedness as a stigma to reject; (2) mixedness as difference that emerges in a couple’s daily life; and (3) mixedness as a resource to be valued by society. The analysis reveals how partners contest and redefine the concept of mixedness and how narratives work as a tool of family display through which partners: deny a socially ascribed negative definition of their family, narratively articulate the activity of ‘doing family’ on a daily basis and (re)signify a contested definition of family.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-26T01:04:06Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221133218
       
  • Knowing What You’ve Got Once It’s Gone: Identifying Familial Norms and
           Values through the Lens of (Sibling) Bereavement

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      Authors: Laura Towers
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Following the death of a sibling, life as it was known and expected to be lived is permanently and irrevocably set on a different trajectory. Surviving siblings are left to consider all that they have lost beyond the individual who died. Using data from a qualitative study exploring experiences of sibling bereavement over the life course, this article presents a set of assumptions that people had regarding their imagined but unliveable futures. In doing so, it outlines how these ideas contribute to a currently under-developed understanding of normative expectations of the adult sibling relationship, as well as wider familial norms and values. As such, this article will demonstrate that death can actually reveal much about living relationships. It will conclude that bereavement research has much to offer the sociologies of family, relationships and personal life, as an alternative lens through which to learn more about familial norms and values.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-26T01:02:34Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221133214
       
  • Urban Rebels' A Gendered Approach to Domicile and Protest Participation in
           Nine European Countries

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      Authors: Anna Lavizzari, Martín Portos
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Engaging with research on protest participation and gender inequalities, we examine how gender dynamics play a crucial role in shaping patterns of protest participation across the rural/urban divide. We argue that moving from a rural toward an urban setting leads to an increase in protest participation for women, but not for men. Using an original two-wave panel survey dataset collected for the same individuals between 2018 and 2019 and covering nine European countries, we are able to go beyond traditional correlation analyses and measure our key variables over time, thus developing a dynamic approach that links differences in gender, socio-geographical positioning and protest participation. Our findings demonstrate that the rural/urban divide as a driver of protest participation affects women and men differently, because it might be shaped by different experiences of political socialization, socio-economic status and structures of domination and discrimination, leading to different opportunities and incentives for mobilization.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-26T01:01:17Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129945
       
  • Futures in Action: Expectations, Imaginaries and Narratives of the Future

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      Authors: Giacomo Bazzani
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The study of the future is a growing field of research transcending almost all research topics. Despite this rising interest, this field often seems fragmented into different approaches, as though the common object of study were vague or inconsistent. This article proposes a framework analytically distinguishing the three key dimensions of the future embedded in the course of action: expectations, imaginaries and narratives of the future. For each, a definition and a short introduction to their use in the social sciences are provided, together with a description of their capacity to shape the course of action and examples. Then, the scope condition of this influencing capacity is discussed, in particular considering its situational origin and the intergenerational links of the future, with climate change as a case in point. The conclusion highlights research perspectives and methods that can be employed.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-21T07:06:29Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221138010
       
  • Family Influences on Migration Intentions: The Role of Past Experience of
           Involuntary Immobility

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      Authors: Zuzanna Brunarska, Artjoms Ivlevs
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The article examines the relationship between past experience of involuntary immobility in a family and the current migration intentions of its members. While family migration experience has been shown to be positively related to migration intentions, the role of past unrealised migration intentions in a family is understudied. Using the case of the former communist bloc, we focus on the migration intentions of people whose family members’ mobility aspirations were stifled by the restrictive political regime. Drawing on data from the Life in Transition III Survey, we show that close relatives of people who had been prohibited from going abroad under communist rule are more likely to report migration intentions compared with people without such family experience. We explain these findings with the intergenerational transmission of mobility aspirations.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-16T04:41:50Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221136060
       
  • The Sociology of Futurelessness

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      Authors: Richard Tutton
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article contributes to ‘sociologies of the future’ by discussing the concept of ‘futurelessness’. I provide a conceptual elaboration of what is meant by ‘futurelessness’, beginning with its use in the psychological literature of the 1980s concerned with the effect of a constant threat of nuclear war. I argue that this concept is of value to ongoing sociological debates about the relationship between imagined futures, power and social change. I further discuss the extent to which ‘futurelessness’ is a particular mode of relating to and feeling about the future that is characteristic of contemporary European societies. I discuss how this ‘futurelessness’ must be understood in relation to political and cultural developments of the past 50 years and consider its significance for sociological debates about contemporary futurity.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-16T04:39:10Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122420
       
  • Neighbourliness and Situational Factors: Explaining Neighbour Behaviour in
           Attacks and Rescues of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and Muslims in Ahmedabad in
           2002

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      Authors: Raheel Dhattiwala
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Studies find a direct association of collective violence with relational distance: lower the relational distance, lower the violence. Where people live as neighbours, spatial proximity provides more opportunity for contact. However, perpetrators of mass violence are often neighbours who had previously coexisted with their victims in apparent harmony. Neighbour-on-neighbour violence is a social violation: it shakes our confidence in the collective values of ‘neighbourliness’ and the strength of prior relations. In two state-orchestrated pogroms in India – against Sikhs in 1984 and Muslims in 2002 – the nature of prior neighbour relationships is delineated to identify why some neighbours participated in attacks, others in rescues. A qualitative analysis of 50 survivor affidavits and 41 in-depth interviews enabled reconstructing the texture of these relationships. Neighbourliness and situational factors (timing of attacks; built environment) provided a more nuanced understanding of behaviour. For democratic polities that authorise pogroms, findings challenge existing knowledge on contact and violence.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-12-10T09:26:11Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221130860
       
  • Me' A Hero' Gendered Work and Attributions of Heroism among Volunteers
           during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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      Authors: Braden Leap, Kimberly Kelly, Marybeth C Stalp
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The gendered features of adults’ attributions of heroism to themselves and others has received substantially less scholarly attention than the gendered dynamics of media representations of (super)heroes. Utilizing 78 interviews and 569 self-administered questionnaires completed by adults in the United States who were voluntarily making personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how respondents effectively deployed popularized assessments of the relative value of gendered labour in the private and public spheres to shift attributions of heroism from themselves to others. Though media portrayals at the outset of the pandemic depicted these volunteers working in their homes as heroes, respondents insisted that the real heroes were those working in the public sphere. Even if media representations increasingly frame women as heroes, these results suggest that the long-standing associations between men and heroism will likely remain in place if feminized labour associated with the private sphere of households remains devalued.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-26T05:13:38Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221136035
       
  • The Greta Thunberg Effect: A Study of Norwegian Youth’s Reflexivity
           on Climate Change

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      Authors: Jan Frode Haugseth, Eli Smeplass
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This study reports on an unique opportunity to compare four quantitative/qualitative datasets from 2017 to 2021, before and after the activist Greta Thunberg became known to the general public. Through a mixed-methods approach, we develop a model to distinguish between three forms of climate reflexivity: (1) reflexivity as ranking; (2) reflexivity as recognising; and (3) reflexivity as qualifying. Our findings imply that in 2019 and the following years, Greta Thunberg became a unifying inspiration for young people already concerned with the climate crisis in Norway. Even though two indicators suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic did divert young people’s reflexivity from climate issues, we also find that a subset of the participants expresses rich reflexivity, addressing nature and the need for transition and solidarity. Finally, we argue these forms of reflexivity shape commonalities that may have relevance across social classes, identities and nation-states.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-18T05:24:37Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122416
       
  • Social Mobility and ‘Openness’ in Creative Occupations since
           the 1970s

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      Authors: Orian Brook, Andrew Miles, Dave O’Brien, Mark Taylor
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Social mobility in the cultural sector is currently an important issue in government policy and public discussion, associated with perceptions of a collapse in numbers of working-class origin individuals becoming artists, actors, musicians and authors. The question of who works in creative occupations has also attracted significant sociological attention. To date, however, there have been no empirically grounded studies into the changing social composition of such occupations. This article uses the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study to show that, while those from more privileged social backgrounds have long dominated, there has been no change in the relative class mobility chances of gaining access to creative work. Instead, we must turn to the pattern of absolute mobility into this sector in order to understand claims that it is experiencing a ‘mobility crisis’.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-18T05:21:44Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129953
       
  • The Politic of Everyday Counter-Terrorism: Online Performances and
           Responsibilities of the Prevent Duty in UK Higher Education Institutions

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      Authors: Keith Spiller, Andrew Whiting, Imran Awan, Ben Campbell
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The Prevent Duty mandates that public authorities must work to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. In this article we review how 158 UK Higher Education Institutions have responded to this new duty by examining their public-facing webpages and Prevent policy documentation. In doing this we draw upon de Certeau’s notions of the everyday to highlight how such initiatives are presented publicly to viewing audiences, and how messages seep into and deepen security measures within UK Higher Education. In reviewing the performative element of Prevent, specifically how information is displayed, we find that the majority of UK Higher Education Institutions have approached their new roles through the prism of ‘compliance’ and/or ‘safeguarding’. The article argues presentations of safeguarding, reassurance and reluctance offer a telling insight into how the Duty has been adopted in Higher Education Institutions’ everyday practice.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-18T05:17:04Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129950
       
  • Social Quarantining in the Construction and Maintenance of White Australia

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      Authors: Zoe Staines
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      While medical quarantining has (again) received widespread attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparatively little consideration has been given to how medical quarantining is entangled with socio-political life. Further, there are no known studies that consider how quarantine might also be employed as a socio-political practice. This article explores the concept of social quarantine by tracing the creation of white Australia via the social construction, excise and discipline of Indigenous peoples as a potentially contagious Other. It shows how social quarantine integrates largely disparate sociological concepts/literatures (e.g. bordering, (im)mobility, confinement, enclave society, discipline, eugenics, assimilation), demonstrating how they unite under settler colonialism as a powerful assemblage of disciplinary technologies. Social quarantine also makes visible how the threat of contamination has been central to constructing and protecting Australia’s (white) imagined nationhood from the perceived disease of Otherness.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-18T05:03:57Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129046
       
  • ‘You are Still a Guest in This Country!’: Understanding Racism through
           the Concepts of Hospitality and Hostility in Healthcare Encounters in
           Sweden

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      Authors: Hannah Bradby, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, Sarah Hamed, Beth Maina Ahlberg
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      While regularly applied to globalized migration, conceptualizations of hospitality have rarely been used to understand healthcare settings. Drawing on interviews with healthcare staff in Sweden, our article contributes to the current conceptualization of hospitality accounting for: the internal contradictions of hospitality that racialized staff experience in their everyday interactions with patients and other staff; the shifting boundaries between host and guest in everyday healthcare practices, especially when examined through the lens of racialization and finally; the subtle though troubled coexistence of hostility and un(conditional) hospitality that weakens resistance against racism. The analysis maps the complex contingencies of professional, ethnic and national relations between staff and patients, in light of their racialized and gendered nature, to suggest that the ambivalences theorized as part of the concept of hospitality show how the hurts of racism are so hard to pinpoint.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-18T04:53:24Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221124827
       
  • Disability, Social Class and Stigma: An Intersectional Analysis of
           Disabled Young People’s School Experiences

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      Authors: Stella Chatzitheochari, Angharad Butler-Rees
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Recent decades have witnessed a renewed interest in stigma and its effects on life-course trajectories of disabled people. However, sociological narratives largely adopt monolithic understandings of disability, neglecting contextual meanings of different impairments and conditions and their intersections with other ascriptive inequalities, which may be consequential for exposure to stigma. Our article provides an intersectional analysis of disabled young people’s lived experiences of stigma in mainstream school settings. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 35 autistic, dyslexic and/or physically disabled students, we show that stigmatisation is contingent on social class background, which affects students’ location within the school. We also find substantial variation in experiences of stigma between and within sub-categories of conditions/impairments, as a consequence of the perceived distance from normative ideals of skills and behaviour attached to individuals in school settings. Our findings highlight the importance of intersectional analyses of stigma, challenging universalised views about stigmatised disabled people.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-14T05:20:18Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221133710
       
  • A Bourdieusian Latent Class Analysis of Cultural, Arts, Heritage and
           Sports Activities in the UK Representative Understanding Society Dataset

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      Authors: Emma S Walker, Daisy Fancourt, Feifei Bu, Anne McMunn
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      To Bourdieu, interaction with culture has symbolic power and drives the manifestation of social stratification. Many have adapted his theory and methodology, developing new models of cultural engagement. Here, to further integrate these theoretical and methodological approaches, Bourdieu’s tools were used to operationalise and interpret a Latent Class Analysis of cultural engagement in the Understanding Society dataset. Six classes of increasing engagement were established, and were increasingly correlated with youth, capital and social advantage. However, some qualitative differences in engagement were also seen. The classes also varied by which characteristics correlated with membership. For example, economic capital was associated with sports engagement, while advantaged social position was associated with broad-scale engagement. Overall, this analysis combined Bourdieusian theory with contemporary methodology in the largest representative UK dataset and highlights the broader relevance of cultural engagement patterns in indicating (and possibly generating) status, identity, capital and social position.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-14T05:07:21Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221130163
       
  • Book Review: Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital
           Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism

    • Free pre-print version: Loading...

      Authors: Nashwa Elyamany
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.

      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-09T09:32:13Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221135569
       
  • From the Home to the (Hand)bag: Negotiating Privacy in Personal Life when
           Living with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

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      Authors: Lauren White
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Securing, and negotiating, privacy with intimate bodily needs is an ordinary but often hidden feature of our personal lives. Drawing upon a UK-based qualitative study that utilised diaries and follow-up interviews to explore everyday life with the health condition irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), this article explores the navigations of privacy when anticipating or experiencing symptoms. Building upon sociological understandings of privacy and personal life, this article maps the intimate and mobile ways in which privacy is sought out – disrupted or achieved – in domestic, material and public realms. It does so by following the paths to privacy and the personal belongings carried as they move through personal life. The article demonstrates how privacy is embodied and spatially, temporally, relationally and materially shaped. In doing so, the article argues that privacy comes to shift through everyday contexts and social relations with intimate materialities in mind.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-07T10:23:12Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122460
       
  • Carrying Europe’s ‘White Burden’, Sustaining Racial Capitalism:
           Young Post-Soviet Migrant Workers in Helsinki and Warsaw

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      Authors: Daria Krivonos
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The opening up of sociology to postcolonial and critical race thinking has been predominantly animated by the relations between western metropoles and their (post)colonies. ‘Eastern Europe’ seems to be an uneasy fit in this discussion, being excluded from the idea of ‘Europe’; at the same time, it is not grouped together with non-European Others in terms of colonial histories. Drawing on fieldwork among young Russian and Ukrainian migrant workers in Helsinki (2014–2016) and Warsaw (2020), the article examines global connections that tie the North/West, South and East in these migrants’ imaginaries and material lives after migration. I demonstrate that Eastern European subjects are not outsiders to global racial capitalist orders but participate in sustaining a colonial project of Europe, whiteness and labour. The article argues for the importance of articulating postcoloniality of Eastern Europe vis-a-vis the West together with race to show the complicity of semi-peripheries with the global structures of racial capitalism.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-07T10:18:44Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122413
       
  • The Unhomely of Homeschooling

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      Authors: Martin Myers
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Despite increasing global popularity perceptions of homeschooling remain problematic. It resists trends towards mass compulsory education and the promotion of children’s rights; it challenges the state’s authority to educate citizens; and raises concerns about child protection issues and educational outcomes. Contemporaneously many homeschoolers identify their fears of risks and failings in mainstream schooling as the reason they homeschool. This article explores how discomfort and fear is ingrained within meanings associated with homeschooling often related to its domestic practice. It develops Freud’s account of unheimlich (the unhomely) as a useful addition to the sociological analysis of the multiple renditions of meaning attached to homeschooling. These include the conflation of homely and unhomely accounts; the significance of anecdotal accounts as a means of restating class biases and racisms; and the ambiguous relationship between family and state. It argues both policymakers and homeschoolers need to acknowledge these ambiguities.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-07T02:08:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129943
       
  • Platforms Disrupting Reputation: Precarity and Recognition Struggles in
           the Remote Gig Economy

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      Authors: Alex J Wood, Vili Lehdonvirta
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Digitalisation and the use of algorithms have raised concerns over the future of work, the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. In this article, we draw on 70 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of gig economy platforms in producing a novel form of reputational insecurity. This insecurity is generated by platforms disrupting the traditional operation of industry reputation in freelance markets. We highlight three areas of transformation (recognition, power relations and transparency) in which platforms disrupt the social regulation of reputation and thus algorithmically amplify uncertainty. We also detail how workers individually and collectively attempt to re-embed reputation within interpersonal relations to reduce this novel insecurity.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-02T12:01:05Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221126804
       
  • Variations of Gender Gaps in the Labour Market Outcomes of Graduates
           across Fields of Study: A (Combined) Test of Two Theories

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      Authors: Diana Roxana Galos, Nevena Kulic
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Unequal gender outcomes in occupational success unravel through different channels in higher education. Using the AlmaLaurea dataset comprised of 80% of Italian graduates and 98 fields of study, this article investigates whether men and women receive similar returns on employment and earnings when choosing the same field of study. Two complementary perspectives are applied – Kanter’s theory of relative numbers and the status theory of gender – to examine the quantitative and qualitative differences between fields. The results show that the most gender ‘balanced’ fields of study are the most gender unequal in terms of earnings and employment. Separate analyses demonstrate that the status of a field interacts with its gender composition, and gender gaps in female-intensive nurturing fields shrink faster with an increasing proportion of women, albeit at higher absolute levels compared with non-nurturing fields. Therefore, nurturing fields of study should not necessarily be considered as levelling gender inequality in the labour market.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-11-02T10:46:48Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122400
       
  • Inequalities in Home Learning and Schools’ Remote Teaching Provision
           during the COVID-19 School Closure in the UK

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      Authors: Sait Bayrakdar, Ayse Guveli
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Millions were affected by COVID-19 school closures, with parents and schools caught unprepared. Education is expected to play a role in creating equal opportunities, so transferring schooling responsibilities to families may have increased learning inequalities generated by family backgrounds. We examined the time students spent on home learning and explored the role of the schools’ distance teaching provision in explaining differences traditionally attributed to parental education, eligibility for free school meals, ethnic background and single parenthood. Using the Understanding Society COVID-19 dataset, we found children who received free school meals, single-parent families and children with parents with lower formal education qualifications and Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds spent significantly less time on schoolwork. However, schools’ provision of offline and online distance teaching and homework checking significantly increased the time spent on learning and reduced some inequalities, demonstrating the policy relevance of digital preparedness to limit learning loss in school closures.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-29T04:47:45Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122444
       
  • No Pass Laws Here! Internal Border Controls and the Global ‘Hostile
           Environment’

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      Authors: Kathryn Medien
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article explores internal border controls in 1980s Britain, examining how they were conceptualised and resisted by a group of activists, the No Pass Laws Here! Group. Drawing on archival research conducted at the Hull History Centre and the Institute of Race Relations and focusing analysis on the Group’s public-facing information leaflets and bulletins, this article explores how internal border controls created differentiated access to employment and the welfare state, targeting migrant and racialised residents and citizens. The No Pass Laws Here! Group’s framing and analysis, in particular their use of pass laws as a frame through which to apprehend the spread of internal border controls, this article argues, allows us to draw out the continuities between policies developed to maintain colonial rule and those present in the metropole.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-25T04:51:28Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221122518
       
  • The Visibility of Digital Money: A Video Study of Mobile Payments Using
           WeChat Pay

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      Authors: Christian Greiffenhagen, Rongyu Li, Nick Llewellyn
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article analyses situated uses of digital payment platforms, contributing to the sociology of money, and digital sociology. Our data are video recordings of 256 small-scale transactions, gathered from across four Chinese cities, at grocery stores, supermarkets, street markets, restaurants, and cafes. Our focus is the visibility of money in particular circumstances associated with some WeChat payments. In these cases, payment is made visible via a confirmation screen only seen by the customer. We argue that payment applications provide a good empirical site for understanding how digital media reconfigure ‘the social’ by shaping how monetary information is seen and heard. Rather than eliminating trust, reducing transactions to impersonal semi-automated affairs, we show how mobile payments generate new and complex patterns of economic action. A nuanced language game is described that requires sellers to trust customers are acting in good faith. We show how ‘the social’ is imprinted on this contemporary monetary medium.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-20T09:14:15Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221104007
       
  • Ethical Practices of the Family Child

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      Authors: Sofie Henze-Pedersen
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Following the introduction of the influential ‘doing’ family perspective, an active understanding of parents has taken centre stage in sociological thinking on how families are constructed. However, this has not extended to children, and their roles as co-constructors of families have not received the same amount of attention. This article examines the practices children use to construct themselves as child of someone in relation to a parent. By locating children’s practices within the ‘doing’ family perspective, the article identifies three levels of childhood in families – being child, doing child and reflecting child. The article shows how the three levels must be understood in relation to discourses on what it means to be a ‘good’ child of someone, as these moral questions influence what children come to do. The article draws on interviews with 39 children (aged 5–17 years) from two studies that explored children’s family relationships in challenging family circumstances.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-08T06:17:41Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221112246
       
  • Deindividualising Imposter Syndrome: Imposter Work among Marginalised
           STEMM Undergraduates in the UK

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      Authors: Órla Meadhbh Murray, Yuan-Li Tiffany Chiu, Billy Wong, Jo Horsburgh
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Imposter syndrome is the experience of persistently feeling like a fraud despite one’s achievements. This article explores student experiences of imposter syndrome, based on 27 interviews with marginalised STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) undergraduates at two pre-1992 elite UK universities. We argue that imposter feelings are a form of unevenly distributed emotional work, which we call imposter work. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s ‘diversity work’ concept we explore how marginalised students’ imposter feelings are often in response to, and reinforced by, the exclusionary atmosphere of university, resulting in more imposter work to survive and thrive at university. Three key themes are explored – the situated and relational nature of imposter feelings; the uneven distribution of imposter work; and the myth of individual overcoming – before concluding with suggestions for collective responses to addressing imposter feelings.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-08T06:11:25Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221117380
       
  • The Sociology of Utopia, Modern Temporality and Black Visions of
           Liberation

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      Authors: Joe PL Davidson
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article focuses on the relationship between the sociology of utopia and Black visions of liberation. Influential figures from Karl Mannheim to Ruth Levitas have effectively demonstrated the value of a utopian perspective for sociology. However, the African American tradition of utopianism has been largely overlooked in this literature. I argue that the Black standpoint forces a rethinking of the sociological understanding of utopia. More specifically, while most sociologists of utopia straightforwardly associate the desire for a better world with the future, the Black tradition proposes a more expansive understanding of utopia’s temporality. Building on visions of new worlds advanced by WEB Du Bois and the movement for reparations for slavery, I suggest that Black utopia involves a glance backwards to the past, such that the image of a better future is accompanied by the memory of the catastrophe of slavery.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-08T06:05:39Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221117360
       
  • Migrant Black African Youths’ Experiences of Racial Microaggressions
           in the Workplace

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      Authors: Joshua Kalemba
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article offers an exploration of migrant Black African youths’ (MBAYs’) experiences of racial microaggressions in Australian, predominantly White, workplaces. Data for this article are drawn from qualitative interviews conducted with 20 MBAYs working in Newcastle, a traditionally White working-class city. Drawing on a theoretical framework that approaches racial microaggressions through a Critical Race Theory lens, the article centres MBAYs’ experiences of racial microaggressions in the workplace as a site of legitimate experiential knowledge. The findings of this article underscore how MBAYs perceive questions like ‘Where are you from'’ posed by their White colleagues and clients as a racial microaggression. They showcase how MBAY experience racial microaggressions in the workplace as an invisible, insidious and infantilizing process. Finally, the findings highlight how some MBAYs respond to racial microaggressions by accepting or contesting them in the workplace. The article concludes by reflecting on how these microlevel, subtle forms of racism contribute towards institutionalizing and sustaining White supremacy.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-08T06:00:59Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221117351
       
  • Dialectical Family Imaginaries: Navigating Relational Selfhood and
           Becoming a Parent through Assisted Reproduction in China

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      Authors: Iris Po Yee Lo
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article examines underexplored aspects of family imaginaries by examining lesbians’ ways of thinking and feeling about having children. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians in Beijing, China, I illustrate their agency and difficulties in pursuing parenthood through assisted reproductive technology or other unconventional means and redrawing the boundaries of the family. Building on the concept of family imaginaries and insights into relational selfhood, I identify three types of ‘dialectical family imaginaries’ in lesbians’ accounts of reproductive decision making: imaginaries of bridging, bonding and self-fashioning. These imaginaries are dialectical in the sense that they reproduce cultural ideals of what it means to be related and simultaneously generate new ways of pursuing parenthood while lesbians juggle filial affection and personal, pragmatic goals. This article highlights the sociological utility of ‘dialectical family imaginaries’ for exploring different forms and meanings of relatedness negotiated between the self, family and intergenerational relations, and wider society.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-08T05:56:44Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221113480
       
  • Moving on up' How Social Origins Shape Geographic Mobility within
           Britain’s Higher Managerial and Professional Occupations

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      Authors: Katharina Hecht, Daniel McArthur
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article presents the first longitudinal analysis of social and geographic mobility into Britain’s higher managerial and professional occupations. Using linked census records from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study, we find that those from advantaged social origins are substantially more likely to make long-distance residential moves, implying that geographic mobility is a correlate of advantaged social origins rather than a determinant of an advantaged adult class position. Among higher managers and professionals, those with advantaged backgrounds lived in more affluent areas as children than those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This ‘area gap’ persists during adulthood: when the upwardly mobile move, they are unable to close the gap to their peers with privileged backgrounds in terms of the affluence of the areas they live in: they face a moving target. Geographic advantage, and disadvantage, thus lingers with individuals, even if they move.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-10-03T03:25:26Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221113669
       
  • How Intellectuals Perform: Meaning Making and Community in the
           Czechoslovak Philosophical Underground

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      Authors: Dominik Zelinsky
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article moves beyond the conventional strictures of the sociology of intellectuals, which is preoccupied with intellectuals’ texts, power struggles and institutional trajectories. Instead, I propose to focus on intellectuals’ situated performances as a way into analysis of the dynamics of their relations and mutual influences. Drawing on theoretical resources from the Strong Program in cultural sociology, I argue that their performances have both social and cultural impact through disseminating ideas, facilitating the emergence of social ties and the production of new social selves in intellectuals’ audiences. I demonstrate the importance of situated intellectual performances in the case of unofficial philosophy in socialist Czechoslovakia.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-09-03T04:18:41Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221112233
       
  • What Lies Beneath: Organisational Responses to Powerful Stakeholders

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      Authors: Fabiola Alvarez, Dimitrinka Stoyanova Russell, Barbara Townley
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article takes recourse to a particular branch of French Pragmatic Sociology, namely, Boltanski and Thévenot’s ‘orders of worth’ paradigm, as a lens through which to both explore the misalignment between espoused values and retrospective discourses and illustrate the underlying motivations behind decision making in an organisation within the creative industries sector. By virtue of its contributions at the organisational, social and sectorial levels, our study contributes to extant debates pertaining to individual agency versus structural constraints as well as demonstrating the heterogeneity of modes of formal compliance to wider institutionalised legitimacy. In so doing, it builds upon recent work that seeks to broaden the notion of value in the creative industries, while, simultaneously, calling for greater heterogeneity in policy making in the sector through an ongoing process of ‘creative conflict’.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-08-12T04:36:19Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221103955
       
  • Becoming an Activist: Individualisation and a Democratic Contentious Ethos
           in ‘How to’ Books

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      Authors: Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The article explores a new aspect of the interplay of individualisation and democracy. I ask how individualisation affects a contentious ethos, a set of ethical relations that contentious actors cultivate towards themselves and others in articulating their idea of the good. I analyse the ethea in the public through ‘how to become an activist’ books. The books instruct individuals in how they should turn inwards and work on themselves to become activists. I delineate three ethea: individuals can work on themselves to discover their passion, connect to an impersonal truth or situate themselves in a structural context. These may undermine collective political projects but can also facilitate deep democratic engagement.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-08-08T06:31:55Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221107495
       
  • Anticipatory Regimes in Pregnancy: Cross-Fertilising Reproduction and
           Parenting Culture Studies

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      Authors: Edmée Ballif
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Despite attempts at highlighting continuities across the reproductive process from conception to childcare, reproduction and parenting still tend to be studied as a collection of separate objects. This article contributes to the cross-fertilisation of reproductive and parenting culture studies by first introducing anticipation as a transversal analytical lens. A conceptual framework for the analysis of anticipatory regimes in reproduction is introduced with a focus on subjectification effects and future images. Second, the importance of pregnancy as a connector between reproduction and parenting is highlighted. These propositions are fleshed out with reference to an ethnography of pregnancy care in Switzerland. The results demonstrate that pregnant women are expected to act as anticipating agents and that foetuses are treated as future children. Future images reveal how prenatal care reproduces gender norms. Analysing anticipatory regimes contributes to discussions of power relations in prenatal care, the stratification of reproduction and challenges to reproductive justice.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-08-08T06:29:50Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221107492
       
  • Powerful or Disempowering Knowledge' The Teaching of Sociology in
           English Schools and Colleges

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      Authors: Sarah Cant, Anwesa Chatterjee
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      While studying sociology can be empowering and transformative, fostering criticality and reflexivity, this capacity is not being sufficiently harnessed in school/college-based delivery in England. A large survey of sociology teachers revealed that they are required to teach outdated and sometimes discredited studies, which can reinforce rather than challenge stereotypes held by the privileged and which can be disempowering for those students who cannot recognise their own experiences. This article provides a unique insight into the ways that school/college curricula reinforce inequality and contributes to important debates within the sociology of education. Specifically, the article argues that the work being undertaken to decolonise the curriculum in universities, through challenging structural and discursive operations of power, should also inform the revision of school/college specifications. The lessons from this study can be usefully applied to the teaching of sociology beyond England and indeed to other subject disciplines.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-08-05T04:56:03Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221107299
       
  • Cultural Models of Contention: How Do the Public Interpret the Repertoire
           of Contention'

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      Authors: Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup, Oluf Gøtzsche-Astrup
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      The literature on contention tends to conflate contentious actions and audience’s interpretation of those actions. This is problematic because interpretation is central to how contention unfolds and brings about social change. We theorise that interpretation is patterned by one or more cultural models of contention. These provide background assumptions about what actions count as political and what actions are legitimate. We show the fruitfulness of our approach in two survey studies of 1429 US citizens. It allows us to explore patterns in how the US public interpret contention. Furthermore, we investigate how interpretation varies across political and apolitical contexts, finding little variation between these. Finally, we study heterogeneity in how the public interpret contention, finding variation between individuals but also shared patterns. The article contributes to the literature on contention by providing a theoretical framework to study the public’s interpretation of contention and a fine-grained empirical analysis of this interpretation.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-27T05:28:41Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221109698
       
  • Coloniality of Gender and Knowledge: Rethinking Russian Masculinities in
           Light of Postcolonial and Decolonial Critiques

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      Authors: Marina Yusupova
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article explores how the legacy of European colonialism and its role in transforming gender relations globally, shapes post-Soviet Russian masculinities. It points to historical connections between European and Russian/Soviet colonial projects, both of which relied on the notion of ‘progress’ in gender relations. Drawing on analysis of biographical interviews with a diverse sample of Russian men interviewed in Russia and the UK, this work identifies how the research participants use the core modern/colonial narratives to establish their individual masculinities. Shifting from a common conceptualisation of Russian masculinities as ‘traditional’, ‘conservative’ and ‘macho’, I show that they are instead, closely bound up with the European project of modernity/coloniality. The study advances the analysis of postcolonial masculinities and posits an agenda for decolonisation of sociological research on global masculinities.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-14T12:59:54Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221110724
       
  • Trajectories towards Political Engagement on Facebook around Brexit:
           Beyond Affordances for Understanding Racist and Right-Wing Populist
           Mobilisations Online

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      Authors: Natalie-Anne Hall
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      Social media are frequently implicated in the racist and right-wing populist mobilisations that found voice in support for Brexit. However, research tends to focus on platform affordances and fails to provide a sociological account of individuals’ actual experiences with these media, and how they interact with broader social and political experiences to impact attitudes. Based on interviews with newly passionately engaged pro-Brexit Facebook users, this article examines the trajectories by which individuals came to be so engaged. The findings demonstrate that the technological opportunities provided by social media were only significant in the context of offline experiences and socio-political factors. These include racist discourses that predate social media, a loss of trust in traditional media and government, and the opportunity provided by Brexit to articulate and activate pre-held attitudes.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-14T12:57:07Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221104012
       
  • Communities of/for Interest: Revisiting the Role of Migrants’ Online
           Groups

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      Authors: Taulant Guma, Stephen Drinkwater, Rhys Dafydd Jones
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article offers a critical examination of the role played by migrants’ online communities. With much of scholarly analysis focusing on the new ways in which online groups enable migrants to connect, interact or socialise together in digital space, little attention has been paid to how these groups are actually formed, by whom and with what motivations. Drawing on qualitative interviews with moderators of online groups created by EU migrants living in Wales, UK, our findings reveal the diverse and sometimes ambivalent roles played by these groups, acting not only as networks of support for migrants (‘communities of interest’) but also driven by commercial motives. To capture the impact of this commercialisation and the complexity in the field, we introduce the notion of ‘communities for interest’. The article thus offers new empirical and conceptual contributions that advance our understanding of migrants’ online communities beyond the much-discussed online/offline and virtual/real dichotomies.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-14T12:55:46Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221104008
       
  • Upward Social Mobility in Chile: The Negotiation of Class and Ethnic
           Identities

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      Authors: Denisse Sepúlveda
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Mapuche indigenous people in Chile. The article builds on cultural class analysis dominated by Bourdieusian approaches, suggesting the incorporation of an intersectional and postcolonial lens, considering the ways in which ethnicity complicates classed trajectories, focusing on class mobility and indigeneity. Drawing on 40 life history interviews of first-generation Mapuche professionals, the analysis reveals complex and varied responses to social mobility. The interviewees display three groups of responses: the ‘mobile-accommodators’, embracing deracinated middle-class identities; the ‘rooted’, asserting connections with working-class and Mapuche origins; and the ‘resignifiers’, embracing a more ambivalent class identity, but articulating a strong sense of Mapuche identity. The experience of upward social mobility represents a challenge to the respondents’ sense of class position, class and ethnic identities, as they have had to manage indigenous identity claims across their social origins and destinations.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-04T12:02:51Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221099402
       
  • Grudging Acts

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      Authors: Wendy Bottero
      Abstract: Sociology, Ahead of Print.
      This article argues for a greater focus on how, and why, social life is often engaged in through grudging acts. Grudging acts are those activities in which we really would rather not participate but which we perform nonetheless. Such acts play a significant role in how many social practices are routinely sustained, but also reworked or undermined. Yet grudgingness is underexplored in social analysis, and its significance for social arrangements is insufficiently examined. This neglect occurs because foregrounding grudging acts requires a focus on key aspects of social life that often slip from view in analysis, and is an omission associated with a number of significant explanatory difficulties.
      Citation: Sociology
      PubDate: 2022-07-01T05:07:09Z
      DOI: 10.1177/00380385221104017
       
 
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