 Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
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- Ethnography of Horse Racing Gamblers’ Lives. Constructing Biographical
Narratives in the Process of Interviewing
Authors: Barbara Bossak-Herbst, Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper
Pages: 6 - 25
Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the narrative strategies employed by horse racing gamblers in the context of their interactions within interviews. The empirical base consisted of 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with long-term regular gamblers from Warsaw, Poland. First, we state our position in the context of interviews with people aware they may be assessed negatively regarding a very important part of their lives. Second, we discuss how the interlocutors presented their biographies and employed discursive methods of protection against negative interpretation. The research reveals how bettors justify their passion by referring to individual myths about the origins of their interest in gambling. We reveal how bettors consciously employ emotive discursive methods that alleviate the discourse of addiction. Emotions are not presented as triggered by compulsively realized needs but as a result of intellectual passion, pursued by like-minded people joined by a drive for agency.
PubDate: 2023-10-31
DOI: 10.18778/1733-8077.19.4.01
Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2023)
- “I was ashamed, and now I am proud as I finally know how to let go.”
How Female Polers Perceive, Experience, and Give Meanings to Their
Bodies—An Ethnographic Case Study
Authors: Magdalena Wojciechowska
Pages: 26 - 51
Abstract: Although the popularity of recreational pole dancing continues to gain momentum, its prevailing association with the erotic sphere and resulting stereotypes shape it as a borderline activity. Notably, the way pole dancing is approached and enacted elucidates how bodies, especially female embodiment, are socially constructed and controlled. Thus, to look at that issue from recreational female polers’ perspectives, this article sheds light on how their understandings of the body evolve with their engagement in the leisure activity at hand. That process is analyzed in the context of how women deal with tensions that arise while they navigate between the internalized societal expectations concerning desired femininity and personal agency. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data from pole dance studios in Poland, I discuss how polers’ perspectives on their bodies change from personal and interactional ‘limitations’ to embracing their bodies as interactional partners with whom to achieve their goals. In the process of learning by doing, women get to know their bodies and develop with them a relationship based on trust. Subsequently, growing to understand the bodies as their substantial selves that functionality allows them to achieve the ‘impossible’ as one empowers women. At the same time, I highlight how the process of espousing alternative perceptions of one’s body unfolds under the umbrella of an internalized frame of meanings concerning female embodiment that lures women to fit societal expectations. The interplay between the two sheds light on how female polers navigate toward reclaiming their self-confidence from the clutches of the critical social gaze while negotiating the notion of their bodies. Compelling in that regard is how relying on erotic associations with recreational pole dancing in terms of inciting empowerment through a sexual agency, as some studios do, plays out and factors into female pole dancers’ experiences concerning their leisure activity.
PubDate: 2023-10-31
DOI: 10.18778/1733-8077.19.4.02
Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2023)
- Between Sport and Leisure: Competitive Senior Ballroom Dancing as Serious
Leisure
Authors: Mariusz Finkielsztein
Pages: 52 - 70
Abstract: The article examines the motivations, attitudes, and practices of senior ballroom dancing (dancers over 30 years of age). The paper is based on qualitative research (interviews and participant observation) conducted in one Warsaw dancing club and presents senior ballroom dancing as serious leisure as conceptualized by Robert Stebbins, that is, a pursuit of leisure activity that involves long-term commitment and substantial investment in one’s development (and thus, significant personal effort) that creates a distinct social world and a strong identification with the chosen activity. Dancing as a serious leisure activity falls somewhere in the middle of the sport-leisure continuum, and senior ballroom dancing is analyzed as a liminal case between these two, oscillating between recreation and competitive approach. The article investigates the process of professionalization of leisure, showing what place dance and competitions occupy in the lives of senior dancers.
PubDate: 2023-10-31
DOI: 10.18778/1733-8077.19.4.03
Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2023)
- Migration and Integration of Foreign Priests. Aspirations, Religiosity,
and Tensions in the Narratives of Foreign Priests in Italy
Authors: Angela Delli Paoli, Giuseppe Masullo
Pages: 72 - 90
Abstract: This paper aims to understand the individual factors sustaining the migratory flow of Catholic priests to Italy. Priests’ migration cannot be seen as the mere result of lack of vocations and shortage of priests in the host country since their agency, belief, aspirations, and motivations affect their religious identity and, consequently, their integration and participation in the host country. Drawing on qualitative research, this paper collects the voices and the narratives of selected international priests living in Italy. Priests’ interviews led to broad-range questions about the nature of migration decisions and their integration into the host society and churches that originate from differences in religiosity, vocations, and missions. That resulted in a typology of 4 types of migrant priests: careerist priests, highly educated and integrated into the host country, driven by career and salary aspiration, and showing a highly politicized vision of religion; servant priests, with a strong missionary impulse to serve the Church as a universal institution transcending abstract and real boarders; evangelist priests who feel the moral obligation to evangelize secularized countries to bring them back to the origins of Catholicism; rebel priests who feel second-class priests, discriminated both within and outside the Church, in a country where they were forced to move, for this reason questioning their sense of clear vocational directions.
PubDate: 2023-10-31
DOI: 10.18778/1733-8077.19.4.04
Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2023)
- The Experience of Conversation and Relation with a Well-Being Chabot:
Between Proximity and Remoteness
Authors: Joanna Wygnańska
Pages: 92 - 120
Abstract: The article concerns the users’ experiences of interacting with well-being chatbots. The text shows how chatbots can act as virtual companions and, to some extent, therapists for people in their daily reality. It also reflects on why individuals choose such a form of support for their well-being, concerning, among others, the stigmatization aspect of mental health problems. The article discusses and compares various dimensions of users’ interactions with three popular chatbots: Wysa, Woebot, and Replika. The text both refers to the results of research on the well-being chatbots and, analytically, engages in a dialogue with the results discussed in the form of sociological (and philosophical) reflection. The issues taken up in the paper include an in-depth reflection on the aspects of the relationship between humans and chatbots that allow users to establish an emotional bond with their virtual companions. In addition, the consideration addresses the issue of a user’s sense of alienation when interacting with a virtual companion, as well as the problem of anxieties and dilemmas people may experience therein. In the context of alienation, the article also attempts to conceptualize that theme concerning available conceptual resources.
PubDate: 2023-10-31
DOI: 10.18778/1733-8077.19.4.05
Issue No: Vol. 19, No. 4 (2023)
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