Most recent papers:

• Breaking the silence on femicide: How women challenge epistemic injustice and male violence.
  Baris Cayli Messina.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 10, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nDigital space has provided an important platform for women by enabling them to defy religious and patriarchal values while rendering their demands more visible in the public sphere. By analyzing the stories of 3349 murdered women, consulting 57 activist‐published materials, studying 37 protest‐focused videos, and using digital ethnography, this article explores Turkish women's struggles against femicide. I propose the emancipatory and democratizing counterpublics as an analytical concept to demonstrate how women challenge epistemic injustice and male violence. To this end, I investigate the struggles of women by studying their use of digital space as a means of breaking the silence on femicide, creating data, disseminating knowledge, and seeking justice. This article highlights the essential role of new media technologies in empowering vulnerable groups through the generation of new forms of knowledge, the formation of collective memory, and the elimination of epistemic injustice in opposition to the ruling authorities. The present study contributes to our knowledge of the sociology of epistemic injustice by demonstrating how digital space plays a limited but critical role in the efforts of activists living under authoritarian regimes to defend their fundamental rights to survive and prevent femicide, which has a devastating impact on the lives of millions of women.\n"]

  July 10, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12968   open full text
• The social infrastructure of online marketplaces: Trade, work and the interplay of decided and emergent orders.
  Patrik Aspers, Asaf Darr.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThis study is designed to remedy the tendency of existing studies to analyze online marketplaces as either sites of work or trading arenas. We argue that the theoretical notion of “social infrastructure” is particularly apt to offer a comprehensive framework that captures the unique intersection of work and trade in online marketplaces. We study the social infrastructure of an online marketplace: the institutions, conditions and forms, and the horizontal and vertical ties between actors that organize work and enable trading. The social infrastructure of online marketplaces deserves research attention because it represents an essential condition for economic activities. In our empirical section we focus on the online marketplace Etsy to illustrate our comprehensive theoretical framework and we identify a complex dynamic between the decided and emergent order of the online marketplace. We demonstrate that the attempt to superimpose order through the constitution of an online marketplace is challenged by sellers and buyers. We find that both dimensions, work and trade, provide actors with material and symbolic resources that inform their strategies and economic actions. The article suggests that “social infrastructure” is a concrete theoretical tool for analyzing online marketplaces that complements existing research on platforms and ecosystems.\n"]

  June 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12965   open full text
• One foot on shore: An analysis of global millionaires' demand for U.S. investor visas.
  Yossi Harpaz.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 554-570, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nEach year, around 10,000 foreigners obtain a U.S. residence visa after investing half a million dollars or more. Who are the millionaires that acquire these visas and what motivates them to leave their home countries? To answer this question, I analyzed an original data set that combines U.S. visa statistics with data on global millionaire populations. The analysis produced three key findings. First, demand for investor visas was led by millionaires from countries that ranked lower in the global hierarchy of citizenship value. Second, most of the visas were acquired by Chinese millionaires, who recorded the world's highest application rate. Third, when the quality of democracy in a country declined, visa applications surged. These findings suggest that investor visas are used by elites in less developed countries to hedge against the risks associated with authoritarian rule. Such elites perceive investor visas as a foothold in a stable and democratic country that can provide an insurance policy or exit option.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12940   open full text
• Liberal‐secular power and the traps of muslim integration in Western Europe.
  Schirin Amir‐Moazami.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 607-622, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThroughout the last decades, integration programmes in Western Europe have centrally revolved around debates on Muslim populations and the institutionalization of Islam. The concept of integration has become a master paradigm with which to structure plurality of immigration societies across Western Europe. Critically reflecting this inflation, this article argues that the integration of Muslims is animated by a contingent liberal‐secular matrix through which the sovereign state, in close connection with civil society, is enabled to decide what counts as proper and improper religion. Integration directed toward Muslims as a “religious minority” is therefore indicative of the very problems that it purports to resolve. In a genealogical vein, the article begins by suggesting that integration is a liberal “recursion” of earlier projects of minority management such as assimilation and conditional recognition within emerging nation‐states. It argues that the epistemological ground which animated the assimilatory forces of the modern nation‐state has been intimately bound by an imperial knowledge order which classifies and hierarchizes people along a race‐religion nexus. The analysis continues by dwelling on contemporary examples of state organized dialog with Muslims, and more specifically the establishment of Islamic Theology Chairs at state universities. Through these examples the article shows that the institutionalization of Islam in Europe reconfigures a pattern which conditionally embraces religious difference, while at the same time continuing hierarchical rankings and by transforming it to make it fit for religion's legitimate place in public life. Finally, the article suggests that the somatic aspirations prevalent in assimilation projects and imperial race‐religion constellations are both inscribed and concealed in the frequent invocation of Muslims to reveal their loyalty to the liberal‐secular contract by bracketing their religious sensibilities for the sake of secular reason.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12942   open full text
• The role of patriarchal structure and gender stereotypes in cyber dating abuse: A qualitative examination of male perpetrators experiences.
  Rula Odeh Alsawalqa, Maissa N. Alrawashdeh.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 587-606, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nIn Jordan, premarital romantic relationships are still socially unacceptable as they contradict traditional values and norms. Although previous studies have examined cyber dating abuse (CDA), few have utilized an exploratory qualitative design to clarify male abusers' perceptions of their motivations, particularly in Arabic and clan environments. Therefore, this study conducted a thematic qualitative analysis of 47 male university students aged 19–26 and asked about their experiences and beliefs regarding their engagement in CDA against female romantic partners via social media (WhatsApp, Facebook) and mobile phone. Two themes were identified: (1) contexts and motivations for male perpetration of CDA (2) consequences of CDA for the male perpetrators. The results revealed that control and direct aggression and sexual behaviors are common practices among male perpetrators; gender identity and male entitlement are related factors, enabling and normalizing male abusive behavior. Women, taught to be submissive by Jordanian society, are unable to defend themselves. Hence, CDA also predicts offline intimate partner violence‐related behaviors. Moreover, the main motives for CDA from the perspective of male perpetrators are anger, jealousy, revenge, abandonment, feeling betrayed by female partners, earning money, sexual exploitation, and incitement by another woman. The results suggest that engaging in CDA behaviors can negatively impact perpetrators' physical and psychological health as well as their social and academic behaviors. These results confirm that efforts to reduce CDA that may lead to domestic violence against women must address the social pressures and context of violence, including masculinity and patriarchal domination.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12946   open full text
• Who you know: The classed structure of social capital.
  Andreea Alecu, Håvard Helland, Johs. Hjellbrekke, Vegard Jarness.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 505-535, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article focuses on the social structuring of social capital, understood as resources embedded in social networks. The analysis integrates key theoretical–methodological insights from two distinct approaches concerned with social capital and inequality: the position‐generator approach associated with Nan Lin and the spatial approach associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Empirically, we exploit the possibilities of survey data containing detailed information about the social ties of a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population (N = 4007). By means of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), we construct a space of social ties, a spatial representation of systematic similarities and differences between individuals' social ties to a set of 33 occupational positions. In this space, social capital is structured according to two primary dimensions: (i) the level of social ties, in terms of individuals' number of contacts; and (ii), the quality of social ties, in terms of a division between being connected to others in high‐status positions and others in low‐status positions. By means of Ascending Hierarchical Cluster analysis, five clusters are identified within the space of social ties: a homogenous working‐class cluster, a well‐connected working‐class cluster, a cluster of high‐status ties, a homogenous high‐status cluster and a low‐volume cluster. Moreover, the analysis clearly indicates that the structure of social capital is connected to respondents' class positions, their volumes of cultural and economic capital and their class origin. The analysis thus draws attention to the role of social capital in processes of social closure, regarding both resource monopolization and class formation.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12945   open full text
• The social origins and schooling of a scientific elite: Fellows of the royal society born from 1900.
  Erzsébet Bukodi, John H. Goldthorpe, Inga Steinberg.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 484-504, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nWe present an analysis of the social composition of the UK scientific elite, as represented by Fellows of the Royal Society, in terms of Fellows' social class origins and type of secondary schooling. From various sources, we have assembled data for 1691 Fellows, representing 80% of our target population of all Fellows born from 1900 onwards whose scientific careers were spent predominantly in the UK. We find that while these elite scientists come largely from more advantaged class backgrounds, it is professional rather than business or managerial families that are the main source of their recruitment—and, increasingly, such families where a parent is in a STEM occupation. Recruitment from working‐class families has declined and for most recent birth cohorts almost ceased. The scientific elite is thus now more homogeneous as regards the social origins of its members than it was in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, little change is evident in the secondary schooling of Fellows. In all birth cohorts, between two‐fifths and a half of all—and over two‐thirds of those from more advantaged class backgrounds—were privately educated, although the proportion attending Clarendon schools would seem low compared with that in other elites. A further finding of interest is that some variation in Fellows' class origins and type of schooling exists across different research fields.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12958   open full text
• Understanding autonomy and relationality in men's lives.
  Karla Elliott, Steven Roberts, Brittany Ralph, Brady Robards, Michael Savic.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 571-586, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nMasculinities scholarship tends toward describing autonomy as bound up with hegemonic masculine ideals such as independence, atomization, and self‐sufficiency, without fully delving into the concept of autonomy. This article offers a more in‐depth conceptual treatment of autonomy, compared to its more simplified rendering in the literature on the dominant relational conceptualizations of masculinities. In doing so, we follow recent calls to avoid categorizing men according to typologies of masculinity, drawing instead on feminist theorizations of masculine autonomy and relationality to explore how both manifest in men's lives. We draw on a study of men's drinking practices, with our data coming from focus groups with 101 men in metropolitan and regional/rural Victoria, Australia; but the issues we attend to have relevance, and can be an impetus, for further scholarly thinking about autonomy in men's lives well beyond drinking practices, and in other similar industrialized nations. We explore how masculine autonomy remains an influential and harmful discourse, often impeding possibilities for men's greater intimacy, connection and care and reproducing gendered hierarchies. However, we simultaneously highlight how men are inescapably relationally situated, exposing masculine autonomy as a discursive ideal of valorized forms of masculinity rather than an achievable state in practice. We argue that acknowledging how men are relationally embedded and interdependent in practice offers potential avenues for further fostering men's care, intimacy and relationality, and might work toward ameliorating gendered inequalities that see care work and the work of sustaining relational networks disproportionately falling to women and marginalized men.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12947   open full text
• The education gap over immigration and socioeconomic security.
  Matthijs Rooduijn.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nWorries about polarization are on the rise. In today's Europe, one of the most manifest gaps is the education divide over immigration. Where lower educated citizens tend to be negative about immigration, higher educated individuals are generally positive. Yet the magnitude of this education divide strongly differs between countries. What explains these differences? I theorize that when the levels of socioeconomic security are high, in particular less well educated citizens will be more likely to focus on issues with a strong cultural component, like immigration, and therefore hold more radical opinions. As a result, existing divides will be more pronounced. Analyzing 23 countries between 2002 and 2018, I show that social welfare spending fuels the education divide over immigration. I demonstrate that, indeed, it does so by affecting the immigration attitudes of the less well educated—not those of the better educated.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12959   open full text
• Temporality in the social sciences: New directions for a political sociology of time.
  Birgan Gokmenoglu.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 643-653, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nTime and temporality are common themes in the social sciences and sociology. The sociological literature on time remains solipsistically empirical, while theoretical elaborations are focused on modernity, capitalism, and technology, through notions of speed and acceleration. Although existing studies on time are imbued with political issues and processes, as the subfield that studies relations of power and politics, political sociology has yet to consolidate a temporal lexicon for studying structures of power and political phenomena. This review situates three recent books on time and politics within a broader sociological literature on time and calls for a political sociology of time. I argue that developing a conceptual apparatus that takes time as an element of power is fundamental to building dialogue across the empirical material and across disciplines. I conclude by offering three avenues for the development of a political sociology of time.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12938   open full text
• Dissecting the “do good and do well” phenomenon: The case of the UK's market for social investment.
  Jess Daggers.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 623-642, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThe developing discourse around social investment and impact investing makes strong claims regarding the possibility of both furthering one's own interests while simultaneously acting for the benefit of others—“doing good and doing well”. Such claims are central to UK‐ and US‐centric attempts to reform capitalism in the face of multiple global crises. This article uses Foucault's writing on (neo)liberal governmentality to analyze a particular manifestation of the logic of “doing good and doing well”: the attempt to build a market for social investment in the UK between 2010 and 2016, a project closely related to the development of the broader impact investment movement. Building on a close reading of Foucault's writing on the role of self‐interest, it is argued that two incompatible versions of social investment are present within the development of the market: one (the “innovative version”) that assumes purpose and profit are fully compatible, and one (the “principled version”) that assumes it is important to maintain a boundary between them. The relevance of these findings and the approach used is discussed in relation to the social studies of market, and ongoing efforts to develop a critique of “doing good and doing well”.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12936   open full text
• Social stratification in meaningful work: Occupational class disparities in the United Kingdom.
  Mark Williams, Jonny Gifford, Ying Zhou.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 25, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 3, Page 536-553, June 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nSociologists have long been interested in the meaning workers derive from their jobs. The issue has garnered increasing academic and policy attention in recent years with the concept of “meaningful work,” yet little is known about how social stratification relates to access to it. This paper addresses this issue by exploring how the meaningfulness of jobs—as rated by their incumbents—is stratified across classes and occupations in a national survey of 14,000 working adults in the United Kingdom. It finds modest differentials between classes, with those in routine and manual occupations reporting the lowest levels of meaningfulness and those in managerial and professional occupations and small employers and own account workers reporting the highest levels. Detailed job attributes (e.g., job complexity and development opportunities) explain much of the differences in meaningfulness between classes and occupations, and much of the overall variance in meaningfulness. The main exception is the specific case of how useful workers perceive their jobs to be for society: A handful of occupations relating to health, social care, and protective services which cut across classes stand out from all other occupations. The paper concludes that the modest stratification between classes and occupations in meaningful work is largely due to disparities in underlying job complexity and development opportunities. The extent to which these aspects of work can be improved, and so meaningfulness, especially in routine and manual occupations, is an open, yet urgent, question.\n"]

  June 25, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12941   open full text
• Trouble with autonomy in behavioral insurance.
  Maiju Tanninen, Turo‐Kimmo Lehtonen, , Minna Ruckenstein.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 21, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nIn this article, we study how people define, negotiate, and perform autonomy in relation to digital technologies, specifically in connection with behavioral insurance policies that involve forms of data tracking and health services. The article builds on focus group discussions, which we treat as a dynamic site of ethico‐political deliberation to test ideas, talk about boundaries of acceptable control, and envision future scenarios. The ethico‐political deliberations assess the legitimacy and usability of new behavioral tools. Concern over the nature and limits of autonomy is activated when people discuss how wellbeing‐related decisions are delegated to algorithmically controlled systems. We argue for appreciating autonomy as a relational and ambiguous notion that is sensed and enacted in collaborations with devices in the form of distributed autonomy. Moreover, as reflected by the experiences of the insured, “autonomy” cannot be analyzed solely in the form transmitted by the liberal tradition; that is, as a clear‐cut entity that can simply be “had”, “exerted”, or “controlled”. Consequently, research, ethical considerations, and governance initiatives should pay attention to how values are “done” in the affect‐laden technologically mediated relations and practices.\n"]

  June 21, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12960   open full text
• ‘More options…less time’ in the ‘hustle culture’ of ‘generation sensible’: Individualization and drinking decline among twenty‐first century young adults.
  Adam Burgess, Henry Yeomans, Laura Fenton.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 18, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThere has been a dramatic decline in alcohol consumption among younger people, including an increase of conscious moderation and abstinence. Change has a generational character, with different cohorts' drinking changing over time from the heavy, embedded pattern among post‐war ‘boomers’ to the more selective habits initiated by ‘millennials’. This is a surprising development in historical terms and has been cast as indicating the emergence of a moderating ‘generation sensible’. It is also coincident with more negative trends, such as young adults worsening mental health. Informed by the perspective of individualization, we consider the decline in youth drinking in the context of generational changes in the lifecourse. We focus upon how recent generations of young people experience greater choice, pressure and a prolonged adolescence, characterized by more limited autonomy. Explored with conscious young moderators through a survey (N = 517) and focus groups (N = 13), these themes resonated with our sample who appear a self‐conscious generation with significant and open‐ended focus upon maintaining their wellbeing and control. Further, they appear more disembedded from pressure to conform but under greater pressure to perform. The same forces of individualization encouraging moderate drinking may also weigh down upon young people who feel under pressure not only to transform their own lives but feel a burden of responsibility for a damaged, unjust world. The article's originality lies in applying individualization to both generational change and consumption, suggesting this can be usefully done through a focus upon freedom/choice and pressure/performance. It also considers what is regarded as the positive trend of drinking decline alongside, and as related to, negative trends such as greater loneliness and less autonomy among young adults.\n"]

  June 18, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12964   open full text
• Private spanner in public works? The corrosive effects of private insurance on public life.
  Sinisa Hadziabdic, Sebastian Kohl.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 16, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "AbstractContemporary societies are not only “risk societies”, but also insurance societies. While the shift of systemic risks from the community to the individual is a distinctive trait of modernity, research on the consequences of this process has focused almost exclusively on welfare state responses aimed at re‐collectivizing societal risks. Individual‐level reactions associated with the need for a private safety net against the uncertainty brought by risk societies have been largely overlooked. What happens to a society and its individuals when private insurance becomes commonplace? Focusing on Germany, we use the data of the German Socio‐Economic Panel (1984–2018) to investigate the attitudinal antecedents and consequences of contracting private insurance. As one of the most important sources of private welfare, life insurance attracts risk‐averse individuals who are highly concerned with public economic affairs and see the market‐based solutions of conservative parties as the best way to safeguard their economic security. While short‐term attitudinal effects are absent, a longitudinal approach reveals that becoming insured gradually increases economic security but also entails withdrawal from public life and aversion to parties that support social redistribution. The loss of dynamism of a society may thus be related not only to public welfare but also to a private institution at the heart of the financial markets, which moreover has privatizing, welfare‐eroding effects. The paper argues for a more general sociology of insurance."]

  June 16, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12961   open full text
• How moderates make boundaries after protracted conflict. Everyday universalists, agonists, transformists and cosmopolitans in contemporary Northern Ireland.
  Jennifer Todd, Sarah Curristan, Stephanie Dornschneider‐Elkink.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 13, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article explores how boundary making proceeds after protracted conflict has ended. Drawing on an interview and focus group study in two local areas in Northern Ireland, we identify the diverse forms of everyday boundary work amongst moderates who distance from the ethno‐political blocs: everyday universalism, agonism, transformation and cosmopolitanism. Each overcomes closed exclusivist boundaries and identity oppositions, thus providing a clear contrast with the overt political contention and polarization that has followed Brexit in Northern Ireland. Our research shows the internal shape and diversity of the moderate constituency who support peace‐building and a less‐polarized politics. It also offers an answer to the question how such everyday openness coexists with continued political polarization. We trace the different political perspectives associated with each form of boundary making and argue that this hinders political cohesion amongst moderates.\n"]

  June 13, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12962   open full text
• “How you keep going”: Voluntary sector practitioners' story‐lines as emotion work.
  Kaitlyn Quinn, Philippa Tomczak, Gillian Buck.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 370-386, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThe voluntary sector acts as the last line of defense for some of the most marginalized people in societies around the world, yet its capacities are significantly reduced by chronic resource shortages and dynamic political obstacles. Existing research has scarcely examined what it is like for voluntary sector practitioners working amidst these conditions. In this paper, we explore how penal voluntary sector practitioners across England and Scotland marshaled their personal and professional resources to “keep going” amidst significant challenges. Our analysis combines symbolic interactionism with the concept of story‐lines. We illuminate the narratives that practitioners mobilized to understand and motivate their efforts amidst the significant barriers, chronic limitations, and difficult emotions brought forth by their work. We position practitioners' story‐lines as a form of emotion work that mitigated their experiences of anger, frustration, overwhelm, sadness, and disappointment, enabling them to move forward and continue to support criminalized individuals. Our analysis details three story‐lines—resignation, strategy, and refuge—and examines their consequences for practitioners and their capacities to intervene in wicked social problems.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12914   open full text
• “This is a political movement, friend”: Why “incels” support violence.
  Catharina O'Donnell, Eran Shor.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 336-351, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nHow do members of extremist groups think about violence conducted by individual members on the group's behalf? We examine the link between extremism‐motivated violence and extremist groups through a case study of misogynist incels, a primarily online community of men who lament their lack of sexual success with women. To learn how misogynist incels talk about mass violence committed by members of their group, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of 3,658 comments relating to the 2018 Toronto van attack, in which self‐declared incel Alek Minassian drove a van into pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 16. We find overwhelming support among self‐proclaimed incels for the attack and violence more generally. Incels viewed mass violence as instrumental, serving the following four main purposes: garnering increased attention, exacting revenge, reinforcing masculinity, and generating political change. Our findings indicate the need to examine misogynist incels as a potential terrorist group and male supremacism as a basis for terrorism.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12923   open full text
• Respectability and boundary making on a superdiverse housing estate: The cross‐racial deployment of intra‐ethnic stereotypes.
  James Rosbrook‐Thompson, Gary Armstrong.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 259-272, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines how white British residents of a superdiverse London housing estate learn about—and subsequently deploy—the intra‐ethnic stereotypes used by their British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi neighbours/flatmates. Building on recent attempts to bring together conviviality and boundary making, along with insights into intra‐ethnic othering, we show how, for white British residents, these stereotypes offered the chance to add detail and authenticity to judgements about the “unrespectable” behaviour of British Asian residents and/or visitors. Ultimately, however, white British residents' inappropriate and/or imprecise deployment of these stereotypes in relation to British Bangladeshis and British Pakistanis led to the misidentification of low‐status people and the unfair extension of discrimination faced by low‐status individuals and families. Furthermore, the combination of clumsy application and the positioning of “respectable” British Bangladeshis and British Pakistanis as purveyors of “insider knowledge” about intra‐ethnic stereotypes led to the reinscribing of boundaries between racial groups. We conclude that studying the cross‐racial use of intra‐ethnic stereotypes allows for a subtler appreciation of the complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in superdiverse areas.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12922   open full text
• From integrated to fragmented elites. The core of Swiss elite networks 1910–2015.
  Thierry Rossier, Christoph Houman Ellersgaard, Anton Grau Larsen, Jacob Aagaard Lunding.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 315-335, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article focuses on historical elite dynamics and investigates elites' integration over time. We describe the changing relations and composition of the central circles in Swiss elite networks at seven benchmark years between 1910 and 2015 by relying on 22,262 elite individuals tied to 2587 organizations among eight key sectors, and identify for each year the most connected core of individuals. We explore network cohesion and sectoral bridging of the elite core and find that it moved from being a unitary corporate elite, before 1945, to an integrated corporatist elite, between the 1950s and 1980s, before fragmenting into a loose group, with an increased importance of corporate elites, in the 1990s onwards. The core was always dominated by business and their forms of legitimacy but, at times of crisis to the hegemony of corporate elites, after the Second World War and (only) shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, elite circles expanded and included individuals with delegated forms of power, such as politicians and unionists. In the most recent cohort (2015), the share of corporate elites in the core is similar to the one before the First World War and during the interwar period. This return to the past echoes findings on wealth inequality and economic capital accumulation by a small group of individuals organized around the most powerful companies.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12929   open full text
• World society and field theory: The infiltration of development into humanitarianism.
  Nir Rotem.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 402-420, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nDifferentiated modern society is commonly viewed as an aggregation of various fields, yet the question of their boundaries is often a silent one. This article builds on this lacuna to argue that cultural globalization should be acknowledged and added to the equation. Drawing from two distinct branches of the sociology of knowledge, Bourdieusian field theory and Meyer’s world society, an integrative approach is presented here. It rests on three propositions: scriptwriting is related to fields; script may be diffused into other fields; and a global taken for granted can emerge. With an eye toward the humanitarian‐development nexus, the article examines the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (established in 1950). Utilizing archival materials, changes the organization underwent, and the transfer of knowledge from the development field are documented. The article argues that resistance to the diffusion of social knowledge may occur, but some shared understanding is nonetheless gained.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12932   open full text
• Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent.
  Maren Toft, Marianne Nordli Hansen.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 291-314, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper explores the trajectories of Norwegians who, in their late‐thirties, possessed financial assets, such as securities, company shares and stocks, qualifying them as the wealthiest one percent nationally. We describe the accumulation of financial wealth over a 25‐year period in adulthood and study how different wealth sequences are linked to family origins and kinship ties. Although some Norwegians manage to build up large fortunes from relatively modest starting points over their life courses, we find that the value of the assets possessed by self‐made individuals, and their ability to retain wealth over time, differ significantly to those based on dynastic lineage. Among the latter group, profound wealth early in adulthood and strategic positions in the economy add to propel exponential ownership of financial wealth from a young age and throughout adulthood. This chimes with C. Wright Mills' suggestion that the amassing of great fortunes is driven by two mechanisms of the big jump that enables initial asset build‐up, and the accumulation of advantages that flows from advantageous economic and social ties. Kinship seems of key importance to ensure the efficacy of both mechanisms. Differences in the relationship of wealth accumulation and class origin seem to have little to do with educational strategies. We draw attention to direct wealth transfers and the institution of marriage as two little explored dimensions involved in dynastic closure.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12925   open full text
• Resilience in the context of conflict‐related sexual violence and beyond: A “sentient ecology” framework.
  Janine Natalya Clark.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 352-369, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nIn his research with Indigenous Evenki people living in Arctic Siberia, Anderson introduces the concept of “sentient ecology”, defined as “the mutual interrelation of person and place”. This interdisciplinary article starts from the basic premise that sentient ecology is relevant for research on resilience, and it aims to demonstrate this in two key ways. First, it uses sentient ecology as a novel framework for thinking about resilience, with a particular focus on conflict‐related sexual violence (CSRV)—an area of scholarship that to date has given very little attention to the concept of resilience. The article locates resilience in the fluid and dynamic interactions between individuals and their social ecologies. What sentient ecology contributes in this regard is a different way of thinking about these interactions. In particular, it highlights some of the ways that female and male victims–/survivors of CRSV actively utilize and engage with the more‐than‐human living world around them in the process of rebuilding and moving on with their lives. Second, the article uses sentient ecology as a framework for thinking in new “sentient” ways about social‐ecological systems (SES)—and how the social and ecological parts of these systems communicate with each other. Taking this a step further, it argues that sentient ecology offers a potential basis for developing more posthumanist accounts of resilience as an extension of SES.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12931   open full text
• “If no one grieves, no one will remember”: Cultural palimpsests and the creation of social ties through rituals.
  Pamela J. Prickett, Stefan Timmermans.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 244-258, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nClassic sociological theories hold that rituals offer opportunities for community integration and cohesion. Rituals allow people to come together across many differences and experience similar thoughts and feelings. Death rituals raise existential questions about the purpose of society and generally foster preexisting social ties. This paper examines the efforts of a US community of volunteers who gather to bury unclaimed, or “abandoned,” babies. Drawing on ethnographic research over a two‐year period, we advance the concept of cultural palimpsest to capture the process by which a gathering of strangers turns a potentially divisive political issue in to a community forming event. We find that in their efforts to mourn babies to whom they have no connection, these volunteers temporarily foster new social bonds that allow them to work through unresolved grief. Similar processes of ritualistically inverting social meanings occur whenever people gather to turn potentially negative into group forming events.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12934   open full text
• “There's just too many”: The construction of immigration as a social problem.
  James Pattison.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 273-290, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article presents findings collected in 2016–2017 from a multi‐method ethnographic study of Shirebrook, Derbyshire in the English East Midlands, examining the narratives used by the local authority (LA) and local residents that construct immigration as a social problem. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on race and migration by extending analysis beyond metropolitan localities with long histories of multi‐ethnic settlement, to consider a relatively small, peripheral former colliery town. The paper demonstrates how migration is framed as a social problem by central government funding streams with consequences for localities, and the influence this has on local narratives of social change. The construction of immigration as a social problem is rooted in the constraints of austerity and longer‐term processes of deindustrialization and economic restructuring, with representations and understandings of place being constitutive of anti‐immigrant sentiment. This article deepens our understanding of responses to immigration in the UK, and has broader implications for understanding the relationship between place, state polices and local narratives.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12933   open full text
• The paradox of local inequality: Meritocratic beliefs in unequal localities.
  Katy Morris, Felix Bühlmann, Nicolas Sommet, Leen Vandecasteele.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 421-460, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nA puzzle has emerged amidst rising inequality: why do people profess high levels of belief in meritocracy even as income gains are increasingly concentrated at the top? In light of contradictory theories and evidence, we undertake the first assessment of the relationship between local income inequality and meritocratic beliefs outside the United States, using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. We find that the positive relationship between country‐level income inequality and meritocratic beliefs identified in the recent literature does not translate straightforwardly below country level: there is no robust relationship between local income inequality and meritocratic beliefs in England. However, there is a robust—and somewhat paradoxical—positive association between high local income inequality and meritocratic beliefs among those with the lowest incomes. On average, respondents with annual household incomes of £10,000 are five points more likely (on a 100‐point scale) to believe their hard work will pay off if they live in the most rather than the least unequal places in England. We also show that this applies beyond the specific case of meritocratic beliefs: low‐income respondents in unequal places are also notably more satisfied with their own (low) income than similar respondents in more equal localities. In line with system justification theory, we argue that belief in meritocracy serves as an important tool of psychological resilience for low‐income individuals who regularly come into contact with others more economically fortunate than themselves: though it legitimates their current position at the bottom of the status hierarchy, this belief also offers the promise of future advancement. While this reduces concern about the psychological effects of growing local income inequality on the most economically vulnerable, it also suggests that there is little prospect of demand for systemic economic change emerging from what might have been considered the most likely places.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12930   open full text
• Epistemology of surveillance: Revealing unmarked forms of discipline and punishment in Israeli academia.
  Sarab Abu‐Rabia‐Queder.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 2, Page 387-401, March 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper analyzes the unmarked forms of discipline and punishment employed against Palestinian researchers in Israeli academia, attempting to decolonize it through critical knowledge production. Based on interviews with 15 researchers from a cross‐section of academic institutions in Israel, the paper identifies subtle mechanisms of discipline and punishment, directed toward normalizing the epistemology of the colonized. The findings suggest that the gatekeepers of Israeli academia not only seek to maintain the existing racial hierarchy between Israeli and Palestinian researchers but also seek to “eliminate” the indigenous epistemology of the latter through mechanisms of hidden surveillance, used to control them as colonized subjects unable to challenge the Zionist ideology that is an essential aspect of Israeli academia. The current paper aims to unpack these invisible mechanisms of surveillance, which are part of a broader colonial apparatus aiming to maintain not only territorial sovereignty but also epistemologic sovereignty.\n"]

  March 30, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12924   open full text
• Relations of extraction, relations of redistribution: Empire, nation, and the construction of the British welfare state.
  Gurminder K. Bhambra.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 4-15, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThe consolidation of the British welfare state in the mid‐twentieth century did not only coincide with the systematic dismantling of the British Empire but was significantly shaped by the empire that preceded it. The story that tends to be told about the welfare state, however, situates it firmly within the national context. Such understandings go on to shape contemporary political debates centered on questions of entitlement and concerns over legitimacy. In this article, I reassess the standard accounts of taxation and welfare that are claimed to be central to the construction of the nation to demonstrate how taking the empire into account offers the possibility of a different political response to the challenges we are faced with today.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12896   open full text
• School‐to‐work transition and subjective well‐being in Australia.
  Hans Dietrich, Alexander Patzina, Jenny Chesters, Volker Reissner.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 78-111, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThe school‐to‐work transition is a demanding period during an individual's life course in all societies particularly because the educational decisions made during this period have long‐lasting consequences in multiple life domains. Moreover, adverse starting points after secondary school are likely to lead to adverse outcomes that might cumulate over the life course. This study analyses subjective well‐being during this sensitive period and examines the following two questions. First, how do different school‐to‐work transitions relate to subjective well‐being changes? Second, how does subjective well‐being develop during and after secondary schooling? As the school‐to‐work transition period is structured by gender, each analytical step aims to identify gender differences. Furthermore, based on life course theories, this study investigates whether adverse starting points after secondary school lead to cumulative effects in the development of subjective well‐being. Based on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and fixed effects regressions, our results reveal that transitions to employment increase subjective well‐being, while transitions to unemployment decrease subjective well‐being. Furthermore, transitions to study increase subjective well‐being only among men, while such transitions appear to decrease subjective well‐being among women. The results related to the development of subjective well‐being indicate that subjective well‐being decreases during secondary schooling and continues to decrease after individuals leave school. This decrease is stronger among men. Finally, our results reveal the negative cumulative effects of adverse starting points on the development of subjective well‐being. Overall, the results reveal great intra‐individual variation in subjective well‐being during the school‐to‐work transition period in Australia.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12895   open full text
• Anywheres, Somewheres, local attachment, and civic participation.
  Tak Wing Chan, Juta Kawalerowicz.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 112-124, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nWe use data from Understanding Society to evaluate several claims advanced by David Goodhart in The Road to Somewhere. We show that geographically mobile individuals are indeed more likely to support Remain in the EU referendum, as Goodhart suggests. But Remainers are no different to Leavers in how attached they are to their local community. And people reporting higher level of civic participation or those who are more trusting are actually less supportive of Brexit. Our findings suggest that the dichotomy between cosmopolitan Anywheres and communitarian Somewheres is a misleading one. Cosmopolitan Anywheres are just as communitarian as Somewheres, if not more so.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12897   open full text
• Social character, interdependence, and the dualities of other‐directedness.
  Chris Shilling, Philip A. Mellor.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 125-138, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nDavid Riesman's exploration of the other‐directed characterological form, suited to corporate capitalism and the rise of the service sector, became one of the most influential sociological analyses of the twentieth century. Yet sociologists interested in the contemporary fate of those dispositional qualities suited to mutual adjustment confront a paradox: why, in an age of increasing interdependencies apparently conducive to the sustenance of other‐directedness, are we witnessing rising concerns about the resurgence of social sectarianism? Most accounts of this tension rely upon structuralist explanations of late modernity's disruptive impact, or psychologistic accounts of group allegiance. In contrast, we develop a meso‐level analysis that highlights an increasingly consequential duality at the heart of other‐directedness itself: the qualities associated with this characterological form still facilitate selective forms of mutuality, but the demands it places upon people in the current era have also prompted growing levels of resentment and antagonism.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12902   open full text
• (Dis)Engagement with queer counterpublics: Exploring intimate and family lives in online and offline spaces in China.
  Iris Po Yee Lo.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 139-153, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThere have been ongoing discussions about the ways in which the Internet has created new spaces for sexual minority individuals to meet, communicate, and build their communities in recent decades. Nevertheless, previous studies have paid disproportionate attention to identity politics, civil society, and rights‐based movements. They have largely overlooked other possible forms of, and orientations toward, engagement with cyberspace, particularly those that have emerged and been restricted in non‐Western contexts. This article examines Chinese lesbians' experiences of using cyberspace and the extent to which these experiences help them develop their intimate and family lives. Drawing on interview data and developing a framework that combines queer counterpublics scholarship with insights drawn from the notion of relational selfhood, this study reveals a wide range of personal, familial, and socio‐political motivations for (not) engaging in cyberspace and the mixed feelings of connection and distance experienced by participants. By identifying three forms of (dis)engagement with cyberspace: those demonstrated by ‘pioneers’, ‘skeptics’, and ‘conflicted pragmatists’, this study expands the notion of queer counterpublics beyond its focus on civic and political participation and illustrates the contested and contingent nature of Chinese queer counterpublics. It shows that Chinese lesbians' interactions in cyberspace enable them to explore non‐traditional paths to family formation and motherhood. Meanwhile, these interactions expose them to tensions between the new possibilities revealed by online spaces and established socio‐political and familial norms. I argue that prevailing heterosexual norms, coupled with material concerns and the regulatory power of the family and the state, continue to restrict the transformative potential of cyberspace and push some lesbians to withdraw from cyberspace into themselves and refrain from taking part in collective action. The article concludes with some reflections on queer counterpublics and the complex interplay between online and offline lives in the digital age.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12913   open full text
• Race as technology and the carceral methodologies of molecular racialization.
  Brett St Louis.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 206-219, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article counters the view (albeit contested) of race as a natural empirical object with technology as a secondary, external entity applied to it. Instead, I posit race itself as a technology that is inherently discriminatory in motivation, design and function, as evident throughout its brutally effective history. Focusing on the post/genomic era, I consider contemporary forms of molecular racialization as the latest technological iteration of race as a disciplinary device. I characterize this biopolitical racial technology as operant through a carceral methodology in four stages: (a) the epistemological mutability of molecular racialization as reiterating the obscurantist claim of modern raciology to constitute a benign description of literal racial difference; (b) the ontological de‐individualization of certain racial others as aggregated risky populations and legitimate targets of repressive management; (c) a predictive empiricism whereby molecular race is seen as indicative of potential behaviours that sanctions oppressive state interventions against specific populations; (d) a normative bioethical dissembling whereby state agencies' exploitation of target molecular racialized populations' vulnerabilities result in the debarment of proper ethical consideration and the right to justice. Drawing largely on criminal justice and immigration control examples, the article asserts that the carceral methodologies of molecular racialization demonstrate race as a repressive technology designed to (re)produce subaltern racial populations and propagate racism.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12918   open full text
• Data money makers: An ethnographic analysis of a global cryptocurrency community.
  Koray Caliskan.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 168-187, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nProposed by an unknown young man using the pseudonym Electra01, Electra appeared in the cryptocurrency markets in 2018. Thanks to its innovative supply mechanism, the money's market capitalization briefly reached 136 billion USD, surpassing Bitcoin in value. Focusing on the empirical case of Electra, a project that was chosen as the “best cryptocurrency community” by the users of world's largest exchange, Binance, this paper ethnographically analyzes the sociological universe of a cryptocurrency community. The research consists of two years of fieldwork, interviews with the core team and the project's anonymous founder, a survey among its community members, and computational analyses of the interaction data of the project's Twitter community of 376,600 handles, as well as their Bitcointalk forum. The paper approaches the socio‐technical universe of a cryptocurrency community by examining the devices, networks, and representations that the community actors produce, use, and maintain in data‐money making and proposes a way to make visible and examine centers of power in a global community operating a seemingly “decentralized” blockchain.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12916   open full text
• Post‐industrial masculinities and gym culture: Graft, craft, and fraternity.
  Nicholas Gibbs, Mike Salinas, Luke Turnock.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 220-236, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article theorizes a link between contemporary masculinity in post‐industrial spaces and ‘hardcore’ gym culture. Over the last three decades the health and fitness industry has grown exponentially, with bodily modification and the proliferation of gymnasia, health supplements and wearable fitness trackers now a dominant means by which many construct their identities. Simultaneously, the onset of wholesale neoliberalism, which has caused large‐scale de‐industrialization and the global outsourcing of labor, has resulted in a macro‐economic shift from production to consumption in the West. Set against this backdrop, this article draws upon two ethnographic studies in ‘hardcore’ gyms to examine the significance of bodywork in the lives of men in two working‐class, post‐industrial locales in England. First, gym work is conceptualized as a form of both graft and craft within our samples, and the role of the male body as a post‐industrial project is considered. Following this, the gym is presented as a site of fraternity which, following the loss of collectivizing industry in both areas, allows men to bond over a shared endeavor and build genuine kinship. Ultimately, we conclude that the gym is a space of production within consumption, furnishing our sample with a means of performing their embodied masculinity and repurposing formative notions of graft, craft, and fraternity in a new adaptive space.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12921   open full text
• Professionalism in the era of accountability: Role discrepancy and responses among teachers in the Netherlands.
  Natalie Browes, Hülya K. Altinyelken.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 188-205, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nThe roles and identities of professionals have undergone significant transformation in an ever‐globalising world shaped by neoliberal values. In the field of education, standardisation and outcome‐based quality measures have become the norm. Teachers are held accountable through their students’ results, with their work subject to ongoing surveillance (performance‐based accountability). This has changed the nature of teachers’ tasks, and what it means to be a \"good teacher\". Based on 20 teacher interviews across six primary schools in the Netherlands, this study examines teachers’ practices and beliefs, asking: do they experience role discrepancy? What responses do we see as a result? And, what does this reveal about teachers' sense of professionalism today? Findings show that all teachers experience the pressure of high workloads and the need to prioritise tasks. Whereas a small minority of respondents understand performative tasks as having a crucial function of supporting student learning and achievement, others experienced a discrepancy between these performative tasks and the tasks they believed to be at the heart of good teaching. Confronted with this, teachers responded in different ways; either incorporating all tasks into their schedule, or feeling forced to choose between them. Beyond this, findings indicate that teachers' understandings of key aspects of the profession, such as autonomy, are changing in response to the policy environment. This supports conceptualisations of professions and professionalism as not only \"being changed by\" external reform, but changing from within.\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12917   open full text
• Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship.
  Kristina Bakkær Simonsen.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 22, 2022
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 73, Issue 1, Page 154-167, January 2022. ", "\nAbstract\nCitizenship has become the language through which several interconnected societal concerns are debated in Europe today. One of these concerns relates to youths' willingness and abilities to live up to dominant citizen ideals. The questioning of young adults' citizenship is particularly intense for youths with an ethnic minority background who are feared to hold values at odds with majority society. In this article, I ask how Danish youths define what it means to be a good (and a bad) citizen, and I investigate how their answers are shaped by their status within dominant hierarchies of belonging. Analyzing 71 in‐depth interviews with young adults in Denmark, I find that they share a conception of citizenship informed by virtues central to the Danish welfare state. At the same time, minority and majority youths place different emphasis on specific traits and duties. These shifts in emphasis reflect that the two groups do not experience the same access to making claims to citizenship. In particular, the ideal of the politically active and critical citizen is largely reserved for majority youths who – because of their status – feel more entitled and called upon to make independent judgments. Theoretically, the article brings the literatures on ordinary citizenship and everyday nationhood into conversation to reflect on the simultaneous reproduction of common norms and on how hierarchies of belonging nevertheless shape different groups' abilities to redefine citizenship. More generally, I contribute to broader sociological debates about agency and structure by discussing how majority youths' power to make independent claims to citizenship masks their privileged position in the national order of things. The study thus sheds light on how structure is made visible to those who are confronted with constraints (minority youths) and invisible to those who have a secure status (majority youths).\n"]

  January 22, 2022   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12915   open full text
• Neither acquiescence nor defiance: Tuscan wineries' “flexible reactivity” to the Italian government's quality regulation system.
  Taeyoung Yoo, Oliver Schilke, Reinhard Bachmann.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1430-1447, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article introduces the concept of “flexible reactivity” to describe and analyze a form of economic actors' response to multiple judgment devices. Using the example of government regulation in the Tuscan wine industry, we show that wineries can in part comply with the government's quality classifications system while, at the same time, also offering products outside the official classification system. Through this research, we provide novel insights into the role of judgment devices and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of organizational responses to institutional pressures. Extending prior institutional‐complexity research, our study illustrates that organizations' reactions to judgment devices are not limited to only the two options of either acquiescence or defiance. The third option—flexibile reactivity—encompasses an explicit combination of acquiescence and defiance at the actor level. Our findings shed new light on how organizations can cope with contradictory external demands such that contrasting logics compete for organizational resources and breed heterogeneous and continuously shifting product offerings.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12883   open full text
• The adaptation of educational expectations in response to ability tracking: Variations by migration background.
  Sara Geven, Andrea G. Forster.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1284-1310, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIn various educational systems, students are sorted into separate secondary schools on the basis of their academic ability. Research suggests that this type of tracking impacts students' educational expectations, as expectations generally align with students' ability track. However, most research is cross‐sectional and students with lower expectations are possibly also sorted into lower tracks. Moreover, the extent to which track placement influences expectations may vary across students. In this paper, we address the following research question: how does ability tracking impact the development of student expectations and how does this vary by students' migration background. Based on the literature on the immigrant aspiration–achievement paradox, we expect that students with a migration background are less likely to adapt expectations downwardly, and more likely to adapt expectations upward in response to track placement. Using German panel data, we examine the educational expectations of students with and without a migration background, before and after track placement. Moreover, we use variations in tracking procedures across German states to study how students who get tracked compare with students who do not get tracked in the development of their educational expectations. We show that students are more likely to upwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement exceeds their expectations and to downwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement is below their expectations. We find little support for the hypothesized variations by student migration background. Students whose parent(s) hold (a) Bachelor degree(s) are more likely to upwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement exceeds their expectations than students whose parent(s) maximally hold an upper secondary or vocational degree(s).\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12886   open full text
• Public support for social security in 66 countries: Prosperity, inequality, and household income as interactive causes.
  Robert Andersen, Joshua Curtis, Robert Brym.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1347-1377, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIt is widely accepted that support for government intervention is highest among people in lower socioeconomic positions, during economic recessions and in less prosperous countries. However, the relationship between income inequality and attitudes toward government intervention is less clear. We contribute new insights to both questions by exploring how subjective household income, economic prosperity, and income inequality interact to influence attitudes. Using mixed‐effects and country fixed‐effects models fitted to data from 66 countries, we demonstrate that income inequality has a strong positive impact on attitudes toward government intervention in rich countries but no discernable effect in poor countries. Concomitantly, the impact of economic prosperity differs by level of inequality. It has little effect when income inequality is relatively low, a weakening effect as inequality rises, and no apparent effect when inequality is high. Consistent with these findings, the effect of subjective household income on attitudes toward government intervention is strongest in countries that are simultaneously very prosperous and highly unequal. Taken together, these findings suggest that if inequality continues to rise, especially in rich countries, public demand for social spending will eventually increase as well.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12842   open full text
• Spatial and social mobility in England and Wales: A sub‐national analysis of differences and trends over time.
  Franz Buscha, Emma Gorman, Patrick Sturgis.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1378-1393, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nRecent studies of social mobility have documented that not only who your parents are, but also where you grow up, substantially influences subsequent life chances. We bring these two concepts together to study social mobility in England and Wales, in three post‐war generations, using linked Decennial Census data. Our findings show considerable spatial variation in rates of absolute and relative mobility, as well as how these have changed over time. While upward mobility increased in every region between the mid‐1950s and the early 1980s, this shift varied across different regions and tailed off for more recent cohorts. We also explore how domestic migration is related to social mobility, finding that those who moved out of their region of origin had higher rates of upward mobility compared to those who stayed, although this difference narrowed over time.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12885   open full text
• A revolt of the deplored? The role of perceived cultural distance in the educational gradient in anti‐establishment politics.
  Kjell Noordzij, Willem Koster, Jeroen Waal.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1448-1463, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nAnti‐establishment politics have become part of contemporary Western democracies. Less‐educated citizens in particular have been found to display political distrust and populist attitudes, support populist parties, and abstain from voting. We advance a novel explanation for these patterns, drawing on extant theoretical insights to hypothesize that less‐ and more‐educated citizens differ in the extent to which they perceive politicians to be culturally distant to them. Informed by our earlier in‐depth qualitative research, we developed novel indicators of such perceptions and included them in a survey fielded among a high‐quality panel representative of the Dutch population. We found: 1) positive associations between perceived cultural distance to politicians and political distrust, populist attitudes, the intention to vote for a populist party, and non‐voting; and 2) that, overall, perceived cultural distance contributes substantially more to the educational gradient in anti‐establishment political attitudes and behavior than the conventional rationalist and materialist approaches.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12892   open full text
• The dark side of onward migration: Experiences and strategies of Italian‐Bangladeshis in the UK at the time of the post‐Brexit referendum.
  Mohammad Morad, Francesco Della Puppa, Devi Sacchetto.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1311-1324, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDrawing on multisited qualitative research in Italy and the UK, this paper documents the dark side of onward migration and the experiences faced by Italian‐Bangladeshis in the UK after the Brexit referendum. The findings show that compared to their position in Italy, Italian‐Bangladeshis experienced a downgrading in symbolic, identity‐related, and, specifically, socio‐economic and cultural aspects in the UK society. The paper also uncovers the potential strategies that Italian‐Bangladeshis intend to adopt in case they lose the special rights provided to them by EU citizenship after Brexit. Since the majority of them have moved to the United Kingdom to build a future for their children, they find themselves forced to further reconfigure their strategies and reactivate different degrees of mobility in order to avoid the loss of social rights (access to welfare, the status of citizens) and material resources (housing and better working conditions) that they have long assumed.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12890   open full text
• Planning versus the market: The dispute between Hayek and Mannheim and its contemporary relevance.
  Martyn Hammersley.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1464-1478, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nParallels have been drawn between the 1930s and today, notably the existence of unstable economic conditions as well as deepening, antagonistic ideological divisions. In the 1940s, two books appeared that presented opposing diagnoses of, and remedies for, the problems that faced Western societies at that time. In Man and Society, Karl Mannheim argued that forms of political organization had not adapted to changing social, economic, and technological conditions, and that this explained the rise of communism and fascism. He insisted that, in order to avoid disorder and political extremism, liberal democracies needed to engage in greater planning of their economic and social affairs, with sociology providing the synthesis of scientific knowledge required for this. Just a few years later, Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, in which Mannheim's work was a central target. He insisted that only the preservation of liberal freedoms and competitive markets could prevent the spread of totalitarianism. This paper outlines the arguments of each of these authors and provides an account of some of the historical background against which their disagreement arose. It also explores the relevance of their very different positions today, at a time when the neoliberal ideology that Hayek championed continues to have great influence but is under increasing attack from across the political spectrum.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12893   open full text
• Social mobilization and political change in countries governed by the left: The cases of Argentina and Brazil.
  Ana Natalucci, Juan Pablo Ferrero.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1479-1496, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper analyses the socio‐political dynamics after the financial crash in two countries governed by the left, Argentina and Brazil. Whilst the economic crisis had an effect on the general distributive capacity of leftwing coalitions, it remains unclear why the political resolution of such a crisis adopted anti‐regime features in Brazil and the form of an institutional alternation of power in Argentina. Our aim is to understand the new socio‐political dynamics and their implications in the crisis of the left turn, especially the relationship between social mobilization and political change in the context of Argentina and Brazil. In doing so, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature interested in the intersections between social movements and the state. Based on the analysis of original qualitative and quantitative data on social protests events in both countries 2011–2015, the paper suggests that the complexity of changes in the socio‐political dynamics can be captured by looking at three dimensions of the problem: grammar of mobilization, social imaginaries, and political representation. The main argument is that the different types of left turn strategy developed in both countries affected in turn the responses to the economic crisis and the new cycle of mobilization. The kirchnerist's movimentista strategy in Argentina contrasted with the demobilizing strategy of the PT in Brazil. Whilst the former contributed to channel the high and polarized levels of activism within the polity, the latter resulted in the crisis of the long cycle of political representation opened with the transition to democracy.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12894   open full text
• From public to commercial service: State‐market hybridization in the UK visa and immigration permit infrastructure, 1997–2021.
  Daniel Nehring, Yang Hu.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1325-1346, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article charts the transformation, between 1997 and 2021, of the family visa and immigration permit infrastructure from a public into a commercial service in the United Kingdom. In doing so, it reveals a process of state‐market hybridization underpinning the commercialization of migration regulation. Drawing on the analysis of legal archives, policy reports, and marketing materials directed at family migrants spanning 1997–2021, it presents fresh, systematic evidence of how, since 2007, a commercialized state‐market hybrid migration infrastructure for visas and immigration permits has developed in the UK. We show how the trend of state‐market hybridized commercialization has cascaded through three dimensions of migration infrastructure, as follows: (1) state and public immigration agencies, (2) outsourcing visa application firms, and (3) private immigration advisers. Predicated on this hybrid public–private commercial infrastructure, application procedures for visas and immigration permits have become increasingly reconstituted as commercial, rather than public, services. This transformation has created a new transactional logic that stratifies individuals' right to family life along socioeconomic lines.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12891   open full text
• How (not) to feed young children: A class‐cultural analysis of food parenting practices.
  Irmak Karademir‐Hazır.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1200-1213, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis study unpacks how class processes shape understandings and practices of “good feeding” in families with young children. It brings a Bourdieusian class consumption focus together with food parenting studies and approaches feeding as encompassing a wide range of processes including cooking, shopping, and planning. To capture the lived experience of feeding work, the study draws on a longitudinal and ethnographic study conducted in the south‐east of England over the course of two years. The analysis suggests that, regardless of their resources, parents tend to internalize the dominant discourse on “healthy” and “varied” feeding. However, closer inspection of day‐to‐day practices reveals a nuanced class‐cultural patterning in how these terms are defined and achieved. Moreover, it reveals how different interpretations of key notions such as homemade, nutritious, and balanced generate practices that contribute to the cultivation of distinctively classed culinary agencies in children. This study also questions what potential role these understandings can play in reproducing taste hierarchies and maintaining symbolic boundaries from very early ages.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12900   open full text
• “It's hard to become mothers”: The moral economy of postponing motherhood in neoliberal Chile.
  Martina Yopo Díaz.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1214-1228, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThe delay of childbearing is one of the most prominent transformations of contemporary fertility and reproductive patterns. This article provides a novel approach to understanding why women are postponing motherhood and having children later in life. Drawing on 24 life story interviews with women from Santiago de Chile, I argue that the transition to motherhood is shaped by a moral economy in which women postpone childbearing to enable becoming “good” mothers. In a context in which social fertility is being redefined by neoliberalism, intensive mothering, and lone motherhood, I find that women delay childbearing until after achieving professional and financial milestones that allow them to fulfil the normative conditions for having children. These findings suggest that women postpone the transition to motherhood not because they reject childbearing and traditional gender roles, but rather because they aspire to become “good” mothers in a context characterized by institutional precariousness, relational insecurity, and increasing demands on mothering. Through these findings, I challenge prevalent interpretations of why women are having children later in life, extend accounts of the gendered norms of social fertility, and contest the nature of autonomy driving change in women's lives.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12901   open full text
• Felt deficits in time with children: Individual and contextual factors across 27 European countries.
  Caroline Berghammer, Melissa A. Milkie.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1168-1199, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nA sizeable portion of parents say they lack time with children—an important social problem given that time strains link to parental well‐being. Extending perspectives on the demands and rewards of parenting beyond the individual level, we provide a contextual‐level window onto mothers' and fathers' time strains. Based on data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2016/17 (n = 5,898), we analyze whether parents feel they spend enough time caring for their children using multilevel models. We first observe that country context matters in that perceptions of time only moderately or weakly relate to hours with children across countries, especially for fathers, suggesting varying social expectations across Europe. Second, in multivariate analyses examining micro‐ and macro‐level factors, we show that at the individual level, feeling too little time with children is more frequent among fathers and those who work more hours, even when controlling for estimated weekly hours spent caring for children. At the country level, parents' time strain is higher in countries where employees have less time and place flexibility, typically in Central and Eastern as well as Southern Europe. Gender norms matter as well. Extending contextual perspectives, we argue that how gender‐work‐family regimes color felt time strain is a promising future research direction.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12899   open full text
• “Pints or half‐pints”: Gender, functional democratization, and the consumption of drink in Ireland.
  John Connolly.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1246-1259, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper examines the relationship between the gender power balance, changes in the consumption of alcohol and changing social interdependences. The empirical setting is Ireland circa 1900 up to the present. Drawing from the works of Norbert Elias, I explain how a lessening of the power inequality between men and women was more moderate and limited up to the 1960s. The effect of this was that emancipatory changes around drinking were mainly confined to women from specific social cohorts. As the reduction in gender power inequality accelerated post 1960 it initially increased tensions between the genders, reflected in new power struggles over the social spaces in which drinking occurred and in the type of glass one should drink from. Despite the emergence of less unequal power relations, men continued to have a model setting function in relation to alcohol consumption. A central contention of the paper is the need to give greater consideration to the nature of social interdependences for they can generate a lessening of power inequalities for some social cohorts while failing to generate such a dynamic for other similar social groups.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12903   open full text
• Public life as identity construction: A case study based on an SL square‐dancing group in Shanghai.
  Jun Yang, Tianli Qin.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1260-1283, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article explores how the group identity is constructed in the process of individualization by reconstructing the public life of square‐dancing groups. The study finds that, on the one hand, groups whose members retired from the work‐unit and whose family structure is waning obtain institutional identities and group membership through external forces. On the other hand, groups play different roles, relying on three types of capital including power, ability, and relationships, and they ultimately reshape the collective identity of the groups with the internally made identity consensus and the externally assimilated identity mechanism. With the social changes in China, the groups have achieved identity construction during the interaction between the state and the individuals. The mutual influence of the reflexive actions of individuals and the support of the state system is also addressed in this paper. Thus, in the interaction between the state and the individual, the basic question of whether free individuals can achieve a universal connection that allows them to maintain public life is answered.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12904   open full text
• Minding the curve: The influence of social origin on earnings inequality by education in Mexico.
  Harold J. Toro.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1394-1414, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nRelying on data from the Mexican Mobility Survey for 2006, I evaluate by how much earnings inequality improves upon reducing the influence of social origin on educational attainment. A semiparametric estimation of a counterfactual distribution is used to simulate a distribution of earnings that is not overdetermined by the effect of social origin on education. The contrast between the simulated and the observed distribution reveals that social origin worsens inequality by inducing an earnings bonus. In particular, the earnings bonus associated with social origin, benefits most those with a high school degree or more. Those who have attained at most middle school obtain a small earnings bonus or none at all. Social origin's boosting of returns to education is most salient above the median of the earnings distribution and increases disproportionately above the 80th percentile. The results emphasize the importance of universal educational opportunities for reducing the effect of social origin on labor market outcomes. The absence of any indirect effect of social origin on the earnings of those with less than a high school education is not consistent with sociological perspectives that emphasize social reproduction mechanisms in explaining inter‐generational persistence in the labor market.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12889   open full text
• How the past becomes the past: The temporal positioning of collective memory.
  Tracy Adams, Jill A. Edy.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1415-1429, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nRecognizing that the past does not necessarily pass of its own accord but rather is made to pass is crucial for understanding relationships between collective memory, temporality and the past. Analyzing processes of temporal negotiation reveals that changing the ending (or, in some cases creating one at all) requires re‐envisioning the entire sequence of events. Thus, the ending (if there is one) depends on the beginning. British prime ministers' references to 9/11 in public addresses demonstrate this process of temporal negotiation about whether and how to create an ending. Tony Blair constructed the attacks as a legacy, thus sustaining the past as part of the present. To unwind this construction and consign 9/11 to the past, Gordon Brown and David Cameron needed to disrupt the flow of contingent incidents in which Blair had embedded 9/11. By redefining the narrative's beginning, they made it possible to bring 9/11 to an end.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12881   open full text
• Embracing the nation: Strategic deployment of sexuality, nation, and citizenship in Singapore.
  Minwoo Jung.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 5, Page 1229-1245, December 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nHow do sexual minorities navigate and negotiate with nationalism? While some scholars consider nationalism as a primarily exclusionary force against sexual minorities, how might we understand sexual minorities’ engagement with nationalism? I address these questions by exploring the strategic deployment of sexual and national identities of LGBT movements through the case study of Singapore's annual LGBT‐inclusive event, Pink Dot. In response to the authoritarian and heteronormative state's construction of sexual minorities as non‐national Others, Pink Dot mobilizes both sexual and national identities in an effort to forge a space of inclusion while ensuring its survival. By portraying itself as a uniquely Singaporean event and espousing national identity and belonging through symbolic and performative practices, Pink Dot leverages national identity to minimize differences from and foreground similarities to the majority. In this way, sexual minorities in Singapore endeavor to embed themselves within the narratives of the nation and claim their legitimate belonging while simultaneously projecting a nation more inclusive of sexual difference. The aspirational inclusion of sexual minorities in the national imagery, however, inevitably elicits the state's backlash that narrowly defines the physical and symbolic boundaries of the political project. This analysis advances our understanding of the interactions between the state and social movements in shaping the relationship among the nation, sexuality, and citizenship.\n"]

  December 15, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12882   open full text
• Who still needs the nation? Empire, identity and the British welfare state.
  Nasar Meer.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 02, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nIt is difficult to conceive of a re‐imagination of “us” by focusing solely on the state, especially where the intended objective is to trouble the prevailing national project. If national projects, like racial projects, must be laboured at to be sustained, then in the case of Britishness we find a rich vein of contestation by those left out of its formal narration. It is on this point that the discussion will focus, beginning with a preliminary but unstated question that warrants explicit attention, namely: why re‐make national projects at all?\n"]

  December 02, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12910   open full text
• “Relations of extraction”: Some issues for social policy.
  Jane Millar.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 01, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nIn response to Gurminder Bhambra's lecture and article, this paper explores some implications for research and teaching in social policy. Taking an imperial, rather than national, lens to welfare state origins highlights that the extraction of people, their labour, skills, and experience, was crucial to the post‐war welfare state. This challenges us to think more critically about the boundaries of redistribution, reciprocity, and reparation, and to go beyond the nation state to the analysis of global systems of inequality and access to resources, and their historical roots. There are also challenges to our conceptual frames and assumptions in social policy, including the way in which the constructions and experiences of race are analysed, which has been shown to be a gap in social policy scholarship.\n"]

  December 01, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12906   open full text
• Decolonization and the spectre of the nation‐state.
  Peo Hansen.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 01, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nGurminder Bhambra's Annual Lecture points the way to a paradigm shift in how the social sciences should approach the nation‐state, both historically and in our own times. That is to say, perceiving of Britain historically as a nation‐state or as an imperial state will make all the difference; and, as Bhambra demonstrates, it is precisely the failure to grasp the imperial fact that prevents us from grasping ‘the shared histories that have configured our present’. This article reflects on the crucial imperial fact outlined by Bhambra, and it applies its radical consequences for our approach to the broader Western European scene and the world at large in the postwar period. Our contemporary nation‐state system, it is argued, is not the invention of Westphalia and European objectives, but rather the product of decolonization and thus a reaction and alternative to the European designs for the modern world order, in general, and the postwar order, in particular. In relation to this, the article also explains how Bhambra's work helps establish a historically informed critique of methodological nationalism, as opposed to the many misconceptions perpetuated by our current theoretical consensus of what ‘methodological nationalism’ entails.\n"]

  December 01, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12909   open full text
• Webs of reciprocity: Colonial taxation and the need for reparations.
  Gurminder K. Bhambra.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 26, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nMy BJS lecture considered how dominant understandings of distributive justice and welfare have been conceptualised through the “nation” and argued that a more adequate framing requires them to be addressed also in the context of colonial and imperial relations. It argues that a just politics in the present has to account for this history and that one way of doing this effectively would be through a reparative frame. In this short response, I engage with the commentaries on my lecture.\n"]

  November 26, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12908   open full text
• Extraction, exploitation, expropriation and expulsion in the domestic colonial relations of the British welfare state in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries.
  Fiona Williams.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article acknowledges the important contribution that Gurminder Bhambra's article makes by using her concept of the imperial relations of extraction as a springboard to revisit the development of domestic social policies in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. The paper analyses this development in terms of the intersecting relations of extraction, exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion which mark a continuing domestic colonialism in welfare settlements since the early twentieth century. This is illustrated with reference to three ‘moments’ of welfare settlement—social imperialism of the early decades of the twentieth century, the post‐war settlement, and austerity welfare. The analysis also exemplifies how these relations reproduced forms of white privilege to social rights and norms while also drawing other marginalized welfare subjects into their practices and rhetorics of subordination.\n"]

  November 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12905   open full text
• Damaged hardmen: Organized crime and the half‐life of deindustrialization.
  Alistair Fraser, Andy Clark.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1062-1076, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDespite frequent associations, deindustrialization features rarely in studies of organized crime, and organized crime is at best a spectral presence in studies of deindustrialization. By developing an original application of Linkon's concept of the “half‐life,” we present an empirical case for the symbiotic relationship between former sites of industry and the emergence of criminal markets. Based on a detailed case‐study in the west of Scotland, an area long associated with both industry and crime, the paper interrogates the environmental, social, and cultural after‐effects of deindustrialization at a community level. Drawing on 55 interviews with residents and service‐providers in Tunbrooke, an urban community where an enduring criminal market grew in the ruins of industry, the paper elaborates the complex landscapes of identity, vulnerability, and harm that are embedded in the symbiosis of crime and deindustrialization. Building on recent scholarship, the paper argues that organized crime in Tunbrooke is best understood as an instance of “residual culture” grafted onto a fragmented, volatile criminal marketplace where the stable props of territorial identity are unsettled. The analysis allows for an extension of both the study of deindustrialization and organized crime, appreciating the “enduring legacies” of closure on young people, communal identity, and social relations in the twenty‐first century.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12828   open full text
• Low life: William Hogarth, visual culture and sociologies of art.
  Eamonn Carrabine.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 909-929, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper is an effort to understand Hogarth's unique position in early eighteenth century London, so as to grasp the rich complexity of his work. It begins by tracing two rival competing positions in the sociology of art, derived from Becker and Bourdieu, before taking a closer look at how Hogarth's work conjures up a new vision of the world, providing shape and meaning to the nation's changing understandings of morality, society, and the city. A fundamental transformation in the field of representation appears halfway through the eighteenth century and the interweaving of art theory, national identity, and systems of patronage are at the centre of this dynamic period. It is no accident that in Hogarth's world the main targets are those who seek to transgress their stations in life and cross class barriers. By combining two different sociological approaches to art the study builds a more nuanced picture of the artist and his work.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12849   open full text
• Resilience as a multi‐directional movement process: A conceptual and empirical exploration.
  Janine Natalya Clark.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1046-1061, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nMovement is a recurrent thematic within extant resilience scholarship. Ecological theorizations of resilience emphasize systems that are in constant movement and flux. Terms such as “bouncing back” and “bouncing forward” are frequently used to describe how individuals recover and move on from adversity and trauma. However, integrated individual‐systemic explanations of resilience movement dynamics are lacking. Seeking to address this gap, this interdisciplinary article expressly frames resilience as a multi‐directional movement process. Individuals do not just move forward and backwards. Rather, they move in multiple and varied ways as they seek to navigate their way through adversity—and through systems and social‐ecological traps that both shape how they move and require them to keep moving. Drawing on interview data with victims‐/survivors of conflict‐related sexual violence in Bosnia‐Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia, and Uganda, the article empirically explores what “movement” looks like at the microlevel through a focus on everyday forms and expressions of movement, while also examining how wider systemic environments shape and influence these movements.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12853   open full text
• Ethnic inequality in choice‐ and performance‐driven education systems: A longitudinal study of educational choices in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
  Jörg Dollmann.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 974-991, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThe motivation for this article was the main finding of an earlier study, which concludes that choice‐driven education systems—in the study represented by England and Sweden—are particularly beneficial for immigrants in that they provide them with many opportunities to pursue their generally high educational ambitions. We extend this analysis by including two countries with performance‐driven education systems: Germany and the Netherlands. Our study specifically aims to explore whether it is true that choice‐driven systems are more beneficial for immigrants or whether immigrants can also succeed in more stratified and selective education systems. Using longitudinal data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), we show that there are no differences in (gross) transition rates between immigrants and natives in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, but immigrants' optimistic choices are more pronounced in England. However, these differences diminish once we account for achievement and students' socioeconomic background in the analyses. Regarding the underlying mechanisms, we find that educational aspirations have an (equally) strong, universal impact, while anticipated discrimination plays a minor role.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12854   open full text
• “The whole thing is really managing crisis”: Practice theory insights into interpreters' work experiences of success and failure.
  Deborah Giustini.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1077-1091, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article explores the relationship of crisis to the professional practice of interpreting. Applying a practice theory approach, it illustrates interpreters' sense‐making efforts and strategic adjustments to crisis as an intrinsic part of their work. Leveraging upon the concepts of consciousness‐mediated, accompanied adjustment and teleoaffectivity as ends, goals and emotions of life conditions, the article argues that we can identify core meanings around “crisis” in the interpreting practice. These meanings are linked to the calibrations that interpreters carry out to achieve professional aims of success and avoid failure. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of interpreting in the United Kingdom, the article finds that interpreters act to provide effective communication services through the orderly display of professional conduct, in turn steering away from the negative publicness that failing in front of users brings upon them. The study reveals that crisis is embedded into interpreters' professional engagements, with their activities equally organised toward the avoidance of negative ends and emotions and the achievement of successful goals, as a precondition for smooth work and positive reputation. Thus, crisis in this practice is linked to specific understandings and enactments of teleoaffectivity, as interpreters adjust to crisis by acting in purposeful ways (‐teleo) steered by accompanying emotional states (‐affect). This article contributes to social practice literature by attending to these nuances of crisis, seeing them as bound up with the purposeful, motivational, and affective adjustments associated with practising interpreting.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12843   open full text
• Habitus and climate change: Exploring support and resistance to sustainable welfare and social–ecological transformations in Sweden.
  Martin Fritz, Max Koch, Håkan Johansson, Kajsa Emilsson, Roger Hildingsson, Jamil Khan.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 874-890, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWe explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social–ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position‐takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of questions about social, ecological, and climate change related topics and identify eight underlying eco–social dispositions. These are used for cluster analyses that find typical constellations of eco–social dispositions within the Swedish population: variants of eco–social habitus. We find seven habitus types and describe their social characteristics, political preferences, and practices. Finally, the seven habitus are plotted onto the map of social positions, the Bourdieusian social space, highlighting their relations—proximities, tensions, and contestations—to each other. We find evidence that political struggles around social–ecological transformations reproduce existing social structures but are also connected to new “eco–social” divisions that appear between groups in similar positions. In the conclusion we discuss the implications for social–ecological transformations based on sustainable welfare.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12887   open full text
• The absorption and multiplication of uncertainty in machine‐learning‐driven finance.
  Kristian Bondo Hansen, Christian Borch.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1015-1029, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nUncertainty about market developments and their implications characterize financial markets. Increasingly, machine learning is deployed as a tool to absorb this uncertainty and transform it into manageable risk. This article analyses machine‐learning‐based uncertainty absorption in financial markets by drawing on 182 interviews in the finance industry, including 45 interviews with informants who were actively applying machine‐learning techniques to investment management, trading, or risk management problems. We argue that while machine‐learning models are deployed to absorb financial uncertainty, they also introduce a new and more profound type of uncertainty, which we call critical model uncertainty. Critical model uncertainty refers to the inability to explain how and why the machine‐learning models (particularly neural networks) arrive at their predictions and decisions—their uncertainty‐absorbing accomplishments. We suggest that the dialectical relation between machine‐learning models’ uncertainty absorption and multiplication calls for further research in the field of finance and beyond.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12880   open full text
• Individualism without full individualization? The compressed life trajectories of the Tibetan graduates of an English training program.
  Lin Yi, Zhuoma Gadou.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1113-1126, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDrawing upon fieldwork data collected among a group of Tibetan graduates who attended an internationally linked English training program that dramatically and fundamentally altered their life trajectories, this study argues that these Tibetans acquired individualism prior to individualization practice. Their pathway is in contrast with the tendency found among Korean women “toward individualization without individualism, a region‐wide phenomenon in East Asia’. Different scenarios exactly reveal complicatedness and complexity in compressed modernity of East Asia. However, the study also finds that their exercise of individualization did not turn them into an ontological or radical—that is, egoistic—individualist on account of multiple factors. Toward the end of the article, we also recommend replacing the controversial concept of individualization (individualism) with the notion of individuation—a project of the individual that may be geared toward collective action and shared ideals—to avoid conceptual ambiguity in the future. This individuation project is more likely to contribute to both the integrity and identity of the individual in her search for a legitimate status and a settled life in the wider society, as well as a prosperous society in the future.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12879   open full text
• From occupational to existential class: How to analyze class structure in hybrid societies (The case of Serbia).
  Predrag Cvetičanin, Inga Tomić‐Koludrović, Mirko Petrić, Željka Zdravković, Adrian Leguina.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 946-973, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIn this article, we propose a model to analyze the class structure of hybrid post‐socialist societies in South‐East Europe (SEE), using the case of Serbia. We argue that, in such hybrid societies, social inequalities are generated by several mechanisms of similar strength: exploitative market mechanisms (based on economic capital) and different types of social closure mechanisms (based on political and social capital). Their influences are intertwined and cannot be analytically isolated or reduced to a common foundation. Therefore, occupational class analysis in these societies can have only limited explanatory power. In an attempt to overcome these challenges, we were forced to modify the instruments of several established approaches to class analysis. These modifications included (1) a reconceptualization of Bourdieusian notions of political, social, and cultural capital, (2) a different operationalization of social space, (3) identification of specific mechanisms of generating social inequalities, (4) paying attention to both practical and discursive classifications of lifestyles in the establishment of symbolic boundaries, and (5) relying on differential association analysis for identifying class boundaries. Our analysis's final result is a model that enables studying general social inequality, that is, generalized social advantage/disadvantage, in SEE post‐socialist societies.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12858   open full text
• Contested ease: Negotiating contradictory modes of elite distinction in face‐to‐face interaction.
  Max Persson.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 930-945, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nResearch on elites and elite schooling mainly theorize the embodied elite distinction of ease as a dispositional phenomenon, drawing on a Bourdieusian framework. I respond to this by developing an interactionist perspective on embodied elite distinction not as a function of social position, but rather as means of communication used more or less actively to manage others' impressions of one's social position. Drawing on ethnography and interviews, I explore how students at two Swedish upper secondary schools with different elite profiles—an economic elite school and a meritocratic elite school—negotiate what counts as successful performances of their elite position in face‐to‐face interactions during conferences for “young leaders”. The findings suggest that in order for performances to be honored as “confident ease,” which is attributed with prestige and moral legitimacy in the peer group, the interacting students had to share the impression that the interaction was a “merit situation”. In interactions defined as “privilege situations,” similar behavior was labelled as arrogant superiority and seen as illegitimate performances of elite position. While “confident ease” was the hallmark of the male students at the economic elite school, the findings suggests that “confident awareness” may be understood as a contradictory mode of elite distinction characterizing the female students from the meritocratic elite school. They display confidence while simultaneously exploiting the unease they felt in the conference to craft a morally legitimate performance of their elite position. While the findings confirm that students' classed, gendered and moral dispositions are central to navigate elite distinction, they also demonstrate that meanings of such embodied distinctions emerge in relation to how situations are defined and are dependent on the interacting students' combined ability and interest to maintain working consensus on the definition of the situation.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12874   open full text
• Humanitarianism, securitization, and containment in Jordan's Za'atari Refugee Camp.
  Suraina Pasha.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1141-1155, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThrough a case study on Za'atari, the largest Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, this paper critically explores a contemporary example of intersection between local and global humanitarian and securitization processes in refugee governance. The paper argues that Syrian refugees have been subjected to humanitarian care and securitized treatment, with their construction in terms of potential threat to State security interests spiking in correlation with insecurities over the expansion of the “Islamic State” (IS). The paper tracks the suit of measures implemented by the host Jordanian State, with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to produce docile refugee subjects of “humanitarian government” in a closed camp. It notes how the UNHCR invariably augments and extends the remit of Jordanian State power at the expense of refugee rights, in the name of ensuring refugee and aid worker security and the effectiveness of the aid operation. The camp plays a critical role in a performative politics of containment targeting local and global audiences.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12827   open full text
• A divided kingdom? Variation in polarization, sorting, and dimensional alignment among the British public, 1986–2018.
  Stuart Perrett.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 992-1014, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nUnderstanding changes in the structure of public opinion is necessary to evaluate both contemporary claims about political divisions in Brexit Britain, as well as to uncover any long‐term mapping of public opinion on the depolarization and subsequent polarization of elites from the birth of New Labour to the aftermath of the Great Recession. I assess trends from British Social Attitudes surveys, utilizing recent conceptual and methodological distinctions between different features of public opinion change. I find that the public, on average, moved to the left during the early 1990s, to the right during New Labour, and back to the left from 2010. Such oscillations are even more pronounced for positions along a welfare dimension. In contrast, average positions along a libertarian‐authoritarian dimension were constant until around 2010, when the public became more liberal. Polarization of left‐right opinion has increased in recent years but does not match that estimated between the mid‐1980s and early 1990s, while low and stable levels of polarization are estimated along libertarian‐authoritarian and welfare dimensions. Overall trends are dis‐aggregated by social class, educational attainment, party identification, strength of partisanship, interest in politics, and position on Europe. Further, the relationships between positions along these three ideological dimensions vary systematically across time and between groups.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12873   open full text
• Navigating the nationalist landscape of exclusion: Armenian citizens of Turkey and the politics of naming.
  Yesim Bayar.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1127-1140, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines how Armenian citizens of Turkey employ names and naming strategies in their everyday life in order to navigate a nationalist social landscape. Studies of nationalist politics in everyday life have been particularly successful in demonstrating how nationalism is experienced and reproduced through the consumption of national symbols and rituals. What remains relatively glossed over in these accounts are the individuals’ constant and dynamic engagements with nationalist politics not only through national symbols and rituals but also through everyday social practices with fellow citizens. The present study seeks to capture and analyze this latter, relatively understudied, aspect. In doing so, the discussion reveals how individuals use different name strategies in order to fend off shame and humiliation as well as inhibit threats to status advancement. Overall, the following narrative moves beyond a demonstration of the functionality of nationalism as a source of unity and solidarity. Instead, it reveals the ways in which nationalist politics and minorities’ responses align, diverge and/or conflict on the ground.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12846   open full text
• The structure of food taste in 21st century Britain.
  Will Atkinson.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 891-908, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper draws on the concepts and tools of Pierre Bourdieu to construct a comprehensive model of the contemporary British “food space.” It uses multiple correspondence analysis to unearth a space structured in two key dimensions revolving around the lean and the rich. A host of supplementary variables are available to examine the relationship, or homology, between food tastes and broader alimentary dispositions, including orientations toward shopping, ethics and cooking. Indicators of social position reveal the structuring of the space by economic and cultural capital as well as gender, but also, updating and nuancing Bourdieu's own model for 1970s’ France, by age, region, ethnicity and religion. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between position in the food space and physical, mental and existential wellbeing, demonstrating that orientation toward the less healthy and the less rich, corresponding with few resources, is, in some cases, accompanied by not only hunger and deprivation but profound worry and misery.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12876   open full text
• Competing revolutionaries: Legitimacy and leadership in revolutionary situations.
  Huseyin Rasit.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1092-1112, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWhen the Arab Spring gave way to demonstrations in Syria in 2011, the Kurds in the country were also full of hope. While they were going into the streets, the Kurdish political parties were debating what their people should do and offering competing visions for the future. Then in July 2012, the regime unexpectedly withdrew its forces from the Kurdish regions (Rojava). Suddenly, a revolutionary situation emerged in Rojava: a mobilized population and several political parties claiming leadership and offering competing political projects for a new society. Among these parties, only the Democratic Union Party (PYD) managed to move into the power vacuum and establish its control over large areas. Its rivals were unable to stop the rapid rise of this relatively young organization and fast erosion of their own base. How did the PYD manage to become the dominant organization even though it had rarely drawn attention before the civil war? This question raises the larger problem of how a revolutionary organization becomes the dominant one among competitors. Even though multiple organizations competing in a single revolution is a recurrent phenomenon, we still lack a comprehensive framework specifically focusing on this issue. In this paper, I argue for an approach based on legitimation: for people to follow a certain organization over others, they should see it as a legitimate leader. Bringing together the insights of the political and organizational legitimacy literatures, I identify three processes of legitimation for revolutionary organizations: ideological/normative congruence, effective organizational capacity, and accumulation of prestige. Drawing upon participant observation and 30 in‐depth interviews with Kurdish individuals collected during fieldwork in Iraq, Germany, and the United States between 2016 and 2019, I demonstrate that the PYD has outperformed its contenders and managed to legitimate its leadership through these three processes.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12875   open full text
• Neoliberal precarity and primalization: A biosocial perspective on the age of insecurity, injustice, and unreason.
  John Bone.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 4, Page 1030-1045, September 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIn light of the observed rise in social instability and populist politics that has emerged recently even in some of the world's oldest and presumed stable democracies, this paper reappraises the role of the neoliberal political and economic consensus in fermenting popular discontent. While this is very well trodden ground the paper approaches the issues from a wholly new direction, specifically addressing how exposure to the destabilizing conditions of the present can be seen to have negatively impacted on the neurological functioning of many of the disenchanted and distressed of the current era, generating chronic negative emotional arousal and an associated impact on the capacity for rational thought and conduct. This condition of mental and emotional fugue, it is argued, has also rendered growing numbers more susceptible to marginal and radicalizing discourses, largely extended and amplified via social media, and not least the emotionally charged overtures of populist politicians. Against a backdrop of increasing insecurity, transformative changes to work and living conditions precipitated by neoliberal policy and the digital revolution, together with the epochal crisis presented by the global pandemic, it is argued that the task of understanding the deep and fundamental causes of social and political fracture have rarely been more urgent.\n"]

  September 20, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12884   open full text
• Outward specific trust in the balancing of hierarchical government trust: Evidence from mainland China.
  Anning Hu.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 774-792, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis study elaborates the link between social trust and government trust by investigating how the extent of outwardness in one's specific trusting relation, as coalescence of trust strength and radius, relates to the varying trust in governments of different administrative levels. Using survey data collected in China, a country featured by the hierarchical government trust and differential mode of interpersonal association, we show that, in both urban and rural areas, the outward orientation of interpersonal trust is positively associated with the trust in the subnational governments, while being independent from the confidence in the central government, suggesting a less hierarchical and more balanced attitude toward government trust. One's generalized trust fails to show such a pattern. This study illustrates a handy measure that combines trust radius and trust strength and highlights the relevance of specific trust for political attitudes in an authoritarian regime.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12798   open full text
• Primary and secondary effects of social origins on educational attainment: New findings for England.
  Erzsébet Bukodi, John H. Goldthorpe, Yizhang Zhao.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 627-650, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWe aim to bring together two current strands of research into inequalities in individuals’ educational attainment that are associated with their social origins: that concerned with the “primary” and “secondary” effects of social origins in creating inequalities, and that concerned with the relation between these inequalities and different components of social origins, taken to represent different forms of parental resources. Our main findings are the following. The secondary effects of social origins—their effects via the educational choices that young people make given their prior academic performance—are clearly operative across five key educational transitions within the English educational system. More specifically, we estimate that 35% of the total effect of social origins is secondary in the earliest transition that we consider, and from 15% to 20% in the subsequent four. Furthermore, mediation analyses reveal that secondary effects are most strongly associated with parental education and then, to a lesser degree with parental status, while little association exists with parental class and none at all with parental income. Primary effects are also at all transitions most strongly associated with parental education and status but in this case both parental class and parental income do retain some importance. We suggest an explanation for our empirical findings as resulting largely from the concern of highly educated, professional parents, and their children to avoid the occurrence of downward intergenerational mobility, especially in terms of education and status.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12845   open full text
• “They don’t know what it’s like to be at the bottom”: Exploring the role of perceived cultural distance in less‐educated citizens’ discontent with politicians.
  Kjell Noordzij, Willem Koster, Jeroen Waal.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 566-579, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWhy is discontent with politicians highest among less‐educated citizens? Supplementing explanations concerning a lack of resources and knowledge, we examine the cultural distance to many a politician perceived by this group. Inspired by qualitative studies mapping the worldviews of people from the lower social strata, we explore less‐educated citizens’ perceptions of politicians using in‐depth (group) interviews carried out in various regions of the Netherlands (n = 26). Our analysis indicates that this group regards politicians as culturally distant “others” and that this perception goes hand in hand with specific negative evaluations of politicians. This improves our understanding of the much‐reported political discontent of these citizens. In moving beyond the often mentioned unspecific divide between the “people” and the “elite”, our analysis reveals that our interviewees: (i) consider politicians to be insensitive to the lived experiences of the “common” people, and therefore, question their legitimacy and the policies they propose; (ii) resent their communication styles, which they describe as “beating about the bush” and perceive to be emblematic of indecisiveness and a lack of integrity; and (iii) accuse them of superiority signaling, inspiring feelings of misrecognition and opposition. We conclude with detailing the implications of our findings for (future) research.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12800   open full text
• “The media love the artificial versions of what’s going on”: Media (mis)representations of Down’s syndrome.
  Gareth M. Thomas.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 693-706, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWhile disability has historically been depicted in problematic ways in television, film, and print media, more balanced and progressive cultural representations are arguably emerging. However, few studies address how disabled people and their families (e.g., parents) encounter, and make sense of, media configurations ostensibly designed to promote a more positive and visible image of living with disability. Drawing upon interviews with parents of children with Down's syndrome in the United Kingdom, I sketch out how they feel about depictions that, arguably, depart from hurtful historical narratives of disability as tragic and pitiable. Parents praise, and mostly embrace, recent portrayals of people with Down's syndrome in media outputs. At the same time, they raise concerns around tokenism, stereotyping, focusing upon “exceptional” people, and fueling sanitized accounts which deny, or at least obscure, the harsh lived realities for many parents of disabled children. I conclude by arguing that while parents largely applaud and welcome positive public narratives, they also fear that such representations threaten to gloss over the pervasive mistreatment, disregard, and disenfranchisement of disabled people and their families.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12807   open full text
• Survival finance and the politics of equal pay.
  Katherine Sobering.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 742-756, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWage gaps constitute a major component of workplace inequality. While scholars have explored the causes and consequences of differences in pay, very few question the basic presumption that workers are paid differently in the first place. Drawing on ethnographic research in a worker cooperative with a policy of equal pay, this article analyses how the organization compensated its members in the context of low wages, economic uncertainty, and insufficient social benefits. Over time, I found that members justified small variations that led to wage difference without amending their commitment to pay equity. This was made possible through a system of survival finance, a set of compensation practices that supports the reproduction of both individual members and the organization as a whole. Whereas members understood money wages as market‐based incentives for labor, the cooperative enacted its principles of equality and fairness by compensating members with alternative currencies (time) and additional benefits (zero interest rate credit) to help make ends meet. The article concludes by reflecting on the challenges of equalizing pay and its implications for reducing workplace inequality.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12832   open full text
• Charismatic authority and fractured polities: A cross‐national analysis.
  Andrew P. Davis, Luis Vila‐Henninger.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 594-608, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nSociological research has overlooked the political consequences of charismatic leadership that arises in existing democratic political bureaucracies. In this article, we theorize the consequences of charismatic leadership in democratic nations by revisiting Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority. Our extension of Weber's theory of charismatic authority helps to address a gap in the political polarization literature concerning the role of charismatic leadership. This article provides a foundational link in the research on charismatic authority–bridging the literatures on charisma and cross‐national comparative sociology. This bridging is enabled by advances in data collection that include information on charismatic authority in cross‐national context. This article makes use of a Driscoll and Kraay fixed‐effects analysis across 76 democracies from 1960 to 2009 to explore the relationship between charismatic leadership and political polarization. Our findings suggest that nations with higher levels of charismatic leadership tend to have higher levels of political polarization. These results contribute to both the literature on political polarization and charisma—as well as support our extension of Weber's theory of charismatic authority.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12841   open full text
• How happenings do (not) turn into events: A typology and an application to the case of 9/11 in the American and Dutch public spheres.
  Thijs Dooremalen.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 725-741, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWhy do some happenings become incentives for cultural or political transformation (that is: turn into events), whereas others remain ordinary occurrences? The theoretical perspectives of cultural repertoires, cleavage structures, and discursive opportunities are prominent and fruitful approaches for explaining cultural or political behavior and attitudes, yet they do not have a satisfactory answer to this question. To fill in this gap, I introduce a typology that indicates how certain happenings merely reproduce existing trends, whereas other ones turn into motives to change them. This can be either because they are “focus events,” which confirm dominant cultural or political patterns, or because they are “shock events,” which form a break from them. I illustrate this typology by investigating the distinct meanings that 9/11 were accorded in the American and Dutch public spheres. This analysis shows that this happening became a “shock event” on the issue of safety in the American case, as it broke with the cultural repertoire of viewing the United States as a safe, militarily impenetrable nation. In contrast, 9/11 turned into a “focus event” concerning the issue of Islam in the Dutch case because it confirmed the discursive opportunities to problematize Muslims, which public actors in the Netherlands had already developed in the years leading up to 2001.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12847   open full text
• Historical change in an elite profession—Class origins and grades among law graduates over 200 years.
  Marianne Nordli Hansen, Thea Bertnes Strømme.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 651-671, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article explores the relationship between social class and educational achievement measured by grades among Norwegian law graduates over a span of 200 years. We argue that class inequalities may arise due to mechanisms favouring ‘insiders’, meaning students whose families have legal backgrounds. Alternatively, a broader category of students with origins in educated or elite families could also enjoy special advantages. Our results indicate that there were insignificant class inequalities in grades before the beginning of the 20th century, when they first appeared, and that class inequalities increased to some extent subsequently. Graduates with origins from families with legal backgrounds or origins in the cultural upper class tend to be awarded the highest grades and those with farming or working‐class origins tend to be awarded the lowest grades. Inequalities according to class origin can be explained only to a limited extent by performance at secondary school. Unlike class origin, however, the impact of grades at secondary school appears to be highly stable over time. We ask whether mechanisms favouring legal ‘insiders’ may have become less important over time, whereas the impact of cultural capital may have increased.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12852   open full text
• Participation in civil society organizations and ethnic minorities’ interethnic friendships in Britain.
  Senhu Wang, Liran Morav.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 808-828, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIn Britain, civil society organizations (CSOs) have garnered much praise for promoting interethnic friendships (IEF) and strengthening community cohesion. Yet, there is very little empirical evidence to suggest that participation in CSOs promotes ethnic minorities’ IEF. Using nationally representative longitudinal (2011–2019) and cross‐sectional (2010) data, this article explores the association between participation in CSOs and IEF formation among five British ethnic minority groups and analyses how this relationship is affected by the ethnic composition of CSOs. Overall, fixed effects models show that participation in CSOs only significantly promotes IEF for Indians. For other minority groups it has either no effect or, in the case of Pakistanis, significantly decreases IEF. Further analyses show that compared with ethnic minorities that do not participate in any CSOs, those who participate in mostly interethnic CSOs tend to have significantly more IEF, whereas those who participate in mostly co‐ethnic CSOs tend to have significantly less IEF. Taken together, these findings suggest that the association between civic participation and ethnic minorities’ IEF is much more nuanced than previously thought and policy interventions seeking to improve ethnic integration should, therefore, take the ethnic background of participants and the ethnic composition of CSOs into account.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12819   open full text
• Rethinking respectability politics.
  Margot Dazey.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 580-593, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nRespectability politics—that is, the process by which privileged members of marginalized groups comply with dominant social norms to advance their group's condition—is the object of a growing body of literature in the fields of race and ethnic studies, social movements, and critical theory. Yet this body of literature remains theoretically unintegrated. This article offers a clarification of the concept by specifying who can resort to this type of politics and by characterizing respectability politics as an inherently ambivalent political strategy, one that stands at the crossroads of forms of resistance and accommodation of oppressive structures. The article also demonstrates the concept's potential to move beyond its current application in African American studies, as respectability politics holds promise in providing insights on the oppositional politics of other marginalized groups' members (such as Muslims in Europe or Latino/as in the United States). Lastly, the article sketches four research directions in the study of respectability politics, with important implications for understanding the workings of social conformance under domination.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12810   open full text
• Lives on track? Long‐term earnings returns to selective school placement in England and Denmark.
  Jesper Fels Birkelund, Queralt Capsada‐Munsech, Vikki Boliver, Kristian Bernt Karlson.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 672-692, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nWe explore the influence of between‐school ability placement at lower secondary education on earnings across the life course in England and Denmark. We go beyond the mid‐career snapshot provided by previous studies by exploiting the availability of four decades worth of earnings data for individuals born in the mid‐1950s. Members of this cohort who were judged to be among the most academically able attended grammar schools in England (19%) and advanced secondary schools (Realskole) in Denmark (51%) prior to the start of comprehensivization. This key difference makes England and Denmark interesting cases for comparison, not least since pro‐selection policies have re‐emerged in England based on the claim that grammar schools lead to better educational and labor market outcomes. Our analysis of the influence of selective school placement on earnings finds little support for this contention. We find that those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds were strikingly under‐represented in schools ear‐marked for higher ability pupils in both countries, even after taking into account social class differences in measured ability. Our analysis for England finds only modest earnings returns to attending a grammar school, totalling just £39,000 across the life course, while in Denmark the lifetime earnings returns to attending Realskole are somewhat larger (£194,000). Because those from advantaged backgrounds were substantially over‐represented at grammar schools and Realskoles, these returns accrue disproportionately to pupils from more advantaged backgrounds. Lower secondary school placement in Denmark accounts for 40% of the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage, more than half of which is due to selection into school types based on socioeconomic background rather than measured ability. Our findings question the wisdom of expanding grammar schools when they appear to do little to improve individuals’ earnings or increase social mobility.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12856   open full text
• From workers to capitalists in less than two generations: A study of Chinese urban top group transformation between 1988 and 2013.
  Li Yang, Filip Novokmet, Branko Milanovic.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 478-513, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nEconomic and social transformation of China during the past 40 years is without precedent in human history. While the economic transformation was extensively studied, social transformation was not. In this paper, we use for the first time harmonized household surveys covering the period 1988–2013 to study the changes in the characteristics of the richest 5 percent of China's urban population. We find that it changed from being composed of high government officials, clerical staff, and workers in 1988 to professionals and small and large business owners in 2013. The educational level of the top group increased substantially. Membership in CCP has a positive (albeit small) effect on one's income but is particularly valuable to large business owners.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12850   open full text
• Inequality and the Chinese elite: Between international convergence and national divergence.
  Paul Segal.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 531-542, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper considers the position of the Chinese elite in both national and international contexts. I show that the Chinese elite has converged with the global elite in terms of their incomes, and that many senior Chinese executives are at least as well paid as their counterparts in rich countries. Their insertion into the global elite is further demonstrated by their increasing participation in the World Economic Forum. But this international convergence has been mirrored by national divergence: economic inequality has risen within China, extending the distance between elites and the rest of the population. I show that for top income groups, the relative cost of employing a median wage worker for their personal service has plummeted, increasing their entitlements over labor and thus their capacity to dominate their compatriots. This has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the reliance of the elite on domestic workers, a traditional symbol of social inequality. Thus the convergence of Chinese elites with their international counterparts has gone hand in hand with both rising economic inequality and rising social inequality within China.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12851   open full text
• A “Phoenix” rising from the ashes: China’s Tongqi, marriage fraud, and resistance.
  Eileen Y. H. Tsang.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 793-807, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThere are significant numbers of women in China who have inadvertently married closeted gay men. Women in China who unwittingly marry closeted gay men are known as Tongqi (同妻), and these women often discover their husband's secret only after giving birth to fulfill filial obligations. These women taken into this “marriage fraud” are initially unaware of their husbands’ sexual orientation. Because China's divorce law favors men, even if the wife files for divorce, the husband often wins custody of children. The tendency to blame the woman who have unwittingly married gay men extends even to the woman's own immediate families. These women suffer heightened risk of not only physical death from AIDS and other diseases, but also psychological death through the loss of physical mobility, alienation of kin, and death of their heterosexual marriage identity. This article extends necropolitics to the social death situations of 12 educated and 47 low‐educated Tongqi and reveals how they resist and overcome their circumstances. Tongqi are the women who have unwittingly married gay men of violations involving their own marriage, but they are not simply waiting for death. Taking an ethnographical approach, this work uses the social death concept of necropolitics to provide understanding of how marriage and gender laws perpetuate these dysfunctional unions.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12812   open full text
• From parvenu to “highbrow” tastes: The rise of cultural capital in China’s intergenerational elites.
  Gordon C. Li.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 514-530, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nA new generation of elites distinguished by their cultural endowments has emerged in China. Unlike the older generation of elites who signaled status through the display of wealth but shared similar tastes, the new generation of cultured elites has sophisticated, often Western‐oriented “highbrow” tastes in their cultural consumption. By comparing the upbringings and the tastes of interviewees from various backgrounds, this study suggests a widening taste‐chasm between the elites and the underclasses in urban cities. The social process behind this is argued to be the rapid formation of cultural capital in China, in which parental privileges accumulated in the market economy converted into cultural privileges in the new generation of new elites.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12862   open full text
• Age‐associations in British politics: Implications for the sociology of aging.
  James Rupert Fletcher.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 609-626, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDebates regarding the status of age in social analysis are foundational to the sociology of aging, with scholars continually questioning the role of age as a social force. The contemporary politicization of age in British politics sheds useful light on this debate. During the past decade, age has emerged as a potent predictor of political preference in the United Kingdom, encompassing numerous intertwined political economic developments. At face value, the emergence of age as a key political variable substantiates the status of age in social analysis. However, I argue that it is articulations of age‐stratified politics, as much as the associations themselves, that should be of principle concern for the sociology of aging, because such articulations are reformulating age, aging and intergenerational relations. The sociology of aging should, therefore, engage with the contemporary politicization of age as a new answer to foundational debates.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12820   open full text
• Social capital as a partial explanation for gender wage gaps.
  Matthias Collischon, Andreas Eberl.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 757-773, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDespite a long record of research on the sources of the gender wage gap, a large fraction of gender wage differences remains unexplained. In this paper, we propose gender differences in social capital as a novel explanation for the gender wage gap. We use British data from the Understanding Society (UKHLS) survey and wage decompositions to estimate the contribution of social capital derived from network homophily, that is, the similarity to one's peer group, to the gender wage differential. Our results show that differences in network structure explain as much as 15% of the overall gender wage gap. This finding is largely driven by gender differences in the number of males among closest friends, while other social capital measures used in this study hardly matter. We further show that differences in returns to social capital are not statistically significant.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12833   open full text
• The female payer: Gender differences in characteristics among child support payers.
  Elke Claessens, Dimitri Mortelmans.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 829-844, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nNonresident mothers who formally pay child support are becoming increasingly prevalent. If the profile of female payers differs from that of men or if their payment is motivated differently, existing gender‐based child support policies and enforcement strategies face significant challenges. This study uses the payment framework of male compliance to map the differences between male and female payers of child support. The analysis applies discriminant analysis to a combination of register and fiscal data of separated parents. Whereas the separate aspects of the payment framework did not reach the threshold for acceptable discrimination, the full model revealed considerable differences between male and female payers. The aspect of willingness to pay showed the greatest discriminating power, suggesting that paying mothers have a higher willingness to do so than fathers. We conclude that while the discrepancies between nonresident mothers and fathers who pay child support can be partly attributed to demographic differences and residency patterns of children, differing motivations are also of importance.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12823   open full text
• Below the radar: A U.K. benefit fraud media coverage tsunami—Impact, ideology, and society.
  Neil T. Gavin.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 16, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 3, Page 707-724, June 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nFramed by a literature on media coverage of welfare, “poverty porn” and “poverty propaganda,” and its emphasis on political messaging and ideology, this article explores reporting of benefit fraud in the United Kingdom. In a comprehensive and systematic assessment, it illuminates the structure and extremely large volume of benefit fraud coverage, 2008–2017, across national, sub‐national, regional and local newspapers, mainstream television, TV documentaries, BBC web output, and BBC radio. With the aid of the 2016 British Social Attitude survey, and utilizing the most current conceptualizations of the processes underpinning media influence, it argues that this tsunami of coverage will have had a significant impact on the public. The results are explored in relation to their political and ideological implications, and their relevance to a much broader array of media discourses.\n"]

  July 16, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12809   open full text
• Legacies of civil wars: A 14‐year study of social conflicts and well‐being outcomes in farming economies.
  Victor Igreja, Janna Colaizzi, Alana Brekelmans.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 426-447, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nCommunity processes to address fractured social relationships and well‐being remain the least examined dimensions in studies of legacies of civil wars. This article addresses these limitations by analyzing how the wartime and postwar generations have negotiated the legacies of the civil war (1976–1992) in a farming economy region in Mozambique. Based on a 14‐year (2002–2015) study of community courts in Mozambique, we analyzed the types of social conflicts and the associations with gender, age, risk factors, self‐described health impairments, and the timing of farming activities. We identified n = 3,456 participants and found that perennial sources of disputes were related to family formation and maintenance, defamation, accusations of perpetration of serious civil wartime violations, mistrust, debts, and domestic violence. Furthermore, conflict relations were associated with gender, age, risk factors, and health problems. This study concludes that civil wars have lasting multifaceted legacies, but generational tensions, availability of community institutions, and economic resources shape social relationships and well‐being outcomes while averting revenge cycles among civilian war survivors.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12802   open full text
• Just what is critical race theory, and what is it doing in British sociology? From “BritCrit” to the racialized social system approach.
  Ali Meghji.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 347-359, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nCritical race theory is growing in popularity in Britain. However, critics and advocates of critical race theory (CRT) in Britain have neglected the racialized social system approach. Through ignoring this approach, critics have thus “missed the target” in their rebuttals of CRT, while advocates of CRT have downplayed the strength of critical race analysis. By contrast, in this paper, I argue that that through the racialized social system approach, critical race theory has the conceptual flexibility to study British society. As a practical social theory, critical race theory provides us with the tools to study the realities and reproduction of racial inequality. To demonstrate this strength of CRT, and to demonstrate its theoretical nature, I discuss the conceptual framework of the racialized social system approach, paying specific attention to the notions of social space, the racial structure and racial interests; the racialized interaction order, racialized emotions, and structure and agency; and racial ideology, racial grammar, and racialized cognition.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12801   open full text
• Terrorist attacks and minority perceived discrimination.
  Marco Giani, Luca Paolo Merlino.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 286-299, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nA growing strand of the literature finds a causal negative impact of terrorism on undifferentiated discriminatory attitudes toward Muslims, migrants, and other minorities. In this paper, we argue that jihadist terrorism threatens first and foremost Muslims. To evaluate this claim, we estimate the causal effect of jihadist terrorism on the perceived discrimination among Muslims through a 2×2 quasi‐experimental design. Exploiting “natural experiments” driven by exogenous variation in terror threat caused by jihadist attacks that unexpectedly occurred during the fieldwork of a large survey, we compare the perceived ethoracial discrimination of the relevant minority (Muslims) against other minorities (non‐Muslims) before and after five different terror attacks in five different European countries. We find that jihadist attacks increase perceived ethnoracial discrimination among Muslims while reducing it among non‐Muslims, and that individual‐level factors including social status and economic insecurity mitigate public opinion responses to a greater extent than group‐level factors do. Hence, while in‐group attitudes toward out‐groups tend to be undifferentiated, the experience of out‐groups in the aftermath of jihadist attacks depends on the specific identity of the respondents.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12799   open full text
• We were never cool: Investigating knowledge production and discourses of cool in the sociology of music.
  Jo Haynes, Raphaël Nowak.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 448-462, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines knowledge production in the sociology of music. Focusing on the idea of cool music, we interrogate the nature of music researchers' relationship with their object of research. While the qualification and connotation of cool is widespread in popular music, sociology has largely neglected to engage with it as an object of research. Instead, the sociological investigation of music audiences is divided between two opposed but co‐constructed paradigms that ultimately do not account for how cool emerges as a qualifier and connotation, how it performs as a discourse on music, and to what effect. Using the example of aging music researchers as a departure point, we examine how the cool connotations of music function as a mode of discourse that legitimates particular knowledge, practice, and taste, demarcating insider/outsider status. We explore how music acquires social connotations such as “cool” and whether that alters music researchers' approaches to it. We argue that apart from the disclosure of inclinations, social characteristics, and relationships to the object of research (music scenes, preferences, fandom, and so on), the tradition of reflexive empirical perspectives in music sociology should incorporate further deconstruction of the transformative dimensions in the relations between music and researcher. Music, as a complex and dynamic object, thus, requires sociology to produce accounts that both encompass people's enjoyment and experience as well as its boundary‐defining capacity.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12829   open full text
• Precarious bodies: The securitization of the “veiled” woman in European human rights.
  Aneira J. Edmunds.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 315-327, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines how judicial human rights in Europe have adopted the security politics that have swept across Europe in recent years and how, through the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR)decision‐making over the veil they have contributed to the precarity of the Muslim woman’s body. While suffering from stigmatization through securitization of the veil (I am using ‘veil’ to describe various garments such as the hijab, niqab and burqa. For the purposes of this article, this is a useful shorthand), covered Muslim women’s (The concept of Muslim women is a misnomer because it suggests that Muslim women constitute a homogeneous group when they are not. Without denying their heterogeneity, its use here is suggestive of the way it is used by securitizing agents and narratives) attempts at strategic human rights litigation against bans on their clothing, including landmark cases such as SAS v. France, have failed. Institutional human rights in Europe have hijacked national governments’ security narratives and thus been complicit in furthering the bodily vulnerability of covered Muslim women by sanctioning the public stripping of their clothing. This transgresses human rights’ fundamental, normative, commitment to preventing bodily wounding. It exposes the conditionality and limitation of judicial human rights and endorses an idealized version of the exposed woman as free and equal. Moreover, by abandoning its role as neutral arbiter or audience, the ECtHR exposes human rights’ ongoing link with neo‐colonialism. The Court’s decision‐making raises the question of how veiled women might mobilize to desecuritize the veil. I suggest a return to the politics of rights combined with the “rebellious cosmopolitanism” resonant with Camus’ politics to mount relentless protests against governance feminism and the Eurocentrism of institutional human rights for a return to “normal politics”.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12806   open full text
• Unveiling everyday discrimination. Two field experiments on discrimination against religious minorities in day‐to‐day interactions.
  Amelie Aidenberger, Malte Doehne.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 328-346, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nIn recent years—particularly since the beginning of the refugee crisis in 2015—the political debate about issues of Islamophobia and resentment of Muslims has gained new momentum. Our research contributes to the growing experimental literature focusing on these phenomena. Unlike most previous empirical investigations, the present study does not examine “large scale” discrimination against Muslim minorities in situations which occur only periodically throughout an individual's life (e.g., on the rental‐, labor‐, or partner market); rather, it sheds light on (minor) discrimination events that occur on a day‐to‐day basis. Such “everyday discrimination” has been shown to be particularly detrimental to physical and psychological health. Specifically, our research examines the effect of open displays of religious identification—wearing a Muslim headscarf—on everyday discrimination against female Muslims. We report the results of two natural field experiments in Switzerland designed to examine such forms of day‐to‐day discrimination. Study 1 focuses on differential sanctioning, whereas study 2 investigates differences regarding helping behavior. We found pronounced discrimination against women wearing a headscarf in two distinctly different types of everyday interactions. In both scenarios, headscarf‐wearing confederates were treated less favorably than bare‐headed ones: they were sanctioned more often for violating the “stand right, walk left”‐norm on escalators and received less help when asking for a favor (borrowing a mobile phone for an urgent call).\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12811   open full text
• “If at First You don’t Succeed”: Why Žižek Failed in France but Succeeded in England.
  Eliran Bar‐El.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 412-425, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article sociologically explains the initial phase of Slavoj Žižek's emergence as global public intellectual. Drawing on positioning theory, the article contributes to previous works on Žižek's performativity by focusing on his contextuality. It examines how his intellectual interventions depended on the context in which they were performed, and on the relations to other intellectuals positioned in that context. The article argues that (1) Žižek's first attempt to intervene internationally was in France; (2) this attempt was a failure; and (3) his second attempt in England was a success. It also demonstrates that vouching is paramount to intellectual positioning: while Jacques‐Alain Miller positioned Žižek along practico‐clinical lines in the French context, Ernesto Laclau positioned Žižek along politico‐philosophical lines in the English context. Consequently, the latter positioning facilitated a public resonance that would lead to Žižek's global success.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12797   open full text
• Intersectionality on the go: The diffusion of Black feminist knowledge across disciplinary and geographical borders.
  Anna Keuchenius, Liza Mügge.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 360-378, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nKimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 as a critique of feminist and critical race scholarship's neglect of—respectively—race and gender. Since then, the concept has been interpreted and reinterpreted to appeal to new disciplinary, geographical, and sociocultural audiences, generating heated debates over its appropriation and continued political significance. Drawing on all 3,807 publications in Scopus that contain the word “intersectionality” in the title, abstract, or keywords, we map the spread of intersectionality in academia through its citations. Network analysis reveals the contours of its diffusion among the 6,098 scholars in our data set, while automated text analysis, manual coding, and the close reading of publications reveal how the application and interpretation of intersectional thinking has evolved over time and space. We find that the diffusion network exhibits communities that are not well demarcated by either discipline or geography. Communities form around one or a few highly referenced scholars who introduce intersectionality to new audiences while reinterpreting it in a way that speaks to their research interests. By examining the microscopic interactions of publications and citations, our complex systems approach is able to identify the macroscopic patterns of a controversial concept's diffusion.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12816   open full text
• The radical ambitions of counter‐radicalization.
  Thomas Martin.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 270-285, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThe “Trojan Horse” scandal laid bare an anxiety at the heart of the British security establishment; an anxiety that brings together questions of identity, values, and security within the demand to manage radicalization. It is an anxiety that, I will argue, reveals a novel conceptualization of threat that has driven the UK’s security and communities policies within the “war on terror.” This conceptualization emerges within Prevent, the UK’s counter‐radicalization strategy. Yet, I argue, the extensive literature on Prevent has failed to adequately articulate this underlying, core logic. To date, the Prevent literature has effectively demonstrated the ways in which Muslim communities in the United Kingdom have been policed through British counter‐radicalization policy. Yet, this analysis struggles to explain the expansion of Prevent into a wider range of “extremist” spaces. In this article, I contend that it is more useful to situate Prevent as a particular conception of power; a logic and an analysis of threat that demands new forms of government intervention. To do so, this article provides a genealogical reading of Prevent, locating it as a radical extension of state security ambitions to intervene early, making explicit a vision of security in which life as a process of becoming is produced as an object of management. The paper draws out the ramifications of this analysis to think through fundamental shifts in the principles and practices of contemporary security aspirations.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12796   open full text
• Societal religiosity and the gender gap in political interest, 1990–2014.
  Juan J. Fernández, Antonio M. Jaime‐Castillo, Damon Mayrl, Celia Valiente.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 252-269, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis manuscript examines the structural causes of the gender gap in political interest. In many countries, men are more interested in politics than women. Yet, in others, men and women prove equally interested. We explain this cross‐national variation by focusing on the effects of societal religiosity. Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken‐for‐grantedness of this order, subjecting it to debate. Men then become especially interested in politics to try to reassert their traditional gender dominance, or to compensate for their increasingly uncertain social status. A secular environment thus increases political interest more among men than among women, expanding this gender gap. Using the World and European Values Survey, we estimate three‐level regression models and test our religiosity‐based approach in 96 countries. The results are consistent with our hypothesis.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12789   open full text
• “I don’t think anybody really knows”: Constructing reflexive ignorance in climate change adaptation.
  Vanessa Bowden, Daniel Nyberg, Christopher Wright.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 397-411, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nResponding to the existential threat of climate change is often seen as requiring greater reflexivity. Imbued with notions of resilience and reflection, reflexivity is assumed to contribute to pro‐environmental change. However, as the need to manage climate impacts becomes more immediate, political struggles over climate adaptation have become increasingly apparent. These impacts occur most often within local communities, in the context of competing economic interests and differing interpretations of climate science. Thus while it is increasingly difficult to deny climate change, conflicting priorities can lead to ignorance. In these circumstances, how communities build and share knowledge, and negotiate responses is central. Based on a study of a vulnerable region in Australia, we identify three processes through which the local community mobilized to disrupt local climate change adaptation. These included emphasizing uncertainty about the science of climate change, encouraging fear about property prices, and repositioning property owners as victims of climate adaptation policy. We argue that this response to climate adaptation constitutes the production of reflexive ignorance, which reinforces skepticism around scientific authority and defends particular economic interests.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12818   open full text
• Agricultural capitalism, climatology and the “stabilization” of climate in the United States, 1850–1920.
  Zeke Baker.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 379-396, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nDrawing from theory on the “co‐production” of science and society, this paper provides an account of trajectories in US climatology, roughly from the 1850s to 1920, the period during which climatology emerged as an organized branch of meteorology and government administration. The historical narrative traces the development of climatology both as a professional/institutional project and as a component of a larger governmental logic. Historical analysis of climatologists' scientific texts, maps, and social organization within government provides a sociological explanation for the emergent “stabilization” of climate as a geographic‐statistical category. Climatic stability, defined by the view that climate is unchanging, was advanced over this period in a way that linked the interests and practices of climatologists to actors invested in facilitating and administrating commercial agriculture and trade. I position the logic of climatology and the discourse of climatic stability historically, with reference to prior concern with climate change and, in recent decades, efforts to govern global warming through geoengineering climatic stability.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12762   open full text
• The intergenerational transmission of language skill.
  Alice Sullivan, Vanessa Moulton, Emla Fitzsimons.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 207-232, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis paper examines the relationship between parents’ and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom—the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We investigate both socioeconomic and ethnic differentials in children's vocabulary scores and the role of differences in parents’ vocabulary scores in accounting for these. We find large vocabulary gaps between highly educated and less educated parents, and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and ethnic gaps in vocabulary scores are far wider among the parents than among their children. Parental vocabulary is a powerful mediator of inequalities in offspring's vocabulary scores at age 14, and also a powerful driver of change in language skills between the ages of five and 14. Once we account for parental vocabulary, no ethnic minority group of young people has a negative “vocabulary gap” compared to whites.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12780   open full text
• Class and status in interwar England: Current issues in the light of a historical case.
  John H. Goldthorpe.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 239-251, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThere has been much recent discussion concerning the conceptual and empirical viability and value of the distinction between social class and social status, and in particular as implemented in the work of Chan and Goldthorpe. The present paper addresses certain of the issues that arise on the basis of a historical case, that of class and status in interwar England, with reference to housing, sports club membership, and dress. It seeks to show that, contrary to what has been claimed by various authors, the distinction can be effectively made and is indeed necessary to an understanding of these features of the social history of the period; that it is differential association that has to be seen as constitutive of status stratification, rather than differences in lifestyle; and that increased status striving, anxieties, and segregation, with adverse psychological consequences, can result from a narrowing as well as from a widening of class inequalities.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12791   open full text
• Older Iranian Muslim women’s experiences of sex and sexuality: A biographical approach.
  Elham Amini, Mark McCormack.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 22, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 2, Page 300-314, March 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nMuslim women in Iran live in a patriarchal society which significantly restricts their freedom and agency. While there is a growing understanding of social change as it relates to younger Muslim women in Iran, the perspectives and experiences of older women are marginalized; mirroring problems with the intersections of age, gender, and sexuality in the West. In order to address this occlusion, this article draws on life history interviews with 30 older Muslim women living in Tehran and Karaj. Adopting a biographical life course approach, and examining pivotal moments related to sexuality in their lives, we discuss how cultural meanings and symbols of sexuality have emerged and been negotiated by these women at the life stages of puberty, first sex at marriage, and menopause. The patriarchal and religious gender order of Iran transgresses these women's human rights so that sexuality is experienced as a source of shame, stigma, and pollution, yet the women also exert forms of agency in their lives as they adopt and challenge these norms.\n"]

  April 22, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12805   open full text
• All about ideology? Reading Piketty´s with Latin American lenses.
  Diego Sánchez‐Ancochea.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 25, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 125-138, January 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nThis review essay evaluates Capital and Ideology in light of the Latin American experience. Given its history of exploitation and high levels of inequality, the region constitutes an essential case study. By considering the Latin America case, we can also benefit from the many insights coming from within the region and often overlooked by the Anglo‐Saxon (dominant) literature. The paper makes two different arguments. First, asymmetries in economic and political power are the main drivers of long‐term inequality. Following insights from structuralism, I show how the organization of the global economy has shaped domestic patterns of income distribution in many parts of the world. The dependent character of economic development together with the power of domestic elites explain Latin America's stubborn inequality; ideology has historically been more an instrument than an underlying driver. Second, we cannot understand the evolution of income distribution without considering the role of dictatorships. While Capital and Ideology explains convincingly why liberal democracies are not working, it never properly considers the risk and costs of (conservative) authoritarian regimes. In thinking about policy responses, the essay also highlights the importance of strengthening democracy, fighting dictatorships, and enhancing the influence of social movements.\n"]

  March 25, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12803   open full text
• Narrating inequality, eliding empire.
  Gurminder K. Bhambra.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 25, 2021
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 69-78, January 2021. ", "\nAbstract\nPiketty’s call for a historically informed, global analysis of inequality is timely, as is the need for a corresponding transformation of our current politics. However, I believe there to be a fundamental flaw in his analysis which reproduces a Eurocentric approach to understanding global inequality. The key issue is that Piketty organizes his historical comparative analysis in terms of inequality within nations. Yet, the polities he is discussing were rarely just nations over the long durée. Rather, they were imperial formations constituted by a colonizing state and the territories and populations that were incorporated. His approach separates the logic of what he calls the modern proprietarian regime of inequality from enslavement and colonialism when both were integral to it. In contrast, I argue for them to be seen as necessarily interconnected with a lasting legacy in contemporary configurations of global inequality.\n"]

  March 25, 2021   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12804   open full text
• Is a new structurally dispossessed class developing in the United States?
  Thomas A. Hirschl, George A. Spisak.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 902-920, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nThis study inquires whether a new structurally dispossessed class is developing in the United States. The new class proposition is derived from social theory and operationalized by two empirical characteristics: not in the labor force (NILF) and family income below poverty. The primary data source is the Current Population Survey over the years from 1968 to 2018, and threshold demographic criteria for class development is specified as increasing size and diversity. Because evidence is found to support the latter criterion but not the former, the proposition that a new class is developing is partially rejected. The analysis finds that new social components are joining the NILF/impoverished including men, Hispanics, college graduates, and young adults. Second, that the NILF/impoverished are politically active in terms of electoral participation, and no more likely than the total electorate to have voted for a populist Presidential candidate in 2016. NILF/impoverished recipiency of state transfers varies over time, increasing through the Great Recession, then receding. The implications of the investigation are discussed in terms of the likelihood that the NILF/impoverished will generate new forms of political opposition to the rule of capital.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12782   open full text
• Dealing with dysnomia: Strategies for the cultivation of used concepts in social research.
  Clayton Fordahl.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 1031-1043, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article follows recent calls to turn social theory away from its fixations on intellectual history and toward the mechanics and craft of creating social theories in the research process. The subject of this article is a dilemma common to theorizing in social science: dysnomia, or the phenomenon in which some object is poorly named. Specifically, this article focuses on how social scientists distinguish original concepts from their equivalents in everyday speech. Three tactics for dealing with dysnomia are named—academic arcana, classification and sociologism—and considered in order to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of each.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12788   open full text
• Making financial uncertainty count: Unit‐linked insurance, investment and the individualisation of financial risk in British life insurance.
  Arjen Heide.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 985-999, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nWhile most scholarship in the sociology of insurance has focused on the making of insurance risk by investigating mechanisms of pooling and spreading, this article examines insurers’ management of financial uncertainty. Based on a large corpus of written sources and 44 semi‐structured oral history interviews, this article seeks to describe and explain a shift in how financial uncertainty is dealt with in British life insurance, away from traditional multipolar arrangements revolving around actuarial prudence and discretion, towards bipolar arrangements that rely on explicit risk quantification and the logic of risk‐based capital to “individualise” financial risk. The article identifies two factors that were key in bringing about this shift: first, the competitive dynamics that unfolded with the emergence of challenger “unit‐linked” insurers in the 1960s, and, second, changes in the professional ecology, as manifested by the changing relations between the actuarial profession and insurance supervisors.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12783   open full text
• “I was discriminated against because I was seen as PRC‐Chinese”: The negotiation between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia.
  Yao‐Tai Li.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 1016-1030, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nResearch on race and ethnicity has focused on conditions under which solidarity will be developed to consolidate collective benefits. For example, facing racial discrimination can bring large‐scale affiliations (e.g., people of color, Latinos, or Asians) to fight against racial injustice. Focusing on the negotiation and struggle between ethnicity and nationalism among Taiwanese migrants in Australia—a politicizing context associated with a prior definition of Chinese category, despite inherent differences within it, this article shows the complexity of ethnicity when ethnic identity/solidarity intersects with nationalism and racial discrimination. I argue that Taiwanese migrants attach specific meanings to the ethnic (Chinese) category and constantly connect to and shift its boundaries in different contexts. Meanwhile, they also make a distinction between racial discrimination from white Australians and political hostility from PRC‐Chinese. This article proposes a procedural and contextual understanding of ethnic identity, solidarity, nationalism, and boundary making/unmaking within the Chinese category as it is enacted in Taiwanese migrants' everyday lives. It also examines situational variability in the salience of ethnic identifications, racialization of the ethnic category, and people's interpretation of ethnic and national identity when facing racial discrimination.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12786   open full text
• From starving artist to entrepreneur. Justificatory pluralism in visual artists' grant proposals.
  Julia Peters, Henk Roose.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 952-969, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nInspired by French pragmatism and using Bourdieu's notion of “refraction” as an indication of a field's autonomy, we explore in‐depth what kinds of justifications visual artists deploy to legitimate their requests for government money. Based on 494 government grant proposals from visual artists between 1965 and 2015 in Belgium, we find six such justifications. The reputational, esthetic, and romantic justifications are grounded in autonomous criteria of worth, such as artistic CVs, the work of art itself, and a compulsive desire to make art. Since the 90s, social, academic, and entrepreneurial justifications bring in heteronomous criteria, or refractions of field‐external values. Artistic practices become increasingly legitimized through engagement with social/political issues, academic methods and terminology, and an entrepreneurial spirit. We empirically show how the refraction of governmental logics is multi‐faceted, yet always related to or combined with artistic concerns, which we interpret as characteristic for the artistic field's persisting autonomy in the face of heteronomous pressures.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12787   open full text
• British terrorism preemption: Subjectivity and disjuncture in Channel “de‐radicalization” interventions.
  Tom Pettinger.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 970-984, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nThis article examines Channel “de‐radicalization” interventions, which take place on individuals suspected of having the potential to commit terrorist crimes. Situated within critical security studies, the article explores the British Prevent programme by utilizing primary interviews with hard‐to‐reach Channel mentors and senior Prevent officials. Following the work of anticipatory risk‐governance scholarship, this research illuminates the three processes of risk‐visibilization (how an individual becomes sufficiently “seen” as harbouring risk that they are offered Channel mentorship), risk‐calculation (how practitioners negotiate supposed riskiness), and risk‐knowing (how practitioners “know” risks they observe). It demonstrates how the practice of preemptive counter‐terrorism is subsumed inherently by—even relies upon—subjectivity and human prejudice, and fundamental disagreements between practitioners. Through substantial empirical contribution on the phenomenon of Channel interventions, the discussion highlights ultimately that the algorithmic rationale of preemptive risk‐spotting normalizes the suspicion of banal and everyday behaviors, precisely because such interventions are ultimately deployed through worst‐case imaginations.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12754   open full text
• Hollywood experts: A field analysis of knowledge production in American entertainment television.
  Arsenii Khitrov.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 939-951, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nHow can we make sense of numerous instances of experts in politics, law enforcement, national security, military defense, fire arms, public health, culture, and history working closely with creators of scripted television series in the USA today? Why do TV makers need them? Why and how do these experts come to Hollywood? In order to answer these questions, I carried out a Bourdieusian field analysis of contemporary American TV series production, with a focus on how knowledge about political and social issues is produced and used in the TV industry. I identify four major expertise providers—the state, social movements, research organizations, and independent experts—and build a macro model of expertise exchange in the field of Hollywood TV. I argue that expertise in Hollywood is a form of capital which Hollywood professionals exchange for symbolic capital within the industry and in the field of power; it is also a form of capital that agents of the state, social movements, and research organizations exchange for symbolic capital in the field of power; and finally, independent experts trade their knowledge to accumulate economic and symbolic capital within the industry. This model is based on the analysis of data I collected during fieldwork in Los Angeles over 10 months in 2017–2019, which includes 159 interviews, 7 observation sessions, and archival materials.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12775   open full text
• “You have to do something”: Snoring, sleep interembodiment and the emergence of agency.
  Dana Zarhin.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 1000-1015, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nAlthough the sociology of sleep is a growing subfield, little is known about agency in the context of sleep. This article contributes to the sociological literature by showing how different types of agency emerge as a result of sleep interembodiment (i.e., experiencing sleep partners’ bodies as intertwined). The study draws on qualitative data generated through in‐depth interviews with 70 snorers and 20 sleep partners of snorers. Interviews were conducted in Israel and were analysed following constructivist grounded theory principles. Results indicate that two types of agency coexist and, in fact, co‐constitute one another: The first type, herein termed material agency, reflects the post‐humanist tradition, which conceptualizes agents as entities (whether human or nonhuman) that alter a state of affairs by making a difference in another agent's action. This type of agency exists in both wakefulness and throughout periods of sleep, as the snorer’s body acts and interacts with a partner's body in ways that engender significant change in their lives, relationships, and actions. In contrast, the second type, herein termed reflexive agency, reflects the humanist tradition, which regards agency as individuals' creative and assertive capacities motivated by intentionality and reflexivity. This type of agency declines significantly during stages of deep sleep but re‐emerges in response to partners' actions. The article adds to the literature by refining the concept of agency and elucidating its relationship to both accountability and interembodiment. In addition, the article provides much‐needed empirical evidence showing how “personal responsibility” for health, as required by neoliberal discourses, is invoked within families, specifically with regard to sleep. This study therefore shows how certain macro‐level structures of neoliberalism are enacted and reinforced within micro‐level interactions.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12774   open full text
• Pathways from origins to destinations: Stability and change in the roles of cognition, private schools and educational attainment.
  Alice Sullivan, Samantha Parsons, George Ploubidis, Francis Green, Richard D. Wiggins.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 921-938, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nWhile much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio‐economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12776   open full text
• The transformation of Industrial Citizenship in the course of European integration.
  Oliver Nachtwey, Martin Seeliger.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 852-866, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nThe question of the social dimension of European integration has so far remained unsettled. While on the European level, the civil and political dimension of citizenship has been strengthened, the evolution of economic and social rights are unclear, contradictory—and still under‐investigated. Our contribution applies citizenship as a central category of modernization theory to inquire into European integration. In particular, our focus is set on the analysis of Economic Citizenship as a specific category of civil rights in the case of Germany. We discuss these dynamics by drawing on the example of three policy fields which illustrate various levels of Economic Citizenship. In this article we are pursuing two goals: Firstly, we revise Marshall's modernization theory against the background of European integration. Secondly, we draw attention to the concept of Industrial Citizenship, which has so far been neglected as a source of further development. We argue that in the process of European integration, industrial rights develop through a double movement, meaning an individual extension of market‐based rights complemented through national de‐collectivization and—connected to this—a re‐stratification of market correcting rights.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12792   open full text
• Understanding the social and cultural bases of Brexit*.
  Tak Wing Chan, Morag Henderson, Maria Sironi, Juta Kawalerowicz.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 830-851, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nWe use data from a large scale and nationally representative survey to evaluate two narratives about the social bases of Brexit. The first narrative sees Brexit as a revolt of the economically left‐behinds. The second narrative attributes Brexit to the resurgence of an English nationalism. There is some, albeit not always consistent, evidence that people in relative poverty or those living in areas that have seen greater Chinese import penetration are slightly more pro‐Leave. People living in economically deprived neighborhoods are not more pro‐Brexit. Using the Weberian class–status distinction, it is social status, not social class, which stratifies Brexit support. Individuals for whom being British is important are more pro‐Leave. But those who see themselves as British rather than English, and those reporting omnivorous cultural consumption are less supportive of Brexit. Overall, there is empirical support for both narratives. But the weight of the evidence suggests a strong cultural dimension in Brexit support.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12790   open full text
• Belonging, believing, behaving, and Brexit: Channels of religiosity and religious identity in support for leaving the European Union*.
  Siobhan McAndrew.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 12, 2020
  ["The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 5, Page 867-897, November 2020. ", "\nAbstract\nHaving an Anglican affiliation is known to be associated with support for leaving the European Union (EU) in Britain. Religiosity, conceived as strength of religious attachment, has received comparatively little treatment. We investigate religiosity via electoral, household, and attitudinal surveys, distinguishing the effects of “behaving” and “believing.” The association between religiosity and EU Referendum vote choice and position is identified before and after inclusion of values, attitudinal, and civic engagement measures. Consistent with established findings, in socio‐structural models Anglicans are more likely to support Brexit than religious Nones. More frequent church attendance is associated with being more pro‐Remain. The Anglican effect is primarily mediated by anti‐immigrant attitudes, authoritarianism, and salience of ethnic identity, suggesting a Christian nationalist aspect to Leave support. The attendance effect is mediated by warmer attitudes toward immigrants, and social capital. Notably, those exhibiting stronger orthodox belief tend to feature a stronger attachment to “Leave,” with this partly mediated by authoritarianism. To evaluate the net effect of religion on civic life, we should pay more attention to the cultural content of religious beliefs, and how they structure other values and attitudes.\n"]

  December 12, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12793   open full text
• “They love death as we love life”: The “Muslim Question” and the biopolitics of replacement.
  Sarah Bracke, Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThis article approaches the analytic of the “Muslim Question” through the prism of the discursive and conspiratorial use of demographics as an alleged threat to Europe. It argues that concerns about “Muslim demographics” within Europe have been entertained, mobilized, and deployed to not only construct Muslims as problems and dangers to the present and future of Europe, but also as calls to revive eugenic policies within the frame of biopower. The article begins by sketching the contours of the contemporary “Muslim Question” and proceeds with a critical engagement with the literature positing a deliberate and combative strategy by “Muslims” centered on birth rates—seen by these authors as a tactical warfare—to allegedly replace European “native” populations. The analysis continues by focusing on two images juxtaposing life and death as imagined within the replacement discourse, and that capture that discourse in powerful albeit disturbing ways. Finally, the article proposes reading the population replacement discourse as a deployment of biopolitics and one of its many techniques, namely, eugenics.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 680-701, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12742   open full text
• More than self‐interest: Why different classes have different attitudes to income inequality.
  Peter Egge Langsæther, Geoffrey Evans.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThe connection between social class and political preferences is among the most well established in the social sciences. This association is typically taken as prima facie evidence of economic self‐interest: Classes hold different attitudes, values, and party preferences because they have different economic interests. However, this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. In this article, we use survey data from 18 West European countries to examine why classes differ on a central aspect of political preferences, namely their views on the desirability of income inequality. We find that only a moderate proportion of differences between employee classes in support for redistribution can be accounted for by contemporary differences in resources and risks; differences in economic interests to some degree account for the anti‐redistributive preferences of the professional middle classes compared with the working class. However, the preferences of the self‐employed have a different explanation; autonomy is a better explanation of the right‐wing preferences of the self‐employed compared with the working class.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 594-607, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12747   open full text
• Life and labor on the internal colonial edge: Political economy of kolberi in Rojhelat.
  Kamal Soleimani, Ahmad Mohammadpour.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThrough the investigation of kolberi (cross‐border labor), this paper sheds light on the state’s policy of de‐development (or internal colonialization) of the Kurdish region (known as Rojhelat) in Iran. While the most dangerous form of labor, kolberi has become a dominant employment opportunity for Rojhelat Kurds in the last decade. There are no Iranian state laws criminalizing kolberi, and yet those laborers die on a regular basis—being shot or thrown off mountain cliffs by the state forces, stepping into minefields, and so forth. Nevertheless, there is not a single scholarly paper on this subject. Using the mixed methods research approach, our study analyzes the existing data along with in‐depth interviews with 20 people who are currently engaged in kolberi to contextualize this understudied phenomenon. Our finding demonstrates that kolberi is a direct outcome of a uni‐ethno‐religious policies of development and part and parcel of the state's Perso‐Shi‘ification strategy in Kurdistan. Therefore, kolberi is more of a political phenomenon than an economic one.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 741-760, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12745   open full text
• Anti‐elite politics and emotional reactions to socio‐economic problems: Experimental evidence on “pocketbook anger” from France, Germany, and the United States.
  Paul Marx.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nMany observers have noticed the importance of anger in contemporary politics, particularly with reference to populism. This article addresses the question under which conditions people become angry about a specific aspect of their lives: their personal financial situation. Specifically, it asks if populist anti‐elite rhetoric has a causal influence on anger and if this influence differs across socio‐economic groups. The theoretical expectation is that anti‐elite rhetoric allows people to externalize responsibility for an unfavorable financial situation and thereby to turn negative self‐conscious emotions into anger. The argument is tested with original survey data from France, Germany, and the United States. The empirical analysis yields three main insights. First, negative emotional reactions to respondents’ personal finances (and anger in particular) are surprisingly widespread in all three countries. Second, there is a pronounced socio‐economic gradient in the distribution of anger and other negative emotions. Third, and most importantly, randomly exposing participants to populist anti‐elite rhetoric causes considerably higher expressed anger about one's financial situation in France and Germany, but less so in the United States. This suggests a causal role of anti‐elite rhetoric in stirring “pocketbook anger.” This is true in particular in the middle classes. The notion that populist rhetoric reduces negative self‐conscious emotions, such as shame, is not supported by the data.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 608-624, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12750   open full text
• “Who generates this city”? Socialist strategy in contemporary London.
  Jacob Mukherjee.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThis essay, based on a “militant ethnography” of the attempts of the small radical grassroots activist group, Our London (a pseudonym), to mobilize a collective oppositional politics through activities around an election campaign, engages critically with E. Laclau and C. Mouffe's arguments on discourse and collectivity in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). I argue, on the basis of my findings, that while their model does provide insights that help describe the process of building collectivity from among disparate perspectives and identities, we need to go beyond a focus on discourse alone and consider the ways politics is shaped by material contexts. This is necessary if we are to understand the continued appeal of class politics as well as the difficulties in mobilizing collectivity in highly unequal and fragmented cities. From an activist perspective, the essay also highlights how developing a conception of collective interests and a critique of overarching systems of exploitation can be important in building political unity.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 644-657, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12751   open full text
• Foreign aid and the rule of law: Institutional diffusion versus legal reach.
  Andrew Dawson, Liam Swiss.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\n\nAbstract\n\nThis paper examines the role of bilateral foreign aid in supporting the diffusion and enactment of common models and institutions of the rule of law among aid‐recipient low‐ and middle‐income countries. We ask whether aid targeted at security‐sector reform and the rule of law influences the adoption of constitutional and legal reforms over time (institutional diffusion), and whether aid also supports more effective implementation of the rule of law, writ large (legal reach). We use event history and fixed‐effects panel regression models to examine a sample of 154 countries between 1995 and 2013 to answer these questions. Our findings suggest that aid does increase the likelihood of adopting several rule of law reforms, but its effect on increasing the depth or quality of rule of law over time within countries is much less substantial. These findings suggest that though aid may play a role in supporting the diffusion of models contributing to state isomorphism among countries, it is less effective at increasing the pervasiveness and quality of such model’s implementation. This discrepancy between the effectiveness of bilateral aid in promoting law on the books versus law in action in aid recipient countries calls into question the current approach to rule of law reforms.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 761-784, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12752   open full text
• Shame and (“managed”) resentment: Emotion and entitlement among Israeli mothers living in poverty.
  Orly Benjamin.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nOf the range of negative emotional states, shame is commonly found to characterize experiences of people living in poverty. However, relatively little attention has been directed toward exploring other emotions that accompany the shame. Not exploring other emotions, the possibility that working‐class mothers go through a struggling emotional experience in relation to their experiences of how authorities validate their belonging, is left out of scope. Exploring the notion of resentment creates a conceptual space for considering this possibility, as it flags the importance of belonging and entitlement for mothers living in poverty. I analyze these issues here, by applying “translocational positionality” which stresses how people take up positions relating to experiences of (non‐) belonging and entitlement which are informed by struggles over inclusion and resources. As such, it stresses the links between struggles of belonging and struggles for securing access to resources. It affords the opportunity to identify the emotional/affectual dimension of struggles that would otherwise be implicit at best. A Resentment focused analysis of structured interviews conducted with 90 mothers, from seven ethno‐national categories, living in poverty in Israel enabled me to analyze issues of belonging and entitlement as part of a continuous struggle for resources, pitched against welfare practices which ostensibly support mothers and families in need, but in fact apply means‐tested and other exclusionary principles to leave mothers without the assistance that would protect them from shame.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 785-799, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12753   open full text
• Occupational inequalities in volunteering participation: Using detailed data on jobs to explore the influence of habits and circumstances.
  Paul S. Lambert, Alasdair C. Rutherford.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nIn this paper we present empirical results that show that detailed occupations have distinctive patterns of association with voluntary participation. We draw upon data from four secondary survey datasets from the UK (coverage 1972–2012). Occupations are shown to link to volunteering in a wide range of scenarios and in individual, household, and longitudinal contexts. We argue that these linkages provide insight into social inequalities in volunteering, and that they can help us to understand the relative influence of “circumstance” and “habits” in enabling or inhibiting voluntary participation.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 625-643, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12756   open full text
• The social stratification of time use patterns.
  Giacomo Vagni.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nTime use is both a cause of social inequality and a consequence of social inequality. However, how social class stratifies time use patterns is seldom studied. In this paper, I describe the time use patterns in the years 1983 and 2015 by social class, and gender in the British context. Using sequence analysis methods, I show how the diversity of time use patterns in British society is socially stratified. I find that 13 clusters capture the heterogeneity of time use patterns and that these clusters are associated with social class, gender, and day of the week. These clusters capture patterns of paid and unpaid work schedules, as well as leisure patterns. The results show that men have experienced a reduction of the standard Monday to Friday 8‐hr working day, while women have experienced a general increase in this type of schedule. On the other hand, patterns of domestic working days have reduced for women and increased for men. Important differences exist in paid and unpaid work patterns between social classes. Working‐class women have experienced an important increase in shift work on weekends. They are also much more likely to be doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to upper‐class and middle‐class women. Working‐class men are more likely to experience non‐working days and leisure days on both weekdays and weekends and are more likely to be doing shift work. They are also more often doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to men in upper‐class households. Patterns of childcare indicate that all families have increased their childcare time. Men in upper‐class households in particular have experienced an important growth in childcare time between 1983 and 2015. I conclude by discussing how time use can further our understanding of social stratification.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 658-679, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12759   open full text
• “Involved in something (involucrado en algo)”: Denial and stigmatization in Mexico’s “war on drugs”.
  Claire Moon, Javier Treviño‐Rangel.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThis article responds empirically to the question posed by Stan Cohen about “why, when faced by knowledge of others’ suffering and pain—particularly the suffering and pain resulting from what are called ‘human rights violations’—does ‘reaction’ so often take the form of denial, avoidance, passivity, indifference, rationalisation or collusion?”. Our context is Mexico's “war on drugs.” Since 2006 this “war” has claimed the lives of around 240,000 Mexican citizens and disappeared around 60,000 others. Perpetrators include organized criminal gangs and state security services. Violence is pervasive and widely reported. Most people are at risk. Our study is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 68 “ordinary Mexicans” living in five different Mexican cities which have varying levels of violence. It investigates participant proximity to the victims and the psychological defense mechanisms they deploy to cope with proximity to the violence. We found that 62 of our participants knew, directly or indirectly, one or more people who had been affected. We also found one dominant rationalization (defense mechanism) for the violence: that the victims were “involved in something” (drugs or organized crime) and therefore “deserved their fate.” This echoes prevailing state discourses about the violence. We argue that the discourse of “involved” is a discourse of denial that plays three prominent roles in a highly violent society in which almost no‐one is immune: it masks state violence, stigmatizes the victims, and sanctions bystander passivity. As such, we show how official and individual denial converge, live, and reproduce, and play a powerful role in the perpetuation of violence.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 722-740, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12761   open full text
• The contextual effect of trust on perceived support: Evidence from Roma and non‐Roma in East‐Central Europe.
  Ioana Sendroiu, Laura Upenieks.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nIn recent years, trust has been conceptualized as an important source of social capital, setting off cross‐disciplinary research on both the benefits and predictors of trust at the individual and contextual level. In this paper, we turn to the individual outcomes of living in a trustful context, and explore the relationship between trust, itself one of the main components of social capital, and social support, seen as one of the most important effects of social capital. In particular, we ask how social capital—and the relationship between trust and social support—functions in the context of unequal societies. We model perceived support as an outcome across three levels, from no support to proximate to distal support, and using a cross‐national study of Roma and non‐Roma across 12 European countries, we track the relationship between trust and support across both mainstream and marginalized populations. Our findings suggest that living in contexts with more trust has protective effects particularly for members of marginalized groups: the Roma are more likely to have distal support in contexts with higher trust. We conclude that contextual trust helps to broaden the circle of support beyond family and friends; thus, trust can indeed be a synthetic force that binds individuals together in broadened structures of support.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 702-721, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12760   open full text
• Max Weber’s antinomies of the Fall: Paradisiacal ethics and the populist Zeitgeist.
  Peter Thijssen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2020
  ["\nAbstract\nThis article points out that the way the biblical myth of the Fall has been interpreted in the Judeo‐Christian tradition is a crucial heuristic in the works of Max Weber, an assessment that hitherto largely remained unnoticed. Nevertheless, Weber's understanding of everyday action is closely related to the various religious interpretations of what deprivations were suffered by humanity as a consequence of Adam's original sin and the paradisiacal yearning for salvation it engenders. Moreover, Weber's interpretation of the Fall is characteristic for his tragic sociology in the sense that it guarantees the freedom to subjectively create self‐conscious meaning that is, however, no longer embedded in a context of common knowledge. His solution to this epistemological problem involves a Nietzschean heroic existentialism whereby individuals give personality to one's character by freely choosing their own values. Yet, he also realizes that many will not be able to choose by themselves and, therefore, will be attracted by charismatic leaders that can invoke a paradisiacal community of choice. Weber's modern antinomical interpretation of the Fall is still relevant today because it provides insight in the epistemological underpinnings of the contemporary populist Zeitgeist.\n", "The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 71, Issue 4, Page 800-817, September 2020. "]

  September 20, 2020   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12773   open full text
• Do the most successful migrants emulate natives in well‐being? The compound effect of geographical and social mobility.
  Yizhang Zhao.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 25, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract A growing body of research has been focusing on the well‐being consequences of migration, yet most of this has overlooked the fact that many migrants experience intragenerational social mobility alongside geographical mobility. Without accounting for the effect of social mobility in working life, the impact of geographical mobility on well‐being cannot be clearly examined. This paper focuses on the most successful migrants, who have started from the bottom and have achieved upward social mobility in the course of their careers, and compares their well‐being with that of native non‐migrants who have experienced a similar intragenerational social mobility trajectory. The analysis is based on a recent national survey in China, which has a representative sample for both the overall population and migrants. Findings show that migrants, whether from an urban or rural origin, have better incomes but significantly lower levels of well‐being than natives, even with a similar career advancement trajectory and the same destination class position. Further exploration shows that the well‐being disadvantage of migrants is mainly due to institutional and sociocultural barriers, rather than to reward differentials in the labour market. This may have a wider implication for migrants across national borders. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  September 25, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12704   open full text
• Returning to sexual stigma: post‐trafficking lives.
  Diane Richardson, Nina Laurie.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 25, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article is concerned with returning to sexual stigma in two key respects. First, it prompts a return to the conceptual understanding of sexual stigma and makes an important contribution to critiques of the individualized frameworks that have dominated much of the literature on stigma to date, through a critical analysis of sexual stigma as a collective process at different scales and locations. Second, using empirical data from a qualitative study of post‐trafficking experiences of women in Nepal as a case study to develop theoretical understandings of the production of stigma, it explores modalities of sexualized stigma encountered on return from trafficking situations. Within the trafficking literature there has been very little attention to what happens after trafficking. This article addresses this gap in focusing on lives post‐trafficking and, in addition, contributes to the limited research on trafficking in Nepal. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  September 25, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12707   open full text
• Discursive opportunities and the transnational diffusion of ideas: ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control’ in Japan after the Aum Affair.
  Rin Ushiyama.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 20, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract A case study in the sociology of ideas, this article refines the theory of ‘discursive opportunities’ to examine how intellectual claims cross national and linguistic boundaries to achieve public prominence despite lacking academic credibility. Theories of ‘brainwashing’ and ‘mind control’ originally began in the United States in the 1960s as a response to the growth of new religious movements. Decades later in Japan, claims that so‐called ‘cults’ ‘brainwashed’ or ‘mind controlled’ their followers became prominent after March 1995, when new religion Aum Shinrikyō gassed the Tokyo subway using sarin, killing thirteen. Since then, brainwashing/mind control have both remained central in public discourse surrounding the ‘Aum Affair’ despite their disputed status within academic discourse. This article advances two arguments. Firstly, the transnational diffusion of brainwashing/mind control from the US to Japan occurred as a direct result of the 1995 Tokyo sarin attack, which acted as a ‘discursive opportunity’ for activists to successfully disseminate the theories in public debate. Secondly, brainwashing/mind control became successful in Japanese public discourse primarily for their normative content, as the theories identified ‘brainwashing/mind controlling cults’ as evil, violent and profane threats to civil society. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  September 20, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12705   open full text
• How states tighten control: a field theory perspective on journalism in contemporary Crimea.
  Olga Zeveleva.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article contributes to denationalizing Bourdieu’s field theory by analysing the relationship between a regional news media field, the state and transnational influences. The article seeks to answer the question of how a state can impose limits on the autonomy of the news media field during political transition. Field theory is applied to changes that have taken place in Crimean news media since Russia’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014. Drawing on narrative interviews with journalists who worked in Crimea in 2012–17, expert interviews, and secondary sources, I demonstrate how Crimea’s news media field went from being dominated by varied Ukrainian private news media owners to becoming dominated by the Russian state. I show that states can employ direct measures such as anti‐press violence and ownership appropriation of news media outlets in order to increase concentration of state media ownership. In addition, states can reallocate capital in the news media field, disenfranchising some journalists and outlets while favouring others. The adaptive strategies of individual journalists, who, upon losing capital, can sometimes relocate or leave their jobs, also changes the composition of news media fields. Departing from a common view of social spaces as bounded within nation‐states, I examine how the news media field of Crimea has been shaped by both transnational influences, and by the direct imposition of Russian state power through a reconstitution of national borders. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1225-1244, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12615   open full text
• Political entrepreneurship in the field of Māori sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand.
  Thomas O’Brien.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Individual actors have the potential to shape political outcomes through creative use of opportunities. Political entrepreneurship identifies how such actors recognize and exploit opportunities, for personal or collective gain. The existing literature focuses on individuals operating within institutional settings, with less attention paid to other types of actors. In this article, I argue for an expansion of the political entrepreneurship framework, by considering individuals in the electoral and protest arenas. An examination of the field of Māori sovereignty, or tino rangatiratanga, in Aotearoa New Zealand allows exploration of prominent actors’ innovative strategies and practices. The findings highlight the actors’ reliance on identity in mobilizing support within the community, to press claims. Broadening the application of political entrepreneurship demonstrates the roles of social, cultural and political capital in influencing outcomes, by identifying opportunities available to individuals embedded in the community and according to the context of the arena. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1179-1197, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12611   open full text
• The collective/affective practice of cancer survivorship.
  Alex Broom, Katherine Kenny, Emma Kirby, Zarnie Lwin.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Whether within an atmosphere of hope, or amidst relations of fear, the emotions of cancer are unavoidably collectively produced. Yet persistent individualistic paradigms continue to obscure how the emotions of cancer operate relationally – between bodies, subjects, discourses, and practices – and are intertwined with circulating beliefs, cultural desires, and various forms of normativity. Drawing on interviews with 80 people living with cancer in Australia, this paper illustrates why recognition of the collective enterprise of survivorship – and the collective production of emotion, more generally – is important in light of persistent, culturally dominant conceptions of the individual patient as the primary ‘afflicted’, ‘feeling’, and ‘treated’ subject. Building on previous work on affective relations and moral framings, we posit that the collective affects of survivorship inflect what people living with cancer can, and should, feel. We highlight how such things as hope, resignation, optimism, and dread are ‘products’ of the collective affects of cancer, with implications for how survivorship is lived, felt, and done. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1582-1601, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12616   open full text
• Educational assortative mating: a micro‐educational approach.
  Stefan B. Andrade, Jens‐Peter Thomsen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article presents a new way of analysing educational assortative mating patterns, using a detailed ‘micro‐educational’ classification capturing both hierarchical and horizontal forms of educational differentiation. Taking advantage of rich Danish population data, we apply log‐linear models that include four ways of measuring educational homogamy patterns: (a) by returns to education, (b) by macro‐education (five aggregated levels), (c) by field of study (16 categories), and (d) by a disaggregated micro‐educational classification, combining levels and fields of study (54 groups). Our results show declines in educational homogamy from 1984 to 2013, but the odds ratios of being educationally homogamous at the university college and university levels remain of substantial magnitude, by both the macro‐ and micro‐educational measures. The micro‐educational classification outperforms all other measures in explaining the associations in the homogamy tables. The income measure (‘returns to education’) does a particularly poor job of explaining homogamy patterns from 1984 to 2013. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1245-1275, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12488   open full text
• Group formation, styles, and grammars of commonality in local activism.
  Eeva Luhtakallio.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article argues that in order to analyse democracy as a pattern constantly processed in a given society, it is useful to look at activist groups’ agenda setting and recruitment principles, group bonds and boundaries, and how these actions direct and influence ways of creating the common. Based on an ethnographic study on bicycle activism in Helsinki, Finland, it describes a local critical mass movement that was successful in promoting a bicycle friendly and sustainable city, yet dissolved due to lack of people involved, and the bicycle demonstrations stopped at a moment of high public interest. This empirical puzzle is addressed by combining three theoretical perspectives: Kathleen Blee’s work on path dependencies in nascent activist groups; Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman’s work on group styles, and Laurent Thévenot’s work on the grammars of commonality. These theoretical tools help understand the sense of what is deemed possible, desirable and feasible in activist groups, and the consequences thereof to social movement ‘success’ and ‘failure’. The article claims that everyday practices and interaction are crucial in understanding the ‘democratic effects’ of social movements. It concludes that following specific processes of politicization and their conditionings in activist groups provides keys to understanding contextual differences in democracies without resorting to methodological nationalism or to exaggerated global isomorphism, and thus may contribute to figuring out how to succeed global action plans over wicked, pressing problems like global warming. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1159-1178, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12606   open full text
• Agency of internal transnationalism in social memory.
  Nelly Bekus.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The article examines the limitations of methodological nationalism in the studies of social memory through a case study of memory of Stalinist repression in Belarus. It analyses how various social agencies – national and local activists, religious organisations, and international foundations – use the memory of repression for constructing post‐Soviet Belarusian identity by embedding their national representations in larger transnational frameworks. Drawing on the concept of ‘internal globalisation’, this article develops the idea of ‘internal transnationalism’ that suggests the importance of wider transnational configurations for the definition of nation. Internalized transnationalism does not make a national memory concept less nation‐centred, but it affects the choice of its cultural, political and civilizational framing. In contrast to methodological cosmopolitanism that implies rediscovering of the national as an internalized global, methodological transnationalism emphasizes the multiplicity of co‐existing transnational networks that can be invoked by social actors in their national mnemonic agenda. Using the case of the Kurapaty memorial site the article analyses how multiple framings of memory representations – the Belarusian national memory, liberal anti‐communist memory, contesting memories, such as Polish, Baltic and Jewish – compete and juxtapose in the space of social memory of political repression. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1602-1623, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12620   open full text
• A dynamic and multifunctional account of middle‐range theories.
  Tuukka Kaidesoja.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article develops a novel account of middle‐range theories for combining theoretical and empirical analysis in explanatory sociology. I first revisit Robert K. Merton’s original ideas on middle‐range theories and identify a tension between his developmental approach to middle‐range theorizing that recognizes multiple functions of theories in sociological research and his static definition of the concept of middle‐range theory that focuses only on empirical testing of theories. Drawing on Merton's ideas on theorizing and recent discussions on mechanism‐based explanations, I argue that this tension can be resolved by decomposing a middle‐range theory into three interrelated and evolving components that perform different functions in sociological research: (i) a conceptual framework about social phenomena that is a set of interrelated concepts that evolve in close connection with empirical analysis; (ii) a mechanism schema that is an abstract and incomplete description of a social mechanism; and (iii) a cluster of all mechanism‐based explanations of social phenomena that are based on the particular mechanism schema. I show how these components develop over time and how they serve different functions in sociological theorizing and research. Finally, I illustrate these ideas by discussing Merton’s theory of the Matthew effect in science and its more recent applications in sociology. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1469-1489, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12621   open full text
• The discreet charm of the children of the bourgeoisie: economic capital and its symbolic expressions at an elite business school.
  Vegard Jarness, Willy Pedersen, Magne Paalgard Flemmen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract We address a largely neglected issue in contemporary research on cultural class divisions: economic capital and its associated lifestyles and symbolic expressions. Using qualitative interviews, we explore how adolescents from wealthy elite backgrounds, namely students at Oslo Commerce School (OCS), traditionally one of the most prestigious upper‐secondary schools in Norway, demarcate themselves symbolically from others. They draw symbolic boundaries against students at other elite schools in Oslo, more characterized by backgrounds with high cultural capital, accusing them of mimicking a ‘hipster’ style. Within the OCS student body, we describe identity work centring on styles of material consumption and bodily distinctions. The most salient dividing line is between those who manage to master a ‘natural’ style, where expensive clothes and the desired bodily attributes are displayed discreetly, and those who are ‘trying too hard’ and thus marked by the stigma of effort. We also show some interesting intersections between class and gender: girls aspiring to the economic elite obey the ‘rules of the game’ by exercising extensive control over their bodies and adhering to demanding bodily norms for their weight and slimness. Such rules are less evident among the boys, where a lack of discipline, unruliness, hard partying and even fighting constitute parts of the lifestyle valued. This article contributes to the field of cultural stratification, highlighting the importance of the ‘hows’ of material consumption when expressing elite distinction. It also adds new insight to the research field of elite education by showing how a mastery of ‘high‐end’ consumer culture is involved in fostering favourable dispositions at elite schools. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1402-1423, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12625   open full text
• Risking safety and rights: online sex work, crimes and ‘blended safety repertoires’.
  Rosie Campbell, Teela Sanders, Jane Scoular, Jane Pitcher, Stewart Cunningham.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the internet and digital technologies, including the development of new markets such as webcamming. This paper reports the most comprehensive findings on the internet‐based sex market in the UK demonstrating types of crimes experienced by internet‐based sex workers and the strategies of risk management that sex workers adopt, building on our article in the British Journal of Sociology in 2007. We present the concept of ‘blended safety repertoires’ to explain how sex workers, particularly independent escorts, are using a range of traditional techniques alongside digitally enabled strategies to keep themselves safe. We contribute a deeper understanding of why sex workers who work indoors rarely report crimes to the police, reflecting the dilemmas experienced. Our findings highlight how legal and policy changes which seek to ban online adult services advertising and sex work related content within online spaces would have direct impact on the safety strategies online sex workers employ and would further undermine their safety. These findings occur in a context where aspects of sex work are quasi‐criminalized through the brothel keeping legislation. We conclude that the legal and policy failure to recognize sex work as a form of employment, contributes to the stigmatization of sex work and prevents individuals working together. Current UK policy disallows a framework for employment laws and health and safety standards to regulate sex work, leaving sex workers in the shadow economy, their safety at risk in a quasi‐legal system. In light of the strong evidence that the internet makes sex work safer, we argue that decriminalisation as a rights based model of regulation is most appropriate. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1539-1560, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12493   open full text
• Structural and motivational mechanisms of academic achievement: a mediation model of social‐background effects on academic achievement.
  Hartmut Ditton, Michael Bayer, Florian Wohlkinger,.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper takes up ongoing discussions on the inequality of educational opportunities and formulates a conceptual model to link separate lines of research. Our particular focus is on combining motivational and structural approaches into a mediation model that explains differences in academic achievement. In the literature, four main mechanisms of social reproduction are discussed. Two main pathways refer to (1) parents’ expectations regarding their children’s academic success and (2) replicating cultural capital through intra‐familial cultural practices. (3) Parents’ perception of children’s abilities depends on social position and is influential for expectations of success. (4) For all three pathways, we expect effects on students’ motivational characteristics, which in turn influence academic achievement. We test our conceptual model by structural equation modelling using longitudinal data from primary school students in Germany. Empirical evidence is in line with the assumptions in the model. Cultural reproduction and expectations of success can be seen as the key components of the model. However, both chains of reproduction are related to each other by parents’ perception of child’s ability, and their effects are mediated by child’s motivational characteristics. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1276-1296, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12506   open full text
• Groups and individuals: conformity and diversity in the performance of gendered identities.
  Robert Evans, Harry Collins, Martin Weinel, Jennifer Lyttleton‐Smith, Hannah O'Mahoney, Willow Leonard‐Clarke.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The nature and role of social groups is a central tension in sociology. On the one hand, the idea of a group enables sociologists to locate and describe individuals in terms of characteristics that are shared with others. On the other, emphasizing the fluidity of categories such as gender or ethnicity undermines their legitimacy as ways of classifying people and, by extension, the legitimacy of categorization as a goal of sociological research. In this paper, we use a new research method known as the Imitation Game to defend the social group as a sociological concept. We show that, despite the diversity of practices that may be consistent with self‐identified membership of a group, there are also shared normative expectations – typically narrower in nature than the diversity displayed by individual group members – that shape the ways in which category membership can be discussed with, and performed to, others. Two claims follow from this. First, the Imitation Game provides a way of simultaneously revealing both the diversity and ‘groupishness’ of social groups. Second, that the social group, in the quasi‐Durkheimian sense of something that transcends the individual, remains an important concept for sociology. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1561-1581, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12507   open full text
• Developing a critical trans gerontology.
  Michael Toze.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Within existing academic literature, ageing within trans populations has primarily been addressed from the perspective of offering advice to service providers and clinicians, with relatively limited application of critical sociological perspectives. This article seeks to integrate the critical perspectives on gerontology with transfeminism, identifying areas of commonality regarding accounts of an integrated lifecourse, scepticism of biomedicalization, and an emphasis on local context. The article suggests that this integration provides a fruitful basis for developing future research into the study of trans ageing, and also provides theoretical development across many debates around age, gender and the lifecourse. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1490-1509, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12491   open full text
• School tracking and its role in social reproduction: reinforcing educational inheritance and the direct effects of social origin.
  Malte Reichelt, Matthias Collischon, Andreas Eberl.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The degree of social reproduction varies considerably between industrialized countries, raising the question of which institutional regulations promote or restrict this process. Education is considered the main mediator of social reproduction. Because school tracking – the sorting of children according to ability and interest at different ages – is known to affect educational attainment and the degree of tracking varies strongly across countries, it may thus account for differences in social reproduction. However, empirical studies are scarce, and the total impact of tracking on social reproduction remains ambiguous. Using the European Social Survey (ESS) 2012 and 2014 from 24 countries, we demonstrate that school tracking is strongly associated with higher degrees of social reproduction. Decomposing the process of social reproduction into educational inheritance, educational returns and direct effects of social origin, we find that although all channels contribute to social reproduction, the impact of tracking seems to be exerted through educational inheritance and to a similar degree through direct effects of social origin, whereas educational returns do not seem to be affected. Even net of educational attainment, social origin thus has a stronger effect on social status in tracked systems. We ascribe this effect to differences in qualitative choices within educational tracks, such as fields of study. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1323-1348, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12655   open full text
• From democratic participation to civic resistance: the loss of institutional trust as an outcome of activism in the refugee solidarity movement.
  Jonas Toubøl.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Adding to the literature on non‐institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed‐methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism – political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience – relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra‐institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1198-1224, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12622   open full text
• The field of graduate recruitment: leading financial and consultancy firms and elite class formation.
  Michael Donnelly, Sol Gamsu.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The symbolic value of being recruited by a high status multinational company likely represents an important marker of distinction. For the first time, a unique Destinations of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE) data‐set is used here to model entry to elite multinational company in finance, accountancy and consultancy sectors among graduates of different social origins, universities, degree subjects and with different degree classifications. From a sample of 11,755 graduates working across these three sectors, we examine what predicts entry to 31 leading firms and then examine pay hierarchies among the 3,260 graduates working for these companies using random‐effects models. At first glance, significantly, we find that elite recruits come from a much broader range of universities than might be imagined. However, a closer look at the highest paid graduates within these firms reveals more familiar patterns of social and institutional stratification. We argue that these patterns likely reflect the nature of work undertaken by graduates in these elite firms, with institutional and social origins of graduates differing according to the particular track taken in what are likely to be highly differentiated graduate recruitment schemes. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1374-1401, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12659   open full text
• Social class background and gender‐(a)typical choices of fields of study in higher education.
  Sara Seehuus.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract By employing a Bourdieu‐inspired class scheme that differentiates between classes’ volume and composition of capital, and by analysing Norwegian administrative register data for birth cohorts between 1987 and 1992, this paper examines the relationship between social class background and gender‐(a)typical choices of higher education. Fields of study in higher education in much of the Western world remain segregated by gender despite the gender gap in educational attainment having been reversed. However, some changes have taken place due to the influx of women into male‐dominated, high‐status fields. Few recent studies have examined the relationship between social class background and gendered educational choices in light of these changes; furthermore, the focus of previous research has been limited to the vertical dimension of class. The results presented in this article suggest that men and women are more likely to make gender‐atypical choices when this leads to social mobility and that focusing solely on the vertical dimension of class may mask horizontal differences. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1349-1373, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12668   open full text
• Everyone deserves quiche: French school lunch programmes and national culture in a globalized world.
  Rahsaan Maxwell.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Globalization poses many challenges for national cultural unity, especially in Europe. Some doubt whether national cultures will be able to survive, but there are many counter‐trends pushing to maintain national cultural unity. I analyse the dual trends of global diversity and maintaining unity through an everyday manifestation of French culture: elementary school lunches. French school lunch programmes are part of the nation‐building process because they are designed to teach students how to eat, which is especially important in France where the art of gastronomy is a key source of identity and pride. I analyse cultural influences on over 11,000 school lunch menu items from eight municipalities across two French regions. I also conduct in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews with the people who design and approve school lunch menus. My inquiry is guided by three key questions. First, to what extent are foreign influences included? Second, does openness to foreign influences vary across different parts of France? Finally, how are foreign cultures represented? My results suggest that foreign cultures are deployed to nationalize difference. The limited foreign influences that appear in school lunches are strategically chosen to appeal to and to educate students, but in a way that reinforces the centrality of traditional French cultural norms. This article contributes to our understanding of the tension between national culture and a globalizing world. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1424-1447, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12643   open full text
• Cross‐domain comparison and the politics of difference.
  Rogers Brubaker, Matías Fernández.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper makes the case for cross‐domain comparison as an undertheorized form of comparative analysis. The units of analysis in such comparisons are not (as in most comparative analysis) predefined units within a domain or system of formally similar yet substantively different categories or entities; they are the domains or systems of categorically organized differences themselves. Focusing on domains of categorical difference that are central to the contemporary politics of difference, we consider two examples of cross‐domain comparison. The first compares sex/gender and race/ethnicity as systems of ascribed identities that are increasingly, yet to differing degrees and in differing ways, open to choice and change. The second compares religion and language as domains of categorically organized cultural difference that are centrally implicated in the politics of cultural pluralism. We situate these cross‐domain comparisons, premised on a logic of ‘different differences’, between generalizing and particularizing approaches to the politics of difference, arguing that these domains are similar enough to make comparison meaningful yet different enough to make comparison interesting. We outline five analytical focal points for cross‐domain comparison: the criteria of membership and belonging, the categorical versus gradational structure of variation within domains of difference, the consolidation or proliferation of categories of difference, the procedures for dealing with mixed or difficult‐to‐classify instances, and the relation between categories of difference and the production and reproduction of inequality. We conclude by considering several potential objections to cross‐domain comparison. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1135-1158, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12490   open full text
• Curriculum requirements and subsequent civic engagement: is there a difference between ‘forced’ and ‘free’ community service?
  Ailsa Henderson, Steven D. Brown, S. Mark Pancer.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Despite figures showing the growth of mandatory community service programmes, there is mixed empirical evidence of their effectiveness. This paper addresses the relationship of mandated community service to one of its purported aims: subsequent volunteerism. It compares current volunteerism among four university student cohorts: those doing no service in secondary school, those volunteering with no requirement, those volunteering both before and after the introduction of a requirement, and those introduced to service through a requirement. The analysis indicates that (1) students who were introduced to service through a mandated programme exhibit current levels of engagement no greater than non‐volunteers; (2) this relationship stems largely from the different service experiences of our four cohorts and relates to the fact that service satisfaction and duration, as well as background variables account for current levels of civic engagement. The findings suggest that mandatory service programmes might well be failing the very population they seek to target, particularly in weaker, less structured programmes. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1297-1322, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12627   open full text
• A thirst for the authentic: craft drinks producers and the narration of authenticity.
  Thomas Thurnell‐Read.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract There is a long academic tradition which positions the desire for authenticity as emerging as a symptom of dissatisfactions with modernity. Most recently, this has involved consumption of products that are valued for being authentic in contrast to mass produced commodities which are seen as being homogeneous, standardized and therefore inauthentic. A recent resurgence in interest in the idea of craft and craftwork has brought to the fore concerns about re‐establishing connections between products, consumers and producers beyond rational market exchange. This research draws on interviews with 40 craft brewery and distillery workers to explore the ways in which authenticity is narrated as part of an ongoing effort to add value to their products and the contexts of their production. The article identifies six modes of authenticity which are drawn on in combination by participants to establish a narrative of authenticity. This is understood to be a clear illustration of the ‘enrichment process’ by which post‐industrial economies manufacture value. A central element of craft drink producers’ work is the marshalling of cultural value and engaging in communicative and performative acts that ascribe that value to products and the people involved in making them. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1448-1468, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12634   open full text
• Stakeholder identities in Britain's neoliberal ethical community: Polish narratives of earned citizenship in the context of the UK's EU referendum.
  Derek McGhee, Chris Moreh, Athina Vlachantoni.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article examines the narrative strategies through which Polish migrants in the UK challenge the formal rights of political membership and attempt to redefine the boundaries of ‘citizenship’ along notions of deservedness. The analysed qualitative data originate from an online survey conducted in the months before the 2016 EU referendum, and the narratives emerge from the open‐text answers to two survey questions concerning attitudes towards the referendum and the exclusion of resident EU nationals from the electoral process. The analysis identifies and describes three narrative strategies in reaction to the public discourses surrounding the EU referendum – namely discursive complicity, intergroup hostility and defensive assertiveness – which attempt to redefine the conditions of membership in Britain's ‘ethical community’ in respect to welfare practices. Examining these processes simultaneously ‘from below’ and ‘from outside’ the national political community, the paper argues, can reveal more of the transformation taking place in conceptions of citizenship at the sociological level, and the article aims to identify the contours of a ‘neoliberal communitarian citizenship’ as internalized by mobile EU citizens. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1104-1127, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12485   open full text
• Do values explain the low employment levels of Muslim women around the world? A within‐ and between‐country analysis.
  Eman Abdelhadi, Paula England.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Using worldwide data from the World Values Survey (WVS) gathered in 2010–2014, we examine two distinct ways in which Islam may be associated with women's employment. We show that, within their countries, Muslim women are less likely to be employed than women of other religions. We also examine between‐country differences and find that, net of education and family statuses, the employment levels of women living in countries that are 90–100 per cent Muslim are not significantly different than those living in countries that are only 0–20 per cent Muslim. Then we test a prevailing view: that Islam discourages gender egalitarian values, and that these values – held by women themselves or people around them – explain why Muslim women are less likely to be employed than women of other religions within their own countries. Despite the rich measures of values in the WVS and a large sample, we find no evidence that values explain any of the lower employment of Muslim women, mainly because values have little or no effect on women's employment. Thus, we conclude that most of the world's gap in employment between Muslim women and other women is within‐country and is not explained by gender ideology. Future research should examine alternative hypotheses, including ethno‐religious discrimination. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1510-1538, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12486   open full text
• Preference for realistic art predicts support for Brexit.
  Noah Carl, Lindsay Richards, Anthony Heath.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Following the UK’s EU referendum in June 2016, there has been considerable interest from scholars in understanding the characteristics that differentiate Leave supporters from Remain supporters. Since Leave supporters score higher on conscientiousness but lower on neuroticism and openness, and given their general proclivity toward conservatism, we hypothesized that preference for realistic art would predict support for Brexit. Data on a large nationally representative sample of the British population were obtained, and preference for realistic art was measured using a four‐item binary choice test. Controlling for a range of personal characteristics, we found that respondents who preferred all four realistic paintings were 15–20 percentage points more likely to support Leave than those who preferred zero or one realistic paintings. This effect was comparable to the difference in support between those with a degree and those with no education, and was robust to controlling for the respondent’s party identity. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 70, Issue 4, Page 1128-1134, September 2019. '

  September 02, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12489   open full text
• Dirty work: cultural iconography and working‐class pride in industrial apprenticeships.
  Emma Pleasant.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 29, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract In the seemingly routine and the everyday, lie layers of cultural and social symbolism. So it is with dirt. This article examines the social and cultural roles of dirt within socialization practices in working‐class industrial and ex‐industrial communities. Drawn from oral history accounts with 46 former and current engineering apprentices, the discussion demonstrates dirt as a concept and a practicality, and how the idea of ‘getting dirty' provided a cultural imagery used to renegotiate moral boundaries that devalue working class, masculine experiences and identities. Building on from the work of Skeggs (1997, 2004, 2011), it demonstrates the lived experience of value within the industrial workplace past and present. Through dirt, the role of cultural artefacts and iconography within working‐class experience and workplace training is explored. Additionally, the role of a cultural icon like dirt in the intergenerational dialogues of workplace communities is given new attention. In doing so the article argues that while after decades of underinvestment in apprenticeships as a model for training in the UK, a recent resurgence in interest can go some way in overcoming the long‐term effects of the loss of large‐scale industrial work. However, the cultures of work attached to the apprenticeships of the past are, within deindustrialization, much more complicated to develop or recreate. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  August 29, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12703   open full text
• Social origin, field of study and graduates’ career progression: does social inequality vary across fields?1.
  Marita Jacob, Markus Klein.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 14, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on stratification and mobility has consistently shown that in the UK there is a direct impact of social origin on occupational destination net of educational attainment even for degree‐holders. However, only a few studies applied a longitudinal and dynamic perspective on how intergenerational mobility shapes graduates’ working careers. Using multilevel growth curve modelling and data from the 1970 British cohort study (BCS70), we contribute to this research by looking at the emergence of social inequalities during the first ten years since labour market entry. We further distinguish between graduates of different fields of study as we expect social disparities to develop differently due to differences in initial occupational placement and upward mobility processes. We find that parental class does not affect occupational prestige over and above prior achievement. Separate analyses by the field of study show that initial differences in occupational prestige and career progression do not differ between graduates from different classes of origin in STEM fields, and arts and humanities. It is only in the social sciences that working‐class graduates start with lower occupational prestige but soon catch up with their peers from higher classes. Overall, our results indicate no direct effect of social origin on occupational attainment for degree‐holders once we broaden our focus to a dynamic life course perspective. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  August 14, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12696   open full text
• Everyday self‐defence: Hollaback narratives, habitus and resisting street harassment.
  Jennifer Fleetwood.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 12, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Street harassment is recognized as an ‘everyday’ form of violence against women. Influenced by contemporary sociologies of everyday life, this article examines women responses to street harassment, drawing on over 500 first person narratives submitted to the website of Hollaback London. The narrative structure highlights women’s actions, which (like street harassment) have generally been considered inconsequential. Quantitative content analysis reveals the extent and variety of strategies employed by women, including speaking back, calling on others for help, physically fighting back, walking away and an array of ‘small’, everyday actions and gestures that aim to resist harassment. I argue that these responses comprise everyday self‐defence practice. Furthermore, the notion of narrative habitus is employed to argue that Hollaback narratives do not just describe harassment, but that reading narratives can generate dispositions for self‐defence. Narrative analysis reveals the way that satire is employed to make space for women’s successful self‐defence. I argue that Hollaback narratives do not just offer storylines or scripts for resisting street harassment but foster a style for doing so. Analysis considers the limits to narratively motivated self‐defence. This research demonstrates that, in order to ‘see’ women’s resistance, we need to pay close attention to the everyday as the site of both oppression and moments of liberation. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  August 12, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12699   open full text
• Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic‐political activism in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China.
  Travis S.K. Kong.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 12, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The sociology of homosexuality lacks engagement with queer theory and postcolonialism and focuses primarily on the global metropoles, thus failing to provide a plausible account of non‐Western non‐normative sexual identities. This research adopts the author’s newly proposed transnational queer sociology to address these deficiencies. First, it critiques the Western model of sexual identity predominantly employed to elucidate non‐Western, non‐normative sexualities. It does so by examining not only the queer flows between West and non‐West but also those among and within non‐Western contexts to produce translocally shared and mutually referenced experiences. Second, the proposed approach combines sociology with queer theory by emphasizing the significant role of material, as well as discursive, analyses in shaping queer identities, desires and practices. This article employs the approach to examine young gay male identities, as revealed in 90 in‐depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong (n = 30), Taiwan (Taipei, n = 30) and mainland China (Shanghai, n = 30) between 2017 and 2019. More specifically, it highlights the interplay between the state and identity by investigating the intersection and intertwining effects of these young men’s sexual and cultural/national identities, revealing three different forms of civic‐political activism. The article both demonstrates the way in which sexuality and the state are mutually constituted and provides nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of contemporary homosexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. In applying a new sociological approach to understanding sexuality, this research joins the growing body of scholarship within sociology that is decentring the Western formation of universal knowledge. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  August 12, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12697   open full text
• Responsibility, planning and risk management: moralizing everyday finance through financial education.
  Daniel Maman, Zeev Rosenhek.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 01, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The individualization, privatization and marketization of risk management represent a fundamental dimension of the financialization of everyday life. As individuals are required to engage with financial products and services as the main way of protecting themselves from risks and uncertainties, their economic welfare and security are construed as depending largely on their own financial decisions. Within this setting, the concept of financial literacy and accompanying practices of financial education have emerged as a prominent institutional field handling the formulation and communication of the attributes and dispositions that arguably constitute the proper financial actor. This article analyzes financial education programmes currently conducted by state agencies in Israel, examining the notions and principles they articulate when defining and explaining proper financial conduct. The study indicates that moral themes and categories occupy a salient place in the formulation of the character traits that constitute the desired literate financial actor. Notions of individual responsibility, planning ahead and rational risk management are presented not merely as instrumental resources, but as moral imperatives. Through these notions, the programmes moralize a broad array of everyday practices of personal finance such as saving, investing, borrowing and budget management, thereby connecting the sphere of financial matters to the domain of moral virtues. Offering a representation of particular modes of financial conduct as constitutive components of morally virtuous personhood, these practices imbue the financial field as a whole, especially its current generalized logic of individualized and marketized risk management, with moral meanings, hence contributing to the normalization and depoliticization of the financialization of everyday life. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  August 01, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12698   open full text
• Class and ambition in the status attainment process: A Spanish replication.
  William Haller, Alejandro Portes.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 21, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract There are two principal theoretical schools that seek to explain status outcomes in early adulthood: those focusing on intergenerational transmission of class privilege and those emphasizing individual characteristics, particularly ambition. The first may be called the structuralist school and the second the psycho‐social school, following the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment. A second structuralist perspective, Segmented Assimilation, highlights transmission of socio‐economic status across immigrant generations, but emphasizes the positive role of co‐ethnic resources for upward mobility and preventing downward assimilation. We examine these alternative predictions using a large longitudinal sample of youths in Spain that includes both children of native parentage and children of immigrants. Spain possesses characteristics that make it uniquely suitable to examine these predictions. Results show that both family socio‐economic status and ambition, measured by adolescent educational aspirations and expectations, play important roles in educational and occupational attainment, but the influence of family status persists even after controlling for ambition. The influence of co‐ethnic nationalities disappears after these controls, except among Chinese and Filipino youths, a result consistent with segmented assimilation. Predictive models of status attainment yield identical results for children of immigrants and children of natives, indicating that in Spain, they have become part of a common youth universe. Theoretical and practical implications of the analysis are discussed. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  July 21, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12695   open full text
• The economic recession and civic participation: the curious case of Rotterdam's civil society, 2008–2013.
  Gijs Custers, Godfried Engbersen, Erik Snel.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 08, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper investigates how the 2008–9 recession affected civic participation in disadvantaged and affluent neighbourhoods in the city of Rotterdam. We hypothesize that levels of civic participation may either diverge or converge across neighbourhoods with a different socioeconomic status. We build upon a recent wave of studies examining how civil society has been affected by the 2008–9 recession. Using five waves from the Rotterdam Neighbourhood Profile survey (N = 63,134; 71 neighbourhoods), we find converging trends in civic participation. Between 2008 and 2013, civic participation declined in affluent neighbourhoods but increased slightly in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This convergence is partly due to the level of perceived problems in the neighbourhood and differences in the types of volunteering found in disadvantaged and affluent neighbourhoods. In addition, we argue that these converging trends can be better understood by considering the neighbourhood organizational infrastructure and local policy configurations. Next to examining the impact of the 2008–9 recession on civic participation, we contribute to research on civil society by comparing the UK and Dutch context. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  July 08, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12691   open full text
• Racial discrimination in Britain, 1969–2017: a meta‐analysis of field experiments on racial discrimination in the British labour market.
  Anthony F. Heath, Valentina Di Stasio.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 06, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Field experiments represent the gold standard for determining whether discrimination occurs. Britain has a long and distinguished history of field experiments of racial discrimination in the labour market, with pioneering studies dating back to 1967 and 1969. This article reviews all the published reports of these and subsequent British field experiments of racial discrimination in the labour market, including new results from a 2016/17 field experiment. The article finds enduring contours of racial discrimination in Britain. Firstly, there is an enduring pattern of modest discrimination against white minorities of European heritage in contrast to much greater risks of discrimination faced by the main non‐white groups, suggesting a strong racial component to discrimination. Secondly, while there is some uncertainty about the magnitude of the risks facing applicants with Chinese and Indian names, the black Caribbean, black African and Pakistani groups all face substantial and very similar risks of discrimination. Thirdly, there is no significant diminution in risks of discrimination over time either for Caribbeans or for South Asians as a whole. These results are broadly in line with those from the ethnic penalties literature, suggesting that discrimination is likely to be a major factor explaining the disproportionately and enduringly high unemployment rates of ethnic minorities. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  June 06, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12676   open full text
• Perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam among European Muslims before and after ISIS: the important roles of residential segregation and education.
  Peyman Hekmatpour, Thomas J. Burns.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 19, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam is one of the indicating features of Islamic fundamentalism and, in some cases, is serving as a pull to join extremist groups. In this paper, using data from two waves of a cross‐national survey, we investigate what affects European Muslims’ opinions about Western governments. We find that residential segregation is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam. Further, we find that Muslims living in segregated neighbourhoods and enclaves have a higher probability of believing that Western governments are hostile to Islam. National origins of Muslim immigrants have a significant impact, with people from African countries measuring less perceived hostility than others. We also find that education is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam in a non‐linear way. People with the highest and lowest levels of education tend to be less likely to believe that Western governments are hostile to Islam, relative to people with mid‐level education. This non‐linear effect is best explained by education’s differential effects on perceptions of key world events. During the time between 2011 – before ISIS’s announcement of its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria – and 2013, subsequent to that announcement, we see a sharp decrease in perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam, particularly among more educated European Muslims. We make the case that this decrease can be attributed, in some ways, to the emergence of ISIS. We discuss our findings in terms of theoretical and policy implications. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 19, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12673   open full text
• Greening the poor: the trap of moralization.
  Hadrien Malier.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 03, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article uses ethnographic data to engage a critical reflection on the tension between individual responsibility for the environment and inequality. While research has shown that the majority of sustainable consumers are middle and upper class, educated and white individuals, the study explores how the ethical injunction to ecological sustainability is being introduced to lower‐income neighbourhoods in France. It draws on the observation of a national programme which aims at supporting inhabitants of public housing estates in the process of greening their lifestyle in order to fight climate change and fuel poverty. The paper analyses how environmental responsibilization is specific in that it calls upon a responsibility towards others, towards the common good. Using the Foucauldian concept of ‘subjectivation’, it describes and analyses the moral work implied by such behaviour change programmes. It demonstrates that a negative representation of poor households and a moral framing of the responsibility for the environment lead to a moralization of their lifestyle under the heading of ‘eco‐friendly behaviours’. A paradoxical result of such endeavours is that the social group with the least impactful lifestyle on the environment is the one which is moralized in the most intrusive and resolute manner. The article shows, however, that the tenants manage to resist the normalizing discourse on sustainable living, for reasons which are not anti‐environmentalist. This piece thus provides interesting results for sustainability studies as well as for the sociology of the regulation of underprivileged neighbourhoods. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 03, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12672   open full text
• Wrangling with the Black monster: young Black mixed‐race men and masculinities.
  Remi Joseph‐Salisbury.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 28, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract In recent times there has been a proliferation of scholarship exploring ‘mixedness’ and mixed‐race people. This is evidenced by the emergence of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) as a distinct field of academic inquiry. However, despite the growth of CMRS, there remains a scarcity of scholarship that considers mixed‐race experiences from a disaggregated, intersectional perspective. Where CMRS has been attentive to the intersection of gender, the focus has largely been on women and femininity. By way of a response, in this article I draw upon data from semi‐structured interviews with Black mixed‐race men in the UK and the US in order to explore how Black mixed‐race men negotiate their raced and gendered identities, particularly in the context of schooling. Drawing upon George Yancy’s (2017) theorizations of the Black monster, I argue that a sense of double consciousness (and even multiple consciousness) means Black mixed‐race men are acutely aware of how the white gaze threatens to fragment and erase them. Yet rather than being passive victims of racism, I show that, through hybridity, the imposition of the Black monster stereotype is something that Black mixed‐race men are able to resist, modify and manipulate for their own ends. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 28, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12670   open full text
• Parental values in the UK.
  William Baker, Katherin Barg.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 26, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article investigates the extent to which parental values differ between social groups in the UK at the start of the twenty‐first century. The study of parental values is an important area of sociological enquiry that can inform scholarship from across the social sciences concerned with educational inequality and cultural variability in family life. We draw on data from the Millennium Cohort Study to show how parent’s social class, religion, religiosity, race and ethnicity, and education are related to the qualities they would like their children to have. Our rank‐ordered regression models show that parents in service class occupations place significantly more importance on ‘thinking for self’ than ‘obey parents’ compared to those in routine manual occupations. We also show that although class matters, the relationship between education and parental values is particularly strong. Parenting values also differ by parental racial and ethnic background and by levels of religiosity. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 26, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12658   open full text
• Interrogating the tribal: the aporia of ‘tribalism’ in the sociological study of the Middle East.
  Ahmad Mohammadpour, Kamal Soleimani.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 20, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract In this paper, we intend to deconstruct the term ‘tribalism’ as a colonial category, which figures as a prominent concept in social studies on Kurds as well as the Middle East at large. Blithely used, tribalism has occupied a central place, especially in the existing scholarship on Kurdistan. Some earlier anthropological works have gone so far as to regard tribalism as the ‘DNA’ of Middle Eastern people. Drawing on recent studies on Latin America, Africa and Central Asia, we argue that the use of tribalism as if it is the natural constitution of Kurdish society has caused a significant misrepresentation and oversimplification of socio‐political life in Kurdistan as well as the broader Middle East. In a way, the existing body of scholarship on this region has reproduced statist‐nationalist discourses at the expense of dominated communities (e.g., Kurds). The historical context of both colonial powers and nation‐states ‘combating tribes and tribalism’ coincided with the emergence of the discourse of racial biopolitics. Thus, the use of the term tribalism to define certain nations or ethnic groups should not be viewed as merely an application of socio‐anthropological categories. Hence, we argue that the ethical aspects and implications of the use of tribalism by both colonial powers and later by nation‐states to define certain ethnic groups must not be overlooked. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 20, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12656   open full text
• Making space for ‘the social’: connecting sociology and professional practices in urban lighting design1.
  Joanne Entwistle, Don Slater.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 12, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Lighting is increasingly recognized as a significant social intervention by both lighting professionals and academic social scientists. However, what counts as ‘the social’ is diverse and contested, with consequences for what kind of ‘social’ is performed or invented. Based on a long‐term research programme, we argue that collaboration between sociologists and lighting professionals requires negotiating discourses and practices of ‘the social’. This paper explores the quality and kinds of spaces made for ‘the social’ in professional practices and academic collaborations, focusing on two case studies of urban lighting that demonstrate how the space of ‘the social’ is constrained and impoverished by an institutionalized division between technical and aesthetic lighting. We consider the potential role of sociologists in making more productive spaces for ‘the social’ in urban design, as part of the central sociological task of ‘inventing the social’ (Marres, Guggenheim and Wilkie 2018) in the process of studying it. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 12, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12657   open full text
• Normalizing covert surveillance: the subterranean world of policing.
  Bethan Loftus.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 06, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract In this article, I draw on data derived from an ethnographic field study of covert policing in the United Kingdom to demonstrate that the deployment of covert surveillance has become normalized, both in policing thought and operational practice. In a break with earlier patterns, the methods of covert surveillance are used extensively and are no longer regarded as a tactic of last resort. Covert policing is well anchored within organizational arrangements, empowered by a series of internal rationales mobilized to justify the expansion of covert tactics over and above more traditional, overt forms. The building of intrusive and exceptional policing practices within mundane contexts, I argue, is one of the ways the police have adapted to a broader policing environment characterized by public scepticism and distrust. Policing relies on the invisibility and low profile that comes with covert work, in order to govern contemporary concerns of crime and insecurity without the conflicts which can accompany – and trouble – overt policing practices. As mainstream policing becomes an increasingly extroverted enterprise, introverted forms of policing have come to the fore. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 06, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12651   open full text
• Social network engagement and subjective well‐being: a life‐course perspective.
  Daniel Wheatley, Sarah L. Buglass.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 14, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract Social networking is a digital phenomenon embraced by billions worldwide. Use of online social platforms has the potential to generate a number of benefits including to well‐being from enhanced social connectedness and social capital accumulation, but is also associated with several negative behaviours and impacts. Employing a life‐course perspective, this paper explores social networking use and its relationship with measures of subjective well‐being. Large‐scale UK panel data from wave 3 (2011–12) and 6 (2014–15) of Understanding Society reveals that social network users are on average younger, aged under 25, but that rising use is reported across the life‐course including into old age. Probit, multinomial logistic, and ANCOVA and change‐score estimations reveal that membership, and greater use, of social networks is associated with higher levels of overall life satisfaction. However, heavy use of social networking sites has negative impacts, reflected in reductions in subjective well‐being. Socio‐economic disadvantage may drive these impacts among young (in education), unemployed and economically inactive heavy SNS users. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  February 14, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12644   open full text
• Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings.
  Nanna Mik‐Meyer, David Silverman.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 09, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  January 09, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12633   open full text
• Terrorism and lethal moralism in the United States and United Kingdom, 1970–2017.
  Joseph H. Michalski.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 04, 2019
  --- - |2 Abstract The current paper examines terrorism as a special form of moralistic violence, with several key features that distinguish such behaviour from other types of violence. The theory of lethal moralism highlights the importance of social polarization, characterized by vast differences in social space and inequality between adversaries as crucial to explaining deadly terrorist attacks. Where the differences are more permanent or chronic – and the groups in question define and justify their existence specifically in contradistinction to ‘other’ groups – then the polarization intensifies and attacks tend to be more lethal. In contrast, groups that appeal to broader audiences or the general public as potential allies more often use non‐lethal terrorism to their strategic advantage. The study examines the United States and the United Kingdom to classify each of more than 8,000 attacks between 1970 and 2017 in terms of their ideological orientations. The evidence highlights the arc of terrorism in relation to different types of groups, as well as confirms the more lethal nature of terrorism linked especially to radical Islam, right‐wing religious extremists, hate groups, ethno‐nationalist sectarian violence, and anti‐government anarchists. Yet apart from the extensive use of terrorism associated with ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the majority of terrorist attacks in the US and the UK have not produced deaths. Most terrorism instead has been perpetrated by groups aiming to rally support for a general cause and has been far less deadly on balance. The implications of these findings are discussed with a view toward developing more powerful explanatory models that focus on the socio‐cultural contexts and justification frameworks that inspire extremism and the use of lethal moralism to settle disputes. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  January 04, 2019   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12635   open full text
• Class and status: on the misconstrual of the conceptual distinction and a neo‐Bourdieusian alternative.
  Magne Paalgard Flemmen, Vegard Jarness, Lennart Rosenlund.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In this article, we address the classical debate about the relationship between the economic and cultural aspects of social stratification, typically cast in terms of Weber’s distinction between class and status. We discuss in particular Chan and Goldthorpe’s influential, yet largely unchallenged, attempt to reinstate a strict version of the class‐status distinction, mounted as an attack on ‘Bourdieusian’ accounts. We argue that this is unconvincing in two respects: There are fundamental problems with their conceptualization of status, producing a peculiar account where one expression of status honour explains the other; in addition, their portrayal of the Bourdieusian approach as one‐dimensional is highly questionable. In contradiction of a reading of Bourdieu as discarding the class‐status distinction, we develop an alternative, neo‐Bourdieusian account that recognizes class and status as distinct aspects of stratification, thereby allowing for a subtle analysis of their empirical entwinement. The fruitfulness of this approach is demonstrated by analysing the homology between the space of lifestyles and the social space through Multiple Correspondence Analysis of unusually rich data about lifestyles. Importantly, we highlight the relative autonomy of these spaces: Although they exhibit a similar structure, they do not overlap completely. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  November 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12508   open full text
• Money as a social relation beyond the state: a contribution to the institutionalist approach based on the Argentinian trueque.
  Hadrien Saiag.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper provides a contribution to the institutionalist approach to money through ethnographic research carried out in two local currency systems in Argentina (known as trueque). It argues that Argentinian local currencies must be considered as monies in their own right even if they differ from state and bank issued currencies, because they can be understood as systems of evaluation and settlement of debts denominated in a specific unit of account (the crédito). Money is said to be an ambivalent social relation because in the two cases studied it mediates very different dynamics, exacerbating inequality in one context and promoting collective emancipation in another. This difference is due to the kind of political communities that the crédito tends to forge. In both Rosario and Poriajhu, the political community is defined by a set of values that legitimizes ongoing monetary practices and institutions rather than the State’s coercion. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  November 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12610   open full text
• Investigative ignorance in international investigations: how United Nations Panels of Experts create new relations of power by seeking information.
  Aurel Niederberger.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 25, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract How do political investigations affect relations of power? Earlier studies have focused on the empowering effects of political knowledge – in contrast, I analyse how the pursuit of such knowledge makes the investigator dependent on others. I hypothesize that where the will to know empowers others, ignorance becomes a strategic alternative. This mechanism should play out strongly at the intersection of global governance and local political crises: here, global governance actors lack knowledge, investigations often constitute the first direct interaction between actors from both sides, and solidification of power (instead of empowering others) should be a central interest of global governance actors. I first explore the hypothesized mechanisms theoretically and develop a framework to analyse dependencies between investigators and their interlocutors. This framework then facilitates a within‐case comparison of investigative approaches of United Nations Panels of Experts. The results support and elucidate the hypothesized mechanisms. The study shows how the analysis of social interaction can create new views of the much‐studied relationship between knowledge and power. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12603   open full text
• Issue Information.
  
  British Journal of Sociology. October 22, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 799-824, September 2018.
  

  October 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12614   open full text
• Obituary for Robert Fine – 1945‐2018.
  Lydia Morris.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 22, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 878-880, September 2018.
  

  October 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12609   open full text
• The social life of DNA: racial reconciliation and institutional morality after the genome.
  Alondra Nelson.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This 2017 British Journal of Sociology Lecture builds upon ideas developed in The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome (Nelson 2016). I argue that one of the more significant developments of the postgenomic era is the circulation of DNA analysis outside of the life sciences, especially commercial applications such as direct‐to‐consumer genealogical testing. These tests are increasingly taken up in ‘reconciliation projects’ – endeavours in which DNA analysis is put to the use of repairing the past, including a recently launched attempt in the United States to locate descendants of enslaved persons sold by the Jesuit stewards of Georgetown College in order to bolster that institution’s finances. With this reconciliation project, genetic genealogy has become a vehicle for a form of social repair, and most particularly, the reuniting of ‘lost’ kin. This use of genetic genealogy takes place against the backdrop of an expanding, national inquiry into ties between education and slavery. In the process, the legacy of racial slavery is rendered both contemporary and proximate, despite a ‘colour‐blind’ racial project that aims to negate the significance of this history and its coeval development with US higher education. Elite educational institutions such as Georgetown that elect to excavate these histories are soon after faced with the choice of how to respond, on campus and beyond, to revelations of entanglements between edification and bondage. However imperfectly, colleges and universities are among the few institutional settings where the contested issue of structural racism (and remedies to it) may be aired. It is in these fraught debates that the exercise of ‘institutional morality’ can take shape; organizations engage in practices that articulate institutional values and are faced with a choice of symbolic and distributional responses. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 522-537, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12607   open full text
• Childcare by grandparents in married and cohabiting couples: evidence from Italy.
  Silvia Meggiolaro.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The process of union formation and the context of childrearing have profoundly changed with the spread of cohabitation in the last few decades. It is only recently that some attention has been paid to the implications of these changes for family ties. This study considers, with reference to Italy, a specific relationship between individuals in couples and their family of origin – childcare by grandparents. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, we investigate whether children of cohabiting couples are cared for by their grandparents to a lower extent compared to children of married couples. Second, the current study examines whether potential differences decrease over time. The data used are from two rounds of cross‐sectional and nationally representative survey conducted in Italy in 2003 and in 2009. Our results show that in 2003 both in the provision and the intensity of grandparents’ childcare, children of cohabiting parents were less likely to have their grandparents involved than children of married parents. However, the differences between marriages and cohabitations disappear in recent years. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 580-600, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12292   open full text
• Tax policy and tax protest in 20 rich democracies, 1980–2010.
  Isaac William Martin, Nadav Gabay.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Why are some policies protested more than others? New data on protest against eight categories of taxation in twenty rich democracies from 1980 to 2010 reveal that economically and socially concentrated taxes are protested most, whereas taxes that confer entitlement to benefits are protested least. Other features of policy design often thought to affect the salience or visibility of costs are unimportant for explaining the frequency of protest. These findings overturn a folk theory that political sociology has inherited from classical political economy; clarify the conditions under which policy threats provoke protest; and shed light on how welfare states persist. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 647-669, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12290   open full text
• From preparedness to risk: from the singular risk of nuclear war to the plurality of all hazards.
  Joe Deville, Michael Guggenheim.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Debates on risk have largely assumed risk to be the outcome of calculative practices. There is a related assumption that risk objects come only in one form, and that the reason not everything can be transformed into a risk is because of the difficulties in calculating and creating universal quantitative comparisons. In this article, building on recent studies of preparedness that have broadened understandings of risk, we provide an analysis of how preparedness measures might themselves produce risk, in particular through risk's durable instantiation, or what we call ‘concretization’. Our empirical focus is on how government agencies in two countries shifted their attention from the risk of nuclear attack during the Cold War to an all hazards approach to preparedness. Comparing the mid‐ to late‐twentieth century histories of the UK and Switzerland, we show that both countries shifted from focusing from a single risk to plural risks. This shift cannot be explained by a change in prevailing calculative practices, or by the fact that the risks changed historically. Instead, it is driven by historically specific changes in how risks are produced and reproduced in relation to how materializations of risk operate over time. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 799-824, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12291   open full text
• Re‐making the global economy of knowledge: do new fields of research change the structure of North–South relations?
  Raewyn Connell, Rebecca Pearse, Fran Collyer, João Maia, Robert Morrell.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract How is global‐North predominance in the making of organized knowledge affected by the rise of new domains of research? This question is examined empirically in three interdisciplinary areas – climate change, HIV‐AIDS, and gender studies – through interviews with 70 researchers in Southern‐tier countries Brazil, South Africa and Australia. The study found that the centrality of the North was reinstituted as these domains came into existence, through resource inequalities, workforce mechanisms, and intellectual framing. Yet there are tensions in the global economy of knowledge, around workforce formation, hierarchies of disciplines, neoliberal management strategies, and mismatches with social need. Intellectual workers in the Southern tier have built significant research centres, workforces and some distinctive knowledge projects. These create wider possibilities of change in the global structure of organized knowledge production. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 738-757, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12294   open full text
• Postmaterialism and young people's political participation in a time of austerity.
  Matt Henn, Ben Oldfield, James Hart.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Recent trends suggest that young people in Britain are refraining from engaging in formal political processes. At the same time, they are increasingly expressing support for, and turning toward, a new and diverse range of non‐institutionalized forms of political action in order to actualize their interests. Using Inglehart's ideas on postmaterialism, we consider whether this apparent rejection of mainstream politics in favour of less conventional – and sometimes radical – forms of political action is changing over time in Britain, reflecting fluctuating economic conditions witnessed over the last two decades. We do this by comparing results from surveys of British 18 year olds conducted in 2002 during an era of relative global prosperity, and then in 2011 at the height of the current global crisis. The findings suggest that British young postmaterialists are considerably more likely than materialists to participate in and support both institutionalized and non‐institutionalized forms of political action. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 712-737, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12309   open full text
• Institutional change and parental compensation in intergenerational attainment.
  Heta Pöyliö, Jani Erola, Elina Kilpi‐Jakonen.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Previous research has shown how institutional changes, such as educational expansion, have weakened parental influence on educational attainment. We extend this analysis to occupational attainment and put forth a parental compensation hypothesis: as the origin‐education (OE) association weakens, parents act to compensate for this in order to maintain their influence on the child's occupational attainment. We should see this as a strengthened origin‐destination association net of education (net OD). Further, we study whether these compensatory actions are triggered by changes in educational institutions and whether the institutional changes that reduce educational inequality are the same ones that prompt parental compensation. We have linked data from five waves of the European Social Survey (2002–10) with data on educational institutions matched to birth cohorts born 1941–80 in 25 countries. We find weakened OE and strengthened net OD associations, supporting our parental compensation hypothesis. Multilevel mixed effects regression analyses reveal that reforms lengthening compulsory education, and the increased access to and the attainment of higher education have had a positive influence on parental compensation. As a conclusion, a later school leaving age seems to secure increased parental influence on children's occupational attainment, while parents seem to have reacted to a lesser extent on the changes in higher education. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 601-625, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12293   open full text
• Small‐p politics: how pleasurable, convivial and pragmatic political ideals influence engagement in eat‐local initiatives.
  Emily Huddart Kennedy, Josée Johnston, John R. Parkins.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Non‐confrontational engagement practices like ethical consumption are a popular form of everyday politics. Existing research into these practices offers positive evaluations (highlighting the value of everyday engagement in public life) and critical perspectives (questioning whether myriad small acts can address structural barriers to equity and sustainability). Meanwhile, less emphasis has been placed on understanding the underlying ideals and motivations for political action that seeks to avoid traditional politics. In order to advance such understanding, this case study uses participant observation and semi‐structured interviews with 57 individuals whose daily paid or unpaid leadership roles shape eat‐local initiatives. We find that in the local food realm, participants idealize pleasurable, convivial and pragmatic engagement and these ideals culminate in a particular form of everyday action we term ‘small‐p politics’. The paper offers a theoretically and empirically informed investigation of non‐traditional political engagement in eat‐local movements, concluding that it emerges from a site where: (a) cultural change is prioritized above contentious politics; (b) rejecting traditional political activity is linked with achieving tangible outcomes; and (c) consumers are deemed the ideal agents of change. Non‐traditional politics play a prominent role in the landscape of contemporary civic engagement. This research advances our existing knowledge of such practices by providing a thick description of the political ideals that endorse consumption‐based approaches to change in the realm of local food. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 670-690, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12298   open full text
• ‘Luck, chance, and happenstance? Perceptions of success and failure amongst fixed‐term academic staff in UK higher education’.
  Vik Loveday.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract What does it mean to attribute success to ‘luck’, but failure to personal deficiency? In 2015/16, more than 34 per cent of academic employees in UK higher education institutions were employed on temporary contracts, and the sector itself has undergone a substantial transformation in recent years in terms of expansion, measurement, and marketization. Based on two waves of interviews conducted with fixed‐term academic employees at different career stages, the article explores the narrativization of success and failure amongst staff working at the ‘sharp end’ of the so‐called neoliberal academy. Arguing that precarious employment situations precipitate the feeling of being ‘out of control’, the majority of the participants’ narratives were characterized by a distinct lack of agency. The paper explores the recourse to notions of chance and the consolidation of ‘luck’ as an explanatory factor in accounting for why good things happen; however, in tandem with this inclination is the tendency to individualize failure when expectations have been thwarted. While accounts of fixed‐term work are suffused with notions of chance and fortune, ‘luck’ remains an under‐researched concept within sociology. The article thus concludes by considering what the analysis of ‘luck’ might offer for a fuller, politicized understanding of processes at work in the contemporary academy. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 758-775, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12307   open full text
• Cultures of choice: towards a sociology of choice as a cultural phenomenon.
  Ori Schwarz.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The article explores different ways to conceptualize the relationship between choice and culture. These two notions are often constructed as opposites: while sociologies of modernization (such as Giddens’) portray a shift from cultural traditions to culturally disembedded choice, dispositional sociologies (such as Bourdieu's) uncover cultural determination as the hidden truth behind apparent choice. However, choice may be real and cultural simultaneously. Culture moulds choice not only by inculcating dispositions or shaping repertoires of alternatives, but also by offering culturally specific choice practices, ways of choosing embedded in meaning, normativity, and materiality; and by shaping attributions of choice in everyday life. By bringing together insights from rival schools, I portray an outline for a comparative cultural sociology of choice, and demonstrate its purchase while discussing the digitalization of choice; and cultural logics that shape choice attribution in ways opposing neoliberal trends. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 845-864, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12305   open full text
• The making of a moral economy: women's views of monetary transactions in an ‘egg sharing for research’ scheme.
  Erica Haimes, Robin Williams.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract There are growing debates about the appropriateness of offering money in exchange for the provision of bodily materials for clinical treatment and research. The bioethics literature and many practice guidelines have generally been opposed to such entanglement, depicting the use of money as contaminating, creating undue inducement, exploitation and commodification of the human body. However, two elements have been missing from these debates: (i) the perspectives of those people providing bodily materials when money is offered; and (ii) systematic empirical engagement with the notion of ‘money’ itself. This article seeks to fill those gaps in knowledge by providing detailed insights from a project investigating the views and experiences of women who volunteered to provide eggs for research in exchange for reduced fees for fertility treatment. Analysis of 29 semi‐structured interviews reveals multiple ways in which volunteers reason through the involvement of ‘money’ in this domain and shows how their accounts diverge from pessimistic understandings of the role of monies in everyday life. When volunteers speak in detail about the monetary aspects of their participation they draw major, recurring, distinctions in five overlapping areas: their depiction of the monetized world of fertility treatment; their views of the different forms that money can take; a distancing of their actions from their understandings of how markets and commodities work; their location of the transactions within a particular clinic, and the ongoing importance of their eggs, post‐transaction. This article: (i) responds to calls for concrete case studies to assist understandings of the inter‐relationships of money and specific aspects of social life; (ii) adds to the sociology of money literature by providing empirical insights into how notions of money are deployed; (iii) presents much‐needed perspectives from providers of bodily materials; and (iv) contributes to ongoing conversations between bioethics and sociology. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 825-844, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12297   open full text
• Transitional justice as social control: political transitions, human rights norms and the reclassification of the past.
  Ron Dudai.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This article offers an interpretation of transitional justice policies – the efforts of post‐conflict and post‐dictatorship societies to address the legacy of past abuses – as a form of social control. While transitional justice is commonly conceptualized as responding to a core problem of impunity, this article argues that such formulation is too narrow and leads to lack of coherence in the analysis of the diverse array of transitional mechanisms, which include among others trials, truth commissions, reparations for victims and apologies. Building on the work of Stanley Cohen, the article contends that the core transitional problem is the denial of human rights violations, and consequently that the common purpose of all transitional justice mechanisms is to reclassify the past: redefining as deviant some acts and individuals which prior to the transition were considered ‘normal’. The article identifies and analyses three themes in the application of a social control framework to transitional justice: (1) truth, memory and retroactive social control, pertains to the way truth‐seeking transitional justice mechanisms reclassify past events by engaging in social control of and through memory; (2) censure, celebration and transitional social control refers to the reclassification of categories of individuals through expressions of both social disapproval and praise; and (3) civil society and social control from below concerns the role of social movements, organizations and groups as informal agents of social control during transitions. The concluding section recaps and briefly explores the concept of ‘good moral panic’ in the context of political transitions. While the concept of social control tends to have negative connotations for critical sociologists, this work suggests that efforts to categorize, punish and disapprove certain behaviours as deviant may not only be viewed as supporting a conservative status‐quo, but also as promoting fledging human rights norms. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 691-711, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12300   open full text
• Reflexive convention: civil partnership, marriage and family.
  Brian Heaphy.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Drawing on an analysis of qualitative interview data from a study of formalized same‐sex relationships (civil partnerships) this paper examines the enduring significance of marriage and family as social institutions. In doing so, it intervenes in current debates in the sociology of family and personal life about how such institutions are undermined by reflexivity or bolstered by convention. Against the backdrop of dominating sociological frames for understanding the links between the changing nature of marriage and family and same‐sex relationship recognition, the paper analyses the diverse and overlapping ways (including the simple, relational, strategic, ambivalent and critical ways) in which same‐sex partners reflexively constructed and engaged with marriage and family conventions. My analysis suggests that instead of viewing reflexivity and convention as mutually undermining, as some sociologists of family and personal life do, it is insightful to explore how diverse forms of reflexivity and convention interact in everyday life to reconfigure the social institutions of marriage and family, but do not undermine them as such. I argue the case for recognizing the ways in which ‘reflexive convention’, or reflexive investment in convention, contributes to the continuing significance of marriage and family as social institutions. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 626-646, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12308   open full text
• The path from social origins to top jobs: social reproduction via education.
  Alice Sullivan, Samantha Parsons, Francis Green, Richard D. Wiggins, George Ploubidis.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper provides a comprehensive account of the way in which cognitive and educational attainment mediate the link between social origins and elite social class destinations in mid‐life. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), we assess the roles of a range of pathways through which educational advantage may lead to occupational attainment: cognitive development; private and selective secondary schools; school level qualifications; and higher education, including institution and field of study. Whereas past research has shown a residual direct effect of social origins on class destinations, we find that, once a sufficiently detailed picture of educational attainment is taken into account, education fully explains the link between social origins and top social class destinations. In contrast, the gap between men and women in achieving top social class positions is in no part accounted for by education. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 776-798, September 2018. '

  October 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12314   open full text
• The social life of DNA: racial reconciliation and institutional morality after the genome – a response.
  Alondra Nelson.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 575-579, September 2018.
  

  October 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12612   open full text
• Race, Rome and the genome.
  Jenny Reardon.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 565-574, September 2018.
  

  October 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12601   open full text
• A post‐liberal theory of stratification.
  Michelle Jackson, David B. Grusky.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The iconic ‘liberal theory’ of stratification fails to attend to the many types of downward mobility and wage loss generated by late‐industrial stratification systems. Although the liberal theory and its close cousins assume that loss and failure will be interpreted in individualistic terms, recent developments suggest instead that they are generating solidary groups that are increasingly locked into zero‐sum contest and successfully mobilized by politicians and other norm entrepreneurs. These developments imply a Marxisant future for late‐industrial inequality that bears scant resemblance to the highly individualized, unstructured, and non‐conflictual stratification system envisaged by the liberal theory. We outline a new post‐liberal theory of stratification that better captures the forces making for change and resistance in late‐industrial societies. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12505   open full text
• Small, M. L. Someone To Talk To 2017 Oxford University Press 288 pp £22.99 (Hardback).
  Maxime Felder.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 10, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  October 10, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12510   open full text
• Strategic ignorance and global governance: an ecumenical approach to epistemologies of global power.
  Grégoire Mallard, Linsey McGoey.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 09, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract How can we account for the role of ignorance and knowledge in global governance? It is a contention of earlier scholarship in international relations and political sociology that knowledge production is tightly coupled with rational action – regardless of whether knowledge widely influences different stakeholders or not. This scholarship equally tends to assume an ignorance‐knowledge binary relationship that associates ignorance with powerlessness and knowledge with power. This is a view we dispute. Calling for a new approach to the study of ignorance and knowledge in international politics, our article builds on research from ignorance studies, science and technology studies and critical race theory to derive a novel typology of epistemologies of power in which truth and ignorance are defined and combined in a plurality of ways. Approaching differing epistemologies of power in the transnational realm in a general or ‘ecumenical’ manner, we identify weaknesses in earlier approaches to the study of knowledge production in global affairs, and present four new concepts: ‘factual determinism’, ‘cynical realism’, ‘unseeing proceduralism’ and ‘hopeful constructivism’. Through this framework, our article calls for greater recognition of the constitutive role that ignorance plays in operations of power on a global scale. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 09, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12504   open full text
• How do international lawyers handle facts? The role of folk sociological theories at the International Criminal Court.
  Julien Seroussi.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 09, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates international crimes committed in different parts of the world. Earlier scholarly analysis of the work performed by the ICC judges has pointed out that judges often lack cultural and national understanding of the local norms and customs of regions where defendants come from. This article treats this lack of contextual knowledge displayed by the court as a case of structural ignorance rather than an aberration to be ‘exposed’ or censured. International lawyers indeed must ground their legal narratives with plausible sociological explanations of contextual elements to overcome their lack of familiarity with the field and the scarcity of their investigative resources. By uncovering the role of ‘folk sociological theories’ (FSTs) in the establishment of facts in a court context, this article addresses the debate over the efficiency of international criminal justice by highlighting the need to bring historical truth back in. The empirical evidence is based on several years of participant observation in the ICC during the trials against Mathieu Ngudjolo and Germain Katanga, two militiamen from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 09, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12604   open full text
• Money and relationships online: communication and norm formation in women’s discussions of couple resource allocation.
  Liz Moor, Shireen Kanji.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on intra‐household resource allocation practices has largely ignored the role of communication within but especially beyond the household. This article shows that discussions engaged in outside of the household shed light on intra‐household deliberation and also contribute to an understanding of how norms are formed and used in discussions and negotiations. Using data from the website Mumsnet, and grounding our analysis in a framework that combines the literature on gender norms in allocation practices with insights from the study of online communication, we contribute to the sociological literature on household distribution in three ways: first, we show that women use discussion sites like Mumsnet to clarify and sometimes contest social norms regarding money and relationships; second, we show that users conceive the ability to communicate with partners as a source of ‘relationship power’ and use online discussion with other women to develop that skill; third, we argue that sites like Mumsnet provide fresh insights into household resource allocation processes. The article concludes with a broader discussion of the role of communication in household distribution and the value of online data for understanding such processes. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12492   open full text
• Robert, Wuthnow. The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America 2018 Princeton University Press 200 pp. £20.00.
  Katherine J. Cramer.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 06, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  October 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12509   open full text
• The IMF failure that wasn’t: risk ignorance during the European debt crisis.
  Pierre Pénet.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This article builds on ignorance studies to revisit how we understand the role of expertise in international policymaking. A fundamental component of ignorance is concealing what you know. For experts, risk ignorance is a strategic resource when the policymaking process becomes a contested exchange. This article covers IMF lending programmes in Europe in 2008–13 with a special focus on Greece. Empirical data is drawn from policy documents. I find that risk ignorance at the IMF resulted from a joint process of ‘private alteration’ and ‘public obfuscation’: the alteration of normal scenarios of debt sustainability in private negotiations worked in tandem with the obfuscation of programme risks in the public stage. The empirical contribution of this article is to show that the ‘failure’ of the IMF programme for Greece can be reconceptualized as ‘success’. The immediate goal of the programme was to bailout Greece’s creditors and avoid the breakup of European monetary institutions. In this respect, the programme was successful. But success came at a huge cost for Greece. Analytically, this article suggests that knowledge procurement based on empirical fact‐gathering is not always the ultimate goal of international organizations and the communities of experts working within them. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12602   open full text
• Morality in racialized institutions.
  James R. Jones.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 05, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 560-564, September 2018.
  

  October 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12598   open full text
• Antagonistic recursivities and successive cover‐ups: the case of private nuclear proliferation.
  Grégoire Mallard.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract “Legal recursivity” is a concept introduced by socio‐legal scholars to capture the progressive elaboration of transnational rules through policy linkages at the international and domestic levels, and the associated jurisdictional expansion of international institutions to new policy areas. Recursivity can take many forms, and this article introduces the concept of “antagonistic recursivity” to capture a dual process of recursive legal innovation and antagonistic obstruction by the same policy actors. The article shows how such antagonistic recursivity worked in the case of the global fight against private nuclear proliferators after the 2003 revelations about the reach of the A. Q. Khan network. In the case under study, antagonistic recursivities took the form of executive‐driven innovation in rule‐making and simultaneous subversion of the same rules by the executive most implicated in the new cycle of policy innovation: the United States government. This paradox can be explained in the following manner. Antagonistic recursivity, the article demonstrates, is likely to emerge when legal rules of global governance have already been previously defined in an opaque manner, so as to help hegemons follow multiple foreign policy goals: the subversion of the most recent policy innovations is then the unfortunate result of attempts to hide prior cover‐ups rather than a purposeful violation of new rules. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12494   open full text
• DNA, reconciliation and social empowerment.
  Yulia Egorova.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 05, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 545-551, September 2018.
  

  October 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12597   open full text
• Plausible folk theories: throwing veils of plausibility over zones of ignorance in global governance.
  Terence C. Halliday.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In an age of expertise, where knowledge ostensibly reigns, global governance not infrequently settles for ignorance. To understand this puzzle, this article draws upon extensive empirical research on two sites within the global governance of finance. One is directed to the suppression of money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism by the Financial Action Task Force and International Monetary Fund. Another intends to stimulate the supply of otherwise scarce money to financial markets through global lawmaking by the UN Commission on International Trade Law. In both cases vast enterprises of global regulation and lawmaking proceed on weakly founded justificatory rhetorics designated here as ‘plausible folk theories.’ Six properties make a folk theory plausible: parsimony, face validity, rhetorical compactness, ambiguity, affinity with extant beliefs, and unexamined premises and logics. Plausible folk theories offer organizational benefits to IOs. They also allow a politics of temporality that may shorten temporal horizons, or weaken and eliminate IO accountability. Finally, three variants of ignorance contribute to choices by international organizations not to get beyond plausible folk theories to justify their regulatory and lawmaking initiatives: inadvertent ignorance, willful ignorance, and strategic or rational ignorance. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12605   open full text
• The uses of disorder in negotiated information orders: information leveraging and changing norms in global public health governance.
  Carol A. Heimer.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 04, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The SARS epidemic that broke out in late 2002 in China’s Guangdong Province highlighted the difficulties of reliance on state‐provided information when states have incentives to conceal discrediting information about public health threats. Using SARS and the International Health Regulations (IHR) as a starting point, this article examines negotiated information orders in global public health governance and the irregularities in the supply of data that underlie them. Negotiated information orders within and among the organizations in a field (here, e.g., the World Health Organization, member states, government agencies, and international non‐governmental organizations) spell out relationships among different categories of knowledge and non‐knowledge – what is known, acknowledged to be known, and available for use in decision making versus what might be known but cannot be acknowledged or officially used. Through information leveraging, technically sufficient information then becomes socially sufficient information. Thus it is especially information initially categorized as non‐knowledge – including suppressed data, rumour, unverified evidence, and unofficial information – that creates pressure for the renegotiation of information orders. The argument and evidence of the article also address broader issues about how international law and global norms are realigned, how global norms change, and how social groups manage risk. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  October 04, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12495   open full text
• Slavery and institutional morality at Georgetown University: Reply to Nelson.
  Adam Rothman.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 04, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 552-559, September 2018.
  

  October 04, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12600   open full text
• Reconciliation projects and the ontological choreography of race.
  Aaron Panofsky.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 26, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 538-544, September 2018.
  

  September 26, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12599   open full text
• The making of an egalitarian elite: school ethos and the production of privilege.
  Maria Törnqvist.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on privilege and education often focuses on institutions that are elite in a rather traditional way, for example schools that instruct the children of the upper classes according to a reproductive logic that reinforces existing inequalities. The present article addresses the fostering of advantage from the angle of a more ambiguous case. The Global College, a municipal Swedish upper secondary school specialized in environmental issues and global justice, offers an empirical prism for discussing the cultivation of elite identification through the formative potential of an egalitarian ethos. The relation between ethics and class is examined, not only in terms of how moral stands are classed, but also by investigating into the productive capacities of such orientation. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the study unfolds how a possible tension between egalitarianism and elitism resolves into a productive relation whereby the students’ incarnation of ethico‐political ideals becomes a means for developing agency, confidence, entrepreneurial skills and an overall sense of ease. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  July 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12483   open full text
• Issue Information.
  
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 235-236, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12378   open full text
• Inegalitarian populism and the university: British reflections on Newfield's The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
  John Holmwood.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 510-517, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339_5   open full text
• The Great Defunding of Public Higher Education in America.
  Kim Voss.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 506-510, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339_4   open full text
• The Argument is Wrong and the Message is Dangerous.
  Henry E. Brady.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 498-505, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339_3   open full text
• Self‐Interests, Corporatization and Rising Educational Inequality in Public Higher Education: A Review of The Great Mistake.
  Prudence L. Carter.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 493-498, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339_2   open full text
• Have we wrecked public universities? The case of the American decline cycle.
  Christopher Newfield.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 484-493, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339_1   open full text
• Newfield, C. The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press 448 pp US$32.95 (hardback).
  Rebecca Elliott.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 11, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 483-483, June 2018.
  

  June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12339   open full text
• Curran, D. Risk, Power, and Inequality in the 21st Century 2016 Palgrave Macmillan 196pp £64.99 (Hardback).
  Jens Oliver Zinn.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 21, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  May 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12487   open full text
• ‘No one to trust’: the cultural embedding of atomism in financial markets.
  Galit Ailon.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 13, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The paper ethnographically explores the cultural embedding of atomistic indifference in online, global financial markets: arenas that have been digitally designed according to economic ideals and that demand an extreme form of relational and social dissociation from the partners to exchange and from those affected by the transactions. Its case‐study is lay financial‐trading in Israel, a country undergoing extensive neoliberalization. The study shows that dissociation is embedded in an economic culture marked by constant, multi‐sited declarations that economic‐Others are cold, uncaring and manipulative. It takes shape as traders convert the distrust towards Others into distrust towards portions of the Self that represent links to these Others, namely their own social‐psychology and social concern. Acting atomistically and selfishly in the market thus entails considerable reflexive work. The paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the moral and cultural embeddedness of markets in general and of the expanding financial markets in particular. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 13, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12382   open full text
• ‘Friends that last a lifetime’: the importance of emotions amongst volunteers working with refugees in Calais.
  Mark Doidge, Elisa Sandri.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 13, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The European ‘refugee crisis’ has generated a broad movement of volunteers offering their time and skills to support refugees across the continent, in the absence of nation states. This article focuses on volunteers who helped in the informal refugee camp in Calais called the ‘Jungle’. It looks at the importance of emotions as a motivating factor for taking on responsibilities that are usually carried out by humanitarian aid organizations. We argue that empathy is not only the initial motivator for action, but it also sustains the voluntary activity as volunteers make sense of their emotions through working in the camp. This type of volunteering has also created new spaces for sociability and community, as volunteers have formed strong emotional and relational bonds with each other and with the refugees. Finally, this article contributes to the growing body of literature that aims at repositioning emotions within the social sciences research to argue that they are an important analytical tool to understand social life and fieldwork. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 13, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12484   open full text
• Emotion, reflexivity and social change in the era of extreme fossil fuels.
  Debra J. Davidson.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 09, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Reflexivity is an important sociological lens through which to examine the means by which people engage in actions that contribute to social reproduction or social elaboration. Reflexivity theorists have largely overlooked the central place of emotions in reflexive processing, however, thus missing opportunities to enhance our understanding of reflexivity by capitalizing on recent scholarship on emotions emanating from other fields of inquiry. This paper explores the role of emotion in reflexivity, with a qualitative analysis of social responses to hydraulic fracturing in Alberta, Canada, utilizing narrative analysis of long‐form interviews with rural landowners who have experienced direct impacts from hydraulic fracturing, and have attempted to voice their concerns in the public sphere. Based on interviews with a selection of two interview participants, the paper highlights the means by which emotions shape reflexivity in consequential ways, beginning with personal and highly individualized emotional responses to contingent situations, which then factor into the social interactions engaged in the pursuit of personal projects. The shared emotional context that emerges then plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes and their implications for social stasis or change. This study exemplifies the extent to which reflexive processing in response to breaches in the social order can be emotionally tumultuous affairs, constituting a significant personal toll that many may be unwilling to pay. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 09, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12380   open full text
• Chumley L. Creativity Class: Art School and Culture Work in Postsocialist China 2016 Princeton University Press 253pp $35.00 (Hardback).
  Larissa Buchholz.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 08, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  May 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12377   open full text
• ‘Scarier than another storm’: values at risk in the mapping and insuring of US floodplains.
  Rebecca Elliott.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract How do people respond to the ways in which insurance mediates environmental risks? Socio‐cultural risk research has characterized and analyzed the experiential dimension of risk, but has yet to focus on insurance, which is a key institution shaping how people understand and relate to risk. Insurance not only assesses and communicates risk; it also economizes it, making the problem on the ground not just one of risk, but also of value. This article addresses these issues with an investigation of the social life of the flood insurance rate map, the central technology of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), as it grafts a new landscape of ‘value at risk’ onto the physical and social world of New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Like other risk technologies, ubiquitous in modern societies as decision‐making and planning tools, the map disseminates information about value and risk in order to tame uncertainty and enable prudent action oriented toward the future. However, drawing together interview, ethnographic, and documentary data, I find that for its users on the ground, the map does not simply measure ‘value at risk’ in ways that produce clear strategies for protecting property values from flooding. Instead, it puts values‐beyond simply the financial worth of places‐at risk, as well as implicates past, present, and future risks beyond simply flooding. By informing and enlarging the stakes of what needs protecting, and from what, I argue that plural and interacting ‘values at risk’ shape how people live with and respond to environmental risks that are mediated by insurance technologies. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12381   open full text
• Do ‘his’ education and class matter? The changing effect of the husband on women's labour‐market transitions in Italy and Britain.
  Cristina Solera.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract A new stream of sociological and demographic theory emphasizes individualization as the key process in late modernity. As maintained by Hakim (), women also have increasingly become agents of their own biographies, less influenced by the social class and the family. In this study, I intend to contribute to this debate by analysing how, in Italy and Britain, women's movements between employment and housework are linked to their husband's education and class, and how this link has changed across cohorts. Using discrete‐time event‐history modelling on the BHPS and ILFI, my findings show that in both countries, if the woman's educational and labour‐market profile is controlled for, the husband's occupation and education have lost importance. Yet, although based more on ‘her’ than ‘his’ profile, divisions along ‘classic’ lines are still evident and not context‐free, and they assume different forms in the two countries with distinctive institutional and cultural settings. In ‘liberal’ Britain, women's labour‐market participation responds more to motherhood and class than to education, while in ‘familistic’ Italy education seems more important, which suggests the existence of returns over and above strictly human capital/economic ones. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12373   open full text
• Can cultural consumption increase future earnings? Exploring the economic returns to cultural capital.
  Aaron Reeves, Robert de Vries.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Cultural consumption is often viewed as a form of embodied cultural capital which can be converted into economic rewards (e.g., earnings) because such practices increase the likelihood of moving into more advantaged social positions. However, quantitative evidence supporting this theory remains uncertain because it is often unable to rule out alternative explanations. Cultural consumption appears to influence hiring decisions in some elite firms, in both the US and the UK, but it is unclear whether these processes are applicable to other professional occupations and other labour market processes, such as promotions. We examine these processes using data from Understanding Society, an individual‐level panel survey conducted in the UK, allowing us to explore whether cultural consumption predicts future earnings, upward social mobility and promotions. People who consume a larger number of cultural activities are more likely to earn higher wages in the future, to be upwardly socially mobile, and to be promoted. Cultural consumption, then, can function as cultural capital in some labour market settings, potentially contributing to the reproduction of income inequality between generations. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  May 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12374   open full text
• How do parents’ educational fields affect the choice of educational field?
  Håvard Helland, Øyvind N. Wiborg.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 26, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study examines the links between parental education and students’ choice of field of study in Norwegian higher education. In our interpretation of the results, we suggest a status group perspective that integrates risk aversion models, micro‐class theory, and cultural reproduction schemes. Complete Norwegian register data for all individuals born from 1955 to 1980 allow for a fine‐grained examination of diverse fields of study not attempted in earlier studies. The findings reveal that intergenerational reproduction of educational fields is widespread, but its extent varies across fields of study. The tendency is most pronounced among children of professional, educated parents with masters and higher‐level degrees. Moreover, the analysis shows that students who do not choose the same field as their parents nonetheless tend to choose educational fields close to those of their parents. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 26, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12370   open full text
• Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression.
  Jennifer Tomlinson, Danat Valizade, Daniel Muzio, Andy Charlwood, Sundeep Aulakh.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 26, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Intersectionality theory is concerned with integrating social characteristics to better understanding complex human relations and inequalities in organizations and societies (McCall ). Recently, intersectionality research has taken a categorical and quantitative turn as scholars critically adopt but retain existing social categories to explain differences in labour market outcomes. A key contention is that social categories carry penalties or privileges and their intersection promotes or hinders the life chances of particular groups and individuals. An emergent debate is whether the intersection of disadvantaged characteristics (such as female gender or minority ethnic status) produce penalties that are additive, multiplicative or ameliorative. Research is inconclusive and as yet pays little attention to moderating factors such as employer type, size, geographic location or work profile. Drawing on administrative records for individuals qualified as solicitors in England and Wales, collected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), combined with aggregated workforce data and firm characteristics of their law firms, we undertake a statistical analysis of the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the profession with a degree of precision and nuance not previously possible. In response to calls to broaden studies of inequalities and intersectionality beyond their effect on pay or income (Castilla ) we focus on career progression to partnership as our key measure of success. The original contribution of our study is twofold. First, we establish statistically different profiles of law firms, showing how the solicitors’ profession is stratified by gender, ethnicity and socio‐economic background, as well as the type of legal work undertaken by developing a model of socio‐economic stratification in the profession. Second, we demonstrate that while penalties tend to be additive (i.e. the sum of the individual ethnic and gender penalties) this varies significantly by law firm profile and in some situations the effect is ameliorative. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 26, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12375   open full text
• Smångs, M. Doing Violence, Making Race: Lynching and White Racial Group Formation in the U.S. South, 1882–1930 2017 Routledge 180pp (Hardback).
  Amy Kate Bailey.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 24, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  April 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12376   open full text
• Bessant J. Farthing R. and Watts R. The Precarious Generation: A Political Economy of Young People 2017 Routledge 228 pp. £85.00 (Hardback) £36.99 (Paperback).
  Maria Grasso.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 24, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  April 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12379   open full text
• Habits and orders of everyday life: commensal adjustment in Anglo‐French couples.
  Isabelle Darmon, Alan Warde.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper examines processes of habit reshuffling and change in different contexts of household formation, looking specifically at habits regarding eating and commensality. It is based on a study of 14 couples, each with one English and one French partner, half of whom live in France, half in England. We examine the interplay between partners, their determination to eat together as a couple, and the various ‘orders’ associated with their commensal pact (diets, routines, extra‐marital commensality), both when they start as couples and as parents of young children. We draw on the specificity of cross‐national couple experience to cast light on processes of adjustment – to one another, and to the new country of residence for the migrant partner. In particular, we explore the potential of notions of ‘split’ and ‘solid’ ‘patrimonies of incorporated habits’, ‘re‐shuffling’ of habits and dispositions, and ‘habit memory’, to characterize the dynamics of habits at play in each of the orders under scrutiny. Overall, the paper contributes to the analysis of habit as the ‘stuff’ of orders of everyday life. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12371   open full text
• Disability differentials in educational attainment in England: primary and secondary effects.
  Stella Chatzitheochari, Lucinda Platt.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Childhood disability has been largely overlooked in social stratification and life course research. As a result, we know remarkably little about mechanisms behind well‐documented disability differentials in educational outcomes. This study investigates educational transitions of disabled youth using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. We draw on social stratification literature on primary and secondary effects as well as that on stigma and labelling in order to explain disabled young people's educational outcomes. We find that disability differentials in transition rates to full‐time academic upper secondary education and to university are largely the result of primary effects, reflected in differences in school performance between disabled and non‐disabled young people. However, we also find evidence for secondary effects, with similarly achieving disabled young people less likely to pursue full‐time academic upper secondary education compared to their non‐disabled peers. We examine the extent to which these effects can be explained by disabled youth's suppressed educational expectations as well as their experiences of being bullied at school, which we link to the stigma experienced by disabled young people and their families. We find that educational expectations play an important role at crucial transitions in the English school system, while the effect of bullying is considerably smaller. By drawing attention to different social processes contributing to disability differentials in attainment, our study moves beyond medical models that implicitly assume a naturalized association of disability with poor educational outcomes, and demonstrates the parallels of disability with other ascriptive inequalities. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12372   open full text
• A child's day: trends in time use in the UK from 1975 to 2015.
  Killian Mullan.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper examines change in school‐age children’s (8–16 years) time use in the United Kingdom between 1975 and 2015. Over this period, concerns for children’s safety, technological change, and increased emphasis on success in school are widely argued to have altered children’s daily lives, leading for example to less time outdoors, more time in screen‐based activities, and more time focused on education. Using data from three national time use surveys collected in 1974–5, 2000–01 and 2014–15, this paper explores the extent to which these arguments reflect actual change in how children spend their time throughout the day. The results show that between 1975 and 2015 children increased their time at home, and spent more time in screen‐based activities and doing homework. Decreases in time in out‐of‐home activities were concentrated in time in unstructured play, partially offset by increased time in sport. A decomposition of trends revealed that, despite a narrowing of the gender gap in time in housework, gender remains a significant factor determining many aspects of children’s time use. In contrast, the significance of age declined in most leisure activities, with the exception of screen‐based activities where significant age differences emerged in 2000 and widened further in 2015. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12369   open full text
• Beyond the heartlands: deindustrialization, naturalization and the meaning of an ‘industrial’ tradition.
  David Nettleingham.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Deindustrialization is a complex and multifaceted series of processes and transitions, reflecting the equally complicated web of social relationships and interdependencies that constitute(d) an industrial society. Contemporary scholars have looked beyond just the economic impact of industrial loss, to the cultural, temporal and spatial legacies and impacts wrought by the mass closures of the 1980s, as well as the continuing presence of an industrial identity in struggles over representation and regeneration. However, deindustrialization has a history that precedes the volatility and culmination of that period, and has impacted upon a more geographically diverse range of former industrial locations than are commonly represented. The narratives that surround some sites are complicated by their displacement in time, place and discourse; they lack the political capital of an ‘industrial’ identity through this disassociation. In this article I aim to go beyond what we might consider the industrial ‘heartlands’ of the UK to a place that has felt the impact of deindustrialization, but which falls outside of the usual representations of the UK's industrial past. I explore how the industrial identity and memory of a place can be naturalized and selectively reworked for the needs of the hour, the very meaning of ‘industrial’ altered in the process. I argue that for sites unable to access or utilize the imagery of modern, heavy industry for community or promotional aims, deindustrialization becomes a process of rewriting an historic identity – one that sheds new light on industrial loss in diverse situations, and at an ever‐increasing distance from closure. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12365   open full text
• Youth participation in ‘post‐secular’ times: young Muslim and Buddhist practitioners as religious citizens.
  Anita Harris, Kim Lam.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 10, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Recently there has been renewed interest in the role of religion in the public sphere in the context of a ‘post‐secular’ age characterized by the resurgence of religious identities and communities in increasingly diverse, multi‐faith societies. Young people's active political and civic engagement has also emerged as a core challenge for robust democracies. While an interesting body of current research suggests that religious commitment may cultivate participation amongst youth by acting as an incubator of civic and political engagement, such literature often positions religiosity as outside of, and consequently at odds with participation in a secular public sphere. We suggest that while religiosity may indeed act as an incubator for civic and political engagement, we propose greater attention to an emergence of alternative, entwined conceptualizations of religious citizenship evident in the practices, performances and dispositions of young Muslim and Buddhist religious practitioners in Australia, whereby processes of individuation contribute to greater fluidity within and across the domains of the religious and the civic. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 10, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12368   open full text
• Pereira Maria do Mar. Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship. An Ethnography of Academia 2017 Routledge 246 pp £90.00 (hardback).
  Isabelle Hertner, Katherine Twamley.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 06, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  April 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12367   open full text
• Producing ‘internal suspect bodies’: divisive effects of UK counter‐terrorism measures on Muslim communities in Leeds and Bradford.
  Madeline‐Sophie Abbas.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on UK government counter‐terrorism measures has claimed that Muslims are treated as a ‘suspect community’. However, there is limited research exploring the divisive effects that membership of a ‘suspect community’ has on relations within Muslim communities. Drawing from interviews with British Muslims living in Leeds or Bradford, I address this gap by explicating how co‐option of Muslim community members to counter extremism fractures relations within Muslim communities. I reveal how community members internalize fears of state targeting which precipitates internal disciplinary measures. I contribute the category of ‘internal suspect body’ which is materialized through two intersecting conditions within preventative counter‐terrorism: the suspected extremist for Muslims to look out for and suspected informer who might report fellow Muslims. I argue that the suspect community operates through a network of relations by which terrors of counter‐terrorism are reproduced within Muslim communities with divisive effects. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  April 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12366   open full text
• The ‘other’ London effect: the diversification of London's suburban grammar schools and the rise of hyper‐selective elite state schools.
  Sol Gamsu.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 31, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper examines the rise of a new elite of ‘super‐state’ schools in London, revealing a growing divide within the state sector which problematizes claims that the capital is a ‘hotspot’ for social mobility (Social Mobility Commission ). Although recent research has revealed a ‘London effect’ in which students in the capital on Free School Meals outperform their peers in other regions (Greaves, Macmillan and Sibieta ), inequalities between London's schools in access to elite universities have been overlooked. Drawing on a case study of a suburban London grammar school, ‘King Henry's School’, I show how ethnic‐minority suburbanization has combined with an institutional strategy to compete with elite private schools. Strategies of selection have been mobilized alongside elements of elite ‘gentlemanly’ educational culture in order to reposition the school within the hierarchy of London's schools. The result is a hyper‐selective school which provides a conduit to elite universities for upwardly mobile British‐Asian students. I show that this strategy has strong parallels with the school's attempts in the early twentieth century to compete with London's fee‐paying ‘public’ schools. The continuing symbolic value of ‘traditional’ forms of elite educational culture to a school seeking to reposition itself within the field reflects deep structural patterns of inequality in English education. To understand how apparent improvements in social mobility can sit alongside deepening inequalities between state schools, there is a need for a historical sociological approach that takes account of long‐term processes of institutional change (Savage ; Inglis ). - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  March 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12364   open full text
• Mobility closure in the upper class: assessing time and forms of capital.
  Maren Toft.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 30, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Most understandings of the ways classes become social groupings centre on processes of mobility closure whereby mutual appreciation and recognition within classes arise from homogenous experiences over time. The mapping of such structured biographies, however, remains understudied. This paper explores intra‐ and intergenerational mobility patterns in the upper strata of the Norwegian class structure and aims to include temporal processes and multiple forms of capital in the quantification of class trajectories. By combining multiple correspondence analysis and social sequence analysis, two important but often neglected aspects of recruitment to the upper class are emphasized: first, by introducing multiple forms of capital, different ways of maintaining mobility closure are demonstrated; second, different pathways to power are highlighted by distinguishing between divergent class careers. A key aim of the analysis is to explore internal divisions within the upper class in forms of parental capital (an ‘origin space’) and link these divisions to a typology of ‘destination careers’ in adulthood. The analysis suggests that individuals from modest origins are more likely to have careers that feature a biographically late arrival and/or short‐term affiliations to upper‐class positions whereas individuals from families rich in capital are more likely to have stable careers in the upper‐class fractions from which they originate. The analysis thus reveals important divisions in the trajectories of Norwegians who reach the upper class; not only are there differences in their upbringing in terms of the availability of different amounts and types of capital but such divisions also seem linked to their own class careers later in adulthood. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 30, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12362   open full text
• Social mobility and demand for redistribution in Europe: a comparative analysis.
  Antonio M. Jaime‐Castillo, Ildefonso Marqués‐Perales.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The literature on preferences for redistribution has paid little attention to the effect of social mobility on the demand for redistribution and no systematic test of the hypotheses connecting social mobility and preferences for redistribution has yet been done to date. We use the diagonal reference model to estimate the effect of origin and destination classes on preferences for redistribution in a large sample of European countries using data from the European Social Survey. Our findings are consistent with the logic of acculturation in the sense that newcomers tend to adapt their views to those of the destination class at early stages and that upward and downward mobility do not have distinctive effects on the formation of political preferences. However, even though social origins seem to have a limited impact on preferences for redistribution, the evidence does not support the hypothesis that mobile and non‐mobile individuals are alike. We also find that the effect of social origin on preferences varies largely across countries. The empirical evidence leads to the conclusion that the effect of social origin on preferences for redistribution increases in contexts of strong familism. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  March 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12363   open full text
• The composition of precarity: ‘emerging’ composers’ experiences of opportunity culture in contemporary classical music.
  Neil Thomas Smith, Rachel Thwaites.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 28, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper examines the precarious working lives of ‘emerging’ composers attempting to build a career in the world of new classical music in the UK. This topic is approached by considering the ‘composition opportunity’, success in which is seen as an important element in ‘making it’ in this sphere. We argue that such schemes in fact manifest a crucial tension in the nature of artistic labour, and are, at the very least, problematic in their function as conduits towards full professional identity. They may instead act to maintain the precarious working situation of composers in a neoliberal age. The working lives of artists are all too rarely illuminated, and new music composers are no exception; this survey of 47 emerging composers is the largest study of such individuals in the UK. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  February 28, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12359   open full text
• DeHanas D.N. London Youth, Religion, and Politics: Engagement and Activism from Brixton to Brick Lane 2016 Oxford University Press 246 pp £55.00 (Hardback).
  Bryan S. Turner.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 27, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 876-877, September 2018.
  

  February 27, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12361   open full text
• Reich, A. Selling our Souls: The Commodification of US Hospital Care 2014 Princeton University Press 248 pp £32.95 (Hardback).
  Marion Fourcade.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 25, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 868-870, September 2018.
  

  February 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12352   open full text
• One world is not enough: the structured phenomenology of lifestyle migrants in East Asia.
  Rob Stones, Kate Botterill, Maggy Lee, Karen O'Reilly.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 25, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The paper is based on original empirical research into the lifestyle migration of European migrants, primarily British, to Thailand and Malaysia, and of Hong Kong Chinese migrants to Mainland China. We combine strong structuration theory (SST) with Heideggerian phenomenology to develop a distinctive approach to the interplay between social structures and the lived experience of migrants. The approach enables a rich engagement with the subjectivities of migrants, an engagement that is powerfully enhanced by close attention to how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts. The approach is presented as one that could be fruitfully adopted to explore parallel issues within all types of migration. As is intrinsic to lifestyle migration, commitment to a better quality of life is central to the East Asian migrants, but they seek an uncomplicated, physically enhanced texture of life, framed more by a phenomenology of prosaic well‐being than of self‐realization or transcendence. In spite of possessing economic and status privileges due to their relatively elite position within global structures the reality for a good number of the lifestyle migrants falls short of their prior expectations. They are subject to particular kinds of socio‐structural marginaliszation as a consequence of the character of their migration, and they find themselves relatively isolated and facing a distinct range of challenges. A comparison with research into various groups of migrants to the USA brings into relief the specificities of the socio‐structural positioning of the lifestyle migrants of the study. Those East Asian migrants who express the greatest sense of ease and contentment seem to be those who have responded creatively to the specific challenges of their socio‐structural situation. Often, this appears to have been achieved through understated but active involvements with their new settings and through sustaining focused transnational connections and relationships. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  February 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12357   open full text
• Bureaucratic power in note‐writing: authoritative expertise within the state.
  Marte Mangset, Kristin Asdal.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract What produces the power of senior civil servants at ministries of finance, positioned at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy? Max Weber has claimed that a hierarchical organization, meritocratic recruitment and procedural work provide bureaucracies with legitimacy. In particular he insisted on the role of Fachwissen (disciplinary knowledge) obtained through formal education. However, he also argued for the role of Dienstwissen, forms of knowledge and skills stemming from the experience of service in itself. Weber did not elaborate on this concept in detail, and few analysts of governmental expertise have examined this notion. We draw on the practice‐turn in sociology, combining the study of governmental expertise with micro‐sociological studies of administrative practices. By analysing interviews with 48 senior civil servants at the British, French and Norwegian ministries of finance about their daily practices, this article demonstrates that bureaucratic note‐writing and the procedural evaluation of such notes constitute a key form of expertise that yields authority. The study provides an analytical framework for understanding what administrative expertise consists of, how it is integral to procedural work, the forms bureaucratic hierarchies take in practice and how these three dimensions provide authority. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  February 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12356   open full text
• Baiocchi, G. and Ganuza, E. Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation 2017 Stanford University Press 224 pp. $24.95 (Paperback).
  Gabriel Hetland.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 23, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 870-872, September 2018.
  

  February 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12353   open full text
• Hsu, B.Y. Borrowing Together: Microfinance and Cultivating Social Ties 2017 Cambridge University Press 174 pp £75.00 (Hardback).
  Supriya Singh.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 21, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 873-874, September 2018.
  

  February 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12354   open full text
• D., Elder‐Vass Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy Cambridge University Press 2016 257 pp. £99.99 (hardback) £34.99 (paperback).
  Sarah Manski.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 21, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 874-875, September 2018.
  

  February 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12355   open full text
• Deserving citizenship? Exploring migrants' experiences of the ‘citizenship test’ process in the United Kingdom.
  Pierre Monforte, Leah Bassel, Kamran Khan.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Since the early 2000s several European countries have introduced language and citizenship tests as new requirements for access to long‐term residence or naturalization. The content of citizenship tests has been often presented as exclusionary in nature, in particular as it is based on the idea that access to citizenship has to be ‘deserved’. In this paper, we aim to explore the citizenship tests ‘from below’, through the focus on the experience of migrants who prepare and take the ‘Life in the UK’ test, and with particular reference to how they relate to the idea of ‘deservingness’. Through a set of in‐depth interviews with migrants in two different cities (Leicester and London), we show that many of them use narratives in which they distinguish between the ‘deserving citizens’ and the ‘undeserving Others’ when they reflect upon their experience of becoming citizens. In so doing, they negotiate new hierarchies of inclusion into and exclusion from citizenship, which reflect broader neo‐liberal and ethos‐based conceptions of citizenship. - 'The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. '

  February 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12351   open full text
• Fair chances and hard work? Families making sense of inequality and opportunity in 21st‐century Britain.
  Helene Snee, Fiona Devine.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In British social mobility discourse, the rhetoric of fair access can obscure wider issues of social justice. While socio‐economic inequalities continue to shape young people's lives, sociological work on class dis‐identification suggests social class is less obviously meaningful as a source of individual and collective identity. This paper considers subjective understandings of the post‐16 education and employment landscape in this context, drawing on qualitative research exploring the aspirations of young men and women as they completed compulsory education in north‐west England, and the hopes their parents had for their future. It shows how unequal access to resources shaped the older generation's expectations for their children, although this was rarely articulated using the explicit language of class. Their children recognized they faced a difficult job market but embraced the idea that success was possible through hard work. Both generations drew moral boundaries and made judgments based on implicit classed discourses about undeserving others, while at the same time disavowing class identities. There was a more explicit recognition of gender inequality among the parents framed with reference to hopes for greater freedom for their daughters. Opportunities and inequalities were thus understood in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  February 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12358   open full text
• The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor.
  Jessica Gerrard.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper examines the affective dimensions of new forms of informal entrepreneurial work carried out in spaces of unemployment. Situating the analysis within contemporary scholarship on deservingness and on affect and labour, I shed light on the forms of entrepreneurial labour that rely upon affect‐driven economies of exchange underpinned by moral judgements of deservingness, value and worth. In particular, this paper draws on a multi‐city (Melbourne, London, San Francisco) study of homeless street press sellers (The Big Issue and Street Sheet) to explore the ways in which contemporary practices of charity and care are carried out through individualized market‐place exchanges. Sellers’ accounts of their work reveal how smiling and being (or looking) happy is a performative expectation that must be managed in the face of poverty and precarity. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  February 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12350   open full text
• The collective roots and rewards of upward educational mobility.
  Shirin Shahrokni.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Drawing on in‐depth interviews with descendants of North African working‐class immigrants admitted to elite higher institutions in France, this paper investigates the under‐researched role of family dynamics in facilitating upward educational mobility and informing the experience of social ascension. It shows that concrete mobility strategies, such as authoritative parenting and close mentorship from older siblings have been deployed to enable the respondents’ educational attainment. Moreover, a set of moral resources transmitted through stories about family‐rooted aspirations and stories about post‐migration hardships and sacrifices have contributed to forging strong motivational dispositions that have facilitated school success among the respondents. These resources have further shaped the symbolic significance the interviewees associate with mobility. In contrast with the dominant individual‐centred narrative of success, for second‐generation North African immigrants, mobility represents a powerful way of ‘giving back’ to former‐generation migrants whose mobility dreams often had to be relinquished. The respondents also position themselves as role‐models for other youths of racially and socially disadvantaged backgrounds: their mobility pathways are described as vital for collective advancements particularly through the sense of minority empowerment these generate. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  February 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12349   open full text
• Do terrorist attacks affect ethnic discrimination in the labour market? Evidence from two randomized field experiments.
  Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, Tak Wing Chan, Elisabeth Ugreninov, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Jon Rogstad.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Terrorist attacks are known to influence public opinion. But do they also change behaviour? We address this question by comparing the results of two identical randomized field experiments on ethnic discrimination in hiring that we conducted in Oslo. The first experiment was conducted before the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway; the second experiment was conducted after the attacks. In both experiments, applicants with a typical Pakistani name were significantly less likely to get a job interview compared to those with a typical Norwegian name. But the ethnic gap in call‐back rates were very similar in the two experiments. Thus, Pakistanis in Norway still experienced the same level of discrimination, despite claims that Norwegians have become more positive about migrants after the far‐right, anti‐migrant terrorist attacks of 2011. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  January 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12344   open full text
• Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution 2017 Princeton University Press 1128pp £29.95 (Hardback).
  Charles Turner.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 23, 2018
  --- - - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 3, Page 865-867, September 2018.
  

  January 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12348   open full text
• The struggle for Via Bologna street market: crisis, racial denial and speaking back to power in Naples Italy.
  Antonia Dawes.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 10, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted with migrant and Italian street vendors in Naples, southern Italy, in 2012. It tells the story of Via Bologna market which was nearly closed down by the City Hall at the time. Naples is a city where issues of poverty and unemployment pre‐date and have been exacerbated by manifold narratives of crisis now unfolding across Europe regarding the economy, political legitimacy, security and migration. Street markets have always been an important and visible economic survival strategy for both Neapolitans and migrants there. This article shows how the Via Bologna street vendors appropriated and adapted discourses about crisis to form their own cosmopolitan social movement that halted the closure of the market. It argues that, in the age of globalized migration, the multilingual nature of such collective action is central to understanding social struggles that must be organized between marginalized groups of people divided by race, religion, politics and legal status. This, frequently ambiguous, transcultural solidarity speaks back against a mainstream post‐racial discourse – often articulated by the Neapolitan street vendors at the market – that would reduce the complexity of such collective action to questions of poverty and class struggle. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  January 10, 2018   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12347   open full text
• Agency in advanced liberal services: grounding sociological knowledge in homeless people's accounts.
  Cameron Parsell, Andrew Clarke.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 29, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper aims to understand how people who are homeless respond to advanced liberal social services that endeavour to promote their autonomy and responsible actions. We prioritize the experiences and positions of people who are homeless, and what agentic action means to them. Sociological literature is selective about what accounts are deemed agentic. Agency is associated with accounts that resist or subvert dominant neoliberal framings of homelessness as failure of individuals. When people experiencing homelessness or poverty themselves foreground autonomy or responsibility, sociologists treat them as cultural dopes who have internalized neoliberal discourse. Our analysis is driven by an ethnographic study in an Australian homelessness shelter. We demonstrate how people who are homeless neither outright reject nor completely embrace advanced liberal practices to influence their actions and promote autonomy. People engaged in relational reasoning. Paternalist and advanced liberal social services were both lauded and rejected for their capacities and limitations to realize a good life. We contribute to the discussion for sociology to value people's accounts and experiences, rather than broader social process explaining their accounts. From the perspectives of people who are homeless, we show that just because something appears neoliberal does not mean it should be automatically rejected. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12346   open full text
• A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’.
  Vegard Jarness, Magne Paalgard Flemmen.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 26, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12345   open full text
• The diversification of inequality.
  Malcolm Brynin, Simonetta Longhi, Wouter Zwysen.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 22, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract We examine intersectionality on the basis of increasingly complex interactions between gender and ethnic groups, which we argue derive from the growing diversity of these groups. While we critique the concept of superdiversity, we suggest that increased diversity leads to a ‘diversification of inequality’. This is characterised by an increasing incidence of inequality through the growth in migration and of the size and variety of ethnic minorities, and by a weakening of specific inequalities. We demonstrate this using the Labour Force Survey and conclude that there is a clear diversification of inequality but also that ethnicity is a more potent source of inequality than gender. Diversity also increases the reach of inequality through producing and increasing the number of intersections. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12341   open full text
• Science or liberal arts? Cultural capital and college major choice in China.
  Anning Hu, Xiaogang Wu.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 19, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Previous studies on major East Asian societies such as Japan and Korea generally fail to find a strong effect of cultural capital in educational inequality, partly due to the characteristic extreme focus on standardized test and curriculum. This study shifts attention to the horizontal stratification of education by investigating the association between family background, cultural capital, and college major choice in contemporary China. Based on analysis of data from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey (BCSPS), we found that, on average, cultural capital significantly mediates the relationship between family background and college major preference. Those with greater endowment of cultural capital are more likely to come from socio‐economically advantaged families, and, at the same time, demonstrate a stronger propensity to major in liberal arts fields rather than science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Further analyses reveal that the association between cultural capital and academic field choice comes into being by way of performance in the Chinese test in the national college entrance examination and of the non‐cognitive dispositions, such as self‐efficacy and self‐esteem. Our findings better our understanding of formation of the horizontal stratification of higher education. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12342   open full text
• An investigation of social class inequalities in general cognitive ability in two British birth cohorts.
  Roxanne Connelly, Vernon Gayle.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 19, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract The ‘Flynn effect’ describes the substantial and long‐standing increase in average cognitive ability test scores, which has been observed in numerous psychological studies. Flynn makes an appeal for researchers to move beyond psychology's standard disciplinary boundaries and to consider sociological contexts, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of cognitive inequalities. In this article we respond to this appeal and investigate social class inequalities in general cognitive ability test scores over time. We analyse data from the National Child Development Study (1958) and the British Cohort Study (1970). These two British birth cohorts are suitable nationally representative large‐scale data resources for studying inequalities in general cognitive ability. We observe a large parental social class effect, net of parental education and gender in both cohorts. The overall finding is that large social class divisions in cognitive ability can be observed when children are still at primary school, and similar patterns are observed in each cohort. Notably, pupils with fathers at the lower end of the class structure are at a distinct disadvantage. This is a disturbing finding and it is especially important because cognitive ability is known to influence individuals later in the lifecourse. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12343   open full text
• The logic of counterfactual analysis in case‐study explanation.
  James Mahoney, Rodrigo Barrenechea.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 19, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In this paper, we develop a set‐theoretic and possible worlds approach to counterfactual analysis in case‐study explanation. Using this approach, we first consider four kinds of counterfactuals: necessary condition counterfactuals, SUIN condition counterfactuals, sufficient condition counterfactuals, and INUS condition counterfactuals. We explore the distinctive causal claims entailed in each, and conclude that necessary condition and SUIN condition counterfactuals are the most useful types for hypothesis assessment in case‐study research. We then turn attention to the development of a rigorous understanding of the ‘minimal‐rewrite’ rule, linking this rule to insights from set theory about the relative importance of necessary conditions. We show why, logically speaking, a comparative analysis of two necessary condition counterfactuals will tend to favour small events and contingent happenings. A third section then presents new tools for specifying the level of generality of the events in a counterfactual. We show why and how the goals of formulating empirically important versus empirically plausible counterfactuals stand in tension with one another. Finally, we use our framework to link counterfactual analysis to causal sequences, which in turn provides advantages for conducting counterfactual projections. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12340   open full text
• Talking about time: temporality and motivation for international Christian humanitarian actors in South Sudan.
  Amy Kaler, John R. Parkins.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 19, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract We investigate ways in which international evangelical Christian humanitarians talk about time as they engaged in humanitarian assistance and development work in South Sudan. Our focus on Christian development work is motivated by a desire to understand how and why people persevere in humanitarian work and reconcile seemingly impossible circumstances and to further elaborate sociological conceptions of time as experienced by people in their own lives. We argue that their faith commitments produce ways of understanding time and causality which make possible their attachment to risky and dangerous work. Our work is based on in‐depth interviews with people who work or have recently worked for Christian faith‐based organizations in South Sudan (n = 30). Drawing on Tavory and Eliasoph's () concepts of life narratives and life projects, we treat our participants as culturally competent actors who skilfully construct their stories through drawing on collectively shared faith‐inflected ideas about temporality and causation. We argue that these ideas represent an important resource for getting through the risks, challenges and uncertainties of doing humanitarian work in complex crises. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12335   open full text
• Conjugal intimacy, gender and modernity in contemporary China.
  Jieyu Liu, Eona Bell, Jiayu Zhang.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 15, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract The new generation of modernity theorists have forecast the democratization of gender relations within intimate relationships in late‐modern times. Chinese society has undergone rapid and dramatic changes in its unique trajectory of political, social and economic reform. Using China as an example of a region which has been largely ignored in contemporary social theory, this article enters the debate to contest the extent to which conjugal relationships are democratized in line with modernity. We further test the assertion that modern marriages are characterized by increased self‐disclosure and communication between partners. Data from a national survey on Chinese families is analysed in relation to the level of self‐disclosure between husbands and wives; gender division of housework; household decision‐making; and home ownership. We highlight the impact of gender, cohort and location (urban, rural or migrant) on experiences of modernity and draw attention to the material, social and cultural factors which continue to shape conjugal relations in contemporary Chinese society. Based on our findings, we contest the argument that disclosing intimacy between intimate partners is a defining characteristic of modern relationships, and suggest that other social factors may condition degrees of self‐disclosure in marriage. Similarly, we question the extent to which heterosexual conjugal equality is attained: the cultural practices and values of patrilineal family organization, together with material circumstances, continue to influence marital relations in China. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12338   open full text
• Muslim gay men: identity conflict and politics in a Muslim majority nation.
  Nassim Hamdi, Monia Lachheb, Eric Anderson.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 08, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract While a number of investigations have examined how gay Muslim men view homosexuality in relation to religious Western homophobia, this research constitutes the first account of the experiences of self‐identified gay men living in an African, Muslim nation, where same‐sex sex is both illegal and actively persecuted. We interviewed 28 gay men living in Tunisia in order to understand how they assimilate their sexual, religious and ethnic identities within a highly homophobic culture. Utilizing notions of homoerasure and homohysteria (McCormack and Eric Anderson ,b), and examining the intersection of identity conflict and new social movement theory, we highlight four strategies that participants use to negotiate the dissonance of living with conflicting identities in a context of religious homophobia: (1) privileging their Islamic identities and rejecting homosexuality as a legitimate sexual identity; (2) rejecting Islam and accepting homosexuality as a legitimate sexual identity; (3) interpreting Islam to be supportive of homosexuality; and (4) creating a non‐penetrative homosexuality to be compatible with literal Qur'anic interpretations. We discuss the multiple difficulties these men face in relation to religious intolerance and ethnic heteronormativity, and reflect upon the possibilities and obstacles of using Western identity politics towards the promotion of social justice within a framework of growing homohysteria. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 08, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12334   open full text
• The limits of the decentred state: the case of policing insurance claims fraud.
  Anders Stenström.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 01, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Existing research clearly shows that the public–private divide is continuously being challenged, recast and transformed. However, this article argues that a sharp distinction between public and private continues to operate as an important norm for professionals involved in the investigation of insurance claims fraud in Sweden. It shows how power within private insurance companies and the police authority is organized around the public–private divide, which is in turn mobilized to justify repression and to give investigations legitimacy. The article indicates that the formal public–private distinction is far more thoroughly maintained than is suggested by the existing literature. Rather than challenging the centrality of state power, private insurers and the police construct, maintain and have a stake in the reproduction of a state‐centric monopoly of crime control. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  December 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12336   open full text
• Pathological integration, or, how East Europeans use racism to become British.
  Jon E. Fox, Magda Mogilnicka.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 30, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract East Europeans are integrating into life in the UK. This entails learning to get along with their new neighbours, but it also involves not getting along with certain neighbours. Integration is not confined to benevolent forms of everyday cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and conviviality; it can also include more pathological forms, like racism. Whilst integration is generally seen as desirable, the learning that it entails necessarily includes less desirable practices and norms. The aim of this article is to show how East Europeans in the UK have been acquiring specifically British competencies of racism. This doesn't mean all East Europeans are racist or they always use racism; it does mean, however, that racism is a part of the integration equation. We focus on the racist and racializing practices of Poles, Hungarians and Romanians in Bristol in the UK. These East Europeans are using racism to insert themselves more favourably into Britain's racialized status hierarchies. This is a kind of integration. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  November 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12337   open full text
• Information barriers and social stratification in higher education: evidence from a field experiment.
  Giovanni Abbiati, Gianluca Argentin, Carlo Barone, Antonio Schizzerotto.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 29, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Our contribution assesses the role of information barriers for patterns of participation in Higher Education (HE) and the related social inequalities. For this purpose, we developed a large‐scale clustered randomised experiment involving over 9,000 high school seniors from 62 Italian schools. We designed a counseling intervention to correct student misperceptions of the profitability of HE, that is, the costs, economic returns and chances of success of investments in different tertiary programs. We employed a longitudinal survey to test whether treated students' educational trajectories evolved differently relative to a control group. We find that, overall, treated students enrolled less often in less remunerative fields of study in favour of postsecondary vocational programmes. Most importantly, this effect varied substantially by parental social class and level of education. The shift towards vocational programmes was mainly due to the offspring of low‐educated parents; in contrast, children of tertiary graduates increased their participation in more rewarding university fields. Similarly, the redistribution from weak fields to vocational programmes mainly involved the children of the petty bourgeoisie and the working class, while upper class students invested in more rewarding university fields. We argue that the status‐maintenance model proposed by Breen and Goldthorpe can explain these socially differentiated treatment effects. Overall, our results challenge the claim that student misperceptions contribute to horizontal inequalities in access to HE. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  November 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12332   open full text
• The moral economy of ready‐made food.
  Kathryn Wheeler.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 22, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract The aim of this paper is to develop and apply a framework to explore how moralities of consumption are constituted in and through markets. Using the case of ready‐made foods, this paper argues moral economies are comprised through interactions between micro‐, meso‐ and macro‐level processes in the form of instituted systems of provision, state regulation, collective food customs promoted though media, NGOs and lifestyle practitioners, and the everyday reflections of consumers. Building on a theoretical framework developed to understand the moral economy of work and employment (Bolton and Laaser 2013), this paper explores how markets for ready‐made food are incessantly negotiated in the context of moral ideas about cooking, femininity and individual responsibility. It focuses on ‘new’ market innovations of fresh ready‐to‐cook meal solutions and explores how these products are both a response to moralizing discourses about cooking ‘properly’, as well as an intervention into the market that offers opportunities for new moral identities to be performed. Using data gathered from interviews with food manufacturers and consumers, I advocate for a multi‐layered perspective that captures the dynamic interplay between consumers, markets and moralities of consumption. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  November 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12333   open full text
• Outline of a sociology of decisionism.
  Gabriel Abend.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 25, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract I propose an agenda for empirical research on decision, choice, decision‐makers, and decision‐making qua social facts. Given society S, group G, or field F, I make a twofold sociological proposal. First, empirically investigate the conditions under which something—call it X—is taken to be a decision or choice, or the outcome of a decision‐making process. What must X be like? What doesn't count (besides, presumably, myotatic reflexes and blushing)? Whom or what must X be done by? What can't be a decision‐maker (besides, presumably, rocks and apples)? Second, empirically investigate how decision/choice concepts are used in everyday life, politics, business, education, law, technology, and science. What are they used for? To what extent do people understand and represent themselves and others as decision‐makers? Where do decision‐centric or “decisionist” understandings succeed? These aren't armchair, theoretical, philosophical questions, but empirical ones. Decision/choice concepts’ apparent ubiquity in contemporary societies calls for a well‐thought‐out research program on their social life and uses. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 237-264, June 2018.
  

  October 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12320   open full text
• The new subversive geranium: some notes on the management of additional troubles in maximum security prisons.
  Alison Liebling, Ryan J. Williams.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 07, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In this paper, we revisit King and McDermott's 1990 article on the social construction of ‘control problem’ prisoners and their management in high security prisons, in the light of our recent research on the location and building of trust in contemporary high security prisons. We examine how religious and race identities are now deeply implicated in the construction of risk, and we describe the procedures for and some of the consequences of managing the new risks of radicalization and extremist violence in prison. The analysis is based on observations and interviews with staff and prisoners in two main and two supplementary maximum‐security prisons in England and Wales. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  October 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12310   open full text
• The class pictures in citizens’ minds.
  Joshua Robison, Rune Stubager.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 07, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Social class has traditionally played a key role in explaining social behaviour and cognition. However, recent analyses have been dominated by the view that the relevance of class for behaviour has dwindled in advanced industrial societies. We contest this view by focusing on the subjective components of class consciousness. Using a national survey of Danish citizens, we show that individuals continue to hold meaningful conceptions of classes, to identify with them and, moreover, to perceive substantial levels of differences between them with these latter beliefs being strongly structured by respondent class identification. These results are all the more intriguing because they stem from a high affluence/low inequality national context that should be a particularly good case for failing to find such rich class perceptions. - The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView.
  

  October 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12313   open full text
• Reluctant entrepreneurs: musicians and entrepreneurship in the ‘new’ music industry.
  Jo Haynes, Lee Marshall.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 18, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Changing labour conditions in the creative industries – with celebrations of autonomy and entrepreneurialism intertwined with increasing job insecurity, portfolio careers and short‐term, project‐based contracts – are often interpreted as heralding changes to employment relations more broadly. The position of musicians’ labour in relation to these changes is unclear, however, given that these kinds of conditions have defined musicians’ working practices over much longer periods of time (though they may have intensified due to well‐documented changes to the music industry brought about by digitization and disintermediation). Musicians may thus be something of a barometer of current trends, as implied in the way that the musically derived label ‘gig economy’ is being used to describe the spread of precarious working conditions to broader sections of the population. This article, drawing on original qualitative research that investigated the working practices of musicians, explores one specific aspect of these conditions: whether musicians are self‐consciously entrepreneurial towards their work and audience. We found that, while the musicians in our study are routinely involved in activities that could be construed as entrepreneurial, generally they were reluctant to label themselves as entrepreneurs. In part this reflected understandings of entrepreneurialism as driven by profit‐seeking but it also reflected awareness that being a popular musician has always involved business and commercial dimensions. Drawing on theoretical conceptions of entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter we highlight how the figure of the entrepreneur and the artist/musician share much in common and reflect various aspects of romantic individualism. Despite this, there are also some notable differences and we conclude that framing musicians’ labour as entrepreneurial misrepresents their activities through an overemphasis on the economic dimensions of their work at the expense of the cultural. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 459-482, June 2018.
  

  September 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12286   open full text
• Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971–2011.
  Franz Buscha, Patrick Sturgis.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 18, 2017
  In this paper we add to the existing evidence base on recent trends in inter‐generational social mobility in England and Wales. We analyse data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS‐LS), which links individual records from the five decennial censuses between 1971 and 2011. The ONS‐LS is an excellent data resource for the study of social mobility because it has a very large sample size, excellent population coverage and low rates of nonresponse and attrition across waves. Additionally, the structure of the study means that we can observe the occupations of LS‐members' parents when they were children and follow their own progress in the labour market at regular intervals into middle age. Counter to widespread prevailing beliefs, our results show evidence of a small but significant increase in social fluidity between 1950s and the 1980s for both men and women.

  September 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12275   open full text
• Class categories and the subjective dimension of class: the case of Denmark.
  Gitte Sommer Harrits, Helene Helboe Pedersen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 15, 2017
  Class relations have been proven to affect various aspects of social life, even in modern individualized societies. However, following claims on individualization and the so‐called ‘death of class’ thesis, studying the subjective dimension of class – that is, the way individuals perceive of class relations and their own position within them – has gone out of style. We argue that even in equalized societies, subjective class perceptions may still influence attitudes and behaviour as they evolve to fit modern class relations. To explore the existence as well as structure and content of perceived social classes, this article investigates how people describe society and social groups in focus group discussions. We find that groups in different positions in terms of education and economy all tend to apply hierarchical class categories to describe Danish society, which is normally seen as one of the most equal societies and political systems in the world. In addition, we find that economic resources serve as a baseline for the hierarchical ordering, often supplemented with notions of education, lifestyle and/or occupational profile. Even though people are somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of class, their descriptions of Danish society and classes are surprisingly similar within and across groups. We conclude that not only do class relations matter; people are also highly aware of the existing classes and able to position themselves and others according to their notion of classes.

  September 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12282   open full text
• Social mobility and the well‐being of individuals.
  Tak Wing Chan.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 12, 2017
  Several papers published in recent years have revived interest in Sorokin's dissociative thesis: the view that intergenerational social mobility has detrimental effects on the social relationships and wellbeing of individuals. In this paper, I test the dissociative thesis using data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society. On a wide range of indicators that measure participation in civic associations, contact with parents, close personal relationships, social support, subjective wellbeing, etc. individuals who have achieved long‐range upward mobility (i.e. those who move from working class origin to salariat destination) tend to fare better than those who are immobile in the working class. Those who have experienced long‐range downward mobility (moving from salariat origin to working class destination) do about as well as second‐generation members of the working class. Overall, there is no support for Sorokin's thesis.

  September 12, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12285   open full text
• What has become of critique? Reassembling sociology after Latour.
  Tom Mills.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 06, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper offers a defence of sociology through an engagement with Actor Network Theory (ANT) and particularly the critique of ‘critical’ and politically engaged social science developed by Bruno Latour. It argues that ANT identifies some weaknesses in more conventional sociology and social theory, and suggests that ‘critical’ and ‘public’ orientated sociologists can learn from the analytical precision and ethnographic sensibilities that characterize ANT as a framework of analysis and a research programme. It argues, however, that Latour et al. have too hastily dispensed with ‘critique’ in favour of a value neutral descriptive sociology, and that the symmetrical and horizontalist approach adopted in ANT is particularly ill‐suited to the development of scientific knowledge about social structures. It argues that a more straightforwardly realist sociology would share many of the strengths of ANT whilst being better able to interrogate, empirically and normatively, the centres of contemporary social power. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 286-305, June 2018.
  

  September 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12306   open full text
• Living in the city: school friendships, diversity and the middle classes.
  Carol Vincent, Sarah Neal, Humera Iqbal.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 04, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Much of the literature on the urban middle classes describes processes of both affiliation (often to the localities) and disaffiliation (often from some of the non‐middle‐class residents). In this paper, we consider this situation from a different position, drawing on research exploring whether and how children and adults living in diverse localities develop friendships with those different to themselves in terms of social class and ethnicity. This paper focuses on the interviews with the ethnically diverse, but predominantly white British, middle‐class parent participants, considering their attitudes towards social and cultural difference. We emphasize the importance of highlighting inequalities that arise from social class and its intersection with ethnicity in analyses of complex urban populations. The paper's contribution is, first, to examine processes of clustering amongst the white British middle‐class parents, particularly in relation to social class. Second, we contrast this process, and its moments of reflection and unease, with the more deliberate and purposeful efforts of one middle‐class, Bangladeshi‐origin mother who engages in active labour to facilitate relationships across social and ethnic difference. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 352-371, June 2018.
  

  September 04, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12296   open full text
• Back to Hegel? On Gillian Rose's critique of sociological reason.
  Brian W. Fuller.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 22, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Thirty‐five years ago, Gillian Rose articulated a significant critique of classical sociological reason, emphasizing its relationship to its philosophical forebears. In a series of works, but most significantly in her Hegel contra Sociology, Rose worked to specify the implications of sociology's failure, both in its critical Marxist and its ‘scientific’ forms, to move beyond Kant and to fully come to terms with the thought of Hegel. In this article, I unpack and explain the substance of her criticisms, developing the necessary Hegelian philosophical background on which she founded them. I argue that Rose's attempted recuperation of ‘speculative reason’ for social theory remains little understood, despite its continued relevance to contemporary debates concerning the nature and scope of sociological reason. As an illustration, I employ Rose to critique Chernilo's recent call for a more philosophically sophisticated sociology. From the vantage point of Rose, this particular account of a ‘philosophical sociology’ remains abstract and rooted in the neo‐Kantian contradictions that continue to characterize sociology. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 265-285, June 2018.
  

  August 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12281   open full text
• Motives of corporate political donations: industry regulation, subjective judgement and the origins of pragmatic and ideological corporations.
  Nicholas M. Harrigan.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 21, 2017
  What motivates corporate political action? Are corporations motivated by their own narrow economic self‐interest; are they committed to pursuing larger class interests; or are corporations instruments for status groups to pursue their own agendas? Sociologists have been divided over this question for much of the last century. This paper introduces a novel case – that of Australia – and an extensive dataset of over 1,500 corporations and 7,500 directors. The paper attempts to understand the motives of corporate political action by examining patterns of corporate political donations. Using statistical modelling, supported by qualitative evidence, the paper argues that, in the Australian case, corporate political action is largely motivated by the narrow economic self‐interest of individual corporations. Firms’ interests are, consistent with regulatory environment theory, defined by the nature of government regulation in their industry: those in highly regulated industries (such as banking) and those dependent on government support (such as defence) tend to adopt a strategy of hedging their political support, and make bipartisan donations (to both major parties). In contrast, firms facing hostile regulation (such as timber or mining), and those without strong dependence on state support (such as small companies) tend to adopt a strategy of conservative partisanship, and make conservative‐only donations. This paper argues that regulatory environment theory needs to be modified to incorporate greater emphasis on the subjective political judgements of corporations facing hostile regulation: a corporation's adoption of conservative partisanship or hedging is not just a product of the objective regulation they face, but also whether corporate leaders judge such regulation as politically inevitable or something that can be resisted. Such a judgement is highly subjective, introducing a dynamic and unpredictable dimension to corporate political action.

  August 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12270   open full text
• Social space and cultural class divisions: the forms of capital and contemporary lifestyle differentiation.
  Magne Flemmen, Vegard Jarness, Lennart Rosenlund.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 17, 2017
  In this article, we address whether and how contemporary social classes are marked by distinct lifestyles. We assess the model of the social space, a novel approach to class analysis pioneered by Bourdieu's Distinction. Although pivotal in Bourdieu's work, this model is too often overlooked in later research, making its contemporary relevance difficult to assess. We redress this by using the social space as a framework through which to study the cultural manifestation of class divisions in lifestyle differences in contemporary Norwegian society. Through a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) of unusually rich survey data, we reveal a structure strikingly similar to the model in Distinction, with a primary dimension of the volume of capital, and a secondary dimension of the composition of capital. While avoiding the substantialist fallacy of predefined notions of ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ tastes, we explore how 168 lifestyle items map onto this social space. This reveals distinct classed lifestyles according to both dimensions of the social space. The lifestyles of the upper classes are distinctly demanding in terms of resources. Among those rich in economic capital, this manifests itself in a lifestyle which involves a quest for excitement, and which is bodily oriented and expensive. For their counterparts rich in cultural capital, a more ascetic and intellectually oriented lifestyle manifests itself, demanding of resources in the sense of requiring symbolic mastery, combining a taste for canonized, legitimate culture with more cosmopolitan and ‘popular’ items. In contrast to many studies’ descriptions of the lower classes as ‘disengaged’ and ‘inactive’, we find evidence of distinct tastes on their part. Our analysis thus affirms the validity of Bourdieu's model of social class and the contention that classes tend to take the form of status groups. We challenge dominant positions in cultural stratification research, while questioning the aptness of the metaphor of the ‘omnivore’, as well as recent analyses of ‘emerging cultural capital’.

  August 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12295   open full text
• The intersection of class origin and immigration background in structuring social capital: the role of transnational ties.
  Anton Andersson, Christofer Edling, Jens Rydgren.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 17, 2017
  The study investigates inequalities in access to social capital based on social class origin and immigration background and examines the role of transnational ties in explaining these differences. Social capital is measured with a position generator methodology that separates between national and transnational contacts in a sample of young adults in Sweden with three parental backgrounds: at least one parent born in Iran or Yugoslavia, or two Sweden‐born parents. The results show that having socioeconomically advantaged parents is associated with higher levels of social capital. Children of immigrants are found to have a greater access to social capital compared to individuals with native background, and the study shows that this is related to transnational contacts, parents’ education and social class in their country of origin. Children of immigrants tend to have more contacts abroad, while there is little difference in the amount of contacts living in Sweden across the three groups. It is concluded that knowledge about immigration group resources help us predict its member's social capital, but that the analysis also needs to consider how social class trajectories and migration jointly structure national and transnational contacts.

  August 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12289   open full text
• Racial entanglements and sociological confusions: repudiating the rehabilitation of integration.
  Sivamohan Valluvan.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 14, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In line with the broader nationalist advances currently remaking the Western political landscape, the concept of integration has witnessed a marked rehabilitation. Whilst many influential critiques of the sociology of integration are already available, this article contests the concept's renewed purchase through addressing its own internal incoherence. Based on research in Stockholm, this critique concerns the relationship between ethnic identity and cultural integration. It will be argued that integration and the production of difference are intertwined, entangled dualities, and far from being a benign entanglement, this duality is premised on the force and reach of everyday civic racisms. Of pivotal and unique analytical significance here is the observation that racism should not only be considered an exogenous process that impedes integration, but as a multifaceted phenomenon folded into integration. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 436-458, June 2018.
  

  August 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12284   open full text
• The Madoffization of Irish society: from Ponzi finance to sociological critique.
  Lee F. Monaghan, Micheal O'Flynn.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 07, 2017
  Financialization and neoliberal policy created the Celtic Tiger. This economic ‘miracle’ furthered creditors’ and property developers’ speculative interests, leading to an unstable financial pyramid that eventually imploded in 2008 with catastrophic consequences for Irish society. Using the sociological imagination as social critique, this paper offers a lens on fictitious capital and Ponzi finance in the context of Ireland's boom and bust. Critique is advanced using the Madoffization of society thesis, a sociological heuristic that draws formal comparisons between Bernie Madoff's US$65 billion Ponzi scheme, which collapsed in 2008, and financialized capitalism. The Madoff case exhibits five main elements or forms which, it has been argued, underlie the varying content of life on a much broader scale: accumulation by debt expansion, mass deception, efforts to maintain secrecy and silence, obfuscation, and scapegoating. In conclusion, a crucial difference between the Madoff case and the Madoffization of Irish society is underscored. Discussion also moves from critique to hope amidst calls to renew sociology and transform financialized capitalism.

  August 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12287   open full text
• Breaking the taboo: a history of monetary financing in Canada, 1930–1975.
  Josh Ryan‐Collins.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 07, 2017
  Monetary financing – the funding of state expenditure via the creation of new money rather than through taxation or borrowing – has become a taboo policy instrument in advanced economies. It is generally associated with dangerously high inflation and/or war. Relatedly, a key institutional feature of modern independent central banks is that they are not obligated to support government expenditure via money creation. Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, however, unorthodox monetary policies, in particular quantitative easing, coupled with stagnant growth and high levels of public and private debt have led to questions over the monetary financing taboo. Debates on the topic have so far been mainly theoretical with little attention to the social and political dynamics of historical instances of monetary financing. This paper analyses one of the most significant twentieth‐century cases: Canada from the period after the Great Depression up until the monetarist revolution of the 1970s. The period was a successful one for the Canadian economy, with high growth and employment and manageable inflation. It offers some interesting insights into the relationship between states and central banks and present‐day discussions around the governance of money creation.

  August 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12278   open full text
• Heteronomy in the arts field: state funding and British arts organizations.
  Victoria D. Alexander.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 25, 2017
  For Bourdieu, the field of cultural production is comprised of an autonomous and a heteronomous sector. A heteronomous sector is one that is interpenetrated by the commercial field. I discuss an arena that, until recently, was part of the relatively autonomous sector in the field of cultural production – the supported arts sector in the United Kingdom – and argue that it became more heteronomous, due to the penetration by the state. Heteronomy due to the commercial field is present but secondary to, and driven by, the actions of the state. Political parties’ attempts to diffuse and legitimate a particular economic ideology have led to state demands that arts institutions adopt neoliberal business practices in exchange for funding. Government giving to the arts, previously at arm's length, proved to be a Faustian bargain that demanded significant repayment in the form of lost autonomy. Coercive pressures from the state, enacted over time, show how the domination of one field over another can occur, even when the domination is resisted.

  July 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12283   open full text
• Becoming independent: political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum.
  Maddie Breeze, Hugo Gorringe, Lynn Jamieson, Michael Rosie.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 25, 2017
  Sociological debates on youth engagement with electoral politics play out against a backdrop of supposed ‘decline’ in civic participation (e.g. Putnam , Norris, ), in turn contextualized by theories of individualization in ‘late’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity (Beck, Giddens). However, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter turnout among this youngest group, and was accompanied by apparently ongoing political engagement. We explored this engagement among a strategic sample of young ‘Yes’ voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Analysis of qualitative interview data generated an unanticipated finding; that interviewees narrated their political engagement biographically, articulated their referendum participation reflexively, and located their new political ideas, allegiances and actions in the context of their own transitions to ‘independent’ adulthood. This inspired us to rethink young people's political engagement in relation to youth transitions. Doing so enables a synthesis of divergent strands in the sociology of youth, and offers new insights into the combinations of ‘personal’ agentic and ‘political’ structural factors involved in young people's politicization.

  July 25, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12288   open full text
• ‘I just don't want to connect my life with this occupation’: working‐class young men, manual labour, and social mobility in contemporary Russia.
  Charlie Walker.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 18, 2017
  A key strand in the Western literature on working‐class masculinities focuses on whether young men are capable of the feminized performances apparently required of them in new service economies. However, the wider literature on processes of neoliberalization – emphasizing the ‘hollowing out’ of labour markets, the cultural devaluation of lower‐skilled forms of employment, and the pathologization of working‐class lives – would suggest that it is as much a classed as a gendered transformation that is demanded of young men leaving school with few qualifications. This dimension of neoliberalization is highlighted by ethnographic data exploring the experiences and subjectivities of young workers in St Petersburg, Russia, where traditional forms of manual labour have not given way to ‘feminized’ work, but have become materially and symbolically impoverished, and are perceived as incapable of supporting the wider transition into adult independence. In this context, young workers attempt to emulate new forms of ‘successful masculinity’ connected with novel service sector professions and the emergent higher education system, despite the unlikelihood of overcoming a range of structural and cultural barriers. These acquiescent, individualized responses indicate that, while ways of being a man are apparently being liberated from old constraints amongst the more privileged, neoliberalization narrows the range of subject positions available to working‐class young men.

  July 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12299   open full text
• Everyday territories: homelessness, outreach work and city space.
  Robin James Smith, Tom Hall.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 18, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract This article develops a situational approach to understanding urban public life and, in particular, the production of urban territories. Our aim is to examine the ways in which city space might be understood as comprising multiple, shifting, mobile and rhythmed territories. We argue that such territories are best understood through attending to their everyday production and negotiation, rather than handling territory as an a priori construct. We develop this argument from the particular case of the street‐level politics of homelessness and street care. The experience of street homelessness and the provision of care in the public spaces of the city is characterised by precarious territorial claims made and lost. We describe some of the ways in which care work with rough sleepers is itself precarious; ‘homeless’, in lacking a distinct setting in which it might get done. Indeed, outreach work takes place within and affirms homeless territories. The affirmation of territory is shown to be central to the relationship developed between the workers and their rough sleeping clients. We also show, however, the ways in which outreach workers operate on territory not their own, twice over. Outreach work is precarious in that it is practised within, and can run counter to, other territorial productions in which the experience of urban need and the work and politics of care are entangled. In sum, this article aims to move beyond static and binary understandings by developing a mobile and situational approach to city space which recognises the intensive yet overlooked work of territorial production. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 372-390, June 2018.
  

  July 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12280   open full text
• Are postgraduate qualifications the ‘new frontier of social mobility’?
  Paul Wakeling, Daniel Laurison.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 12, 2017
  We investigate the relationship between social origin, postgraduate degree attainment, and occupational outcomes across five British age‐group cohorts. We use recently‐available UK Labour Force Survey data to conduct a series of logistic regressions of postgraduate (masters or doctorate) degree attainment among those with first degrees, with controls for measures of degree classification, degree subject, age, gender, ethnicity and national origin. We find a marked strengthening of the effect of class origin on degree‐ and occupational attainment across age cohorts. While for older generations there is little or no difference by class origin in the rates at which first‐degree graduates attain postgraduate degrees, those with working‐class‐origins in the youngest age‐group are only about 28 per cent as likely to obtain a postgraduate degree when compared with their peers from privileged origins. Moreover, social origin matters more for occupational destination, even among those with postgraduate degrees, for those in younger age groups. These findings demonstrate the newly important, and increasing, role of postgraduate degrees in reproducing socio‐economic inequality in the wake of the substantial expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate education. Our findings lend some support to the Maximally Maintained Inequality thesis, suggesting that gains in equality of access to first‐degrees are indeed at risk from postgraduate expansion.

  July 12, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12277   open full text
• Why have relative rates of class mobility become more equal among women in Britain?
  Erzsébet Bukodi, John H. Goldthorpe, Heather Joshi, Lorraine Waller.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 12, 2017
  In a previous paper it has been shown that across three cohorts of men and women born in Britain in 1946, 1958 and 1970 a gender difference exists in regard to relative rates of class mobility. For men these rates display an essential stability but for women they become more equal. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the causes of this trend—or, that is, of increasing social fluidity—among women. We begin by considering a refined version of the perverse fluidity hypothesis: that is, one that proposes that part‐time work leads to increasing downward worklife mobility among women that also entails downward intergenerational mobility and thus promotes greater fluidity. We do in fact find that the increase in fluidity is very largely, if not entirely, confined to women who have had at least one period of part‐time work. However, a more direct test of the hypothesis is not supportive. We are then led to investigate whether it is not that part‐time working itself is the crucial factor but rather that women who subsequently work part‐time already differ from those who do not at entry into employment. We find that eventual full‐ and part‐timers do not differ in their class origins nor, in any systematic way, in their educational qualifications. But there is a marked and increasing difference in the levels of employment at which they make their labour market entry. Eventual part‐timers are more likely than eventual full‐timers to enter in working‐class positions, regardless of their class origins and qualifications. Insofar as these women are from more advantaged origins, they would appear not to seek to exploit their advantages to the same extent as do full‐timers in order to advance their own work careers. And it is, then, in the downward mobility accepted by these women—who increase in number across the cohorts—that we would locate the main source of the weakening association between class origins and destinations that is revealed among women at large.

  July 12, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12274   open full text
• Belonging across the lifetime: Time and self in Mass Observation accounts.
  Vanessa May.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 12, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Our sense of belonging rarely stands still, yet the research literature has hitherto paid little attention to the temporal nature of belonging. Based on an analysis of 62 Mass Observation Project (MOP) accounts written by people living in the UK aged from their 20s to their 90s, this paper argues that as people age, how they locate belonging in time shifts. This has to do with changing concerns related to belonging, but also to metaphysical issues of temporality and mortality, namely how people experience their own finite lifetime. The paper thus offers an illustrative example of how time can be empirically researched in sociology, with a particular focus on the important role that the future plays in how people construct their ‘functional present’ (Mead ). The central argument put forward is that time itself can be an important source of belonging, but one that is unequally accessible to people of different ages because of contemporary cultural scripts that present life as a linear progression into the future and construct the future as a more meaningful temporal horizon than the past. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 306-322, June 2018.
  

  July 12, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12276   open full text
• ‘Hidden identities’: perceptions of sexual identity in Beijing.
  Toby Miles‐Johnson, Yurong Wang.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 08, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract This article draws upon responses given by volunteers who work in the Beijing LGBT Centre regarding perceptions of sexual identity, and how Chinese culture affects hidden or open sexual identities of Chinese lesbian and gay people in this region. The insights gained from those working carefully to create social change offers an important and original contribution to the field of gay and lesbian studies in China. The findings indicate the volunteers at the Beijing LGBT Centre are frustrated by the lack of acceptance of non‐heterosexual relationships among Chinese culture and society, and by the disregard of lesbian gay and bisexual (LGB) people by the Chinese government. The findings also illustrate stigmatization of homosexuality in China is enacted in structural terms (such as in the lack of policy, legislation and positive endorsement by governmental and socio‐political organizations), public expression (such as negative attitudes, beliefs or reactions towards LGB people) and internalized repression (through fear of stigmatization, and subsequent abuse due to negative societal attitudes and discrimination). Influenced by the Chinese tradition of conforming to group values, the findings from this study show that volunteers at the Beijing LGBT Centre believe LGB people in China are generally hesitant to disclose their sexual identities, and reject the idea that there had been a collective shift in Chinese culture regarding increased acceptance of LGB people. It also finds volunteers at the LGBT Centre in Beijing blame Chinese culture for its lack of acceptance of non‐heterosexual relationships, and state stigmatization of homosexuality in China is due to deep‐rooted cultural homophobia. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 323-351, June 2018.
  

  July 08, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12279   open full text
• Reframing sociologies of ethnicity and migration in encounters with Chinese London.
  Caroline Knowles.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 13, 2017
  In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an ‘immigrant problem’ framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focused on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small‐scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London, I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalization as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants’ thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalization's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK.

  June 13, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12271   open full text
• Does disestablishment lead to religious vitality? The case of Switzerland.
  Jörg Stolz, Mark Chaves.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 07, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Economists and sociologists of religion have claimed that religious establishment dampens religious vitality, leading to lower recruitment efforts, low attendance, declining membership within established congregations, and the ‘crowding out’ of non‐established congregations. Conversely, these authors have told us, disestablishment will lead to more religious vitality. Remarkably, even though these claims rest on the connection between establishment and the organizational and membership behaviour of local religious congregations, no research has directly examined that connection. We use the 2008 Swiss National Congregations Study as well as historical data to assess the effect of different levels of religious establishment on both established and non‐established congregations. We find that established congregations do indeed show less religious vitality than non‐established congregations. Contrary to the claims of the economic literature, however, these covariations are not caused by differences in religious establishment on the cantonal level. Both our quantitative and historical analyses show that disestablishment has not led to religious vitality for either established or non‐established congregations. The only clear effect of disestablishment is a dramatic decrease of income for established congregations. Based on quantitative and historical evidence, we suggest that differences between established and non‐established congregations are produced by differences in religious tradition and immigration flows, not by differences in levels of establishment. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 412-435, June 2018.
  

  June 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12268   open full text
• Ethical living: relinking ethics and consumption through care in Chile and Brazil.
  Tomas Ariztia, Nurjk Agloni, Léna Pellandini‐Simányi.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 30, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Mainstream conceptualizations of ‘ethical consumption’ equate the notion with conscious, individual, market‐mediated choices motivated by ethical or political aims that transcend ordinary concerns. Drawing on recent sociology and anthropology of consumption literature on the links between ordinary ethics and ethical consumption, this article discusses some of the limitations of this conceptualization. Using data from 32 focus groups conducted in Chile and Brazil, we propose a conceptualization of ethical consumption that does not centre on individual, market‐mediated choices but understands it at the level of practical outcomes, which we refer to as different forms of ‘ethical living’. To do that, we argue, we need to depart from the deontological understanding of ethics that underpins mainstream approaches to ethical consumption and adopt a more consequentialist view focusing on ethical outcomes. We develop these points through describing one particular ordinary moral regime that seemed to be predominant in participants’ accounts of ethics and consumption in both Chile and Brazil: one that links consumption and ethics through care. We show that the moral regime of care leads to ‘ethical outcomes’, such as energy saving or limiting overconsumption, yet contrary to the mainstream view of ethical consumption emphasizing politicized choice expressed through markets, these result from following ordinary ethics, often through routines of practices. - The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 69, Issue 2, Page 391-411, June 2018.
  

  May 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12265   open full text
• Mind the gap: financial London and the regional class pay gap.
  Sam Friedman, Daniel Laurison.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 29, 2017
  The hidden barriers, or ‘gender pay gap’, preventing women from earning equivalent incomes to men is well documented. Yet recent research has uncovered that, in Britain, there is also a comparable class‐origin pay gap in higher professional and managerial occupations. So far this analysis has only been conducted at the national level and it is not known whether there are regional differences within the UK. This paper uses pooled data from the 2014 and 2015 Labour Force Survey (N = 7,534) to stage a more spatially sensitive analysis that examines regional variation in the class pay gap. We find that this ‘class ceiling’ is not evenly spatially distributed. Instead it is particularly marked in Central London, where those in high‐status occupations who are from working‐class backgrounds earn, on average, £10,660 less per year than those whose parents were in higher professional and managerial employment. Finally, we inspect the Capital further to reveal that the class pay gap is largest within Central London's banking and finance sector. Challenging policy conceptions of London as the ‘engine room’ of social mobility, these findings suggest that class disadvantage within high‐status occupations is particularly acute in the Capital. The findings also underline the value of investigating regional differences in social mobility, and demonstrate how such analysis can unravel important and previously unrecognized spatial dimensions of class inequality.

  May 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12269   open full text
• Post‐Fordist reconfigurations of gender, work and life: theory and practice.
  Breda Gray, Luigina Ciolfi, Aparecido Fabiano Pinatti de Carvalho, Anthony D'Andrea, Lisa Wixted.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 29, 2017
  Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever ; Morini and Fumagalli ; Gill and Pratt ; Weeks ; Hardt and Negri ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.

  May 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12267   open full text
• That's what friends are for: how intergroup friendships promote historically disadvantaged groups’ substantive political representation.
  Andrej Kokkonen, David Karlsson.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 16, 2017
  The interests of historically disadvantaged groups risk being overlooked if they are not present in the decision‐making process. However, a mere presence in politics does not guarantee political success. Often groups need allies to promote their interests successfully. We argue that one way to identify such allies is to judge politicians by whether they have friends in historically disadvantaged groups, as intergroup friendships have been shown to make people understand and feel empathy for outgroups. In other words, intergroup friendships may function as an important complement to descriptive representation. We test our argument with a unique survey that asks all elected political representatives in Sweden's 290 municipalities (response rate 79 per cent) about their friendship ties to, and their representation of, five historically disadvantaged groups: women, immigrants, youths, pensioners and blue‐collar workers. We find a strong correlation between representatives’ friendship ties to these groups and their commitment to represent them. The correlation is especially strong for youths and blue‐collar workers, which likely can be explained by the fact that these groups usually lack crucial political resources (such as experience and education). We conclude that friendship ties function as an important complement to descriptive representation for achieving substantive representation.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12266   open full text
• The Jack Wills crowd: towards a sociology of an elite subculture.
  Anthony King, Daniel Smith.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 16, 2017
  British sociologists have long been interested in youth sub‐cultures. However British sociologists have tended to focus on working class subcultures and avoided engagement with exclusive sub‐cultures of elite social groups. This article seeks to attend to this gap by examining the subculture of a British elite: ex‐public school students at select universities in the UK in the twenty‐first century. This group consists of a relatively small group of young adults, aged between 18 and 23, who attended public schools, especially one of the nine Clarendon schools (Eton, Winchester, Westminster, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylor's, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Harrow and Charterhouse), and were students at a selective group of British universities, primarily Oxford and Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Exeter, Bath, Manchester, St Andrews and Edinburgh. The article examines the way in which this group has reconfigured and re‐constituted itself in the face of globalizing challenges. Specifically, it examines the way in which participation of ex‐public school students in events run by and under the patronage of the high street retailing company, Jack Wills, has played a galvanising role for this group in the last decade. The Jack Wills crowd is an example of how some young adults form exclusive social networks and reproduce prevailing forms of privilege. The social networks built around the Jack Wills subculture is likely to provide them with advantages in the job market through a prodigious network of connections and patrons. The Jack Wills subculture potentially contributions to the socio‐economic reproduction of the higher professional middle classes.

  May 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12254   open full text
• German Muslims and their engagement in participatory culture: reflections on civic and artistic contributions to the public sphere.
  Asmaa Soliman.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 30, 2017
  This paper examines publics of young German Muslims. Case studies include the singer Huelya Kandemir, the theatre group Uma Lamo and the social network Zahnräder. By focusing on spiritual music publics, theatrical comedy publics and social publics, it tries a new approach to the way in which we understand minority public engagement. In addition to examining the concept of counterpublics, it utilizes the concept of participatory culture, which offers a relevant complement. The study argues that the publics of young German Muslims display multifaceted artistic and civic engagement, which can best be understood in terms of participation in cultural or civic productions and contribution to the wider German public. Features or effects of counterpublics, such as the countering of mainstream representations of minority identities and the offering of alternative discourses, are occasionally reflected in their activities.

  April 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12264   open full text
• The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience.
  Dimitris Boucas.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 30, 2017
  The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre‐existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic‐relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in‐depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post‐2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.

  April 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12238   open full text
• Is ethnic prejudice declining in Britain? Change in social distance attitudes among ethnic majority and minority Britons.
  Ingrid Storm, Maria Sobolewska, Robert Ford.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 29, 2017
  Most literature on racial prejudice deals with the racial attitudes of the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities separately. This paper breaks this tradition. We examine the social distance attitudes of white and non‐white British residents to test if these attitudes follow the same trends over time, whether they are driven by the same social processes and whether they are inter‐related. We have three main findings. Firstly, social distance from other ethnic groups has declined over time for both white and ethnic minority Britons. For the white majority there are both period and cohort elements to this decline. Secondly, we see some evidence that social distance between the majority and minority groups is reciprocal. Specifically, minorities who experience rejection by the white British feel a greater sense of distance from them. Thirdly, we find that all groups share the perception of the same ethnic hierarchy. We see evidence of particularly widespread hostility towards Muslim Britons from all ethnic groups suggesting that Muslims are singled out for negative attention from many British residents of all other backgrounds, including a large number who do not express hostility to other groups.

  April 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12250   open full text
• How fields vary.
  Monika Krause.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 06, 2017
  Field theorists have long insisted that research needs to pay attention to the particular properties of each field studied. But while much field‐theoretical research is comparative, either explicitly or implicitly, scholars have only begun to develop the language for describing the dimensions along which fields can be similar to and different from each other. In this context, this paper articulates an agenda for the analysis of variable properties of fields. It discusses variation in the degree but also in the kind of field autonomy. It discusses different dimensions of variation in field structure: fields can be more or less contested, and more or less hierarchical. The structure of symbolic oppositions in a field may take different forms. Lastly, it analyses the dimensions of variation highlighted by research on fields on the sub‐ and transnational scale. Post‐national analysis allows us to ask how fields relate to fields of the same kind on different scales, and how fields relate to fields on the same scale in other national contexts. It allows us to ask about the role resources from other scales play in structuring symbolic oppositions within fields. A more fine‐tuned vocabulary for field variation can help us better describe particular fields and it is a precondition for generating hypotheses about the conditions under which we can expect to observe fields with specified characteristics.

  April 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12258   open full text
• Value orientations and social attitudes in the holistic milieu.
  Franz Höllinger.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 01, 2017
  Based on a representative population survey for Germany this article investigates whether engagement in holistic activities is associated with privatized lifestyles and lack of social responsibility or with countercultural orientations and base‐democratic political commitment. To analyse this question, respondents who are engaged in holistic activities are divided into three groups that are compared with each other as well as with Christians and non‐religious people. The findings show that the three holistic groups are characterized by clearly different attitudinal patterns: Respondents engaged in body‐mind‐spirit activities have an affinity to self‐directed ways of life, post‐materialism and environmentalism. Holistic Christians try to combine the Christian ideal of altruism and post‐materialist orientations. Those who are attracted only to magical‐occult practices are primarily concerned with individualistic self‐improvement and correspond more to the image of the hedonist consumer at the esoteric marketplace.

  April 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12255   open full text
• Sustaining corporate class consciousness across the new liquid managerial elite in Britain.
  Aeron Davis.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 01, 2017
  This article asks: how is class consciousness and cohesiveness amongst the UK business elite maintained in the twenty‐first century? Elite studies traditionally sought to account for the construction and circulation of dominant ideology through exclusive education systems, institutional board interlocks and club memberships. The problem is that business elite membership of all these institutions has been steady declining in recent decades. Contemporary corporate elites now appear more mobile and fragmented in an age of globalization. However, class cohesion amongst business leaders appears as strong as ever after decades of neoliberal policy hegemony. So, how are such ideas, norms and values circulated and maintained? This study tried to answer this question drawing on a set of 30 semi‐structured interviews with top UK CEOs and a demographic audit of current FTSE 100 CEOs. The findings suggest that three additional means of achieving business elite coherence have become more significant: professional business education, semi‐formal but regular meeting sites, and specialist business media.

  April 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12257   open full text
• Cosmopolitanism through mobility: physical‐corporeal or virtual‐imagined?
  Knut Petzold.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 01, 2017
  In the context of increasing cross‐border mobility and the associated interconnections and diversities, ‘cosmopolitanism’ has become a key concept in sociology. Understood as individual real‐world orientation, many authors consider a central cause for cosmopolitanism in physical‐corporeal mobility, in particular transnationally. However, the significance of virtual and imagined mobility, such as via television or the Internet, is increasingly emphasized. Nevertheless, it has so far been little examined how and with which relative strength physical‐corporeal and virtual‐imagined mobility are associated with cosmopolitan orientations. Unlike previous studies, the two forms of mobility are considered simultaneously. On the basis of existing studies and theoretical considerations, it is assumed that the dimension of global orientation is influenced rather by physical‐corporeal than by virtual‐imagined mobility, whereas the dimension of cultural openness is influenced rather by virtual‐imagined than by physical mobility. One reason could be the different potential of the mobility forms to respond to perceived conflicts in the confrontation with the Other. The hypotheses are preliminary tested using data from an online survey that allows both to distinguish locals, (national) shuttles and transnationals, and to query media use. An exploratory principal component analysis confirmed, as in other studies, that global orientation and cultural openness are distinct dimensions. The results of the multivariate analyses largely support the hypotheses and indicate that in investigations of cosmopolitanism, the processes of identity‐related self‐categorization should be distinguished from pure socialization processes.

  April 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12253   open full text
• Stagnation only on the surface? The implications of skill and family responsibilities for the gender wage gap in Sweden, 1974–2010.
  Katarina Boye, Karin Halldén, Charlotta Magnusson.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 31, 2017
  The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level‐of‐Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974–2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.

  March 31, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12252   open full text
• Making the middle classes on shifting ground? Residential status, performativity and middle‐class subjectivities in contemporary London.
  Michaela Benson, Emma Jackson.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 29, 2017
  This paper argues that shifts in access to housing – both in relation to rental and ownership – disrupt middle‐class reproduction in ways that fundamentally influence class formation. While property ownership has had a long association with middle‐class identities, status and distinction, an increasingly competitive rental market alongside inflated property prices has impacted on expectations and anxieties over housing futures. In this paper, we consider two key questions: (1) What happens to middle‐class identities under the conditions of this wider structural change? (2) How do the middle classes variously manoeuvre within this? Drawing on empirical research conducted in London, we demonstrate that becoming an owner‐occupier may be fractured along lines of class but also along the axes of age, wealth and timing, particularly as this relates to the housing market. It builds on understandings of residential status and place as central to the formation of class, orienting this around the recognition of both people and place as mutable, emphasizing that changing economic and social processes generate new class positionalities and strategies for class reproduction. We argue that these processes are writ large in practices of belonging and claims to place, with wider repercussions within the urban landscape.

  March 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12256   open full text
• Corporate social responsibility and conflicts of interest in the alcohol and gambling industries: a post‐political discourse?
  Ben Baumberg Geiger, Valentina Cuzzocrea.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 28, 2017
  The corporate pursuit of social goals – known as Corporate Social Responsibility or ‘CSR’ – has been subject to critique on a number of grounds. However, a hitherto underexplored potential consequence of CSR has been suggested in a recent paper by C. Garsten and K. Jacobsson (‘Post‐Political Regulation: Soft Power and Post‐political Visions in Global Governance’ (2013), Critical Sociology 39: 421–37). They suggest that CSR is part of an international trend towards ‘post‐political’ governance discourses, where an emphasis on different actors’ common goals obscures conflicts of interest, subverting the open political conflict necessary for a well‐functioning democracy. This paper examines whether such post‐political discourses – including an outright denial of conflict of interest – can be found within the alcohol and gambling industries, where conflicts of interest are likely to be particularly acute given the addictive nature of the goods/services in question. Based on interviews with CSR professionals in these industries in Italy, the UK, and at EU‐level, we do indeed find evidence of a post‐political discourse. In these discourses, alcohol/gambling industry staff deny potential conflicts of interest on the basis that any small benefits from sales to a small number of addicts are seen to be outweighed by the reputational damage that addicts cause. Crucially, however, this coexists with another, less post‐political discourse, where addictions CSR professionals emphasize ‘common ground’ as a basis for CSR, while accepting some instances of possible conflict of interest. Here interviewees make considerable efforts to differentiate good (sustainable) from bad (short‐term) self‐interest in order to stress the genuineness of their own actions. We conclude the paper by considering whether CSR embedded within a ‘common ground’ discourse still hides conflicts of interests and subverts democratic debate, or overcomes the problems identified by Garsten and Jacobsson.

  March 28, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12249   open full text
• Crowding‐in: how Indian civil society organizations began mobilizing around climate change.
  Tuomas Ylä‐Anttila, Pradip Swarnakar.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 22, 2017
  This paper argues that periodic waves of crowding‐in to ‘hot’ issue fields are a recurring feature of how globally networked civil society organizations operate, especially in countries of the Global South. We elaborate on this argument through a study of Indian civil society mobilization around climate change. Five key mechanisms contribute to crowding‐in processes: (1) the expansion of discursive opportunities; (2) the event effects of global climate change conferences; (3) the network effects created by expanding global civil society networks; (4) the adoption and innovation of action repertoires; and (5) global pressure effects creating new opportunities for civil society. Our findings contribute to the world society literature, with an account of the social mechanisms through which global institutions and political events affect national civil societies, and to the social movements literature by showing that developments in world society are essential contributors to national mobilization processes.

  March 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12251   open full text
• Race in an epigenetic time: thinking biology in the plural.
  Maurizio Meloni.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 22, 2017
  The notion that biological memories of environmental experiences can be embedded in the human genome and even transmitted transgenerationally is increasingly relevant in the postgenomic world, particularly in molecular epigenetics, where the genome is conceptualized as porous to environmental signals. In this article I discuss the current rethinking of race in epigenetic rather than genetic terms, emphasizing some of its paradoxical implications, especially for public policy. I claim in particular that: (i) if sociologists want to investigate race in a postgenomic world they should pay more attention to this novel plastic and biosocial view of race; and (ii) there are no reasons to believe that an epigenetic view will extinguish race, or that soft‐inheritance claims will produce a less exclusionary discourse than genetics (hard heredity). Quite the opposite, the ground for a re‐racialization of social debates and the reinforcement of biological boundaries between groups are highlighted in the article.

  March 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12248   open full text
• W. E. B. Du Bois at the center: from science, civil rights movement, to Black Lives Matter.
  Aldon Morris.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 23, 2017
  I am honoured to present the 2016 British Journal of Sociology Annual Lecture at the London School of Economics. My lecture is based on ideas derived from my new book, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. In this essay I make three arguments. First, W.E.B. Du Bois and his Atlanta School of Sociology pioneered scientific sociology in the United States. Second, Du Bois pioneered a public sociology that creatively combined sociology and activism. Finally, Du Bois pioneered a politically engaged social science relevant for contemporary political struggles including the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement.

  February 23, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12241   open full text
• Social closure, micro‐class immobility and the intergenerational reproduction of the upper class: a comparative study.
  Lucia Ruggera, Carlo Barone.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 09, 2017
  This article assesses how processes of social closure enhance intergenerational immobility in the regulated professions and thus promote persistence at the top of the occupational hierarchy. We compare four European countries (GB, Germany, Denmark and Sweden) that differ considerably in their degree of professional regulation and in their broader institutional arrangements. We run log‐linear and logistic regression models on a cumulative dataset based on three large‐scale surveys with detailed and highly comparable information at the level of unit occupations. Our analyses indicate that children of licensed professionals are far more likely to inherit the occupation of their parents and that this stronger micro‐class immobility translates into higher chances of persistence in the upper class. These results support social closure theory and confirm the relevance of a micro‐class approach for the explanation of social fluidity and of its cross‐national variations. Moreover, we find that, when children of professionals do not reproduce the micro‐class of their parents, they still display disproportionate chances of persistence in professional employment. Hence, on the one hand, processes of social closure erect barriers between professions and fuel micro‐class immobility at the top. On the other hand, the cultural proximity of different professional groups drives intense intergenerational exchanges between them. Our analyses indicate that these micro‐ and meso‐class rigidities work as complementary routes to immobility at the top.

  February 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12235   open full text
• Subjective well‐being in the new China: religion, social capital, and social status.
  Yunsong Chen, Mark Williams.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 01, 2016
  We present the first nationally representative evidence on the relationship between religion and subjective well‐being for the case of China. Research on Western societies tends to find a positive association between being religious and level of well‐being. China provides an interesting critical case as the religious population is growing rapidly and the religious and socioeconomic environments are profoundly different from Western societies, implying different mechanisms might be at work. We hypothesize to find a positive association between religion and well‐being in China too, but argue social capital, for which strong evidence is often found in Western societies, is unlikely to be an important mechanism because religion in China is generally non‐congregational. Instead, we argue that the private and subjective dimension of religion matters for well‐being in China by helping adherents have an improved sense of social status relative to the non‐religious in the context of rapid social change and growing inequality. Our results generally support these predictions.

  December 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12232   open full text
• Cosmopolitanism and the relevance of ‘zombie concepts’: the case of anomic suicide amongst Alevi Kurd youth.
  Umit Cetin.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 25, 2016
  Against Beck's claims that conventional sociological concepts and categories are zombie categories, this paper argues that Durkheim's theoretical framework in which suicide is a symptom of an anomic state of society can help us understand the diversity of trajectories that transnational migrants follow and that shape their suicide rates within a cosmopolitan society. Drawing on ethnographic data collected on eight suicides and three attempted suicide cases of second‐generation male Alevi Kurdish migrants living in London, this article explains the impact of segmented assimilation/adaptation trajectories on the incidence of suicide and how their membership of a ‘new rainbow underclass’, as a manifestation of cosmopolitan society, is itself an anomic social position with a lack of integration and regulation.

  November 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12234   open full text
• Barossa Night: cohesion in the British Army officer corps.
  Patrick Bury.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 25, 2016
  Contrasting the classical explanation of military group cohesion as sustained by interpersonal bonds, recent scholars have highlighted the importance of ritualized communication, training and drills in explaining effective military performance in professional armies. While this has offered a welcome addition to the cohesion literature and a novel micro‐sociological method of examining cohesion, its primary evidential base has been combat groups. Indeed, despite their prominent role in directing operations over the past decade, the British Army's officer corps has received relatively little attention from sociologists during this period. No attempt has been made to explain cohesion in the officer corps. Using a similar method to recent cohesion scholars, this paper seeks to address this imbalance by undertaking a micro‐sociology of one ritual in particular: ‘Barossa Night’ in the Royal Irish Regiment. Firstly, it draws on the work of Durkheim to examine how cohesion amongst the officer corps is created and sustained through a dense array of practises during formal social rituals. It provides evidence that the use of rituals highlights that social solidarity is central to understanding officer cohesion. Secondly, following Hockey's work on how private soldiers negotiate order, the paper shows how this solidarity in the officer corps is based on a degree of negotiated order and the need to release organizational tensions inherent in a strictly hierarchical rank structure. It highlights how the awarding of gallantry medals can threaten this negotiated order and fuel deviancy. In examining this behaviour, the paper shows that even amongst an officer class traditionally viewed as the elite upholders of organizational discipline, the negotiation of rank and hierarchy can be fluid. How deviant behaviour is later accepted and normalized by senior officers indicates that negotiated order is as important to understanding cohesion in the British Army's officer corps as it is amongst private soldiers.

  November 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12236   open full text
• Eating together and eating alone: meal arrangements in British households.
  Luke Yates, Alan Warde.
  British Journal of Sociology. November 18, 2016
  Sociology traditionally accounts for eating in terms of the social organization of meals, their provision and consumption. A recurrent public concern is that the meal is being subverted. This paper examines meal arrangements in British households in 2012, drawing on an online survey in the format of a food diary administered to 2784 members of a supermarket consumer panel. It charts the organization of contemporary eating occasions, paying attention to socio‐demographic variation in practice. Especially, it explores companionless meals, putting them in contexts of food provisioning and temporal rhythms. Findings show that eating alone is associated with simpler, quicker meals, and that it takes place most commonly in the morning and midday. Those living alone eat alone more often, but at similar meal times, and they take longer over their lone meals. Comparison with a similar study in 1955–6 suggests some fragmentation or relaxation in collective schedules. The implications are not straightforward, and the causes probably lie more in institutional shifts than personal preferences. Declining levels of commensality are, however, associated with a reduction in household size and, especially in households with children, difficulties of coordinating family members’ schedules.

  November 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12231   open full text
• Continuity, change and complexity in the performance of masculinity among elite young footballers in England.
  Steven Roberts, Eric Anderson, Rory Magrath.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 31, 2016
  Following recent research evidencing that young men are redefining the essential components of what it is to be a man, this paper draws on qualitative interviews with 22 elite‐level, English Premier League academy level football (soccer) players to investigate their performances and understandings of masculinity in relation to decreasing homohysteria. Even in this gender‐segregated, near‐total institution, these working‐class, non‐educationally aspiring adolescents evidence an attenuated performance of ‘maleness’ and improved attitudinal disposition toward homosexuality. Congruent with insights developed by inclusive masculinity scholars, respondents maintained emotional closeness and physical tactility with male teammates and friends. These more inclusive attitudes and homosocial behaviours were, however, slightly more conservative than in other recent research. We close by explaining this variation with reference to theoretical apparatus’ provided by Goffman and Bourdieu to advance theoretical debates about social class and masculinities.

  October 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12237   open full text
• Do organizational and political–legal arrangements explain financial wrongdoing?
  Harland Prechel, Lu Zheng.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 18, 2016
  The 2008 financial crisis was a systemic problem with deep‐rooted structural causes that created opportunities to engage in financial malfeasance, a form of corporate wrongdoing. However, few quantitative studies exist on the effects of organizational and political–legal arrangements on financial malfeasance. In this paper, we examine the effects of organizational and political–legal arrangements that emerged in the 1990s in the FIRE sector (i.e., financial, insurance, and real estate) on financial malfeasance. Our historical contextualization demonstrates how changes in the political–legal arrangements facilitate the emergence of new corporate structures and opportunities for financial malfeasance. Our longitudinal quantitative analysis demonstrates that US FIRE sector corporations with a more complex organizational structure, larger size, lower dividend payment, and higher executive compensation are more prone to commit financial malfeasance.

  October 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12212   open full text
• Intergenerational solidarity: the paradox of reciprocity imbalance in ageing welfare states.
  Peter Thijssen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 28, 2016
  In this article a new theoretical framework is applied to a research field that is somewhat fragmented, namely that of intergenerational solidarity in ageing welfare states. Inspired by utilitarian considerations many scholars tend to problematize the lack of reciprocity characterizing intergenerational exchanges. As some generations are longer old and more numerous they may receive excessive state‐administered support of the younger generations, especially in a democratic setting. However, in reality there is limited empirical evidence of intergenerational conflict and theoretical explanations of this paradox are rare. An integrated and dynamical approach that incorporates Durkheim's solidarity theory, Honneth's intersubjective recognition theory, and the current work on reciprocal exchange is necessary in order to understand the survival of intergenerational solidarity in ageing welfare states. According to this model reciprocal recognition leading to the empathization of exchanges is the driving force of intergenerational solidarity in a prefigurative and democratized culture where the status of the young has risen dramatically. Hence, we come to the paradoxical conclusion that attempts to preserve intergenerational solidarity by openly denouncing excessive transfers and trying to bypass them institutionally sometimes might be counterproductive because they may erode their empathic underpinnings.

  September 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12221   open full text
• The sociology of late secularization: social divisions and religiosity.
  Steve Bruce.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 22, 2016
  At the start of the twentieth century the religious differed from the religiously indifferent largely in being religious. Now they differ in a number of other social and demographic characteristics that reduce interaction between the two populations further than simple numbers would require. That some of the main carriers of religion are immigrants or adherents of recently imported faiths reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do. In the context of the stock of religious knowledge being depleted and religion‐taken‐too‐seriously being unpopular, the narrow demographic base of the religious makes conversion unlikely and thus makes the reversal of secularization unlikely.

  September 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12219   open full text
• Student involvement in the UK sex industry: motivations and experiences.
  Tracey Sagar, Debbie Jones, Katrien Symons, Jacky Tyrie, Ron Roberts.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 19, 2016
  The Student Sex Work Project was set up in 2012 in the United Kingdom (UK) to locate students who are involved in the sex industry, to discover their motivations and needs, and in doing so provide an evidence base to consider the development of policy and practice within Higher Education. As part of this initiative, a large survey was undertaken comprising students from throughout the UK. Reporting on the findings from this survey, the article sheds some light on what occupations students take up in the sex industry, what motivates their participation and how they experience the work. The study also offers a much‐needed empirical input to the ongoing academic debates on the nature of sex work. The results suggest that there can be little doubt of a student presence within the sex industry in the UK. The motivations and experiences of student sex workers cover elements of agency and choice as well as of force and exploitation and it is suggested that student sex work is best understood from a polymorphous framework which leaves room for a wide variety of experiences and challenges.

  September 19, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12216   open full text
• Constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions of ‘family’ amongst people who live apart together (LATs).
  Mariya Stoilova, Sasha Roseneil, Julia Carter, Simon Duncan, Miranda Phillips.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 19, 2016
  This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand ‘family’. It investigates whether, and how far, non‐cohabiting partners, friends, ‘blood’ and legal ties are seen as ‘family’, and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re‐draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways that involve emotionally subjective understandings of family life, and that also refer to normative constructions of what ‘family’ ought to be, as well as to practical recognitions of lived family ‘realities’. This often involves handling uncertainties about what constitutes ‘family’.

  September 19, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12220   open full text
• The disorganized family: institutions, practices and normativity.
  Lisa Smyth.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 14, 2016
  This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de‐institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de‐institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience.

  September 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12217   open full text
• Targeted harassment, subcultural identity and the embrace of difference: a case study.
  Paul Hodkinson, Jon Garland.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 09, 2016
  This paper examines the significance of experiences and understandings of targeted harassment to the identities of youth subcultural participants, through case study research on goths. It does so against a context of considerable recent public discussion about the victimization of alternative subcultures and a surprising scarcity of academic research on the subject. The analysis presented indicates that, although individual direct experiences are diverse, the spectre of harassment can form an ever‐present accompaniment to subcultural life, even for those who have never been seriously targeted. As such, it forms part of what it is to be a subcultural participant and comprises significant common ground with other members. Drawing upon classic and more recent understandings of how subcultural groups respond to broader forms of outside hostility, we show how the shared experience of feeling targeted for harassment tied in with a broader subcultural discourse of being stigmatized by a perceived ‘normal’ society. The role of harassment as part of this, we argue, contributed to the strength with which subcultural identities were felt and to a positive embrace of otherness.

  September 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12214   open full text
• Processes of social flourishing and their liminal collapse: elements to a genealogy of globalization.
  Arpad Szakolczai.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 17, 2016
  This article aims at exploring a long‐term historical perspective on which contemporary globalization can be more meaningfully situated. A central problem with established approaches to globalization is that they are even more presentist than the literature on modernization was. Presentism not only means the ignoring of history, but also the unreflective application to history of concepts taken from the study of the modern world. In contrast, it is argued that contemporary globalization is not a unique development, but rather is a concrete case of a historical type. Taking as its point of departure the spirit, rather than the word, of Max Weber, this article extends the scope of sociological investigation into archaeological evidence. Having a genealogical design and introducing the concept of ‘liminality’, the article approaches the modern process of globalization through reconstructing the internal dynamics of another type of historical change called ‘social flourishing’. Taking up the Weberian approach continued by Eisenstadt in his writings on ‘axial age’, it moves away from situations of crisis as reference point, shifting attention to periods of revival by introducing the term ‘epiphany’. Through the case of early Mesopotamia, it shows how social flourishing can be transmogrified into globalizing growth, gaining a new perspective concerning the kind of ‘animating spirit’ that might have driven the shift from Renaissance to Reformation, the rise of modern colonialism, or contemporary globalization. More generally, it will retrieve the long‐term historical background of the axial age and demonstrate the usefulness and importance of archaeological evidence for sociology.

  August 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12213   open full text
• The remaining core: a fresh look at religiosity trends in Great Britain.
  Sarah Wilkins‐Laflamme.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 08, 2016
  In recent years, there has been a growing argument that the end product of secularization may not be a disappearance of all things religious, but rather a polarization between a larger secular group in society and smaller religiously fervent and active communities. Yet, there has been little empirical testing of this theory in contexts of advanced secularization. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by studying individual belief and religiosity trends over the past four decades in Great Britain, searching specifically for evidence of the population splitting more and more between religious ‘nones’ removed from all forms of religion, and actively religious individuals characterized by strong beliefs and favourable to the public involvement of religion. Analysing descriptive statistics from the 1983–2012 BSAs as well as more detailed models from the 1991, 1998 and 2008 BSAs, we find growing differences in levels of beliefs and attitudes towards public religion between the increasing proportions of unaffiliated and, in recent years and among younger cohorts, more stable proportions of religiously committed individuals. The remaining religiously committed generally have stronger beliefs and more favourable views towards religious leaders influencing politics in 2008 compared with 1991, and the unaffiliated, less favourable views towards public religion.

  August 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12205   open full text
• The cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization.
  Gareth Millington.
  British Journal of Sociology. August 04, 2016
  This paper explores the empirical, conceptual and theoretical gains that can be made using cosmopolitan social theory to think through the urban transformations that scholars have in recent years termed planetary urbanization. Recognizing the global spread of urbanization makes the need for a cosmopolitan urban sociology more pressing than ever. Here, it is suggested that critical urban sociology can be invigorated by focusing upon the disconnect that Henri Lefebvre posits between the planetarization of the urban – which he views as economically and technologically driven – and his dis‐alienated notion of a global urban society. The first aim of this paper is to highlight the benefits of using ‘cosmopolitan’ social theory to understand Lefebvre's urban problematic (and to establish why this is also a cosmopolitan problematic); the second is to identify the core cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization, tensions that are both actually existing and reproduced in scholarly accounts. The article begins by examining the challenges presented to urban sociology by planetary urbanization, before considering how cosmopolitan sociological theory helps provide an analytical ‘grip’ on the deep lying social realities of contemporary urbanization, especially in relation to questions about difference, culture and history. These insights are used to identify three cosmopolitan contradictions that exist within urbanized (and urbanizing) space; tensions that provide a basis for a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan investigation of planetary urbanization.

  August 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12200   open full text
• The making of ‘Boomergeddon’: the construction of the Baby Boomer generation as a social problem in Britain.
  Jennie Bristow.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 29, 2016
  High‐profile claims about the problem of the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation, made in media and policy circles in recent years, have contributed to an awakened interest in the sociology of generations. While many claims focus on resource issues arising from the existence of a relatively large cohort (for example, pensions and healthcare), they contain an implicit moral critique of the generation associated with the postwar ‘boom’ of the Sixties. This article examines the development of the cultural script of the Baby Boomer problem in British newspapers over a 26‐year period, to examine how shifts in the discourse about the Boomer generation relate to wider social, economic, cultural and political trends.

  July 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12206   open full text
• A state of limbo: the politics of waiting in neo‐liberal Latvia.
  Liene Ozoliņa‐Fitzgerald.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 29, 2016
  This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post‐Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo‐liberal governmental technology and its application in post‐socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state‐run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between ‘neo‐liberal’ and ‘Soviet’ regimes, we should understand the double‐move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo‐liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo‐liberalism.

  July 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12204   open full text
• Moral panic, moral regulation, and the civilizing process.
  Sean Hier.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 22, 2016
  This article compares two analytical frameworks ostensibly formulated to widen the focus of moral panic studies. The comparative analysis suggests that attempts to conceptualize moral panics in terms of decivilizing processes have neither substantively supplemented the explanatory gains made by conceptualizing moral panic as a form of moral regulation nor provided a viable alternative framework that better explains the dynamics of contemporary moral panics. The article concludes that Elias's meta‐theory of the civilizing process potentially provides explanatory resources to investigate a possible historical‐structural shift towards the so‐called age of (a)moral panic; the analytical demands of such a project, however, require a sufficiently different line of inquiry than the one encouraged by both the regulatory and decivilizing perspectives on moral panic.

  July 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12201   open full text
• Gay guys using gay language: friendship, shared values and the intent‐context‐effect matrix.
  Mark McCormack, Liam Wignall, Max Morris.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 14, 2016
  This article draws on in‐depth interviews with 35 openly gay male undergraduates from four universities in England to develop an understanding of the changing nature of language related to homosexuality. In addition to finding a diminution in the prevalence of homophobic language, we demonstrate that participants maintain complex and nuanced understandings of phrases that do not use homophobic pejoratives, such as ‘that's so gay’. The majority of participants rejected the notion that these phrases are inherently homophobic, instead arguing that the intent with which they are said and the context in which they are used are vital in understanding their meaning and effect. We conceptualize an intent‐context‐effect matrix to understand the interdependency of these variables. Highlighting the situated nature of this matrix, we also demonstrate the importance of the existence of shared norms between those saying and hearing the phrase when interpreting such language.

  July 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12203   open full text
• Why still marry? The role of feelings in the persistence of marriage as an institution1.
  Francesco C. Billari, Aart C. Liefbroer.
  British Journal of Sociology. July 14, 2016
  Despite cohabitation becoming increasingly equivalent to marriage in some of the most ‘advanced’ Western European societies, the vast majority of people still marry. Why so? Existing theories, mostly based on various approaches tied to cognitive decision‐making, do not provide a sufficient explanation of the persistence of marriage. In this article, we argue that feelings attached to marriage, i.e. the affective evaluation of those involved in a partner relationship concerning marriage as opposed to cohabitation, explain the persistent importance of marriage as an institution. We argue that socialization, biological and social‐structural factors affect these affective evaluations. We provide a test of our hypotheses using a longitudinal study of young adults in the Netherlands. The results of our analyses are consistent with a central role of feelings in the decision to marry, as well as with a role for key moderating factors such as gender.

  July 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12202   open full text
• Fetishes and factishes: Durkheim and Latour.
  Bjørn Schiermer.
  British Journal of Sociology. June 03, 2016
  This paper defends the concept of ‘fetishism’ as an explanatory parameter in sociological theorizing on Durkheimian grounds, while at the same time paying due attention to important insights regarding the role of objects in social life, originating from Actor‐Network Theory (ANT). It critically assesses the current critique of the concept of fetishism propagated by ANT protagonist Bruno Latour. Latour and suggests a compromise between these two ‘schools’. First, to place the paper firmly in context, I analyse some examples of modern fetishism and outline the themes of the ensuing discussion. Next, I turn to Durkheim, seeking to develop a distinct interpretation of the concept of the social and of fetishism, and then point to some of Durkheim's shortcomings and attempt to make room for Latourian perspectives. Finally, I critically assess Latour's dismissal of forms of social ‘explanation’ and of the concept of fetishism.

  June 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12199   open full text
• Kindness in Australia: an empirical critique of moral decline sociology.
  Daphne Habibis, Nicholas Hookway, Anthea Vreugdenhil.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 27, 2016
  A new sociological agenda is emerging that interrogates how morality can be established in the absence of the moral certainties of the past but there is a shortage of empirical work on this topic. This article establishes a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of everyday morality drawing on the work of theorists including Ahmed, Bauman and Taylor. It uses the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to assess the state and shape of contemporary moralities by asking how kind are Australians, how is its expression socially distributed, and what are the motivations for kindness. The findings demonstrate that Australians exhibit a strong attachment and commitment to kindness as a moral value that is primarily motivated by interiorized sources of moral authority. We argue these findings support the work of theorists such as Ahmed and Taylor who argue authenticity and embodied emotion are legitimate sources of morality in today's secular societies. The research also provides new evidence that generational changes are shaping understandings and practices of kindness in unexpected ways.

  May 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12194   open full text
• Does media coverage influence public attitudes towards welfare recipients? The impact of the 2011 English riots.
  Aaron Reeves, Robert de Vries.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 27, 2016
  Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference‐in‐differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre‐intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post‐intervention: 10 August–10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non‐readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non‐readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right‐leaning newspaper and non‐newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right‐ and left‐leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.

  May 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12191   open full text
• Public political thought: bridging the sociological–philosophical divide in the study of legitimacy.
  Uriel Abulof.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 27, 2016
  The study of political legitimacy is divided between prescriptive and descriptive approaches. Political philosophy regards legitimacy as principled justification, sociology regards legitimacy as public support. However, all people can, and occasionally do engage in morally reasoning their political life. This paper thus submits that in studying socio‐political legitimation – the legitimacy‐making process – the philosophical ought and the sociological is can be bridged. I call this construct ‘public political thought’ (PPT), signifying the public's principled moral reasoning of politics, which need not be democratic or liberal. The paper lays PPT's foundations and identifies its ‘builders’ and ‘building blocks’. I propose that the edifice of PPT is built by moral agents constructing and construing socio‐moral order (nomization). PPT's building blocks are justificatory common beliefs (doxa) and the deliberative language of legitimation. I illustrate the merits of this groundwork through two empirical puzzles: the end of apartheid and the emergence of Québécois identity.

  May 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12192   open full text
• Homology and isomorphism: Bourdieu in conversation with New Institutionalism.
  Yingyao Wang.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 24, 2016
  Bourdieusian Field Theory (BFT) provided decisive inspiration for the early conceptual formulation of New Institutionalism (NI). This paper attempts to reinvigorate the stalled intellectual dialogue between NI and BFT by comparing NI's concept of isomorphism with BFT's notion of homology. I argue that Bourdieu's understanding of domination‐oriented social action, transposable habitus, and a non‐linear causality, embodied in his neglected concept of homology, provides an alternative theorization of field‐level convergence to New Institutionalism's central idea of institutional isomorphism. To showcase how BFT can be useful for organizational research, I postulate a habitus‐informed and field‐conditioned theory of transference to enrich NI's spin‐off thesis of ‘diffusion’. I propose that while NI can benefit from BFT's potential of bringing social structure back into organizational research, BFT can enrich its social analysis by borrowing from NI's elaboration of the symbolic system of organizations.

  May 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12197   open full text
• Malala and the politics of global iconicity.
  Thomas Olesen.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 21, 2016
  The article presents a case analysis of Malala Yousafzai's transformation into a global injustice icon after she was shot in 2012 by the Pakistani Taliban for advocating for girls’ right to education. The analysis focuses on the political aspects of this process and is divided into three parts. The first looks at factors that facilitated Malala's iconization as she was undergoing medical treatment and was unable to participate in her iconization. The second part starts when Malala enters the global public sphere and begins to actively contribute to the iconization process. The third part identifies de‐iconizing resistance to Malala from Pakistani actors who see her iconization as a symbolic colonization in which Malala has become a vehicle of the West. Theoretically, the article is located within cultural sociology, but expands it in a political and global direction.

  May 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12195   open full text
• Performative family: homosexuality, marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China.
  Susanne YP Choi, Ming Luo.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 21, 2016
  Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.

  May 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12196   open full text
• The persistence of cliques in the post‐communist state. The case of deniability in drug reimbursement policy in Poland.
  Piotr Ozierański, Lawrence King.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 21, 2016
  This article explores a key question in political sociology: Can post‐communist policy‐making be described with classical theories of the Western state or do we need a theory of the specificity of the post‐communist state? In so doing, we consider Janine Wedel's clique theory, concerned with informal social actors and processes in post‐communist transition. We conducted a case study of drug reimbursement policy in Poland, using 109 stakeholder interviews, official documents and media coverage. Drawing on ‘sensitizing concepts’ from Wedel's theory, especially the notion of ‘deniability’, we developed an explanation of why Poland's reimbursement policy combined suboptimal outcomes, procedural irregularities with limited accountability of key stakeholders. We argue that deniability was created through four main mechanisms: (1) blurred boundaries between different types of state authority allowing for the dispersion of blame for controversial policy decisions; (2) bridging different sectors by ‘institutional nomads’, who often escaped existing conflicts of interest regulations; (3) institutional nomads’ ‘flexible’ methods of influence premised on managing roles and representations; and (4) coordination of resources and influence by elite cliques monopolizing exclusive policy expertise. Overall, the greatest power over drug reimbursement was often associated with lowest accountability. We suggest, therefore, that the clique theory can be generalized from its home domain of explanation in foreign aid and privatizations to more technologically advanced policies in Poland and other post‐communist countries. This conclusion is not identical, however, with arguing the uniqueness of the post‐communist state. Rather, we show potential for using Wedel's account to analyse policy‐making in Western democracies and indicate scope for its possible integration with the classical theories of the state.

  May 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12193   open full text
• Trauma management: Chernobyl in Belarus and Ukraine.
  Ekatherina Zhukova.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 18, 2016
  Although the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened in the Soviet Union in 1986, we still do not know how the most affected states – Ukraine and Belarus – have managed this tragedy since independence. Drawing on the concept of cultural trauma, this article compares Chernobyl narratives in Belarus and Ukraine over the past 28 years. It shows that national narratives of Chernobyl differ, representing the varying ways in which the state overcomes trauma. Our understanding of post‐communist transformations can be improved by analysing trauma management narratives and their importance for new national identity construction. These narratives also bring new insights to our vision of cultural trauma by linking it to ontological insecurity. The article demonstrates how the state can become an arena of trauma process as it commands material and symbolic resources to deal with trauma. In general, it contributes to a better understanding of how the same traumatic event can become a source of solidarity in one community, but a source of hostility in another.

  May 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12198   open full text
• Funerals and families: locating death as a relational issue.
  Kate Woodthorpe, Hannah Rumble.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 05, 2016
  Situated at the intersection of the Sociology of Death and Sociology of the Family, this paper argues that the organization and funding of funerals is an overlooked and available lens through which to examine cultural and political norms of familial obligation. Drawing on interviews with claimants to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Social Fund Funeral Payment, the paper shows how both responsibility for the organization and payment of a funeral is assumed within families, and how at times this can be overridden by the state. In highlighting the tension between reflexive choice and political norms of family espoused in this policy context, it supports Gilding's () assertion that understanding family practice through reflexivity alone neglects the institutions and conventions within which ‘doing’ family takes place. In so doing, the paper further makes a case for families and relational negotiations and tensions to be more explicitly included within sociological understanding(s) of death more generally.

  May 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12190   open full text
• Party on wheels: mobile party spaces in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration.
  Eivind Grip Fjær, Willy Pedersen, Sveinung Sandberg.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 28, 2016
  Research on partying and nightlife often emphasizes commercial control while overlooking participants’ creativity and agency. Due to their age, appearance and transgressive partying, participants in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration have limited access to bars and pubs in the ordinary night‐time economy. To create alternative party spaces under their own control they utilize the spatial opportunities offered by automobility. Groups of students get together many years in advance and buy old buses which they refurbish to become rolling nightclubs that enable them to ‘transcend space’ through partying while on the move. These mobile party spaces provide a material and symbolic centre of communion and a tight space for physical assembly that enhances the production of intense positive emotions. In a cat‐and‐mouse game with the police, the buses provide a sense of nomadic autonomy, and enable participants to drink heavily for days on end. The study examines how youth may creatively zone their own party spaces within the context of automobility and how these mobile spaces again shape the partying that goes on within them. While this party practice opens up for autonomy, creativity and social transgressions reminiscent of liminal phases or carnivals, at a deeper level participants clearly reproduce class‐based differences and exaggerate conventional practices and symbols.

  April 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12189   open full text
• Revitalizing sociology: urban life and mental illness between history and the present.
  Des Fitzgerald, Nikolas Rose, Ilina Singh.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 22, 2016
  This paper proposes a re‐thinking of the relationship between sociology and the biological sciences. Tracing lines of connection between the history of sociology and the contemporary landscape of biology, the paper argues for a reconfiguration of this relationship beyond popular rhetorics of ‘biologization' or ‘medicalization'. At the heart of the paper is a claim that, today, there are some potent new frames for re‐imagining the traffic between sociological and biological research – even for ‘revitalizing’ the sociological enterprise as such. The paper threads this argument through one empirical case: the relationship between urban life and mental illness. In its first section, it shows how this relationship enlivened both early psychiatric epidemiology, and some forms of the new discipline of sociology; it then traces the historical division of these sciences, as the sociological investment in psychiatric questions waned, and ‘the social' become marginalized within an increasingly ‘biological' psychiatry. In its third section, however, the paper shows how this relationship has lately been revivified, but now by a nuanced epigenetic and neurobiological attention to the links between mental health and urban life. What role can sociology play here? In its final section, the paper shows how this older sociology, with its lively interest in the psychiatric and neurobiological vicissitudes of urban social life, can be our guide in helping to identify intersections between sociological and biological attention. With a new century now underway, the paper concludes by suggesting that the relationship between urban life and mental illness may prove a core testing‐ground for a ‘revitalized' sociology.

  February 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12188   open full text
• Real social analytics: A contribution towards a phenomenology of a digital world.
  Nick Couldry, Aristea Fotopoulou, Luke Dickens.
  British Journal of Sociology. February 18, 2016
  This article argues against the assumption that agency and reflexivity disappear in an age of ‘algorithmic power’ (Lash 2007). Following the suggestions of Beer (2009), it proposes that, far from disappearing, new forms of agency and reflexivity around the embedding in everyday practice of not only algorithms but also analytics more broadly are emerging, as social actors continue to pursue their social ends but mediated through digital interfaces: this is the consequence of many social actors now needing their digital presence, regardless of whether they want this, to be measured and counted. The article proposes ‘social analytics’ as a new topic for sociology: the sociological study of social actors’ uses of analytics not for the sake of measurement itself (or to make profit from measurement) but in order to fulfil better their social ends through an enhancement of their digital presence. The article places social analytics in the context of earlier debates about categorization, algorithmic power, and self‐presentation online, and describes in detail a case study with a UK community organization which generated the social analytics approach. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this approach for further sociological fieldwork in a digital world.

  February 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12183   open full text
• Work–life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class.
  Tracey Warren.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 21, 2015
  The paper was stimulated by the relative absence of the working class from work–life debates. The common conclusion from work–life studies is that work–life imbalance is largely a middle‐class problem. It is argued here that this classed assertion is a direct outcome of a particular and narrow interpretation of work–life imbalance in which time is seen to be the major cause of difficulty. Labour market time, and too much of it, dominates the conceptualization of work–life and its measurement too. This heavy focus on too much labour market time has rendered largely invisible from dominant work–life discourses the types of imbalance that are more likely to impact the working class. The paper's analysis of large UK data‐sets demonstrates a reduction in hours worked by working‐class men, more part‐time employment in working‐class occupations, and a substantial growth in levels of reported financial insecurity amongst the working classes after the 2008–9 recession. It shows too that economic‐based work–life imbalance is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction than is temporal imbalance. The paper concludes that the dominant conceptualization of work–life disregards the major work–life challenge experienced by the working class: economic precarity. The work–life balance debate needs to more fully incorporate economic‐based work–life imbalance if it is to better represent class inequalities.

  October 21, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12160   open full text
• Notes towards a ‘social aesthetic’: Guest editors' introduction to the special section.
  Cristiana Olcese, Mike Savage.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 12, 2015
  There is an emerging ‘aesthetic turn’ within sociology which currently lacks clear focus. This paper reviews the different issues feeding into this interest and contributes to its development. Previous renderings of this relationship have set the aesthetic up against sociology, as an emphasis which ‘troubles’ conventional understandings of sociality and offers no ready way of reconciling the aesthetic with the social. Reflecting on the contributions of recent social theorists, from figures including Bourdieu, Born, Rancière, Deleuze, and Martin, we argue instead for the value of a social aesthetic which critiques instrumentalist and reductive understandings of the social itself. In explicating what form this might take, the latter parts of the paper take issue with classical modernist conceptions of the aesthetic which continue to dominate popular and sociological understandings of the aesthetic, and uses the motif of ‘walking’ to show how the aesthetic can be rendered in terms of ‘the mundane search’ and how this search spans everyday experience and cultural re‐production. We offer a provisional definition of social aesthetics as the embedded and embodied process of meaning making which, by acknowledging the physical/corporeal boundaries and qualities of the inhabited world, also allows imagination to travel across other spaces and times. It is hoped that this approach can be a useful platform for further inquiry.

  October 12, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12159   open full text
• Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière on art/aesthetics and politics: the origins of disagreement, 1963–1985.
  Derek Robbins.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 12, 2015
  Rancière published two substantial criticisms of the work of Bourdieu in the early 1980s. It is possible that these were provoked by his sense that he needed to oppose what he considered to be the sociological reduction of aesthetic taste offered by Bourdieu in Distinction (Bourdieu 1986 [1979]) at precisely the moment when he (Rancière) was beginning to articulate his commitment to the potential of aesthetic expression as a mode of political resistance. Except in so far as it draws upon some of the retrospective reflections offered by Rancière in his introductions to the re‐issues of his early texts, this paper examines the parallel development of the thinking of the two men up to the mid‐1980s – but not beyond. The discussion is situated socio‐historically and, by definition, does not seek to offer comparatively any transhistorical assessment of the values of the positions adopted by the two men. I argue that Rancière misrepresented the character of Bourdieu's sociological work by failing to recognize the underlying phenomenological orientation of his thinking. Bourdieu suppressed this orientation in the 1960s but, after the May events of 1968, it enabled him to expose the extent to which the practices of both science and art operate within constructed ‘fields’ in strategic distinction from popular primary experience. The challenge is to introduce an ongoing dialogue between primary and constructed cultures rather than to suppose that either social science or art possesses intrinsic autonomy.

  October 12, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12148   open full text
• On reflexivity and the conduct of the self in everyday life: reflections on Bourdieu and Archer.
  Sadiya Akram, Anthony Hogan.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 04, 2015
  This article provides a critique of the concept of reflexivity in social theory today and argues against the tendency to define agency exclusively in terms of reflexivity. Margaret Archer, in particular, is highlighted as a key proponent of this thesis. Archer argues that late modernity is characterized by reflexivity but, in our view, this position neglects the impact of more enduring aspects of agency, such as the routinization of social life and the role of the taken‐for‐granted. These concepts were pivotal to Bourdieu and Giddens' theorization of everyday life and action and to Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self. We offer Bourdieu's habitus as a more nuanced approach to theorizing agency, and provide an alternative account of reflexivity. Whilst accepting that reflexivity is a core aspect of agency, we argue that it operates to a backdrop of the routinization of social life and operates from within and not outside of habitus. We highlight the role of the breach in reflexivity, suggesting that it opens up a critical window for agents to initiate change. The article suggests caution in over‐ascribing reflexivity to agency, instead arguing that achieving reflexivity and change is a difficult and fraught process, which has emotional and moral consequences. The effect of this is that people often prefer the status quo, rather than to risk change and uncertainty.

  October 04, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12150   open full text
• Ultimate concerns in late modernity: Archer, Bourdieu and reflexivity.
  David Farrugia, Dan Woodman.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 04, 2015
  Through a critique of Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, this paper explores the theoretical contribution of a Bourdieusian sociology of the subject for understanding social change. Archer's theory of reflexivity holds that conscious ‘internal conversations’ are the motor of society, central both to human subjectivity and to the ‘reflexive imperative’ of late modernity. This is established through critiques of Bourdieu, who is held to erase creativity and meaningful personal investments from subjectivity, and late modernity is depicted as a time when a ‘situational logic of opportunity’ renders embodied dispositions and the reproduction of symbolic advantages obsolete. Maintaining Archer's focus on ‘ultimate concerns’ in a context of social change, this paper argues that her theory of reflexivity is established through a narrow misreading and rejection of Bourdieu's work, which ultimately creates problems for her own approach. Archer's rejection of any pre‐reflexive dimensions to subjectivity and social action leaves her unable to sociologically explain the genesis of ‘ultimate concerns’, and creates an empirically dubious narrative of the consequences of social change. Through a focus on Archer's concept of ‘fractured reflexivity’, the paper explores the theoretical necessity of habitus and illusio for understanding the social changes that Archer is grappling with. In late modernity, reflexivity is valorized just as the conditions for its successful operation are increasingly foreclosed, creating ‘fractured reflexivity’ emblematic of the complex contemporary interaction between habitus, illusio, and accelerating social change.

  October 04, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12147   open full text
• Fell runners and walking walls: towards a sociology of living landscapes and aesthetic atmospheres as an alternative to a Lakeland picturesque.
  Sarah Nettleton.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 23, 2015
  This article draws on analysis of data generated by way of an ethnography of fell running in the English Lake District and suggests that participants who have lived and run in the area for many years experience a particular mode of aesthetic. The Lake District has long been valued for its outstanding scenery represented in the aesthetic of the picturesque comprising relatively static landscapes that should be conserved. Established fell runners who have run in the area for many decades apprehend and appreciate the landscape in more complex, rooted and situated ways. The anthropologist Ingold, distinguishes between landscape and landsceppan, and this insight is instructive for grasping the way in which the runners do not simply scope scenery but work with the land: they shape it and are shaped by it. Fell runners are elements within the living environment and along with walls, sheep, becks, sun, rain – what Ingold evocatively calls the ‘weather‐world’ – are mobile. Movement is central to their aesthetic, they enjoy not so much the scenic but rather a fellsceppan and do so through their fast eye‐gait‐footwork and their lively, variable occupation with the terrain. The fells infiltrate and interpenetrate the runners and movement through the fells generates a somatic aesthetic. The pleasure in turn breeds existential capital an embodied gratification that serves as an attractor that binds those who appreciate feelings of being alive with and in the fells.

  September 23, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12146   open full text
• Rethinking industrial citizenship: the role and meaning of work in an age of austerity.
  Tim Strangleman.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 15, 2015
  T. H. Marshall in his famous tract Citizenship and Social Class wrote briefly about what he called ‘industrial citizenship’, a type of belonging rooted in the workplace. Here Marshall's ideas are developed alongside a consideration of Durkheim's Professional Ethics and Civic Morals together with research material from the Guinness Company. It shows the way the Company actively sought to create ‘Guinness citizenship’ within its London brewery. The article draws out the ways in which the significance and potential of work based citizenship for ameliorating the ills of industrial society are clearly articulated in mid‐twentieth century Britain and echo earlier neglected Durkheimian sociological ideas on work. These ideas have real potential to inform contemporary academic and policy debates about the nature of capitalism and the form and content of work now and in the future.

  September 15, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12135   open full text
• The idea of philosophical sociology.
  Daniel Chernilo.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 05, 2014
  This article introduces the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the relationships between implicit notions of human nature and explicit conceptualizations of social life within sociology. Philosophical sociology is also an invitation to reflect on the role of the normative in social life by looking at it sociologically and philosophically at the same: normative self‐reflection is a fundamental aspect of sociology's scientific tasks because key sociological questions are, in the last instance, also philosophical ones. For the normative to emerge, we need to move away from the reductionism of hedonistic, essentialist or cynical conceptions of human nature and be able to grasp the conceptions of the good life, justice, democracy or freedom whose normative contents depend on more or less articulated conceptions of our shared humanity. The idea of philosophical sociology is then sustained on three main pillars and I use them to structure this article: (1) a revalorization of the relationships between sociology and philosophy; (2) a universalistic principle of humanity that works as a major regulative idea of sociological research, and; (3) an argument on the social (immanent) and pre‐social (transcendental) sources of the normative in social life. As invitations to embrace posthuman cyborgs, non‐human actants and material cultures proliferate, philosophical sociology offers the reminder that we still have to understand more fully who are the human beings that populate the social world.

  May 05, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12077   open full text
• Social media in the 2011 Egyptian uprising.
  Robert Brym, Melissa Godbout, Andreas Hoffbauer, Gabe Menard, Tony Huiquan Zhang.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 05, 2014
  This paper uses Gallup poll data to assess two narratives that have crystallized around the 2011 Egyptian uprising: (1) New electronic communications media constituted an important and independent cause of the protests in so far as they enhanced the capacity of demonstrators to extend protest networks, express outrage, organize events, and warn comrades of real‐time threats. (2) Net of other factors, new electronic communications media played a relatively minor role in the uprising because they are low‐cost, low‐risk means of involvement that attract many sympathetic onlookers who are not prepared to engage in high‐risk activism. Examining the independent effects of a host of factors associated with high‐risk movement activism, the paper concludes that using some new electronic communications media was associated with being a demonstrator. However, grievances, structural availability, and network connections were more important than was the use of new electronic communications media in distinguishing demonstrators from sympathetic onlookers. Thus, although both narratives have some validity, they must both be qualified.

  May 05, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12080   open full text
• Alleviating poverty or reinforcing inequality? Interpreting micro‐finance in practice, with illustrations from rural China.
  Becky Yang Hsu.
  British Journal of Sociology. May 02, 2014
  Academic and political discussions about micro‐finance have been found lacking in predictive power, because they are based on orthodox economic theory, which does not properly comprehend the social components of credit. I take a better approach, utilizing credit theory – specifically, Ingham's explication of how the nature of money as credit leads to social inequality. I also expound the perspective that morality is not separate from considerations borrowers make in micro‐finance programmes on the micro level. I draw upon illustrations from my fieldwork in rural China, where a group‐lending micro‐finance programme was administered as part of a larger government‐initiated effort across the country.

  May 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12076   open full text
• Social theory and current affairs: a framework for intellectual engagement.
  Rob Stones.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 27, 2014
  The paper aims to facilitate more adequate critical engagement with current affairs events by journalists, and with current affairs texts by audiences. It draws on social theory to provide the intellectual resources to enable this. The academic ambition is for the framework to be adopted and developed by social thinkers in producing exemplary critical readings of news and current affairs texts. To this end it is offered as a research paradigm. The paper situates its argument in relation to the wider literature in media and cultural studies, acknowledging the subtle skills required to appreciate the relative autonomy of texts. However, it draws attention to the lack of an adequate perspective with which to assess the frames, representations, and judgments within news and current affairs texts. To address this lacuna it proposes the conception of a social‐theoretical frame, based on a number of meta‐theoretical approaches, designed to provide audiences with a systematic means of addressing the status and adequacy of individual texts. Social theoretical frames can reveal the shortcomings of media framing of the contextual fields within which news and current affairs events take place. Two illustrative case studies are used to indicate the value and potential of the approach: the analysis of a short newspaper report of the return of protesters to Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011, and a critique of four current affairs reports from various genres on the political turmoil in Thailand leading up to the clashes of May 2010.

  April 27, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12074   open full text
• The arbitrariness and normativity of social conventions.
  Ismael Al‐Amoudi, John Latsis.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 09, 2014
  This paper investigates a puzzling feature of social conventions: the fact that they are both arbitrary and normative. We examine how this tension is addressed in sociological accounts of conventional phenomena. Traditional approaches tend to generate either synchronic accounts that fail to consider the arbitrariness of conventions, or diachronic accounts that miss central aspects of their normativity. As a remedy, we propose a processual conception that considers conventions as both the outcome and material cause of much human activity. This conceptualization, which borrows from the économie des conventions as well as critical realism, provides a novel perspective on how conventions are nested and defined, and on how they are established, maintained and challenged.

  April 09, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12042   open full text
• Uncertainty: the Curate's egg in financial economics.
  Jocelyn Pixley.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 08, 2014
  Economic theories of uncertainty are unpopular with financial experts. As sociologists, we rightly refuse predictions, but the uncertainties of money are constantly sifted and turned into semi‐denial by a financial economics set on somehow beating the future. Picking out ‘bits’ of the future as ‘risk’ and ‘parts’ as ‘information’ is attractive but socially dangerous, I argue, because money's promises are always uncertain. New studies of uncertainty are reversing sociology's neglect of the unavoidable inability to know the forces that will shape the financial future.

  April 08, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12070   open full text
• The advanced use of mobile phones in five European countries.
  Leopoldina Fortunati, Sakari Taipale.
  British Journal of Sociology. April 04, 2014
  The paper explores the advanced users of mobile phones in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK (EU5 countries) and aims to clarify the social meaning of advanced use. The mobile phone is seen as a strategic tool of social labour, whose capabilities are exploited to a different extent in the five studied countries. The analysis is based on a cross‐national survey data collected in 2009 (N = 7,255). First, the results show that there are substantial differences in the advanced use of mobile phone and its predictors in Europe. Generally, only about one third of the studied mobile features are exploited. British and French people are the most advanced users, followed by German, Spanish and Italians. While Italians have stuck to early developed mobile phone features, Britons especially have continued to adopt the newer properties of the mobile phone. Second, the article shows that owing to the extensive under‐utilization of its features, the mobile phone as a tool of social labour is efficiently exploited by only a small number of people. They, however, constitute technological vanguards that make use of the diverse features in different countries. This limited use of advanced features results in the new patterns of social stratification.

  April 04, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12075   open full text
• Pennies from heaven? Conceptions and earmarking of lottery prize money,.
  Anna Hedenus.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 24, 2014
  The source of money has been shown to be important for how money is spent. In addition, sudden wealth is often associated with social and psychological risks. This article investigates if conceptions of lottery prize money – as a special kind of money – imply restrictions on how it can be spent. Analysis of interviews with lottery winners shows that interviewees use earmarking of the prize money as a strategy for avoiding the pitfalls associated with a lottery win. Conceptions of lottery prize money as ‘a lot’ or as ‘a little’, as shared or personal, and as an opportunity or a risk, influences the ends for which it is earmarked: for self‐serving spending, a ‘normal’ living standard, paying off loans, saving for designated purposes, or for economic security and independence. Clearly defining and earmarking lottery prize money thus helps lottery winners construe their sudden wealth, not as a risk, but as ‘pennies from heaven.’

  March 24, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12073   open full text
• Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992–2006.
  Lyn Craig, Abigail Powell, Ciara Smyth.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 17, 2014
  Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non‐work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent–child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk‐based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child‐centred parenting. Fathers' parent–child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12035   open full text
• The materiality of mathematics: Presenting mathematics at the blackboard.
  Christian Greiffenhagen.
  British Journal of Sociology. March 12, 2014
  Sociology has been accused of neglecting the importance of material things in human life and the material aspects of social practices. Efforts to correct this have recently been made, with a growing concern to demonstrate the materiality of social organization, not least through attention to objects and the body. As a result, there have been a plethora of studies reporting the social construction and effects of a variety of material objects as well as studies that have explored the material dimensions of a diversity of practices. In different ways these studies have questioned the Cartesian dualism of a strict separation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’. However, it could be argued that the idea of the mind as immaterial has not been entirely banished and lingers when it comes to discussing abstract thinking and reasoning. The aim of this article is to extend the material turn to abstract thought, using mathematics as a paradigmatic example. This paper explores how writing mathematics (on paper, blackboards, or even in the air) is indispensable for doing and thinking mathematics. The paper is based on video recordings of lectures in formal logic and investigates how mathematics is presented at the blackboard. The paper discusses the iconic character of blackboards in mathematics and describes in detail a number of inscription practices of presenting mathematics at the blackboard (such as the use of lines and boxes, the designation of particular regions for specific mathematical purposes, as well as creating an ‘architecture’ visualizing the overall structure of the proof). The paper argues that doing mathematics really is ‘thinking with eyes and hands’ (Latour 1986). Thinking in mathematics is inextricably interwoven with writing mathematics.

  March 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12037   open full text
• Reading self‐help literature in Russia: governmentality, psychology and subjectivity.
  Suvi Salmenniemi, Mariya Vorona.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 16, 2014
  Self‐help has become a booming business over the past decades and an increasingly visible part of popular media culture worldwide. The paper analyzes the arrival and effects of this cultural technology in post‐Soviet Russia after more than seventy years of socialism. It examines how Russians are engaging with popular psychology self‐help as a technology of the self and how they are making it meaningful in their lives. Drawing on a set of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews conducted with self‐help readers, it examines how these individuals negotiate the new ethics and the normative models of personhood put forward by the self‐help genre. It argues that popular psychology has offered a new language for making sense of the self and the social world, and highlights how the readers critically engage with the normalizing power of popular psychology by drawing on a number of local historically sedimented discourses.

  January 16, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12039   open full text
• Taste clusters of music and drugs: evidence from three analytic levels.
  Mike Vuolo, Christopher Uggen, Sarah Lageson.
  British Journal of Sociology. January 16, 2014
  This article examines taste clusters of musical preferences and substance use among adolescents and young adults. Three analytic levels are considered: fixed effects analyses of aggregate listening patterns and substance use in US radio markets, logistic regressions of individual genre preferences and drug use from a nationally representative survey of US youth, and arrest and seizure data from a large American concert venue. A consistent picture emerges from all three levels: rock music is positively associated with substance use, with some substance‐specific variability across rock sub‐genres. Hip hop music is also associated with higher use, while pop and religious music are associated with lower use. These results are robust to fixed effects models that account for changes over time in radio markets, a comprehensive battery of controls in the individual‐level survey, and concert data establishing the co‐occurrence of substance use and music listening in the same place and time. The results affirm a rich tradition of qualitative and experimental studies, demonstrating how symbolic boundaries are simultaneously drawn around music and drugs.

  January 16, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12045   open full text
• On the almost inconceivable misunderstandings concerning the subject of value‐free social science.
  Donald Black.
  British Journal of Sociology. December 10, 2013
  A value judgment says what is good or bad, and value‐free social science simply means social science free of value judgments. Yet many sociologists regard value‐free social science as undesirable or impossible and readily make value judgments in the name of sociology. Often they display confusion about such matters as the meaning of value‐free social science, value judgments internal and external to social science, value judgments as a subject of social science, the relevance of objectivity for value‐free social science, and the difference between the human significance of social science and value‐free social science. But why so many sociologists are so value‐involved – and generally so unscientific – is sociologically understandable: The closest and most distant subjects attract the least scientific ideas. And during the past century sociologists have become increasingly close to their human subject. The debate about value‐free social science is also part of an epistemological counterrevolution of humanists (including many sociologists) against the more scientific social scientists who invaded and threatened to expropriate the human subject during the past century.

  December 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12034   open full text
• Techno economic systems and excessive consumption: a political economy of ‘pathological’ gambling.
  Gerda Reith.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 30, 2013
  This article argues that gambling is a paradigmatic form of consumption that captures the intensified logic at the heart of late modern capitalist societies. As well as a site of intensified consumption, it claims that gambling has also become the location of what has been described as a new form of ‘social pathology’ related to excess play. Drawing on Castells' (1996) notion of techno‐economic systems, it explores the ways that intersections between technology, capital and states have generated the conditions for this situation, and critiques the unequal distribution of gambling environments that result. It argues that, while the products of these systems are consumed on a global scale, the risks associated with them tend to be articulated in bio‐psychological discourses of ‘pathology’ which are typical of certain types of knowledge that have salience in neo‐liberal societies, and which work to conceal wider structural relationships. We argue that a deeper understanding of the political and cultural economy of gambling environments is necessary, and provide a synoptic overview of the conditions upon which gambling expansion is based. This perspective highlights parallels with the wider global economy of finance capital, as well as the significance of intensified consumption, of which gambling is an exemplary instance. It also reveals the existence of a geo‐political dispersal of ‘harms’, conceived as deteriorations of financial, temporal and social relationships, which disproportionately affect vulnerable social groups. From this, we urge an understanding of commercial gambling based on a critique of the wider social body of gambling environments within techno economic systems, rather than the (flawed) individual bodies within them.

  October 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12050   open full text
• Governing multicultural populations and family life.
  Suki Ali.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 29, 2013
  Shortly after coming to power in Britain, the Conservative–Liberal Democratic alliance placed family life at the heart of their political agenda, and set out their plans to reform adoption. The paper draws upon debates about the reforms and considers them in articulation with concerns about health of the nation expressed in political pronouncements on ‘broken Britain’ and the failures of ‘state multiculturalism’. The paper considers the debates about domestic (transracial) and intercountry adoption, and uses feminist postcolonial perspectives to argue that we can only understand what are expressed as national issues within a transnational and postcolonial framework which illuminate the processes of state and institutional race‐making. The paper analyses three key instances of biopower and governmentality in the adoption debates: the population, the normalizing family and the individual. The paper argues that we need to understand the reforms as part of a wider concern with the ‘problem’ of multicultural belonging, and that the interlocking discourses of nation, family and identities are crucial to the constitution and regulation of gendered, racialized subjects.

  October 29, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12046   open full text
• ‘A place for men to come and do their thing’: constructing masculinities in betting shops in London.
  Rebecca Cassidy.
  British Journal of Sociology. October 29, 2013
  During fieldwork conducted with workers and customers in betting shops in London research participants consistently conceptualized betting shops as masculine spaces in contrast to the femininity of other places including home and the bingo hall. According to this argument, betting on horses and dogs was ‘men's business’ and betting shops were ‘men's worlds’. Two explanations were offered to account for this situation. The first suggested that betting was traditionally a pastime enjoyed by men rather than women. The second was that betting is intrinsically more appealing to men because it is based on calculation and measurement, and women prefer more intuitive, simpler challenges. I use interviews with older people to describe how the legalisation of betting in cash in 1961 changed the geography of betting. I then draw upon interviews with regular customers in order to show how knowledge about betting is shared within rather than between genders. Finally, I use my experience of training and working as a cashier to describe how the particular hegemonic masculinity found in betting shops in London is maintained through myriad everyday practices which reward certain kinds of gendered performances while at the same time suppressing alternatives. The article shows how particular spaces may become gendered as an unanticipated consequence of legislation and how contingent gendered associations are both naturalized and, at the same time, subjected to intense attention.

  October 29, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12044   open full text
• Public sphere as assemblage: the cultural politics of roadside memorialization.
  Elaine Campbell.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  This paper investigates contemporary academic accounts of the public sphere. In particular, it takes stock of post‐Habermasian public sphere scholarship, and acknowledges a lively and variegated debate concerning the multiple ways in which individuals engage in contemporary political affairs. A critical eye is cast over a range of key insights which have come to establish the parameters of what ‘counts’ as a/the public sphere, who can be involved, and where and how communicative networks are established. This opens up the conceptual space for re‐imagining a/the public sphere as an assemblage. Making use of recent developments in Deleuzian‐inspired assemblage theory – most especially drawn from DeLanda's (2006) ‘new philosophy of society’ – the paper sets out an alternative perspective on the notion of the public sphere, and regards it as a space of connectivity brought into being through a contingent and heterogeneous assemblage of discursive, visual and performative practices. This is mapped out with reference to the cultural politics of roadside memorialization. However, a/the public sphere as an assemblage is not simply a ‘social construction’ brought into being through a logic of connectivity, but is an emergent and ephemeral space which reflexively nurtures and assembles the cultural politics (and political cultures) of which it is an integral part. The discussion concludes, then, with a consideration of the contribution of assemblage theory to public sphere studies. (Also see Campbell 2009a)

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12030   open full text
• UN genocide commemoration, transnational scenes of mourning and the global project of learning from atrocity.
  Tracey Skillington.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  This paper offers a critical analytic reconstruction of some of the main symbolic properties of annual UN Holocaust and Rwandan genocide commemorations since 2005. Applying a discourse‐historical approach (Wodak and Meyer 2010), it retraces how themes of guilt, responsibility, evil and redemption are woven together across annual commemorative performances in the hope of stabilizing shared patterns of cultural translation of the significance of these atrocities to globally dispersed communities. UN commemorative discourse characteristically links memories of Holocaust and Rwandan trauma in a ‘chain of communication’ with those of other episodes of brutality (e.g., Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur) chiefly to convey the continuity of human barbarity across time and endorse certain presuppositions regarding the fate of a fallen humanity in this more ‘post‐secular’ age. As scenes of mourning, UN commemorations unite participating international delegations in their expressions of grief for the victims of ‘preventable tragedies’ in the past but also, it must be said, their uncertainty regarding new horrors likely to occur in the future. The duty to remember is reiterated continuously as both a mark of respect to those who have already perished and as a warning of atrocities yet to unfold. This paper explores how the historical constancy of violence is interpreted by the UN through a detailed critical analysis of its recently inaugurated ‘remembrance through education’ programme aimed at a transnational collective learning from atrocity.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12029   open full text
• Strangers in a strange land: coping with imprisonment as a racial or ethnic foreign national inmate.
  Candace Kruttschnitt, Anja Dirkzwager, Liam Kennedy.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  A wide range of scholarship examining the global effects of neo‐liberalism draws attention to the precarious position of individuals who are not seen as part of the social body. While immigrants, racial minorities, and common criminals are central to this discourse, relatively little research has examined how the experiences of these individuals may vary based on statuses other than citizenship when they are imprisoned. Our research focuses on the interactions (between prisoners and between prisoners and correctional staff) of a racially diverse group of Dutch foreign national prisoners incarcerated in England. Although all of these prisoners clearly saw themselves as ‘outsiders,’ visible minorities faced a unique set of challenges relative to their White counterparts. We consider both the practical and theoretical import of these findings.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12028   open full text
• Mutualism, resource competition and opposing movements among Turkish organizations in Amsterdam and Berlin, 1965–2000.
  Floris Vermeulen.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  This article seeks to understand environmental effects on associational interdependencies, be they competitive or collaborative, in a polarized organizational population. To do so, it builds on the density‐dependent model and the ecology of ideologies. Especially interested in the effect of context on density‐dependent processes, I compare different Turkish ideological movements in Amsterdam and Berlin. Amsterdam represents an open and supportive environment for such movements, whereas Berlin constitutes a more closed and hostile one. By analysing the founding and disbanding rates of Turkish immigrant organizations in Amsterdam and Berlin during the period 1965–2000, the article demonstrates how the increasing density of Turkish ideologies has affected interdependencies in two main ways: by heightening competition, particularly between ideologically similar organizations, and by increasing counter activities between opposing movements. It also shows that the influence of context is limited. An open environment does not significantly influence the vitality rates of ideologies or further collaboration among or between them. On the contrary, it seemingly increases competition and fragmentation because more resources and opportunities are available. More signs of collaboration and mutualism are found in Berlin's closed environment.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12027   open full text
• Neighbourhood social ties: how much do residential, physical and virtual mobility matter?
  Gundi Knies.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  Following up on the prediction by classical sociological theorists that neighbours will become irrelevant as societies become more mobile, this research examines the strength of people's social ties with neighbours and the associations thereof with residential, physical and virtual mobility using longitudinal data for Germany. Unlike previous studies, the research considers the three forms of mobility simultaneously and contrasts its effects on social ties with neighbours to those with family. The results show that residential and physical mobility are negatively associated with social ties to neighbours and positively with ties to family. Virtual mobility does not weaken social ties with neighbours but ties with family. The positive association between mobility and social ties with family may not be strong enough to ascertain that people maintain as close social ties to others in the future as it does not outweigh the negative association with visiting neighbours.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12026   open full text
• Corporate corruption of the environment: sustainability as a process of compromise.
  Daniel Nyberg, Christopher Wright.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  A key response to environmental degradation, climate change and declining biodiversity has been the growing adoption of market principles in an effort to better value the social good of nature. Through concepts such as ‘natural capitalism’ and ‘corporate environmentalism’, nature is increasingly viewed as a domain of capitalist endeavour. In this article, we use convention theory and a pluralist understanding of social goods to investigate how the social good of the environment is usurped by the alternate social good of the market. Through analysis of interviews with sustainability managers and corporate documentation, we highlight how organizational actors employ compromise to temporally settle disputes between competing claims about environmental activities. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the processes of empirically grounded critique and the under‐theorized concept of compromise between social goods. Rather than protecting the environment, the corporate promotion of sustainability facilitates the corruption of the social good of the environment and its conversion into a market commodity.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12025   open full text
• Risk, interest groups and the definition of crisis: the case of volcanic ash.
  Bridget M. Hutter, Sally Lloyd‐Bostock.
  British Journal of Sociology. September 02, 2013
  This paper considers a key aspect of the ‘risk society’ thesis: the belief that we should be able to manage risks and control the world around us. In particular it focuses on the interface between risk and risk events as socially constructed and the insights that ‘critical situations’ give us into ‘the routine and mundane’, the otherwise taken for granted assumptions underlying risk regulation. It does this with reference to the events precipitated by the April 2010 volcanic eruption in the Eyjafjallajökull area of Iceland. The resulting cloud of volcanic ash spread across Europe and much of Europe's airspace was closed to civil aviation for six days, with far reaching consequences including huge financial losses for airlines. The social processes of defining and reacting to risk and crisis both reveal and generate dilemmas and challenges in regulation. This paper examines the role of different interest groups in defining risk expectations and thereby redefining the ash crisis as a regulatory crisis.

  September 02, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12024   open full text