{"title":"A Child of the City: a Longitudinal Study of Stratification and Migration in a Rajasthan Village","authors":"J. H. Jones","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2016-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2016-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By reference to a multi-caste and tribal village in southern Rajasthan the paper examines the degree to which caste and tribal membership impacts on different aspects of migration, e.g. commencement, form, destination, duration, and types of work undertaken. Using a livelihoods approach, supplemented by other perspectives and concentrating on four migration streams (three domestic, one international), data collected over a period of nearly thirty-five years indicates that patterns of migration are far from random. It is argued that the use of official stratification categories in migration surveys can obscure important differences within caste groupings. Short-term circular migration, underestimated in national surveys, is shown to be substantial, especially for the tribal migrants in the village. While position in the social structure differentially affects aspects of migration across the village hierarchy, examples are given of individual migrant agency overcoming structural constraints.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"107 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2016-0014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jean-Jacques Boutaud, A. Becuț, Angelica Marinescu
{"title":"Food and culture. Cultural patterns and practices related to food in everyday life. Introduction","authors":"Jean-Jacques Boutaud, A. Becuț, Angelica Marinescu","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2016-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2016-0001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"1 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Design, It’s Not What It Looks Like!","authors":"Voica Pușcașiu","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The main purpose of this paper is to explore the different ways in which materials are used to deceive, the reasons behind these practices, and what they say about society. Starting off from the premises that by choosing a medium one also implies a message due to the inherit personality of the materials, we will first take a swift look at the history of deceiving through artistic practices. Further on we shall take into consideration the shift in paradigm noticeable in contemporary design as we explain the motivations and the strategies behind creating objects that seem made out of plastic and yet they are not. Touching on subjects such as sustainable design and commodification, we will try to conclude whether the eco-friendly design is indeed working or if it is just another successful marketing strategy.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"113 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2015-0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Creative Industries: a discourse-theoretical approach","authors":"Rene Mäe","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the emergence of the idea of the creative industries in a particular former socialist country – Estonia. Instead of regarding the creative industries as an economic sector, the article (re)conceptualises it as an ‘empty signifier’. The paper borrows its central theoretical concepts (hegemony, empty signifier, floating signifier) from post-Marxist discourse theory and employs them to explore the ways in which the creative industries are instituted within particular social, discursive or political struggles. The article proposes that Laclauian (or post-Marxist) discourse theory can raise some new fruitful methodological problems and challenging research directions among the researchers of the creative industries and cultural policy, especially in the Eastern European context.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"78 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public banking for the cultural sector: financial instruments and the new financial intermediaries","authors":"R. Monclus","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The use of financial instruments by the public sector to support the cultural and creative field is a rising trend. At a national and supranational level, public bodies are increasingly employing financial instruments, such as loan guarantees, to facilitate debt financing to creative organisations. This paper attempts to contribute to the understanding of these changes. It explores the logic of public intervention underpinning the emergence of this phenomenon in four distinct polities; France, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU), as well as their mutual influences. It does so from a historical perspective, placing special attention to economic, political and ideational factors. The article concludes by arguing that although financial instruments cannot be considered as novel mechanisms, the intensity under which they are currently being advanced may signal towards a profound change for the governance of the cultural sector.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"101 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2015-0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Risk Management Responses to Armed Non-State Actor Risk in Afghanistan","authors":"Jeremy Simpson","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article considers responses by different categories of actor to the threat of armed non-state actors in the international intervention in Afghanistan 2001-2015. Concepts from the sociology of risk, in particular risk-management and the distinction between operational and reputational risk, are related to field research in Afghanistan during the intervention. The ‘risk society’ approach of Beck (2009) is critiqued as relatively inapplicable to a discussion of differences in risks to and responses by different categories of actor. The article identifies some convergences of practice across three categories of intervening actor, civil-developmental, counter-insurgent and counter-terrorist, in particular tendencies to risk-transfer and remote-management that draws together theorisation of civil practice by Duffield (2010) and military practice by Shaw (2002). This is problematised relative to difficulties in managing tensions between operational risks to intervening actors and reputational risks vis-à-vis local actors.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"156 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Casuistic explanation to Hizbullah’s realpolitik: Interpreting the re-interpreted","authors":"Mariam Farida","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The recent development unfolding in the Arab region forces the observer into the question of security and stability. The Middle East region has been coined with violence and transformations with the growing inability to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end. The history of Lebanon is not separate from the surrounding danger. For that end, Hizbullah has pushed Lebanon into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. This article investigates the role Hizbullah plays amidst regional conflicts, and its ability to stand out as a religio-political party able to face the Israeli aggression and withstand its religious identity. Interestingly, this has been a key to the Party’s success, where the Party’s religious identity and politics go hand in hand. As such, this paper offers the reader an analysis of how Hizbullah uses religion to its favour, and how religion (specifically Shi’ism) offers a ground for political pragmatism to be justified.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"167 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiating with the Other: Centre-Periphery Perceptions, Peacemaking Policies and Pervasive Conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh","authors":"Matthew E. Wilkinson","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Intrastate peace agreements tend to be drafted in situations of political chaos, multiple combatants and shifting allegiances within and between state and non-state actors. Despite this, such agreements continue to reflect a bilateral understanding of conflict, with the state on one side and the non-state on the other. Such an understanding was employed in the largely unsuccessful 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord in Bangladesh. This article argues that the failure of the Accord to secure a durable and lasting peace is due to the mistaken belief by the Bangladeshi government that the conflict was a ‘two sides’ war between the modern Bengali-Muslim state and it’s ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ periphery. Soon after the Peace Accord was signed it became apparent that the Government of Bangladesh had made a fatal error in assuming that the communities in question were a simple, homogenous and unified group. Rather, the communities of the CHT are a collection of ethnically and ideologically distinct groups. This failure has led to division and competition of local politics in the CHT today, and continued warfare within and between many CHT communities. Violent actors have been polarized by the terms of the peace agreement and jungle warfare continues at great risk and cost to communities.1","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"179 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2015-0017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Less than Friends, More than Acquaintances: Artists, Markets and Gallery Openings in New York","authors":"Martin G Fuller","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article describes one way that unknown and ‘emerging’ artists with limited exhibition history or reputation take steps towards developing their careers. Artists cannot apply directly for exhibition opportunities, therefore they develop social associations with gallerists that are described as being ‘kind-of-friendly-with’. Using a descriptive ethnographic narrative drawn from a case study of artists as they navigate an evening of commercial gallery openings in New York’s Chelsea district, it is argued that establishing a career in contemporary visual art depends on the ability to render one’s self visible to other participants in an art world. Rather than viewing the symbolic value of artworks as antagonistic with the economic art market, artists seek to establish social associations in which different forms of value are interrelated. In conclusion it is suggested that this is an art world in which the ‘economic world reversed’ is inversed.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"120 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2015-0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Armed non-state actors as a distinct research topic","authors":"A. Miroiu, Radu-Sebastian Ungureanu","doi":"10.1515/irsr-2015-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/irsr-2015-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article introduces the topic of armed non-state actors and briefly summarizes the contributions to this special issue.","PeriodicalId":37251,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Social Research","volume":"5 1","pages":"153 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/irsr-2015-0014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66817251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}