Current SociologyPub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1177/00113921231159433
Eleri Lillemäe, Kairi Kasearu, E. Ben‐Ari
{"title":"Making military conscription count? Converting competencies between the civilian and military spheres in a neoliberal Estonia","authors":"Eleri Lillemäe, Kairi Kasearu, E. Ben‐Ari","doi":"10.1177/00113921231159433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921231159433","url":null,"abstract":"While past decades Western societies have been shifting from mandatory military service toward all-volunteer forces, a number of them have retained conscription. A growing emphasis on individualization and neoliberalist ideas results in a tension for youths between fulfilling a duty and the need for constant self-development. We argue that a central mechanism for addressing this challenge is convertibility, the ability to use competencies gained in one sphere in another, and thus increasing the individual value of conscription for recruits. By linking convertibility to societal expectations, we demonstrate how societies shape ideas of what is convertible and why, and by relating convertibility to agency and motivation, we extend the concept to the individual level. We argue that as material rewards are limited and conscripts cannot rely on occupational motivations, convertibility has a potential to increase the value of conscription for recruits and enable them to combine institutional motivators with utilitarian motives.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41606456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2023-02-22DOI: 10.1177/00113921231154725
Priscila Susin, Naida Menezes
{"title":"Exploring biographical case reconstructions of women with housing instability experience in South Brazil","authors":"Priscila Susin, Naida Menezes","doi":"10.1177/00113921231154725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921231154725","url":null,"abstract":"How do women who have faced housing instability interpret and set up strategies to access housing? This article reflects on biographical narrative interviews conducted with women who have experienced compulsory housing removal and with women who were living in squats organized by social movements in the city of Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil. These interviews were further analysed through the use of the biographical case reconstruction method. This method aims to comprehend the interviewees’ past and present perspectives on experiences of struggle related to housing, and its connection to individual and family stories and broader socio-historical processes. The two cases discussed in this article show that to access formal housing through social policy, not rarely women confront socially and politically legitimate discourses and practices by adopting strategies beyond legal or formal means. The selected cases have demonstrated distinct perspectives on similar conditions, revealing that women who have faced housing instability can interpret and experience the consequent processes of temporariness and of changing geographical and social ties in different ways.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":"71 1","pages":"644 - 660"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44700458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2023-02-22DOI: 10.1177/00113921231155652
E. F. Elcioglu, Tahseen Shams
{"title":"Brokering immigrant transnationalism: Remittances, family reunification, and private refugee sponsorship in neoliberal Canada","authors":"E. F. Elcioglu, Tahseen Shams","doi":"10.1177/00113921231155652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921231155652","url":null,"abstract":"Using the case study of Canada’s private refugee sponsorship program, we show how neoliberalization heightens the power of non-immigrant civilians to broker immigrants’ transnationalism. Private sponsors respond differently to two common and interrelated forms of refugee transnationalism in which they are structurally empowered to intervene. They encourage family reunification while discouraging remittances, although the former often depends on the fulfillment of the latter. Reflecting on these power imbalances, we classify private refugee sponsorship as part of a North American trend to devolve the management of noncitizens from state actors to ordinary citizens. We conclude by encouraging scholars of transnationalism to look down and investigate how non-immigrant private civilians in receiving countries increasingly shape newcomers’ cross-border linkages. We also urge them to look up and attend to the broader neoliberal context empowering and structuring the behavior of citizen brokers.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42105743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2023-01-12DOI: 10.1177/00113921221146575
Daniel Nehring, Anja Röcke
{"title":"Self-optimisation: Conceptual, discursive and historical perspectives","authors":"Daniel Nehring, Anja Röcke","doi":"10.1177/00113921221146575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221146575","url":null,"abstract":"Self-optimisation has arguably become a central socio-cultural trend in contemporary Western societies. The imperative to optimise our ways of thinking, feeling and interacting with others features prominently in public discourse, and a range of commercial products and services are available to assist us in our quest to become the best version of our selves. However, self-optimisation has so far received scant attention in sociological research. Addressing this knowledge gap, we aim to introduce self-optimisation as a concept for sociological analysis. We first situate self-optimisation in several closely linked strands of academic debate, on transformations of self-identity under conditions of globalisation and neo-liberal capitalism, and on the spread of a therapeutic culture. We then map the socio-cultural antecedents of self-optimisation, survey its rise as a salient public discourse and as a form of everyday practice and consider some political implications. In the conclusion, we set out an agenda for further research on self-optimisation and discuss its conceptual and empirical relevance beyond the Global Northwest.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48311128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1177/00113921221106502
Elizabeth A. Cook, S. Walklate, Kate Fitz‐Gibbon
{"title":"Re-imagining what counts as femicide","authors":"Elizabeth A. Cook, S. Walklate, Kate Fitz‐Gibbon","doi":"10.1177/00113921221106502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221106502","url":null,"abstract":"This Special Subsection on Re-imagining what counts as femicide brings together five original articles which, from different perspectives, seek to push, challenge, and redefine what counts as femicide. The contributions offered here excavate the conceptual issues of what, who, and where femicide ‘counts’. In order to do so, the articles engage with epistemological and methodological questions regarding how different bodies of evidence on femicide are formed and which take priority, the ethical implications of including or excluding deaths from counts of femicide, and prospects for legal intervention, specifically in Latin America, in contributing to who and what is counted as femicide. Together, these articles seek to challenge how existing concepts of femicide and approaches to counting have focused policy and practice attention on some women’s lives whilst neglecting to count (and thereby acknowledge) others.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":"71 1","pages":"3 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46591062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2022-12-29DOI: 10.1177/00113921221146583
Anson Au
{"title":"A Black feminist approach to antiracist qualitative research methods: Commemorating the legacy of bell hooks","authors":"Anson Au","doi":"10.1177/00113921221146583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221146583","url":null,"abstract":"This article commemorates the legacy of bell hooks by bringing core themes in her oeuvre to bear on several debates on the conceptualization and use of qualitative research methods in sociology. Despite the uptake of qualitative research methods in sociology as a launching point for critical inquiry with analytical and political overtones, they have been fragmented threefold by debates about their politics (whether to humanize research subjects), practice (whether to intervene in field research), and epistemology (procedural, craft, and bricolage orientations). Reflecting on the legacy of bell hooks, this article articulates a Black feminist approach by unearthing methodological and epistemological themes underwritten in hooks’ work (inclusive pedagogy, creative dialogue, and reflexive accountability) to offer new perspectives on the three debates and, in so doing, to identify ways to better qualitative research methods as tools for emancipating the marginalized – by invigorating cross-professional and transdisciplinary dialogue, collaboration, and love.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42948753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00113921221141472
Alexander Paulsson
{"title":"Planned meetings: Multiplicity, boxed-in dialogues, and deliberative bureaucracy as social form","authors":"Alexander Paulsson","doi":"10.1177/00113921221141472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221141472","url":null,"abstract":"In what ways are meetings a social form? How are meetings organized and how do organizations structure meetings to produce consensus around visions of the future? In this article, planning meetings, which gather representatives from the regional Public Transport Authority and the municipalities involved in public transport planning in Stockholm, Sweden, is probed as a social form. By structuring the meetings as collaborative planning processes, the Public Transport Authority’s ambition is to draw on the municipalities’ multiplicity of experiences and views but then arrive at a consensus, on which a strategic document is produced. However, these meetings are perplexing as a social form. While expectations of their outcomes vary, dialogues in the meetings are boxed-in as they follow standardized protocols for agendas, discussions, and decision points. Planned meetings, as this article shows, are an undertheorized aspect of attempts at future-making among formally independent bureaucracies. The article concludes by proposing that deliberative ideals in bureaucratic settings allude to deliberative bureaucracy through the social form of planned meetings.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49272790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00113921221141471
Maha Sabbah-Karkabi
{"title":"The diverging gender inequality across households: The case of Palestinian-Arab families in Israel","authors":"Maha Sabbah-Karkabi","doi":"10.1177/00113921221141471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221141471","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on how the family’s position in the stratification system affects the division of housework and childcare in Palestinian-Arab society in Israel; a highly gendered society experiencing socioeconomic change. Recent studies carried out in economically developed countries have shown that the household position indicated by education, income, and employment, related to the way the household tasks are shared by the spouses. However, less is known about the phenomenon in the context of societies that maintain gendered norms regarding family roles while women improved their education and employment status. A multilogistic regression analysis for household tasks and logistic regression analysis for childcare were applied to data from Israeli Social Surveys to examine the effect of household strata in the social stratification system regarding the way Palestinian-Arab families in Israel manage their household’s demands. The main results show that upper-class households and couples with a higher education pose their gender roles as more egalitarian, which demonstrates selective gender equality. The gender boundaries in the sharing of caring tasks are less rigid by class in Palestinian-Arab families while they continued to be determined mainly by the couple’s relative education and attitudes toward gender roles.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43765523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00113921221141469
Amit Rottman, Amalia Sa'ar
{"title":"Anti-consumerism as a class practice: Parental investment in a private kindergarten in Israel","authors":"Amit Rottman, Amalia Sa'ar","doi":"10.1177/00113921221141469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221141469","url":null,"abstract":"This article documents a cultural script of ‘non-materialistic parental investment’ in a private kindergarten in Israel, and the paradoxes that accompany it. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the analysis reveals an inherent tension between an anti-materialistic ideology and the immersion of the kindergarten in a hyper-consumerist culture. While the explicit discourse emphasizes simplicity and unmediated emotional nurturing, the kindergarten in effect comprises an arena of intense elite consumerism of upper-middle-class parents who wish to give their children high-quality, expensive education. As a prestigious private business, it, therefore, plays a direct role in class differentiation processes, although ‘social-class’ is not part of the conscious pedagogical agenda.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48058330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current SociologyPub Date : 2022-11-23DOI: 10.1177/00113921221132515
U. Apitzsch, L. Inowlocki
{"title":"Reconstructing biographical knowledge: Biographical policy evaluation toward a structural understanding of transnational migration","authors":"U. Apitzsch, L. Inowlocki","doi":"10.1177/00113921221132515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221132515","url":null,"abstract":"In our article, we address how migrants in transnational spaces are affected by policies of citizenship, language policies, labor market, and education and training policies, among others. The analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews can provide methodical access to latently effective structures of transnational spaces. Transnational spaces can be conceptualized as opaque structures of multiply interconnected state, legal, and cultural transitions toward which individuals orient themselves biographically and in which they are simultaneously intertwined as collectives of experience. Transnational biographical knowledge is not only a result of subjective agency, but at the same time produces the structure of migration biographies, which are experienced and repeatedly reconstructed by migrating subjects. Through biographical policy evaluation we analyze policies and their simultaneous and sometimes paradoxical effects that force family members to find solutions for shaping their life practice. Thus, members of a family of several generations might be affected differently by policies due to their incomplete rights and family status, age, and gender. In reconstructing biographical evaluations, typical effects of the underlying policies can be discerned and critically assessed.","PeriodicalId":47938,"journal":{"name":"Current Sociology","volume":"71 1","pages":"683 - 701"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49078352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}