Capital in Transition

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 706-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuan Dong
Keyword(s):  
Martial Arts ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Central China ◽  
Full Time ◽  
County Level ◽  
Value System ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Urban Migrant

Abstract Migrant children are an unintended consequence of the widened rural-urban gap in China. In Dengfeng, a county-level city in central China, many of the 70,000 full-time martial arts students were rural-to-urban migrant children ‘floating’ with their parents from one place to another. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores why these migrant children ‘migrated’ to martial arts schools for educational purposes and how they and their parents seek to establish a new value system within which different forms of capital can be accumulated, disseminated, and transformed as society expects. This paper argues that the (imaginary) transition between and flow of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital construct a path to an aspirational future used by both these martial arts students and their parents.

scholarly journals Perception of Civil Identity Symbols in Russia: (Based on Focus Groups)

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna S. Soldatova ◽  
Irina G. Napalkova ◽  
Marina Yu. Gryzhankova
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Value System ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Introduction. The problem of identity is one of the key in both theoretical and applied scientific research of various directions, including in the framework of political psychology. This is largely due to the importance of the formation of common vectors of development of the state, based on the identity shared by most citizens. In this scientific article, the topic of the formation of state-civil identity by means of symbolic capital is actualized, which in turn can both harmonize social relations and introduce dysfunctionality, and be an instrument for mobilizing or polarizing society. The authors attempt to study the social product of the representation and construction of contemporary reality in Russia. Materials and Methods. As a theoretical and methodological research strategy, systemic, integrated and analytical approaches were made. The materials for the scientific work were the results of applied research, in particular, focus group interviews, which, thanks to synergies, allowed us to obtain diverse information about the subject of analysis and to more deeply present its perception. Participants in group discussions were residents of the island. Saransk and two municipal regions of the Republic of Mordovia. Results. Unique data were obtained, on the basis of which it is possible to draw conclusions about the features of the perception of conceptual structures of the formation of state-civil identity in modern Russian society. The difference between the older generation and young people in the perception and symbolic reflection of Russian reality was noted. Moreover, both the sources of obtaining information turned out to be excellent, as did personal and collective positions in determining their own role in the process of creating and assimilating symbols of identity, the level of recognition of symbols of different historical eras, the stability and rooting of the value system. In terms of the perception of symbolic identity elements uniting all age groups of respondents, several phenomena are thematically highlighted, among them “border trauma”, “we are the opposition”, “separation from the powers that be”, “Russian & imperial & Soviet”, “nationalities of Russia = peoples of the USSR” and etc. Discussion and Conclusions. Understanding the specifics of perception of the symbolic-value system of Russians allows us to analyze and evaluate the processes of nation-building and to study the problems of social consolidation. The authors come to the conclusion that the Russians are deficient in spiritual bonds, civil activism is weak; most citizens feel outside the active community.

scholarly journals ‘It’s not about disability, I want to win as many medals as possible’: The social construction of disability in high-performance coaching

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C Townsend ◽  
Tabo Huntley ◽  
Christopher J Cushion ◽  
Hayley Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Disability Sport ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Performance Coaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Construction Of Disability ◽  
Social Construction Of Disability

This article draws on the theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu to provide a critical analysis of the social construction of disability in high-performance sport coaching. Data were generated using a qualitative cross-case comparative methodology, comprising 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport, and interviews with coaches and athletes from a cross-section of Paralympic sports. We discuss how in both cases ‘disability’ was assimilated into the ‘performance logic’ of the sporting field as a means of maximising symbolic capital. Furthermore, coaches were socialised into a prevailing legitimate culture in elite disability sport that was reflective of ableist, performance-focused and normative ideologies about disability. In this article we unpack the assumptions that underpin coaching in disability sport, and by extension use sport as a lens to problematise the construction of disability in specific social formations across coaching cultures. In so doing, we raise critical questions about the interrelation of disability and sport.

scholarly journals Stepping-up: ‘Urban’ and ‘queer’ cultural capital in LGBT and queer communities in Kansai, Japan

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 666-682
Author(s):  
Jane Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Hierarchical Nature ◽  
Queer Communities ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Successful Transfer

This article argues that the Bourdieusian concepts of field, habitus and cultural capital open up theoretical space in which to analyse the hierarchical nature of LGBT and queer communities living in the Kansai region of Japan. Drawing upon data collected during ethnographic fieldwork, this article will show how ‘urban’ and ‘queer’ forms of LGBT-activist practice acted as a kind of cultural capital (in the form of symbolic capital) within the groups studied. The possession of and ability to engage in specific ways with these cultural capitals determined the respondents’ positions in the field. However, access is not universal, and is determined by context. Furthermore, the processes involved in a renegotiation of an individual’s position in the field can bring multiple habitus into contact, resulting not only in instances of successful transfer, but also tension and rupture. This article provides an original and timely contribution to sexuality and gender studies of Japan, by adding a detailed analysis of the ways in which cultural capital plays out in the field using ethnographic data.

scholarly journals Long-term changes of tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> over megacities derived from multiple satellite instruments

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4145-4169 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hilboll ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
J. P. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central China ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Tropospheric No2

Abstract. Tropospheric NO2, a key pollutant in particular in cities, has been measured from space since the mid-1990s by the GOME, SCIAMACHY, OMI, and GOME-2 instruments. These data provide a unique global long-term dataset of tropospheric pollution. However, the observations differ in spatial resolution, local time of measurement, viewing geometry, and other details. All these factors can severely impact the retrieved NO2 columns. In this study, we present three ways to account for instrumental differences in trend analyses of the NO2 columns derived from satellite measurements, while preserving the individual instruments' spatial resolutions. For combining measurements from GOME and SCIAMACHY into one consistent time series, we develop a method to explicitly account for the instruments' difference in ground pixel size (40 × 320 km2 vs. 30 × 60 km2). This is especially important when analysing NO2 changes over small, localised sources like, e.g. megacities. The method is based on spatial averaging of the measured earthshine spectra and extraction of a spatial pattern of the resolution effect. Furthermore, two empirical corrections, which summarise all instrumental differences by including instrument-dependent offsets in a fitted trend function, are developed. These methods are applied to data from GOME and SCIAMACHY separately, to the combined time series, and to an extended dataset comprising also GOME-2 and OMI measurements. All approaches show consistent trends of tropospheric NO2 for a selection of areas on both regional and city scales, for the first time allowing consistent trend analysis of the full time series at high spatial resolution. Compared to previous studies, the longer study period leads to significantly reduced uncertainties. We show that measured tropospheric NO2 columns have been strongly increasing over China, the Middle East, and India, with values over east-central China tripling from 1996 to 2011. All parts of the developed world, including Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, show significantly decreasing NO2 amounts in the same time period. On a megacity level, individual trends can be as large as +27.2 ± 3.9% yr−1 and +20.7 ± 1.9% yr−1 in Dhaka and Baghdad, respectively, while Los Angeles shows a very strong decrease of −6.00 ± 0.72% yr−1. Most megacities in China, India, and the Middle East show increasing NO2 columns of +5 to 10% yr−1, leading to a doubling to tripling within the study period.

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