scholarly journals Borrowed identities: Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 1417-1434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Sparkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Relative Class ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Way

Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu’s class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption. This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes. Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others. The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation. This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt – which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation – illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle.

An Examination of Women's Perspectives on Power

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
A. Gaye Cummins
Keyword(s):  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Personal Authority ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Men's Experience ◽  
The Way

Historically, theoretical and popular conceptions about power have not included or addressed women's experiences. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about women by examining women's perceptions of and relationship to power. One hundred twenty-five women, ranging in age from 21 to 63, were asked to define and explore power through a variety of structured and open-ended questions. The results showed that women's definition of power differed significantly from their perception of society's definition of power, as well as from the way power has traditionally been conceptualized. More theoretical and empirical attention should be given to understanding the role of personal authority in both women's and men's experience of power.

scholarly journals Dzielenie przestrzeni, praktyki graniczenia. Parkowanie, własność i przynależność na polskich osiedlach mieszkaniowych

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Karol Kurnicki
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation

Space gains significance through processes of social differentiation and bordering, and in consequence is connected with the creation and maintenance of social divisions. The author seeks confirmation of this fact at the level of everyday practices in housing settlements, tracking the mechanisms used by people in situations of contact and confrontation with others in the social space. He sets himself several aims: (1) he attempts to analyze selected spatial practices (parking within the settlement, the creation of belonging), reflecting the internal structuring strategies of housing settlements; (2) he points to the causes of that structuring, that is, the main contexts in which these practices occur and are strengthened; (3) he highlights the important role of space in processes of bordering and differentiation. Practices connected with parking and the creation of belonging, although apparently disparate and deriving from contrary spheres of social life make it possible to hypothesize that the striving for separation and the increased importance of space determine the organization of borders, divisions, and social relations in housing settlements.

Class is What Capitalism Makes of It: Challenging the Lure of ‘‘Realism’’ in Mainstream Class Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Guillaume Durou
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Key Dimensions

This article addresses polemically, perhaps, the most prominent class analyses today – the occupational and stratification approaches (OSAs) developed by various sociologists and economists. Strongly opposed to the “big class” of conventional Weberian and Marxian typologies, the stratification and occupational models have, unsurprisingly, claimed more realistic grounds. By contrast, key dimensions of social relations such as domination, exploitation and oppression are purposely overlooked. Moreover, the lack of theorization – even marginally regarded, does not take into consideration the qualitative explanatory strength for the analysis of social structure. Alternatively, the underlying optimistic market-oriented belief of the “realistic” class framework overestimates the role of institutions and economics. Thus, this “Smithian” background unveils a market fetishism as well as a functionalist and naturalized vision of class structure.

Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification

1977 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Collins
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
High Status ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Demand For Education ◽  
Economic Goods

During the 1950s and early 1960s functionalism, which held that education socializes the young and provides socially necessary technical skills, provided the dominant explanation for the genesis and role of educational systems. In the late 1960s,various neo-Marxist positions appeared which pointed to education's role in maintaining class inequality. Drawing on the work of Max Weber, Randall Collins proposes to move beyond both types of explanation by demonstrating the role of three sources of demand for education—the demand of individuals for practical skills,the desire of groups for social solidarity and high status, and the concern of states for effective political control. These sources and their consequences can be conceptualized as operating within a market for cultural goods which behaves much like the market for economic goods.

Dombey and Son and the Question of Reproduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 178-190
Author(s):  
Michal P. Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Domestic Ideology ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the role of reproduction, labour, and maintenance in Dombey and Son as it pertains to both the domestic sphere and the public sphere of economic and social relations. It shows that the reproduction and maintenance of the material home are represented in the novel mostly by the effects of their absence. It analyses both the ideological stakes of such representation and the way it ends up conflicting with claims about the naturalness of family and home that support domestic ideology. The chapter further argues that the way Dickens represents the firm of Dombey and Son also shows the need for, and the lack or failure of, the labour of reproduction and maintenance. It then discusses how ‘management’ is introduced to cure the ills of both the socio-economic and the domestic sphere.

scholarly journals Why a critical geopolitics cannot be Confucian

2021 ◽  
pp. 204382062110177
Author(s):  
Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Critical Geopolitics ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Confucian Thought ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

In this commentary, I welcome An et al.’s (2021) commitment to explore the role of Confucian thought in the contemporary practices of statehood in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonetheless, I also take issue with the authors’ argument that a Confucian geopolitics is needed to replace inadequate ‘Western geopolitical frameworks’. Confucian philosophies promote a hierarchical social order based on authority and subordination, and the way in which they are selectively and strategically utilized in contemporary China represents an important subject of analysis. However, they should not be viewed as a framework of analysis, as they obscure rather than shed light on spatial and class struggles – even in the hybridized stylization endorsed by An et al. Critical political economic and critical geopolitical perspectives with a global theoretical orientation and a knowledge of place and culture offer more promise in the disentangling of state practices and social relations in the PRC.

Repair strategies and social interaction in spontaneous spoken French: the pragmatic particle enfin

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Beeching
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Degenerate Version ◽  
The Way

The spoken language has traditionally been regarded as being a degenerate version of the written language, marred by backtrackings and repetitions. This paper explores the role of the pragmatic particle enfin when it is used as a corrective, both to introduce a repair and, in its mitigating or hedging capacity, as a mediator of social relations. An attempt is made to account for the pragmatico-syntactic characteristics of a particular manifestation of corrective enfin – the echo/self-mimic corrective. The behaviour of enfin is arguably a microcosm in a much larger universe of rules governing the way speakers produce and hearers interpret the shifting signals of participatory discourse.

scholarly journals An Exploration of Safe Space: From a Youth Bicycle Program to the Road

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jeanette Steinmann ◽  
Brian Wilson ◽  
Mitchell McSweeney ◽  
Emerald Bandoles ◽  
Lyndsay M.C. Hayhurst
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Youth Programs ◽  
Safe Space ◽  
The Road ◽  
Sport For Development ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Development Literature ◽  
Program Engagement

Safe space—a physical and psychosocial space cultivated through social relations—can be vital for youth programs and community development. This paper analyzes youth participants’ experiences in a Canadian bicycle program. The authors suggest that the program can be seen as a form of “Sport for Development,” and specifically what the authors term “Bicycles for Development”—as the bicycle is considered as a possible catalyst for development. Using interviews and photos, the role of “safe space” in the growing body of Bicycles for Development literature is highlighted, and the authors make a connection between Sport for Development scholarship and literature related to youth cultural activities and spaces. The findings reveal the benefits associated with program engagement and challenges despite program-related benefits.

Structure, Knowledge and Practice: Art Exhibitions and Power during the Nineteenth Century

1984 ◽  
Vol 32 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 20-45
Author(s):  
Gordon J. Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Structure Knowledge ◽  
The Way

This paper concerns the relationship between nineteenth century art exhibitions and the social construction of the artist. Attention is focused on the institutional conditions which endorsed the fine artist in the role of an individuated creator within the context of the changing social relations of artistic production. In this way art exhibitions are considered as sites of cultural production and it is argued that matters of their organization relate fundamentally to both questions of power and the production of the artist's pictorial authority. An assessment of the problems that faced the powerful Royal Academy of Arts and its Exhibition points to the way in which such questions took on political and class hues in the context of a developing capitalist society. It is suggested that what is at stake here is the way in which the institution of the art exhibition relates to the emergence of a dominant tradition of creativity – symbolically restating the class situation of the bourgeoisie.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Sensory Emotioncy as a Source of Group Formation

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 326
Author(s):  
Reza Pishghadam ◽  
Golshan Shakeebaee ◽  
Nasim Boustani
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
Perceived Similarity ◽  
Social Units ◽  
The Way

An understanding of the qualities that attract people to each other and the tenacious forces that connect them into social units seems to be necessary for the advancement of sound comprehension of interpersonal relationships. Given the fact that the role of senses is accentuated in social relations, the present study intends to benefit from the newly developed concept of sensory emotioncy to predict the perceived similarity. To this end, 24 participants were asked to fill the sensory emotioncy scale. After that, based on the obtained score, they were put into four groups of six, and negotiated about three different topics. The way that participants team up in the groups were tracked, and it was observed that the participants with adjacent sensory emotioncy score tend to team up with each other. In the end, the possible implications of this qualitative study are presented.

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