scholarly journals The Sociology of Personal Identification

2021 ◽  
pp. 073527512110557
Author(s):  
Jordan Brensinger ◽  
Gil Eyal

Systems drawing on databases of personal information increasingly shape life experiences and outcomes across a range of settings, from consumer credit and policing to immigration, health, and employment. How do these systems identify and reidentify individuals as the same unique persons and differentiate them from others? This article advances a general sociological theory of personal identification that extends and improves earlier work by theorists like Goffman, Mauss, Foucault, and Deleuze. Drawing on examples from an original ethnographic study of identity theft and a wide range of social scientific literature, our theory treats personal identification as a historically evolving organizational practice. In doing so, it offers a shared language, a set of concepts for sensitizing researchers’ attention to important aspects of personal identification that often get overlooked while also facilitating comparisons across historical periods, cultural contexts, substantive domains, and technological mediums.

Author(s):  
Leonardo Cardoso

This book is an ethnographic study of controversial sounds and noise control debates in Latin America’s most populous city. It discusses the politics of collective living by following several threads linking sound-making practices to governance issues. Rather than discussing sound within a self-enclosed “cultural” field, I examine it as a point of entry for analyzing the state. At the same time, rather than portraying the state as a self-enclosed “apparatus” with seemingly inexhaustible homogeneous power, I describe it as a collection of unstable (and often contradictory) sectors, personnel, strategies, discourses, documents, and agencies. My goal is to approach sound as an analytical category that allows us to access citizenship issues. As I show, environmental noise in São Paulo has been entangled in a wide range of debates, including public health, religious intolerance, crime control, urban planning, cultural rights, and economic growth. The book’s guiding question can be summarized as follows: how do sounds enter and leave the sphere of state control? I answer this question by examining a multifaceted process I define as “sound-politics.” The term refers to sounds as objects that are susceptible to state intervention through specific regulatory, disciplinary, and punishment mechanisms. Both “sound” and “politics” in “sound-politics” are nouns, with the hyphen serving as a bridge that expresses the instability that each concept inserts into the other.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Hanan Subhi Al-Shamaly

The concept of caring is vague and complex, especially in critical environments such as the intensive care unit (ICU), where technological dehumanisation is a challenge for nurses. ICU nursing care includes not only patients but also extends to patients’ families, nurses, other health team members and the unit’s environment. Caring in critical care settings is affected by enabling and impeding factors. To explore these enablers and challenges factors, a focused ethnographic study was conducted in an Australian ICU. The data was collected from 35 registered nurses through various resources: participants' observations, documents reviews, interviews, and additional participants’ notes. Data were analysed inductively and thematically. The study outlines comprehensively and widely a wide range of enablers and challenges affecting caring in the ICU - which originate from different sources such as patients, families, nurses, and the ICU environment. This paper is the second in a two-part series which explores the ICU nurses’ experiences and perspectives of the enablers and challenges of caring in the ICU. Part 1 was concerned with the enablers and challenges to caring that are related to ICU patients, families, and environment. While Part 2 introduces readers to the enablers and challenges factors that are concerned with the nurses in ICU. These factors include nurses’ educational backgrounds and professional experience, employment working factors, leadership styles, relationships, and personal factors. Nurses and other stakeholders such as clinicians, educators, researchers, managers, and policymakers need to recognize these factors and their implications for providing quality care, in order to enhance and maintain the optimal level of caring in the ICU.


Temida ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Vida Vilic

Global social networks contributed to the creation of new, inconspicuous, technically perfect shape of criminality which is hard to suppress because of its intangible characteristics. The most common forms of virtual communications? abuse are: cyberstalking and harassment, identity theft, online fraud, manipulation and misuse of personal information and personal photos, monitoring e-mail accounts and spamming, interception and recording of chat rooms. Cyberstalking is defined as persistent and targeted harassment of an individual by using electronic communication. The victim becomes insecure, frightened, intimidated and does not figure out the best reaction which will terminate the harassment. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance and necessity of studying cyberstalking and to point out its forms in order to find the best ways to prevent this negative social phenomenon. Basic topics that will be analyzed in this paper are the various definitions of cyberstalking, forms of cyberstalking, and the most important characteristics of victims and perpetators.


2021 ◽  
pp. 88-108
Author(s):  
Roderic Broadhurst

This chapter describes the definitions and scope of cybercrime including an outline of the history of hackers and the role of criminal networks and markets in the dissemination of malicious software and other contraband such as illicit drugs, stolen credit cards and personal identification, firearms, and criminal services. Different cybercrime types and methods are described, including the widespread use of ‘social engineering’ or deception in computer misuse and identity theft. The challenges facing law enforcement in the suppression of cybercrime and the important role of private and public partnerships, as well as cross-national cooperation in the suppression of cybercrime is illustrated.


Cyber Crime ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Chen

Most people recognize there are risks to online privacy but may not be fully aware of the various ways that personal information about them can be stolen through the Web. People can be lured to malicious Web sites designed to deceive them into revealing their personal information or unknowingly download malicious software to their computer. Even worse, legitimate sites can be compromised to host attacks called drive-by downloads. This chapter describes the online risks to identity theft and the technological means for protecting individuals from losing their personal information while surfing the Web.


Author(s):  
Kevin Curran

Spam in the computer does not simply mean ads. Spam is any message, article, or ad that repeats itself an unacceptable number of times so that it causes annoyance. The content of the spam is of no importance. It could contain your simple “Make Money Fast” hyperlink or a beautiful piece of poetry, but if the message is continuously repeated it becomes spam. The term spam is thought to have been taken from a famous Monty Python sketch. In that sketch spam came with everything the people ordered and the waitress would be constantly saying the word spam. Therefore the meaning of spam is something that repeats itself causing much anger or annoyance. Spam can be categorized as follows: • Junk mail: Mass mailings from legitimate businesses that is unwanted. • Noncommercial spam: Mass mailings of unsolicited messages without an apparent commercial motive including chain letters, urban legends, and joke collections. • Offensive and pornographic spam: Mass mailings of “adult” advertisements or pornographic pictures. • Spam scams: Mass mailings of fraudulent messages or those designed to con people out of personal information for the purpose of identity theft and other criminal acts. • Virus spam: Mass mailings that contain viruses, Trojans, malicious scripts, and so forth. Spoofing (Schwartz & Garfinkel, 1998) is a technique often used by spammers to make them harder to trace. Trojan viruses embedded in e-mail messages also employ spoofing techniques to ensure the source of the message is more difficult to locate (Ishibashi, Yamai, Abe, & Matsuura, 2003). Spam filters and virus scanners can only eliminate a certain amount of spam and also risk catching legitimate e-mails. As the SoBig virus has demonstrated, virus scanners themselves actually add to the e-mail traffic through notification and bounceback messages. SMTP is flawed in that it allows these e-mail headers to be faked, and does not allow for the sender to be authenticated as the “real” sender of the message (Geer, 2004). This article looks at a new type of spam known as spam over Internet telephony (SPIT).


2020 ◽  
pp. 273-296
Author(s):  
Natalia Savkina ◽  
Rita McAllister ◽  
Maria McMinn

Images of Thanatos, or death, appear in Prokofiev’s output in a variety of contexts. Thoughts of death threw many shadows over the young composer, despite his naturally happy disposition; but from the 1920s, as a Christian Scientist, he tried to see death as merely a human aberration. His musical works are nonetheless full of death images. Different cultural-historical traditions are drawn upon, reflecting his own life experiences. Ancient mythological and magical beliefs, as well as Christian motives, rub shoulders with positivism and with interpretations of Bolshevism as a secular religion. By exploring concepts of Thanatos in a wide range of Prokofiev’s theater works—from Maddalena, Chout, and The Fiery Angel to Semyon Kotko, Romeo and Juliet, and War and Peace—this chapter casts new light on the composer’s emotional attitudes toward the mysteries of death, as well as revealing special psychological depths in his musical ideas.


Author(s):  
Wen-Chen Hu

There are two kinds of handheld computing and programming, namely client- and server- side handheld computing and programming. The most popular applications of the latter are used with database-driven mobile web content, whose construction steps were described in the previous section. The remainder of this book will be devoted to client-side handheld computing and programming, whose applications do not need the support of server-side programs. Client-side handheld applications are varied and numerous, covering a wide range of everyday activities. Popular application examples include: • address books, which store personal information such as addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses in an accessible format, • appointments, which allow users to edit, save, and view times reserved for business meetings and visits to the doctor, • calculators, which may be a standard 4-function pocket calculator or a multifunction scientific calculator, • datebooks/calendars, which allow users to enter hourly activities and show a daily or weekly schedule, or a simple monthly view, • expenses, which allow users to track and record common business expenses such as car mileage, per diems, air fees, and hotel bills, • mobile office functions, which include viewing and processing documents, spread sheets, presentations, and inventory. • multimedia, which includes playing music and videos, photography, and personal albums. • note pads, which allow users to save, view, and edit text notes, • to-do lists, which allow users to enter a list of tasks to be performed, and • video games, in addition to those on-line video games that require the support of server-side programs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-340
Author(s):  
Devrim Adam Yavuz

The instruction of classical sociological theory at Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY) underwent significant transformation to make it more activity-based and better aligned with departmental learning goals. The article focuses on the effectiveness of an “edited book” project that came of this endeavor, where students become editors and curate “chapters” on a topic by identifying journal articles from specific sociological traditions to then write the “book’s introduction.” In addition to situating the project within the sociology curriculum and scholarship on sociological literacy, the article presents assessment results that revealed improvement in learning outcomes. The latter suggests that discipline-specific writing and literacy activities can be as effective as informal assignments even in anxiety-inducing courses like theory. This is encouraging given Lehman College’s role as a commuter campus, which makes the instructional strategy applicable in a wide range of programs.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veslemøy Egede-Nissen ◽  
Rita Jakobsen ◽  
Gerd S Sellevold ◽  
Venke Sørlie

The purpose of this study was to explore situations experienced by 12 health-care providers working in two nursing homes. Individual interviews, using a narrative approach, were conducted. A phenomenological–hermeneutical method, developed for researching life experiences, was applied in the analysis. The findings showed that good care situations are experienced when the time culture is flexible, the carers act in a sovereign time rhythm, not mentioning clock time or time as a stress factor. The results are discussed in terms of anthropological and sociological theory: time as event and action and flexible time cultures. Care settings for persons with dementia represent many challenges, such as a heavy workload and time strain. Time ethics is a construction, understanding time used in caring for persons suffering from dementia, which involves a mature, responsible and flexible nursing approach to these patients.


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