Avian Influenza Risk Environment: Live Bird Commodity Chains in Chattogram, Bangladesh

In this paper, we identify behaviours in live bird commodity chains in Chattogram, Bangladesh, which may influence the risk of pathogen emergence and transmission: the nature of poultry trade, value appropriation and selling sick or infected birds. Examining the reasons why actors engage in these behaviours, we emphasise the politics of constraints within a context of real-world decisions, governed by existential and pragmatic agency. Focusing on contact zones and entanglement, analysing patron-client relationships and precarious circumstances, we argue that agency and structure specific to the Bangladeshi context produce a risk environment. Structural constraints may reinforce risky occupational practises and limit individual agency. Structural constraints need to be addressed in order to tackle animal and zoonotic disease risk along live animal commodity chains.

Download Full-text

‘I Know What Freedom and Responsibility Mean Now’

Young ◽

10.1177/1103308817715143 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 26 (4) ◽

pp. 348-365 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gowoon Jung

Keyword(s):

International Students ◽

Time Of Arrival ◽

Structural Factors ◽

State University ◽

Advanced Degrees ◽

Broad Perspective ◽

Individual Agency ◽

The Usa ◽

Korean International Students ◽

Agency And Structure

This article analyses narratives of autonomous adulthood among Korean international students at an American state university. I categorize student narratives in terms of the number of activities associated with achieving adulthood markers and the efficacy of individual agency. A broad perspective considers a wide variety of activities to contribute to autonomous adulthood and valourizes individual agency. A narrow perspective focuses on activities tailored to one’s career, and downplays individual agency compared to larger institutional-structural factors. I examine these narratives among three groups of international students, depending on their time of arrival: pre-college migrants who moved to the USA during middle or high school, college-migrants who arrived during the first or second year of undergraduate college and post-college migrants who came for advanced degrees (e.g., MA, PhD). The finding suggests that students negotiate agency and structure differently depending on their past and current experiences in the sending and receiving countries.

Download Full-text

Diverging Mobilities, Converging Immobility? Romanian Roma Youths at the Crossroad between Spatial, Social and Educational Im/mobility

Intersections ◽

10.17356/ieejsp.v4i3.388 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 29-56

Author(s):

Stefano Piemontese ◽

Bálint Ábel Bereményi ◽

Silvia Carrasco

Keyword(s):

Rural Economy ◽

Structural Constraints ◽

Negative Experience ◽

Social And Cultural Capital ◽

Rural Village ◽

Individual Agency ◽

Educational Trajectories ◽

Collaborative Ethnography ◽

Training Opportunities ◽

Meaningful Interaction

The article investigates the youth transitions of a group of Romanian Roma adolescents with different im/mobility experiences but originating from the same transnational rural village. Their postcompulsory education orientations and development of autonomous im/mobility projects are anything but homogeneous; nevertheless, they all develop halfway between the reproduction of socio-economic inequalities and the challenge of social mobility. While in Spain young migrants are confronted with severe residential and school mobility but have access to wider vocational training opportunities, their peers in Romania rely on more consistent educational trajectories, but face the prospect of poorly valued work in the local rural economy. As for young returnees, they struggle to mobilize their richer transnational social and cultural capital as a way of overcoming the negative experience and result of (re)migration. Based on broader, longitudinal, multi-sited and collaborative ethnography, this paper aims to unveil the interplay between structural constraints and individual agency that shapes meaningful interaction between spatial, social and educational im/mobility in both transnational localities. While emphasizing the usefulness of the concept of transition to explain the processes of intergenerational transfer of poverty in contemporary Europe, we discuss how temporality, social capital and mobility engage with the specific socio-economic context, transformations, and imagined futures of its young protagonists.

Download Full-text

Towards a criminology of structurally conditioned emotions: Combining Bourdieu’s field theory and cultural criminology

European Journal of Criminology ◽

10.1177/1477370817737242 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 344-363 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Annick Prieur

Keyword(s):

Field Theory ◽

Strain Theory ◽

Criminological Theory ◽

Cultural Criminology ◽

Individual Agency ◽

The Core ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

Promising Solution ◽

Agency And Structure

When trying to explain why some people commit crimes while most do not, criminological theory has had a problem with linking agency and structure. A promising solution came in Jock Young’s version of cultural criminology, which integrated Merton’s strain theory with Katz’s account of the emotional rewards from criminal acts. Young claimed the core emotion behind different crimes would be a structurally caused experience of humiliation. Linking individual agency and structural conditions through emotions certainly advances understanding, but Young did not show how this linking was effectuated. Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory may contribute with a better grasp on how structural conditions influence the social agent’s perception of the world and emotional orientation towards it. After exploring how this argument may be supported with regard to empirical cases – studies of graffiti, thefts and violence – the concluding discussion deals with the limits of an approach that combines fields and emotions.

Download Full-text

Between Individual Agency and Structure in HIV Prevention: Understanding the Middle Ground of Social Practice

American Journal of Public Health ◽

10.2105/ajph.2013.301301 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 103 (8) ◽

pp. 1367-1375 ◽

Cited By ~ 58

Author(s):

Susan Kippax ◽

Niamh Stephenson ◽

Richard G. Parker ◽

Peter Aggleton

Keyword(s):

Hiv Prevention ◽

Social Practice ◽

Middle Ground ◽

Individual Agency ◽

Agency And Structure

Download Full-text

Bioaerosol Sampling at a Live Animal Market in Kunshan, China: A Noninvasive Approach for Detecting Emergent Viruses

Open Forum Infectious Diseases ◽

10.1093/ofid/ofaa134 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (5) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Xinye Wang ◽

Emily S Bailey ◽

Xian Qi ◽

Huiyan Yu ◽

Changjun Bao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Avian Influenza ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

H9n2 Virus ◽

Molecular Evidence ◽

Avian Influenza Viruses ◽

Live Animal ◽

Live Bird Market ◽

Live Bird

From October to December 2018, periodic bioaerosol sampling was conducted at a live bird market in Kunshan, China. Sixty-six (55%) of 120 samples had molecular evidence of avian influenza viruses. Four yielded live H9N2 virus after egg culture.

Download Full-text

Why Do They Enroll in This Course? Undergraduates’ Course Choice From a Motivational Perspective

Frontiers in Education ◽

10.3389/feduc.2021.641254 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Author(s):

Hye Rin Lee ◽

Luise von Keyserlingk ◽

Richard Arum ◽

Jacquelynne Sue Eccles

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

College Students ◽

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Life Goals ◽

Structural Constraints ◽

Freshman Year ◽

Individual Motivation ◽

Normative Expectations ◽

Agency And Structure

Why do students pick various courses? Interdisciplinary research has highlighted the role of structural constraints, normative expectations, and individual motivation as the joint influences of agency and structure in the service of life goals. Here, we examined undergraduates’ reasons for course choices for their most difficult and most important courses. We compared the reasons for non-major vs. major courses, for freshman vs. juniors, and across different disciplines. College students selected courses that fulfilled their major or breadth requirements, particularly in their freshman year. STEM courses were taken more for career development reasons than other disciplines, particularly humanities courses; social sciences courses were taken more for interest than STEM courses; and humanities courses were taken more for intellectual broadening than STEM courses.

Download Full-text

Agency and Structure Revisited with Youth Responses to Gendered (Spatial) Mobilities in the EU

BORDER CROSSING ◽

10.33182/bc.v10i1.953 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 61-78

Author(s):

Şahizer Samuk Carignani ◽

Tabea Schlimbach ◽

Emilia Kmiotek-Meier ◽

Celia Diaz ◽

Laura Diaz Chorne ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Young People ◽

Gender Inequalities ◽

Structural Constraints ◽

Voluntary Work ◽

Gender Beliefs ◽

Gender Perceptions ◽

Different Types ◽

And Gender ◽

Agency And Structure ◽

The Eu

Young people involved in geographical mobility face diverse gendered mobility settings and gender inequalities. How do the youth involved in diverse mobility types deal with adverse circumstances caused by gender beliefs and gender prejudices? To answer this question, problem-centred interviews with young people (18-29) are analysed using Grounded Theory. These young people are European citizens and they are involved in five mobility types: higher education, employment, voluntary work, vocational education & training, and entrepreneurship. We apply Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) categories (iterational, projective and practical-evaluative) to the analysis of gendered mobility narratives as unequal gender perceptions reveal themselves in the context of different types of youth mobility. The analysis allows to see the ways young people reflect on their actions: refusal of gender beliefs, acceptance or rejection of gendered prejudices, individual vs. collective solutions, demand for equality in numbers, comparison of gendered workplaces and assumption of leadership in initiating mobility. At the same time, we observe how geographical mobilities can increase the critical sensibility of youth towards gender inequalities, contributing to new conceptualisation of agentic responses to structural constraints.

Download Full-text

Understanding Lived Experiences of Food Insecurity through a Paraliminality Lens

Sociology ◽

10.1177/00380385211003450 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 003803852110034

Author(s):

Caroline Moraes ◽

Morven G McEachern ◽

Andrea Gibbons ◽

Lisa Scullion

Keyword(s):

Food Insecurity ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Food Access ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Social Processes ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Short Term ◽

Individual Agency ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Agency And Structure

This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as a liminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfare reform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing on original qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional, oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, which are both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three original contributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empirical research by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared social processes and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructing people’s experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory by conceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generates a persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-term emergency food access measures.

Download Full-text

Development in the context of care migration from rural Hungary: An agency-based approach

Szociológiai szemle ◽

10.51624/szocszemle.2018.4.4 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 88-110

Author(s):

Krisztina Németh ◽

Monika Mária Váradi

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

Financial Stability ◽

Elderly Care ◽

Small Towns ◽

Structural Constraints ◽

Circular Migration ◽

Individual Agency ◽

Structure And Agency ◽

Care Workers ◽

The Face

This paper aims to create a better understanding of the interplay between structural constraints and individual agency in the process of international labor migration based on empirical evidence collected in Hungarian small towns and villages. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability-based concept of development, and a theory of agency elaborated by Emirbayer and Mische, the paper focuses on live-in care migration as a specific form of female circular migration from Hungary to Western European countries, and highlights the varying and dynamic nature of migrant women’s agency within the complexity of structural constraints. The object of this paper is twofold: first, it compares and systematically analyzes Hungarian migrant elderly care workers’ coping strategies in the face of constraints set in the global context of care work. Second, it aims to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework based on the concepts of agency in which diverse empirical findings – human games within a host household and narratives problematizing these specific social roles – can be interpreted. Our empirical evidence shows that human games and tactics are triggered precisely by structural constraints; they are directly inspired by limitations. Although these tactics are potential tools for enlarging individual room for maneuver situationally, they evidently cannot alter structures. The asymmetry of structure and agency is clearly demonstrated in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Hungarian care workers describe individual gains from their jobs as fragments of development. These fragments reflect not only structural constraints, but also highlight potential gains from this specific type of circular migration, pointing out that the concept of “remittances” is more complex than a mere increase in financial stability.

Download Full-text