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'Sexting' as a form of sexual expression and experimentation has grown increasingly ubiquitous among teens. In addition to fostering intimacy and closeness among selected partners, sexting between minors incurs considerable risks to youth mental, physical, social and emotional wellbeing. Current debates on sexting focus on the conflicting role of pressure and pleasure among youth. We highlight findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens examining attitudes and experiences with cyber-risk and sexting. Our results show that youth demarcate boundaries between public and private and an ordered/disordered sense of self as they seek intimacy with others through the exchange of explicit digital material. Drawing on recent conceptual and theoretical work on image-based sexual abuse, we suggest that teens express situated agency when reflecting on sexting, indicating only partial awareness of wider patriarchal contexts mediating and patterning gendered behaviours involved in sexting and its outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on parental mediation of children's online engagements situate historically longstanding anxieties within the dynamics of present-day information communications technologies (i.e., concerns over new "cyber risks," as well as opportunities). Yet, there remains a lack of emphasis on children's reactions to and experiences with parental strategies and responses. In the current article, we highlight research involving semi-structured focus groups (n=35) with Canadian teenagers (n=115). We highlight themes directly related to parental digital mediation, including the role of ICTs in driving addictive behaviors, social connection, differences in parental responses between sons and daughters, and differences concerning age and birth order. Disrupting cultural discourses of young people who lack agency in relation to their use of ICTs, our discussions with teens reveal qualified support, even degrees of sympathy, for parental efforts to restrict access and use of digital technologies, but illuminate multifaceted reasons for resistance: their vital role not only for social connection but access to crucial information and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences taking a graduate qualitative methodology course with Dr. William (Billy) Shaffir. We highlight Billy's approach to ethnographic research and his declaration to "just do it." Rather than just absorbing theoretical knowledge from the literature, Billy taught us to be wary of the dangers of a prior theorization and how it can distort rather than shed light on empirical investigations. Despite his belief that sociological theory is far too often abstract and removed from real-world contexts, he nevertheless provided us with a latent theoretical commitment to concept formation, modification, and testing in the field that guides our research to this day. We explore Shaffir's agnostic and at times ironic approach to theory and demonstrate how his specific type of theory-work, derived from Everett Hughes' and Howard Becker's interactionist perspective on "people doing things together," influenced how many of his students study occupations and organizations via sensitizing concepts. Billy managed to get us to think differently about how we theorize in the field and how to cultivate a playful and healthy skeptical attitude towards its application. This type of agnostic-interactionism d oes n ot d ismiss t heory o utright, b ut is always vigilant and mindful of how easy it is for practitioners of theory to slip into obfuscation and reification. We conclude with a Shaffir inspired theory-work that argues for the continuing significance of an agnostic stance towards ethnographic and qualitative inquiry; one that continues to sensitize the researcher to generic social processes through which agency-structure is mediated and accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent rise of so-called 'surveillance schools' is often justified given the need to engender a safe and secure educational environment for students—a fusion of pedagogical and security motives. This article contributes knowledge regarding the attitudes and lived experiences of teenagers in response to school-based surveillance. Focus groups centre discussions on two areas: the effectiveness of policies regarding technology in the classroom as well as school-wide restrictions on Wi-Fi access and the effectiveness of surveillance technologies geared to actively monitor student online activities. We explore a bifurcation of attitudes revealing both resistance to surveillance school practices as well as strong support for monitoring technologies perceived to be effective in addressing cyber-risks like cyberbullying. Our findings point to the need for empirically assessing the contexts where support or antagonism towards surveillance occurs, suggesting neither isomorphic resistance nor wholescale acquiescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erving Goffman has not only had a huge impact upon his home discipline of sociology but may be its most cited, as well as best known member ever. Nevertheless, Goffman continues to be heavily criticized by his fellow sociologists for his allegedly undecipherable and sloppy methods for conducting empirical research and constructing and accumulating general theory. We demonstrate here that while some of his specific practices were intuitive and unorthodox, and perhaps not always available to Goffman himself through self-reflection, they often included systematic empirical comparisons and generalizations, and grounded, general theory. It is tragic that he apparently died lamenting that these common characteristics of his work have been so little recognized (Berger 1986). He encouraged Verhoeven (1993), among others, to rectify this, and hopefully our own efforts here have contributed to this important, but unfinished business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the "one country, two systems" model fashioned after its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, is to retain its rule of law, capitalist system, and accompanying political and ideological independence. However, tensions remain centered on concerns held by many Hong Kong citizens over the "resinicization" of Hong Kong, related to anxieties regarding the putative erosion of political and ideological freedoms. This paper examines the claims-making of the student activist group Scholarism, who effectively used Facebook to raise awareness of and successfully resist a government proposal to introduce a national education curriculum into Hong Kong schools. Scholarism's resistance and ability to mobilize mass demonstrations against the government is significant considering the lack of democratic channels in Hong Kong. Implications are explored for the examination of how claims-making in cyberspace impacts the social problems process, especially in non-democratic and post-colonial contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, has advocated for an 'engaged' Buddhism since the 1960s. This paper explores Hanh's concept of 'inter-being' as a philosophy of action. Often attempts to understand Eastern spirituality and practice are distorted by an occidental standpoint. Marx's own attempts to understand Eastern modes of production have been accused of being 'orientalist', and it remains a challenge to Western sociologists to let Eastern standpoints represent themselves. Nhat Hanh challenges Western views which juxtapose self and society, yet recognizes that taking steps towards solving some of humanity's greatest crises necessitates recognizing the individual's ability to affect worldwide systemic change. Nhat Hanh's 'engaged Buddhism' stands as a unique approach, even within Buddhism, to address and ameliorate suffering both at the individual and collective levels. We compare engaged Buddhism with American pragmatism, suggesting that Hanh's vision is essential to addressing over-simplified dialectics such as body/mind, self/society, and personal/aggregate transformation.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]