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A growing literature in institutional theory has recently brought organizational agency back in. In this paper, we concentrate on one type of agency, bricolage, where organizations manipulate already legitimate norms that they find around them in their institutional environment. We try here to bridge a gap in the literature by examining how, through bricolage, an organization can increase or preserve its legitimacy.We first propose that both legitimate and illegitimate organizations can benefit from bricolage, but that the rewards should be higher for the illegitimate ones. We then refine the concept of bricolage and come up with two different mechanisms that should lead to different outcomes in terms of legitimacy. Third, we tackle the issue of institutional change and offer that change may play a mediating effect in the bricolage-legitimacy linkage. Finally, we distinguish among the three institutional pillars and advance that the moderating role of the cultural pillar should be the strongest, thereby reducing the effectiveness of bricolage relative to its outcomes under the influence of the normative and regulative pillars.We conclude this paper by positioning our propositions in the institutional literature and explaining how it should benefit from the incorporation of the underexplored notion of bricolage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although boys engage in more fights than girls, there has been a growing amount of research devoted to understanding the aggressive and antisocial behavior of girls. Unlike boys, girls tend to engage in relational aggression, which includes anything from name-calling to spreading rumors to violent threats. Because of the elusive nature of this type of aggression, it may be less easily quantifiable. This paper interrogates girl fighting from a qualitative approach to help better understand the meaning of girl violence in public high schools, and to examine the perception that (despite statistics) "girls are worse." This research reveals how fighting among girls can sometimes be a site for reinforcing a normative feminine role of the overly "emotional" girl, at the same time it can be constructed as a transgression of such ideals, where girl fighters are "tomboys" and "tough girls." This is often intricately connected to sexuality, where girls who fight are sometimes perceived to be "gay girls." This kind of homophobic name-calling may in turn work to reinforce heterosexism and homophobia in schools. This paper also examines how fights are tied to race, where the construction of "ghetto girls" can work to reinforce racist ideologies about violence in schools. Finally, this paper suggests that girl fighting can also be a site of situated agency, where girls fight to gain a sense of power and respect among their cohorts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that referring to 'agency', contrary to some recent sociological interpretation, is not useful for the study of interaction practices. The argument of the paper is that studying interaction does not require an individualistic and voluntaristic notion of social action. In this regard, Goffman, Garfinkel and conversation analysis offer an alternative approach to the study of interaction practices in natural settings.This reasoning stems from data collected during research conducted on medical emergency call centres (telephone number 118 in Italy). The paper describes what seems to be a recurrent pattern of behaviour in the interaction among telephone operators handling emergency calls: a common method used to send dispatches by the dispatcher, which consists in repeating out loud on the radio what is being said by the call-taker. This seems to be a case where a person has a minimum amount of control over his/her behaviour and verbal production. If these cases are examined from the point of view of interaction processes, and therefore shifting the attention from an individual actor to the relation between the parties and to the ecological context in which the relation takes place, one finds that what is apparently an example of zero-agency is in fact an efficient form of behaviour which contributes collaboratively and collectively to the ongoing activity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theories of social movement participation elaborate important mechanisms and processes but cannot reliably predict or account for participation or non-participation in movements, because they generally ignore the sociohistorical contexts of participation decisions. This paper sketches an alternative approach to studying participation in movements that examines how movement actors succeed or fail in their attempts to solve problems posed by specific contexts of mobilization. Toward that end, the paper compares participation in four union organizing campaigns that took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, demonstrating that the kinds of general mechanisms and processes social movement theorists have elaborated cannot account for the divergent outcomes of these four cases. It is argued instead that participation outcomes in these four episodes of mobilization can only be understood by examining how the activists involved solved ? or failed to solve ? the problems posed by legacies of business unionism ? the specific sociohistorical context of these two pairs of mobilization attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a larger project investigating women?s gender and sexual practices, identifications, and consciousness, this paper examines the retrospective adolescent narratives of a group of sexually diverse New Jersey women, most of whom identified as childhood tomboys. Despite common beliefs in the gender flexibility accorded girls and a wealth of stories of childhood ?masculinity,? women?s teen recollections highlighted difficulties maintaining outward tomboy display, a continuum of paths for discarding ?boyish? manners, and manifold social pressures for enacting heterosexual femininity. The paper considers the implications of the women?s narratives for theorizing women’s "masculinity" and gendered agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the Dewey-Lippmann debate of the 1920s, an exchange that centered on their contrasting normative ideals of democracy. While the debate holds historical significance in itself, this paper uses it as a historical point of departure toward the broader sociological objective of understanding the current direction of democratic scholarship. In particular, this paper focuses on the descendants of Lippmann and Dewey ? the democratic elitists and the participatory democrats. While the elitist model tends to hold a dominant position in academic and popular discourse, I argue that the divide between elites and citizens can be bridged if the habits surrounding knowledge and expertise are fundamentally transformed ? that is, if citizens as well as elites engage in intelligent and critical reflective agency. I conclude the paper by outlining three empirical social problems ? the expansion of intellectual property rights, media conglomerates, and reliance on standardized tests ? that work to delimit the capabilities of public citizens to engage in critical and reflective agency, and thus to bridge the gap between themselves and elites. I suggest that radical and participatory democrats must struggle with these empirical issues in order to understand and ultimately transform the tense relationship between expert knowledge and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative studies on cosmetic surgery often find that women who receive surgery argue they are empowered by doing so. This paper explores issues of agency versus autonomy in relation to women (and men's) support of cosmetic surgery as one form of human enhancement. Based on a survey of 100 respondents in southern California, it attempts to match attitudinal questions regarding cosmetic surgery with these broader philosophical and sociological concepts, and to determine the social conditions which shape an autonomous and agenic position on cosmetic surgery. The paper is innovative on several fronts: it merges sociological concerns with philosophical considerations; it is the first sociological study of cosmetic surgery to utilize quantitative data in a subject area dominated by qualitative work; and it complicates our understandings of the notion of agency so central to ongoing debates about gender, bodies, health and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates why Afghans in the wider diaspora take action in certain ways. It builds on the analysis of transnational activities and different 'spheres of engagement' (Van Hear 2015). Drawing on qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews and participant observation the paper first explains how members of Afghan diaspora groups come to direct their activities towards certain social contexts and how these engagements implicate ideas of change. In a further step the findings are used to critically discuss the notion of diasporas as agents of change. Engaging with relational sociology the article contends that we cannot assess the agency of diasporic groups by focusing exclusively on the transnational practices which they direct towards the respective origin country. How and under what conditions people exercise agency only becomes intelligible if we broaden our understanding of the multi-layered conditions under which members of diasporic groups act upon their specific relationships with their countries of origin and reception, their embeddedness in social networks and ideas of change and development. A relational perspective replaces the interpretation of actions through a priori categorizations with a focus on contingent narratives of meaning. This way the effects and variability of multi-layered structures are disentangled and thus a more precise understanding is being developed of why people engage with their home countries in certain ways and what forms of agency are involved if they take action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the role that immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa and their applications for citizenship played in the early construction of whiteness in the US. By studying six citizenship applications and court debates in the early years of the twentieth century through which people from the Middle East and North Africa "achieved" whiteness, I show how legal conception of whiteness variedly relied on different criteria such as geography, skin color, culture/civilization, religion, and personal qualifications of applicants, as well as different sources of definition like the knowledge of the "average person," "science," and congressional intent. While courts were trying to define the boundaries of whiteness and borders of white America, the prerequisite cases examined below reveal how the first wave of immigrants from the Middle East, exposed to an unfamiliar taxonomical practice, learned about race politics in the context of the US and chose to adopt a racial language of white Christian supremacy to prove their "whiteness." Based on this finding and through a Foucauldian lens, I criticize the literature that romanticizes the agency of the subjugated and sympathizes with their claims for whiteness through perceiving it as the "logical" option for naturalization and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although specialists in the study of social stratification and mobility emphasize class reproduction, not a few people enter social classes different from their original classes. This occurs by two factors: structural changes and agency of actors. For example, the number of professional positions in children's generation is larger than that in parents' generation because of occupational and industrial changes. It is true that many children from professional class got newly created professional positions, but children from other classes also got them by studying very hard and attained higher education. They used their agency in response to the structural changes. This paper proposes a new theoretical framework to clearly understand the relationship between structure and agency in the creation of social inequality. To do that this paper follows three steps. First, it is pointed out that there are two types of inequality: inequality created by institutions and self-organizing inequality. The former is inequality created by structure, while the latter is created by agency. Second, the model of relative risk aversion proposed by Breen and Goldthorpe is revisited. I show that their model is a classic example of the interaction of the two types of inequality. Finally, I propose a general theoretical framework with which we clearly understand the interaction. The framework is based on Coleman's scheme of the micro-macro linkage and demonstrates how prior institutions create inequality among actors, how actors rationally react to the inequality, and how their reactions accumulate to the macro level and create new social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating Swidler's theory on the cultural tool-kit (1986) and Sewell's theory on structure and agency (1992), this paper aims to further theorize ways in which social movement participants develop and utilize cultural repertoires in their attempts to achieve social change. I question how movement participants construct cultural repertoires for use in their activities and mobilization, and whether they reproduce the structure of social change through their actions and deployment of resources. The paper situates both theories within the social movement literature, considering how individuals use configurations of their existing cultural repertoires to participate and, through their involvement, build their tool-kits and construct new strategies of action. In proposing theoretical connections and the analysis of interactions among movement participants, we may begin to understand the reproduction of social change structures in future movement waves and the adoption of movement cultural schemas into mainstream culture. The paper concludes with a proposal for using this integrated perspective in the analysis of ethnographic data from the Occupy Wall Street Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines redundancy as a critical life event, focusing on the relational and temporal contexts of individual action. A biographical methodology is used to explore the perceptions and experiences of individuals who were seeking a new career within a larger sample of those who had experienced redundancy in the Welsh steel industry between 2001 and 2003. Comparisons are drawn between the experiences of three groups of 'career changers': those who were already planning new careers prior to the redundancies, those whose pursuit of new careers had been triggered, resourced and legitimised by the redundancies and those who were at a cross-roads, experiencing unresolved tensions between new future projects, present contingencies and past identities. The paper advances theoretical understanding of the temporal and relational contexts of action, drawing on Emirbayer and Mische's (1998) framework and contributes to wider debates about critical life events and fateful moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, sociological research on organizations has paid particular attention to the relationship between organizations and the broader fields in which they exist. However, the attention to context has frequently led to an impoverished notion of creative and strategic agency in organizational life. This paper illustrates the importance of considering agency through an analysis of natural and organic foods co-operative retailers, known as co-ops, in a changing natural products marketplace. The paper begins by outlining the new institutionalist and organizational ecology approaches to organizations research. I also examine recent criticisms about the dearth of agency in these models and offer a way to think about actors' strategies that draws on research in cultural sociology. Next, I explain the relevance of co-ops for this research and describe my data and research methods. The remainder of the paper analyzes three dimensions of strategy in co-ops. I consider changes in work, management, and collective organization and argue that co-ops' responses to dilemmas in these areas illustrate the role of strategy in mediating between environmental conditions and organizational behavior. These examples also show that organizational histories, cultures, and goals condition strategic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploration of the history of the transculturation of the New England College model in the Ottoman Empire and focuses on the earliest and one of the enduring examples, Robert College of Constantinople. Founders of the college, mostly ex-affiliates of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sought to replicate the educational practices and the standards of their alma maters, then provincial evangelical colleges â?”such as Andover, Bowdoin, Williams and Amherstâ?”that were crucial in structuring their habitus. The main argument in the paper is that the agency of the founders that was at work in the establishment of Robert College and the imagery of bringing New England college to the Ottoman Empireâ?” not just the proverbial Bible schoolâ?” stemmed both from the founders' educational formation, and from the transformation that took place in their habitus due to the differences between the logics of practice in the field of religion and education in New England and those in Constantinople of the 19th century. There were many moments of misalignment and tension between founders' habitus and the fields of religion and education they were trying to navigate in Constantinople. For example the millet system, regulating the social and legal interfaith relationships in the Ottoman Empire from urban settling to all the schools, had no corresponding referent within the social space of New England. Thus their position taking in the Ottoman power field required that they invent new ways of combining faith and science and adjust to the delicate balances at the interface of the religious and educational fields in Constantinople. In their desire to maintain and increase their cultural and symbolic capital in the educational field of New England, and simultaneously reach out to the non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, they had to handle dual logics of practice. Consequently college founders' experiences and practices reflected a habitus in constant negotiation with itself and its ambivalences. It is my contention that out of these negotiations and ambivalences a forceful agency emerged shaping the experimentation with New England college model in the Ottoman Empire; leading to an increase in the autonomy of the education from religion; and in time contributing to the structural transformation of the Ottoman educational field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider how the women on the Greek island of Kythera at the end of the 20th century exercised their agency in a context of the intersection of gender, class and nationality. The paper is based on a larger study of the intersection of gender and ethnicity among women of Kytherian Greek heritage living in Australia, the United States and on the island. For the larger study I conducted interviews with 95 women of Kytherian Greek heritage living in the three places, and I engaged in participant observation. For this paper, I focus on the 16 interviews I conducted with women living on Kythera in 1993 as well as field notes from short visits I took to the island between 1988 and 1993. I examine the interviews and my notes, and I relate the major themes identified by the women with respect to the constraints women experience and the opportunities they find to exercise their agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn this paper I found that a hyper-regulated rehabilitation program changed the meaning of rehabilitation to probation staff. Detention Service Officers once felt rehabilitation was their duty to the community and/or a way to help troubled youth. With the bureaucratization of their efforts rehabilitation has become something they simply must do as a part of the job, whereas in the past there was a higher level of personal commitment to rehabilitation on part of the DSO. Prior to the Achieve program the majority of juvenile hall staff were African-American. Many of these staff seemed to take a role that was very similar to the way Elijah Anderson (1999) describes old heads roles to delinquent youth. My contention is that many of these DSOs (particularly African-Americans) saw themselves as institutional old heads telling tales and mentoring detained youth, warning them about the future consequences of their actions. This paper examines the manner in which a bureaucratic rehabilitation program is implemented and experienced by these old heads, how do they practice agency, and the bureaucracy's response to their agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional entrepreneurship literature has advanced the understanding of fields as sites of political contestation in which agents shape, and are shaped by, processes of institutional transformation. This paper enriches these notions by demonstrating the relevance of the concept of hegemony for understanding the contingent stability of fields as networks of actors embedded in an alignment of economic, discursive, and organizational forces. We use this concept to fill gaps in the literature regarding the potential constraints on agents deploying strategies to shift fields. Both institutional entrepreneurs and 'institutional defenders' make strategic moves within complex and indeterminate hegemonic fields, pointing to a 'strategic face of power'. We offer a coherent account of 'strategies for the weak' that reflect agents' critical awareness of political opportunities for subverting the superior resources and formal authority of the 'powerful'. Inhabiting the precarious space between structural determinism and unconstrained agency, the Modern Prince represents a strategic agent of change and proffers a theoretical path forward for institutional entrepreneurship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working from the claim that U.S. involvement in the affairs of other nations, particularly those in the Middle East, is a type of manufactured risk, with terrorism or "blowack" being the possible outcome, this paper examines the role of the mass media in managing this risk. A rich collection of empirical evidence from media coverage, military documents, administration tactics, and research studies are marshalled to specify this hypothetical process. This data is then considered in the context of theories of social systems and individual agency from Talcott Parsons and Anthony Giddens. Careful attention is given to possible mechanisms of media influence on individual action, examined through the lens of each theorist's work. A surprisingly influential role for the mass media is suggested in the works of both writers, though to differing degrees. Specifically, the research indicates a high probability of media continuing to informally partner with the state to manage the risks that accompany globalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the idea of the global city, this paper looks at bike messengers as an integral part of international business. I argue that, despite their manifest function within the global economy, messenger work allows for spontaneous action prohibited in rationalized labor. As such, the structural constraints of globalization become unfettered at the local level allowing for messenger work-an otherwise dead-end service job-to flower into an opportunity for self-affirming action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habermas and Garfinkel are an unlikely pair, despite sharing a common distinction for being theoretically obscure. This paper lays out the advantages of considering Habermas and Garfinkel as complimentary perspectives. I argue that what Habermas and Garfinkel are doing is similar enough to suggest an alternative approach to the structure-agency problem. Together they provide us with a basis for thinking about action and its environments not simply in terms of contingent or formal conditions in isolation from one another, but as extensions of an integrated dependency between the local (indexical) contexts in which interactions occur and the rational (pre-theoretical) presuppositions that make such interactions possible. The conditions upon which actors can be identified as agents of their actions or as bound by the structured environments in which they move, are not differentiated in the course of everyday life. This is part of the taken-for-granted features of social interaction. We assume that we formulate our day to day actions and decision making through a real deliberative process while also assuming that our choices are not entirely of our own accord. Only upon reflection do we confront the antinomies of structure and agency. Social action can be represented as either internally or externally governed, each of which can find independent support but when considered together result in contradictions, real or otherwise. This apparent conundrum should give us pause and force us to re-examine our conceptions of structure and agency in light of how we manage to interact throughout the course of our everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women who are battered by their intimate partners are simultaneously objects of domination and subjects with the ability to act. Rather than conceive subordination and agency as polar opposites, we must understand them as part of a dialectic that is full of contradictions and tensions. The actions of women who are battered reflect both the ways that they are subordinated and their ability to resist their subordination. Thus, they may consent or acquiesce to the control and abuse their partners exert over them in some ways and resist it in others. I argue that women who are battered respond to abuse and control in three ways: by consenting, by acquiescing, and by resisting, and that they often respond with elements of all three simultaneously. I define consent as acceptance of control or abuse by an intimate partners, acquiescence as a decision to yield to the batterer?s will despite recognizing it as controlling or abusive, and resistance as active opposition to domination. In this paper, based on in-depth interviews with 25 women, I analyze the ways access to economic resources, responses from friends and family, motherhood, the degree of violence, and hope that the relationship will improve shape women?s agency while they are in relationships with men who abuse them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emphasizes the economic and sociological relevance of syndicate play, an extended social practice by which networks of friends or coworkers share lottery tickets. Since syndicate play gives room to opportunistic behavior, a strictly rational lottery player would always prefer to play the lottery on individual basis rather than risking malfeasance. Many players, however, do not behave in a strictly rational manner and prefer to play lottery within their social networks in order to strengthen the social ties that define them. Syndicate play is a valuable example of embedded economic behavior based on interpersonal trust and triggered by both economic and social motives. The article claims that syndicate play is a good candidate for the explanation of why Spain has been the heaviest lottery country in the world for more than one hundred years. This claim is supported by a comparative and historical analysis of the institutional frameworks of 19th Century European lottery markets that reveals the extent to which syndicate play was facilitated in Spain but not in any other lottery country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a qualitative approach, this paper works to make visible the power relations that exist between youth and adults in shared social spaces. These complex relationships of power are constantly constructed and reconstructed through various social interactions. Three adult-mediated spaces were chosen for this research: an office where youth volunteers staff a hotline, a classroom at a charter high school, and a movie theater. Several key themes were examined as they related to youth-adult power dynamics: the work done by adults to uphold traditional relations of power, the work of adults to minimize their power and authority, youth agency (as brought about through both resistance and the internalization of adult definitions of the space), and the relationship between power and mobility. Additional research on the ways youth navigate adult-managed spaces may offer important insight into the techniques used by young people as they work to control their worlds and could have important implications for the ways that we structure these social spaces in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, labeling theory has been the primary framework through which the labeling of emotional disorders has been studied. However, this theory is limited in its analysis, I argue. By focusing on these labels as imposed, deviant social roles, labeling theory makes virtually no allowance for a consideration of agency in the labeling process. This paper attempts to balance this omission by using an identity perspective to analyze the recovery narratives of twenty-five individuals who have disidentified with disorder labels ("ex-labelers"). These narratives suggest a great deal of agency in the processes of choosing the identifying labels, using these identities for their own purposes, and ultimately, refusing to identify with with the labels altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women?s generalized restrictions within public spaces are significantly related to crime prevention as well as etiquette (see Gardner 1995). Despite the widespread common knowledge and academic research which maintain that women should not exhibit these behaviors precisely to avoid becoming victims, ethnographic research I conduct in a women?s self-defense class suggests that many women indeed try to minimize their presence in public spaces so as to not be targeted as victims of violent crimes. After the self-defense course, however, many women reclaim public and private spaces as their own, challenging normative discourses on white femininity that require women?s invisibility in social spaces. This paper explores how embodied resistance to normative discourses changes public/private space for women. Women?s expressions of entitlement to equal and safe spaces in public areas are treated as manifestations of bodily agency in this analysis, which reviews how women perceive choices in otherwise restrictive situations, create boundaries for themselves and others, and engage with a corporeal power that resists cultural expectations of (white) women in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One central challenge to the modern nation-state involves the tradeoff around the acquisition and distribution of resources necessary for the welfare of the homeland population versus alternative assignment of resources to maintain a strong posture to potential enemies. This paper links the discussion of this tradeoff to theories of social and income inequalities, and provides an empirical analysis to support these assertions. Well-being is operationalized in two measures, the infant mortality rate (IMR) and life expectancy at birth (LEB). The theory developed here argues for a well-known tradeoff in this literature, the guns-versus-butter tradeoff, and addresses the short-term (IMR) and long-term (LEB) effects of militarism on well-being, as well as differential effects by gender. Measures of military spending are obtained from two independent sources: the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The results show that the manner in which the state mediates this tradeoff may indeed impose a penalty on population well-being. It is estimated that, on average, as many as 3.5 additional infant deaths can be attributed to each one percent of gross domestic product allocated to security. Life expectancy at birth may be reduced by as much as nine months for every one percent of resources allocated to security. These findings are consistent across the two measures of military expenditure. The findings also suggest that there is a differential in the impact of military expenditure by gender. The negative effect of resource allocation for security may be as much as 50 percent greater on the life expectancy of women than for that of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "transnationalism" has been used to refer to different activities. In this paper, I will compare and contrast concepts and methodologies of three major approaches to transnationalism. The first approach investigates the relationship between transnationalism and assimilation, which I call the transnationalism/assimilation approach. This approach measures immigrants' participation into economic, political, and civil activities in both host and home countries. Methodologically, the transnationalism/assimilation approach takes "nation-states" as the unit of analysis. On the contrary, the other two approaches conceptually and methodologically deviate from using the "nation-state" as the analytical unit. The second approach of transnationalism-the transnational social field approach-conceptualizes transnationalism as networks of social relationship through which ideas, practices, and resources are exchanged. The transnational social field focuses on networks of social relations that span across national borders. This approach suggests a methodology of multi-sited ethnography to capture the transnational social networks. The third approach-the agency/structures approach-conceptualizes migration as "circuits" in which people exercise their agencies and use migration as a way to negotiate between economic structures across national borders. The major methodology used in the agency/structures approach is ethnography or in-depth interviews that focus on the exercising of agency in everyday life. These three approaches are not conceptually or empirically exclusive to each other. Rather, I suggest they are complementary to each other. Future research in transnationalism can benefit from combining conceptual and empirical strengths of these three approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores, in a preliminary fashion, the nature, origins, and cultural-political significance of the phenomenon of deferred agency through the prism of the theoretical work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas' work offers one of the most fertile, multidimensional, but relatively untapped sources of theoretical understanding and insight into the dynamics of this phenomenon. At the same time, the unprecedented, world-historical significance of the dangers these global developments pose to human survival affords social theorists, political activists, and ordinary citizens a unique opportunity to rethink the foundations of our ostensibly democratic political culture, and the role and responsibilities of informed citizenship in an increasingly global world society. I believe that Habermas' work provides the most fertile, comprehensive theoretical framework available for just such a rethinking. In addition, I argue that Habermas' communicative account of action and rationality, as the conceptual core of his work, provides a basis for connecting two formerly unrelated aspects of that work and, in so doing, lays the groundwork for the application of his overall theoretical framework to an understanding of deferred agency. I take for granted here that any attempt to understand the multiple sources of individual political behavior, particularly in concrete, empirical cases, is exceedingly complicated, because one is faced with analyzing and interpreting a dynamic, multifaceted configuration of contingent, interlocking factors - psychological, social structural, political, cultural, historical, etc. - which influence such behavior. For the purposes of this research, I simply wish to place the problem of deferred agency in the context of the work of Habermas and the original Frankfurt theorists, as well as sociology more generally, in order to shed some light, in a preliminary fashion, on certain key dimensions of this problem. ..PAT... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the debate between feminism and queer is by now a fairly old and some might argue, trite and overwrought one, in this paper I direct my attention to a specific feminist assessment of queer that I find to be especially unhelpful and pernicious: the automatic linkage of queer with the exaltation of a gay male subjectivity. I argue that this contention, that lesbians who espouse queer are aping (gay) male sexuality and subjectivity—due to the privileging of non-normative sexual practices found within the gay male community, does two things: (re)essentializes genders and sexualities, and, more importantly, robs non-gay male subjects (e.g., women, lesbians, butches, trans identified individuals) of their own agency. In sum, I believe that this linkage to a supposed gay male imitation, and concomitantly, viewing lesbian/queer sexual cultures, behaviors, configurations, and signifying sexual economies as mere derivatives of gay male culture, reinforces lesbian/queer invisibility and (re)centers the heterosexual matrix. For the sake of lesbian/queer subjects' own viability, lesbian/queer sexualities must thus be pulled out of this discursive trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines looks at the process of maintaining ties, or more specifically, those factors that enable people to be in mutually reinforcing relationships in everyday life. That is to say, some relationships persist (or remain active) because one party is actively initiating contact – making phone calls, sending email or inviting. Other relationships seem more balanced with individuals equally likely to call, write or invite. We investigate four ways in which tie maintenance varies – by frequency of contact, distance, relationship/demographics and social network context. In general, we assert that the more accessible a tie is, the more likely the relationship is going to be mutually reinforcing. We examine this claim using 84 personal networks collected in 2004 in Toronto, Canada. We find that while most relationships are mutual, there are clear indicators that the aforementioned factors make a difference. Proximity is strongly related to mutual ties, as is communication/interaction frequency. These findings reinforce the idea that new communication media are embedded in everyday life, and that place is still a significant factor, both in maintaining ties socially, and maintaining contact generally. We also illustrate the role networks play in this process by highlighting how the homogeneity of ties as well as the amount of fragmentation in the network both illustrate how active people are in keeping up their network. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following makes pragmatic Maines' (2001) suggestion of using autoethnographies to determine structural constraints, fate, and illusions of agency amongst social actors within select social worlds. With transgenderism as the substantive area of examination, the following explores the autobiographical narrative of Riki Wilchins' (1997) Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender. Drawing similarities between the sample and the commonly accepted narrative within the transgender community as highlighted by Mason-Schrock (1996) and Roen (2002), it is found that Wilchins' narrative follows the patterned structure of the transgender group narrative through alignment to group-held symbolic object meanings; supporting Maines' (2001) contention that actors are constrained by the available constructions of knowledge, or narrative stories, determined by the group.Furthermore, this paper argues that transgender narratives are unable to break pre-existing gender dichotomies. While the political objective of postmodernity's transgenderism is to "disrupt" binaries with proposed ambiguous gender performances, analysis illustrates how narratives are structured to follow both a group ideology, and a cultural narrative of gendered binaries; portraying how "successful" transgender accounts instead reproduce gender normatives. The social actor is expected to not only foster the collective ideology surrounding the self, but also enact the transgender role through processes of "becoming" the genderized other, leaving intact structures of gender constraint. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug users, through variegated strategies of moral disvaluing and discrediting, are often constructed as 'immoral', 'unnatural', and 'not one of Us'. The aim of this paper is to unpack these processes using the context of Singapore as a case study. More crucially, it considers the manner in which such a problem is racialised by the state as a predominantly 'Malay problem' and in so doing, frames this ethnic minority as a 'problem population' (Spitzer, 1975) and a 'lazy native' (Alatas, 1977). However, the complexities embedded in the experiences and stories narrated by these users themselves show that such historical and contemporaneous constructions of drug use among the Malays cannot easily and conveniently be simplified by the discourses put forward by the state and by other forms of scholarship that have identified general drug use in a particular manner. More often than not, I argue, these users are embedded in a complex process of meaningful negotiation between imposed structural constraints and their potential as active human agents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 77 accounts of dating conflict, this paper examines two interrelated questions: 1) How do young women account for dating conflict? 2) What forms of agency do women express in these accounts? In our sample of minority, urban college students, we found that accounts of dating conflict are discursive terrain through which study participants "do difference," actively engaging in a negotiation over norms appropriate to their gender, race and class positions. In so doing, they exercise agency â?”act and make decisions and interpretations within the limitations of the specific social and material conditions of their lives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world system area has been produced by deep familiarity with people and locales based on extensive fieldwork. Few other methods are as useful to understand the impacts of structural change on daily life and the ways agents resist, alter, and shape emerging structures. Yet fieldwork has been subject to twin limitations. First, in the majority of instructional materials on field methods, there is a reliance on social constructionist, social psychological, or interactionist perspectives for exemplars and, as a result, discussions of field work problems. Thus, field methods are largely taught as ways to understand the sociological 'micro' with emphasis on micro-level meanings, rather than wider political economic questions. This bias provides a limitation on pedagogical training. An important exception is feminist scholarship examining the structural impacts of gender and patriarchy. Second, world systems research and writing often privilege either historical methods to highlight long durée structures and dynamics, or quantitative cross-national studies. Although exemplars of fieldwork that successfully contributes to debates and understandings of larger structural processes abound, there is a lack of systematic attention to field methods by much world systems research. This paper examines how field method instruction can fruitfully move beyond the micro-level and how more explicit attention to fieldwork may strengthen political economy and world systems research. In the process, it may also help de-marginalize political economy informed fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks provide individuals with specific resources, from good advice to great times. But not all networks are created equal. By examining an actor’s planning habits, this paper will demonstrate the link between active management of personal information and greater likelihood of social support provision, given a particular network structure. The theoretical framework for this paper is based on the work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998), who articulated the structure-agency relationship in terms of organization within a network context, rather than action in a situation. By shifting the terms of the structure-agency debate from action towards organization, they have posited a conceptualization of agency amenable to empirical testing. The question is not “do humans have agency”, but rather, “given this particular network structure or social location, how much agency does this person have”. This particular study takes a multivariate approach to this question thereby allowing the researcher to get a wider view of an actor’s personal habits and social network. For each respondent, I have collected information on personal information management tools, communication by a variety of media, the amount of everyday social support, and a detailed account of social activity within their personal social network. As such it is possible to construct a model of the actor’s networking habits and volume of social support controlling for various social network characteristics such as size and density. Data for this paper comes from the Connected Lives Project in Toronto, Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on sociological theory pertaining to personhood, risk and the process of science, we analyze ways in which the social construction of personhood affects participation in clinical trials. In particular, we focus on the case of HIV-infected foster children in New York City who were enrolled in clinical trials of experimental drugs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Using details recently reported in the media and congressional testimony regarding the use of foster children in clinical trials, we argue that there were three key legitimizing frames: 1) respect for persons, 2) beneficence, and 3) justice, used to justify foster children's participation in the experimental studies. The social construction of the foster child as person (as opposed to other categories of persons such as adults and children living with parents) influences the way informed consent and clinical trial participation is framed. Understandings of risk, benefits, and need for protection are contingent on personhood status. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This presentation stems from my dissertation work exploring lesbian/queer public sexual cultures, sexual practices and attitudes towards sexuality as they are played out at two sites: the Dinah Shore Weekend Event, the largest lesbian circuit party held every year in Palm Springs, California and Pussy Palace, a lesbian/queer bathhouse in Toronto, Canada. Lesbian/queer sexualities are analyzed using both participant observation techniques and face-to-face interviews. Uncovered are the ways in which these spaces affirm an extensive repetoire of sexual behaviors and sex-positive attitudes, such that sexual agency and exploration are possible. Women's appropriation of their own desires and sex for sex sake upends traditional socio-cultural ideas we have regarding female sexuality as barren, passive and emotion-based. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of industrialization coincided with a general shift from a hyperopic conception of agency, in which order and action derived from broad forces, to a myopic conception of agency, in which tiny agents and actions were seen as capable of transforming the world. The myopic conception of agency, I argue, made possible a form of anxiety that is distinctly modern, and that resonated with the observations and concerns of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Germ theory, with its emphasis on the invisibly small germ as the root cause of epidemics exemplified the myopic redrawing of the causal order. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier research and theorizing often cast cosmetic surgery as an expression of human agency, since so many patients tend to dismiss "external influences" on their decision-making, claiming they "did it for themselves." Feminist philosophers of health care ethics argue instead for a higher standard of autonomous agency, one that requires the recognition of and ability to resist unjust norms and social influences. Based on survey data of 182 respondents, 67 of whom have had cosmetic surgery procedures, we found that recipients are most clearly distinguished from non-recipients in their lower self-esteem, their greater use of entertainment media, and greater levels of aging anxiety. On a series of attitude questions as well, recipients were more likely to endorse ideas that configured cosmetic surgery as a (relatively) harmless beauty device and significantly less likely to support statements that identified the unfair societal conditions (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism) that lead some to seek "the surgical fix." In these respects, then, cosmetic surgery recipients reveal the clear distinction between agency and autonomy in patients' health care choices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how school districts react to population growth within their community and to changes in the racial composition of their student body. The outcome of a change process can differ depending on the type of change required, the type of change agents involved, and the type of social dimension referenced. The decisions and actions of an educational organization can be considered proactive or reactive. A district can acknowledge the demographic shift occurring in its community early, make projections and recommend policies in response to the changes. Another aspect concerning the agency of a school or district is whether the impetus that initiates the change is endogenous or exogenous to the educational system.

This study examines the place of families in interpretations of religious socialization among second-generation Asian Americans. Analysis was based on interviews [N=100] with college-aged Asian Americans of different religious traditions and ethnic backgrounds. Asian Americans viewed families as the most significant influence on religiosity, seeing mothers as religious guides and mentors. Despite American evangelicalism's emphasis on personal choice in determining religiosity, however, Asian American Protestants (largely evangelical) viewed personal faith as primarily determined by family faith. Other religious adherents negotiated personal agency with family tradition. For Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, dating relationships and discussions about marriage were also central sites for negotiating religiosity. Immigrant generation characteristics and proximity to American mainstream religion potentially explain these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on Pro-Anorexia Web sites. These websites view the eating disorder, anorexia in a positive light. This is not some media stunt or attempt to lure young women into buying a new type of diet pills. These websites are being constructed by young women in an attempt to create community around their redefinition of anorexia as a lifestyle rather than a disease. It explores how some anorexic young women use the tools of the postmodern information age to challenge two dominant cultural structures and discourses namely psycho-medical model and the hegemonic ideal of beauty.

The article discusses the empirical model of the concept of human agency. The concept of human agency occupies a central position in sociology and life course theory. Researchers differ over the nature and existence of agency as well as the place occupied by individuals within social structures. Many concepts for explaining the nature of agency have been developed, including "structuration" and "habitus." These ideas highlight the disagreements among researchers about the interrelated aspects of persons and the social environments in which they live.

The article presents information on the theory of institutions. The theory offers ways to resolve chronic problems by overcoming dualism between agency and structure in ways that define the object domain of the social sciences. An institution is an obligatory form of getting by, and getting along in an established social setting. Institutions are obligatory, as failure to conform to establish ways of doing things either entails some significant cost in resources, time or status, or provokes marginalization, sanctions or even exclusion from the situation in which given institutions are effective. Institutions serve as sources of paradigms widely internalized by agents during socialization which steer habitual behavior.

As formal barriers to the realization of expectations are reduced, the factors that affect occupational aspirations of women and race/ethnic minorities deserve closer examination. The importance of same-sex parental role models on adolescents’ career goals has been well documented in the literature. However, the mechanisms through which mothers’ career orientations translate into daughters’ career aspirations are not well understood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative sample of 12, 686 young men and women aged 14 to 22 in 1979, we assess the relationship between occupational aspirations, characteristics of family background, gender ideology, and perceptions of individual agency. Although comparable proportions of young men and young women had mothers who were employed, mother’s employment status relates differently to the career expectations of young men and young women. Further analysis suggests that mothers’ employment status helps shape daughters’ gender ideology: daughters of employed mothers are more likely to form egalitarian attitudes regarding the range of appropriate behaviors in which young women may engage. In addition, this mechanism varies across race/ethnic groups. A stronger sense of agency positively affects occupational aspirations across gender and race/ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is possible to combine methodological individualism with methodological holism to integrate many theories about socio-behavioral processes. Methodological individualism allows us to study all the social and environmental factors that impinge on an individual and affect his/her body, emotions, memories, thoughts and actions. Mead?s theory of agency shows how emotions, memories and thoughts can lead to agentic action?and ways to help people increase their level of agentic sophistication. Methodological holism links the individual?s actions into a dynamic model of whole social systems by focusing on cycles of interactions that entwine the individual with his/her social and physical environments. This allows us to incorporate theories of development and socialization, then link them with theories of social change and social evolution. Public sociologies can use this information at all levels from micro to macro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agency is a core concept in the discipline of sociology yet it suffers from at least two weaknesses. First, debates over the nature of agency are curiously abstract and of only tangential importance for empirical researchers. Second, discussions about the nature of individual agency rarely draw on the substantive subfield most suited for study of the individual, social psychology. Drawing on a nationally representative, longitudinal data set, we propose an empirical model of agency that allows us to begin to adjudicate among various theoretical and empirical approaches to the topic and lays the groundwork for future work situating agency more fully within social contexts across the life course. Empirical work on agency tends either to focus on self-efficacy or planful competence as measures of the concept; we find that both constructs load strongly on a second-order latent construct of agency, and that future study of the topic profitably will include both aspects. We find that autonomy, as measured here, is significantly less important as a factor in agency. We conclude with suggestions for future directions of empirical inquiry that will serve to situate the concept more fully in sociological processes and determine the utility of the concept for life course research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under uncertainty, we never know for sure the precise boundaries of our warranted knowledge to be able to completely trust our judgments within its range. This poses a problem of substantiating our trusting attitudes in the absence of credible affirmative evidence. The functionalist understanding of trust as a device pruning down uncertainty and complexity of the outer world does not seem to be an adequate response, since it can bring about inferior outcomes, given the incompleteness of the agents? knowledge. The challenge of human agency further complicates the issue of trust due to emerging uncertainty about the partners? response to the initial act of trusting. Biases and illusions in surmising the others? trustworthiness add to uncertainty and unpredictability of placing trust and show the danger of drawing inferences about the trustees? motivation and reliability on purely subjective grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of worker resistance has tended to focus on organizational attributes that may alter actors= capacity to respond, or on influential social relations occurring on the shop floor. This divide, partially driven by analytical and methodological preference, is also a function of different theoretical traditions. In this article, we suggest that organizational attributes and social relations at work may be simultaneously but also conditionally meaningful for workers and their potential resistance strategies. Findings, derived from analyses of unique data on 82 workplace ethnographies from the U.S. and England and that make use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques, largely support these expectations. The configuration of poor workplace organization and worker-manager conflict significantly increases the likelihood of collective resistance in the form of strike action. This pattern also holds for certain, more individualized forms of worker resistance (i.e., social sabotage, work avoidance, and absenteeism), and within poorly run and less bureaucratized work environments. Cross-national differences in the forms of worker resistance typically employed are also reported. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of our results for future analyses of worker satisfaction, workplace change, and resistance-oriented action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Arab women are active participants in day-to-day practices and struggles that create opportunities and improve the conditions under which they live. Yet the popular media and the academic press alike conventionally portray Arab women as passive, powerless victims of patriarchal societies or parrot Hollywood's reification of women as glamorous commodities for the male gaze. Such images of disempowerment are self-perpetuating; these depictions also misrepresent the experiences of countless women. There are few accurate portrayals of Arab women in the media today. The stark contrast between mediated images of Arab women and the everyday experiences of actual Arab women prompted the development of the Arab Women Speak Out project, an advocacy and training program that features ten video profiles of women relating their life histories in their own words. According to social learning theory, compelling role models can contribute to higher levels of self-efficacy and, by extension, enhanced human agency or the propensity to take goal-oriented, purposive action. Therefore, the central hypothesis of this study is that participation in the program will be positively and significantly correlated with expressed human agency as evidenced in actions undertaken to change or improve health, economic, political or social conditions. This article presents the conceptual framework that guided the development of this program, describes the program, and reports findings from the 2001 evaluation survey, which used a posttest-only control group design. Qualitative research complemented the survey findings. Multiple logistic regression found that the odds of starting a new business venture were 2.5 times greater for participants than for non-participants, while the odds of taking an active part in community meetings was 2.3 times greater for participants than for non-participants. The presentation will discuss these and other findings in light of the theoretical framework... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]