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This paper develops the notion of metonymy scenarios by exploring the social and cognitive dimensions of various creative uses of metonymy in a collection of digital banners created for the Global Climate Strike movement. The paper argues that the banners exploit existing metonymic relationships to activate dominant anthropocentric discourses in society, and to subvert them via processes of recontextualisation and reappropriation, in order to challenge system conventions and normative attitudes regarding climate change. The literature to date has not adequately considered metonymy as a dynamic and scenario-activating cognitive operation, nor has it thoroughly investigated the relationship between metonymy and irony. However, the data analysed here show that several creative uses of metonymy, including twice-true metonymy, metonymy in combination with metaphor, and the juxtaposition of different metonymies are markers of what this paper posits as metonymic mininarratives or scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a tribute to the late Steve Crook who shared with us the excitement of research on environmentalism. As we predicted, environmental activism in Australia remains socially circumscribed, but its scope, and the scope of environmental concerns, have been widening. Differentiation and proliferation of environmental issues combine with social diffusion and routinization. The pro- portion of people who see the environment as a salient issue continues to be relatively high, in spite of an increasing competition from new issue concerns, including security and illegal migration. The new `white' environmental issues enter the public arena reflecting widespread (though less urgent) concerns about genetic modification of food-crops and cloning of human tissue - all interpreted as `interference with nature'. The `white' environmental issues attract the concern of new social categories of `conscience environmentalists' who are more likely to be women, tend to be older, religious; and less attracted by green organizations. They are also less metropolitan in their location, and not as leftist and postmaterial in their value preferences as their `green' and `brown' predecessors. The formation of the `white' environmental issue cluster and constituency opens the way for new ideological reinterpretations of environmental outlook - and for new political alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified interest in alternatives to neoliberalism. One proposal that has been increasingly discussed by both academics and activists is the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would typically see all citizens awarded a regular cash payment, without conditionality attached. While UBI thus deserves considerable attention from sociologists, as yet critical theorists have not offered an extended engagement with the proposal. In this paper, I provide exactly such a critical theoretical perspective on UBI, subjecting the approach to an extended critique. When viewed through the perspective of critical theory, UBI emerges as a more problematic approach to social change, failing to offer what its most enthusiastic progressive proponents promise: 'a capitalist road to communism'. Rather, in this article, I argue that, when viewed through the lens of critical theory, UBI appears likely to further entrench, rather than disturb, the neoliberal social formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to the special section 'Biocircularities: New Formations of Embodied Time', we introduce the concept of 'biocircularity'. Drawing on case studies from Senegal, Australia and the United States, we argue that (bio)circularities provides a new tool to understand transformations of embodiment and embodied time in response to rapid technoscientific, social and environmental change. We situate the potential of biocircularity by distinguishing the approach from cycles and 'looping'. We lay out why we think biocircularity is an important concept now, when we stand on the brink of ecological crisis and reproductive futures appear deeply precarious and uncertain. Biocircularity, we argue, offers new ways of understanding how people live out embodiment and understand biological time. The concept offers new possibilities for theorising and realising scientific practice and public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document introduces a special section on therapeutic cultures in contemporary societies. It discusses the growing prevalence of psychologically and psychotherapeutically informed ideas and practices in everyday life, as well as the commercial success of the 'happiness industry' and the implications of therapeutic discourses in power and governance. The document also examines the assumption that therapeutic cultures are closely linked to neoliberal capitalism and individualization, questioning whether this is still the case in the 2020s. The special section includes four papers that explore therapeutic discourses and practices in various social contexts, emphasizing the need for further research in this area. The papers specifically examine the impact of neoliberal policies and economic crises on mental health and well-being in higher education in Finland and the United Kingdom, highlighting the pathologization of poor academic performance and the neglect of broader social and economic issues. The authors argue that the emphasis on individual responsibility and autonomy contradicts the actual experiences of students. Additionally, the papers investigate the role of self-help books in shaping modern subjectivity in the UK and the contradictions between the neoliberal therapeutic ethos and the construction of a measurable selfhood through digital therapeutic cultures. Overall, the papers demonstrate the pervasive influence of therapeutic discourses in contemporary society and the importance of sociological analysis in understanding this psychologization of society. [Extracted from the article]

Within IR, scholars are starting to consider difference on the level of ontology rather than epistemology. Other worlds are introduced into IR's political pluriverse, however, these are often encountered in faraway places, thereby playing into the colonial narrative that ontological difference does not exist in the 'West'. This paper introduces another real from within the 'disenchanted North' that is shaped by contemplative activists: people using contemplation as a form of protest. An engagement with contemplative activism challenges our commonly held assumptions about what contemplation and social change are, thereby undermining the institutions of 'science' and 'religion' underlying the universe. It argues that the project of political ontology in IR should consist of two moves: drawing in other, in particular spiritual, realities into the political imaginations of IR and challenging the ontological assumptions underpinning concepts. Consequently, it suggests that the pluriverse in IR should be a methodological rather than an ontological commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the generational experiences of young adults are believed to have an enduring impact on their attitudes throughout the life course, it remains unclear whether periods of stability versus different types of radical social change lead to substantive generational differences. In this paper, we examine attitudes toward meritocracy of four generations in Poland whose young adulthood was spent in (a) the "Little Stabilization" period of the 1960s and early 1970s; (b) the economic and political crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s; (c) the turbulence of the political and economic transformation of the 1990s; and (d) the relative stability of the first decade of the 21st century after Poland's accession to the European Union. Our data come from surveys dating back to 1988, before the regime change in Poland, and until 2020. The results show changing attitudes toward the value of education, innate abilities, talent, and hard work in Poland. There is a generational effect on perceived meritocracy. The generation of people born in 1956–1959, who entered adult life during the deep crisis of the socialist state, expresses the greatest distrust in meritocracy. Findings suggest that the experience of spending one's youth and young adulthood in a relatively stable political and economic system, either socialist or capitalist, has a positive influence on meritocratic attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the discursive strategies used by #EndSARS protesters in their tweets and Facebook comments to construct SARS officers, hold the Nigerian government accountable and demand social change. Informed by social media critical discourse analysis (SMCDA) and social movement theory, the analysis revealed three strategies: constructing SARS as oppressors, representing the Nigerian government as insensitive and issuing a clarion call for action. The analysis shows that these strategies enabled the protesters to construct the victim-aggressor categorisation, thereby legitimising their resistance to police brutality and demand for change. The study also highlights how the protesters deployed local linguistic resources and ideologies to appeal to the emotions of other Nigerians to join the protest. The study demonstrates how digital political mobilisation can galvanise reform in Nigeria, where leaders and law enforcement agencies are held accountable for their (in)actions. This study contributes to the developing interdisciplinary studies on SMCDA and digital activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changes to social networks of people living in seven informal settlements in Raipur, India, who, in line with the "Indian Alliance" model of community organizing, worked with NGO partners to form local associations in their settlements. These associations were meant to help the participants and their fellow settlement residents to access more secure housing through the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) policy. This paper presents findings from a quantitative social network analysis, demonstrating the impact of the organizing efforts in reshaping their relationship structures and strengthening their agency. These findings were tested for resonance and further fleshed out with qualitative details by going through the analysis with participants. Finally, this paper offers reflections on incorporating technical research methods into organizing and action research interventions, affirming the notion that people living in informal settlements are well placed to generate and make use of sophisticated data on their own communities and cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of social work, it is important to analyse food insecurity before and during the COVID-19, identify the best practices and how social work can contribute to improving living conditions. Using a meta-analysis, this article reviews how food security is addressed in the literature to better inform social policies from a social work perspective. A search of the literature revealed 217 articles between 2010 and 2021. The descriptors for the search were food security, food aid and social work. The main results are the identification of key aspects to inform social policies and promote sustainable social change worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including changing cultures of education in English schools, cultural-historical geographies of British movement 'Woodcraft Folk' and cultural policies within institutional spaces.

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of archaeological proxy records representative of population dynamics is paramount for a richer understanding of prehistoric cultural change, but its use require a dialectic assessment between proximate climatic drivers and ultimate cultural responses. Focusing on the Stone Age archaeological record of Western Norway (11,500–4300 cal. BP), this paper presents an exhaustive empirical curation and statistical testing between changing climates and demographic responses among coastal hunter-fisher-gatherers. The results connect long-term demographic fluctuations with changes in annual mean temperatures and seasonality and the results are discussed in relation changes in technology, subsistence and mobility. The paper also highlights the process of population decline and cultural loss towards the end of the Late Mesolithic (ca. 7000–6000 cal. BP) and emerging cultural novelties and population re-growth during the Early and Middle Neolithic (ca. 6000–4300 cal. BP). However, despite its strong correlation, the archaeological record of Western Norway lacks sufficient detail to ascribe an exclusive explanatory role to climate change, especially in episodes of significant population decline. This helps to emphasise that changing climates, while evidently central, form but a part of a larger system of interactions leading to demographic fluctuations and cultural change, the substantiation of which requires significant empirical improvements to the archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model to identify why, for some, the expression of liberal attitudes towards the LGBT population may be strategic rather than sincere. We show that the British population displays considerably more tolerant views towards homosexuality compared to the end of the 1980s. However, there is evidence that this has slowed in recent years, especially in areas that have experienced the highest levels of immigration, particularly from countries outside Europe. We explain these changes with reference to two effects that immigration/multiculturalism may have – direct cultural and indirect political effects – the latter manifested in selective liberalisation such that for some members of the in-group adopting a liberal attitude towards a group that was once the salient out-group (in this case the LGBT population) generates greater benefits for the in-group by creating disutility for the currently salient out-group (in this case culturally conservative religious minorities and immigrants). We explore both influences using survey data and find strong evidence for the first effect and suggestive support for the second effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the empirical data of school occupations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during 2016 to discuss the production of novel generational orders around the good of public education. Using a decolonial standpoint from where to examine modernization in Brazil and its welfare provision for children, the paper advances the notions of intergenerational practices of co-generativity and politicized generativity as instances of how Southern realities can contribute to new theoretical insights in childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on policing has increasingly acknowledged the influence of a broad array of changes upon both the structure and culture of police organizations. Generally, however, literature and research have tended to focus attention onto those elements of the broader police environment that effect such developments, whereas little commentary, to date, has been directed towards those features which impact across the broader public sector. Through drawing on the concepts of 'hybrid professionalism' [Noordegraaf M (2015) Hybrid professionalism and beyond: (new) forms of public professionalism in changing organizational and societal contexts. Journal of Professions and Organization 2: 187–206] and 'institutional isomorphism' [DiMaggio PJ and Powell WW (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160], this conceptual paper will argue that the impact of neoliberal ideology on the contemporary public sector has created a police organization for which professionalism increasingly denotes generic management skills that are common across different occupations and different police roles. In particular, it will be suggested that such institutional isomorphism may drive ideational responses commensurate with cultural change within police organizations. In short, therefore, the paper will make the case that, in parallel with changes already identified by other academics, broader structural changes may lead to a narrower and more generic set of cultural responses within contemporary police organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through unfamiliar and at times marginal environments, successful colonisation of the Pacific Islands relied upon the introduction of domesticated flora and fauna as well as widespread burning to reduce forests and lowland vegetation for agricultural production. These transformations led to the extinction of avifauna, the reduction of forests, and extensive slope erosion and sedimentation into valleys and along shorelines. To date, most attention has been paid to human-induced changes to the terrestrial landscape. In this paper we present the archaeomalacological results from the deeply stratified coastal Kawela Mound, one of the oldest habitation sites in the Hawaiian Islands, with occupation beginning during the 12th century AD. We describe how anthropogenic change of the terrestrial landscape caused sediment run-off, increased shoreline turbidity, and progradation of the adjacent shoreline altering marine habitats, which is recorded in the diversity, size, and habitat preference of food shellfish harvested over nearly eight centuries. The construction of ancient stone-walled fishponds along the littoral shore provided an artificial rocky habitat for shellfish otherwise uncommon along the sandy coast. Consequently, AMS dated layers containing these shellfish provide an indirect avenue for determining the chronology of stone-walled fishponds, the construction of which was directed under the aegis of elites and thus one of the hallmarks of increasing social complexity during the last two centuries before Contact in the late 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one's subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the translation of knowledge into actions that produce beneficial social change). Feminist family science, in particular, advances critical, intersectional, and queer approaches to examine the uses and abuses of power and the multiple axes upon which individuals and families are privileged, marginalized, and oppressed in diverse social contexts. In this paper, I embrace feminism as a personal, professional (academic), and political project and use stories from my own life to illuminate broader social-historical structures, processes, and contexts associated with gender, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, nationality, and other systems of social stratification. I provide a brief history and reflections on contemporary feminist theory and activism, particularly from the perspective of my disciplinary affiliation of feminist family science. I address feminism as an intersectional perspective through three themes: (a) theory: defining a critical feminist approach, (b) method: critical feminist autoethnographic research, and (c) praxis: transforming feminist theory into action. I conclude with takeaway messages for incorporating reflexivity and critical consciousness raising to provoke thought and action in the areas of personal, professional, and political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online platforms can help public information campaigns reach target audiences who are unlikely to engage with content distributed via traditional media. This paper adds to this emergent literature, as the first study of the Ending the Harm campaign, which is designed to change public discourse about paramilitary-style attacks in Northern Ireland. Campaign effects were explored through interviews (N = 7) conducted with key stakeholders, as well as the results of a quantitative survey of residents (N = 805) in areas most affected by these attacks. Results indicate that exposure to the ETH advertisements correlated with a belief that PSAs were unjustified. Platforms like Snapchat helped the campaign reach younger demographics (16–34 years old). Nevertheless, it was unclear whether self-reported changes in attitude toward PSAs would lead to sustained behavioral changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a vast proliferation of categories, descriptors and labels used to describe gender and sexual identity over the past few years, with terms now numbering in the hundreds. Many terms, such as heteroflexible, asexual, demigirl and sapiosexual actively contest masculine/feminine and hetero/homo binary arrangements of identity, and LGBTQ minority rights discourses and arguably represent an epochal shift in gender/sexual knowledge frameworks. The cultural conditions that make such change possible have yet to be explored. This paper draws on theoretical approaches to populism to analyse the role of popular culture, digital communication and contestation of institutional and expert knowledges in driving the emergence of new gender and sexual terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report of the Council of International Programmes (CIP) 20th Anniversary Conference, which took place from August 2-7, 1976. The Conference was jointly sponsored by CIP, by the Council of International Fellowship and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. The Conference theme was "Stability and Change". It was an examination of the attempted reconciliation of inevitable social change with the need for maintenance of a stable social order. Each of the three days started with a specialist elaborating one of the sub-themes that is the effect of change on groups and communities, families and individuals. Following the speaker each day all Conference delegates met in small seminars and discussed the sub-theme of the day. The Conference concluded with a professional evaluation and summary of the week's discussions. The scope of Conference deliberations, like CIP itself, was worldwide, relating to countries all over the world. It was oriented towards the future and directed towards the effect on each participant's job back home of these changes and new developments, social, economic, demographic and technological.

Three decades of interdisciplinary research within the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project has provided extensive archaeological, environmental and geoarchaeological datasets. This paper seeks to bring together these datasets to explore diachronic socio-ecological dynamics within the Sagalassos Study Area, SW Türkiye. For this, we will use the Adaptive Cycles and Resilience Theory framework to explore socio-cultural development during changing climatic and environmental conditions. The paper aims to serve as an in-depth case study of these frameworks, integrating archaeological and environmental data, which – despite the increasing popularity of resilience theory – remains underdeveloped within the field of archaeology, especially within Mediterranean and Anatolian archaeology. We will explore the utility of the adaptive cycle framework for reconstructing diachronic human-environment interactions through changing settlement patterns documented during surveys conducted by the Sagalassos Project. Critical phases within the settlement record can be identified during the last 8000 years including apparent periods of ‘rupture’ during the Middle Chalcolithic, Middle-Late Bronze Age, Hellenistic and Middle-Byzantine periods; representing times of serious upheaval in ‘normal’ cultural traditions and lifeways. The adaptive cycle framework will help distinguish between the effects of environmental changes and social dynamics, as well as their potential interrelations in causing long-term social transformation in the Sagalassos Study Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing recognition that "human development" frameworks, such as the Capabilities Approach (CA) with its emphasis on the promotion of justice, offer promise for guiding efforts aimed at enhancing mental wellbeing. This article explores challenges that might arise when there is a need to arbitrate among the competing demands of different parties in their efforts to enhance capabilities. Particular tensions can arise when the efforts of particular individuals to enhance their capabilities exert pressure on scarce resources, or threaten the safety and security of people living in precarious environmental contexts. Consideration is given to the need for "an ethos of restraint" to balance the consumption of resources aimed at facilitating human development on the one hand, with the need to promote environmental justice on the other. The paper highlights research that has investigated how environmental factors can impact on mental wellbeing, including rapid urbanization, climate change related issues (such as weather systems, drought, food insecurity and rising sea-levels), and access to "green/blue spaces". As such, the paper explores the important links that can exist between people and the ecosystems in which they live (including the way in which particular cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous groups can be tethered to the land). Elinor Ostrom's "design principles", derived from her work investigating the sustainable use of pooled resources, are presented as a helpful means of assisting members of communities to negotiate and apply "functioning constraints", which can promote environmental justice whilst not compromising efforts aimed at promoting mental wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we approach Feminism & Psychology 's 30th anniversary, we reflect on and explore what makes the journal distinctive – its emphasis on critical feminist psychology. In this article and the accompanying Virtual Special Issue, we outline five methodological considerations that we believe are at the heart of critical feminist scholarship: 1) the politics of asking questions; 2) attention to language/discourse; 3) reflexivity; 4) representation and intersectionality; and 5) mobilizing research for social change. We then draw across a set of 15 articles published in the archives of Feminism & Psychology that showcase one or more of these key features and demonstrate the 'doing' of critical feminist psychology. These articles are housed on the journal's website, as is an additional paper developed for students or those in a position of learning, which explores central ideas and debates that have culminated in critical feminist psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss the impact that women judges have made in property law outcomes in Kenya. The study shows that women judges were able to influence a feminist jurisprudence in matrimonial property and inheritance disputes peripherally even though they were not sitting in some of those cases – through trainings of other [male] judges and informal interactions with colleagues. I argue that there is need to focus lens on the collaborative and networking programmes of women judges to bring about institutional change as opposed to a focus on individual women judges. The findings suggest that studies that focus on individual [women] judges have far less potential to uncover the impact of collective efforts of women judges. Existing studies are based largely on Anglo-American positivist methodologies that are based on methodological individualism over collectivism. It is no wonder that the collective efforts of women judges under the auspices of the International Women Judges Association has received little to no scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how shame is constructed in working-class "coloured" men's talk about their violence against women partners in Cape Town, South Africa. It examines how men who are violent toward their partners attempt to dissociate from their shamed identities and their perpetration of violence at the intersection of their gender, race and class identities, and how these processes allow men to produce subjectivities as "respectable coloured" men. Ten individual interviews were conducted with men who had perpetrated violence against their partner(s) residing in a predominantly working-class "coloured" community on the peripheries of Cape Town, South Africa. A Foucauldian discourse analysis tracks the complicated processes followed by men in dissociating from shamed subjectivities towards ones that encompass pride. The men talk about the battle for subjectivity in their pursuit for a "respectable", "good" masculinity, which is commended in specific pro-feminist spaces while being reportedly questioned or denounced by their fellow community members. The article concludes by considering the usefulness of shame in this sample of South African "coloured" men, and its capacity to mobilise men towards a pro-feminist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early Holocene onward, the Indian Subcontinent has accommodated a range of diverse human cultures and associated ecological adaptations and lifestyles. Around 10 kyrs ago, the Subcontinent has witnessed the development of later Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and their subsequent regional transitions to pastoralist (Neolithic) and agricultural (Chalcolithic) lifeways. The Holocene climate records reveal discrepancies in the timing and duration of climatic events, which can be attributed to a vast geographic isolation, the influence of height, elevation, and local climatic conditions. These changing climatic patterns including the development of a geographically variable monsoon directly impacted these various cultures including the Harappans and their contemporaries as well as younger Historical and Medieval empires across India, at various levels. In some regions, environmental changes led to uneven cultural transitions, geographic migrations, and the development of regionally-distinct material cultures along with establishment of sedentary life-ways. This paper attempts to present a review broadly correlating general climatic patterns throughout the Holocene period of India with regional cultural dynamics. All geomorphic-climatic zones of the Subcontinent showed strong inter-proxy coherence between 9 and 5 kyrs in response to increased precipitation. After this warming period ends, we see a moderate dry period as a result of a weakening monsoon and an overall tendency toward aridity throughout all zones (after 4 kyrs). The temporal variation of human habitation and respective adaptive responses suggest broad linkages to the varying climatic and physiographic features at a regional scale. Learning how this shaped human eco-dynamics in the past can help us expand our understanding of human history and implement lessons for the present as well as the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism & Psychology (F&P) was launched in 1991 with a sense of possibility, enthusiasm and excitement as well as a sense of urgent need – to critique and reconstruct mainstream psychology (theory, research methods, and clinical practice). Thirty years have now passed since the first issue was produced. Thirty volumes with three or four issues have been published each year, thanks to the efforts of many. On the occasion of F&P 's 30th anniversary, we, the present and past editors, reflect on successes, changes and challenges in relation to the journal. We celebrate the prestigious awards accruing to the journal, its editors, and authors, and the significant contributions the journal has made to critical feminist scholarship at the interface of feminisms and psychologies. We note some of the theoretical and methodological developments and social changes witnessed over the last three decades. We highlight challenges facing feminist researchers in academia as well as international feminist publishing. We conclude that the initial enthusiasm and excitement expressed by the then editorial collective was justified. But, there is still much work to be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an important aspect of the politicisation of contingent work: the evolution of grassroots organising strategies by immigrant day labourers, an allegedly ‘unorganisable’ class of contingent workers. The paper focuses on the ways in which repertoires of contestation – based in a philosophy of social transformation through radical democracy and Popular Education – have defused from mass-movement social struggles in Latin America in the 1980s to street-corner organising in US cities today. Through a series of in-depth interviews with day labour organisers, the paper: (1) follows the continental travels of Popular Education methodologies; and (2) explores how organising approaches from the global South have been adapted and recombined to meet the challenges presented by day labour markets in the US which are characterised by rampant violations of core labour standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two recent papers Storper and Scott have sought to counter the rise of assemblage thinking in urban studies, suggesting it is indeterminate, jargon-ridden and particularist – that it lacks a critique of power. Against such approaches they propose the ‘nature of cities’ as an ‘urban land nexus’ driven by the economics of agglomeration. In this paper we respond, largely agreeing on jargon yet arguing that assemblage is a form of critical urban thinking that holds potential for a general but open theory of urbanity. We also suggest that many parts of Scott and Storper’s own work are entirely compatible with assemblage thinking, including concepts such as urban ‘bundling’ and ‘buzz’. Agglomeration theory explains why cities emerge and grow where they do but is weak on issues of scale and morphology. Assemblage thinking embodies capacities to expand urban studies through a better engagement with multi-scale relations, gearing the economics of agglomeration to the study of urban morphology; understanding cities in terms of their possible futures as well as actual conditions. We call for more open and productive interfaces between research disciplines and approaches – a deterritorialisation of urban theory. The choice is not between agglomeration and assemblage, it is between the singular and the multiple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intended to stimulate interest in probing the interrelationship between the press and social change in China, this paper investigates some salient aspects of the changes of the Chinese press in post-1989 years and their implications for journalistic professionalization. It is argued that under the hybrid system of economic freedom and political repression, journalism as a profession, while benefiting from the changing information environment, suffers from persistence in the Maoist press theory and the nation-wide commercialization. It is further argued that press professionalization can hardly be guaranteed unless a more democratic and freer political climate emerges in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the trajectory of energy efficiency policies in Berlin from the 1920s to today in order to illustrate how the shifting political and socioeconomic conditions of a city can shape urban energy provision and consumption. Taking a long-term perspective on the relationship between urban transitions and energy policy, it investigates how the geo-political turbulence, regime diversity and socioeconomic volatility experienced by 20th-century Berlin influenced strategies of electricity generation and use in the city. Drawing on different ways of conceptualising change to socio-technical systems in the literature, the paper’s findings present a more differentiated picture of urban energy transitions than notions of path dependency and transition pathways imply, highlighting the importance of non-linear trends, political contestation and crisis discourses in and beyond the city and their relevance for reconfiguring urban energy systems today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religiously motivated welfare provisioning has played an increasingly important role in the Turkish social welfare arena over the previous two decades. This paper investigates the society-specific mechanisms behind the contemporary proliferation of religiously motivated associations (RMAs) in Turkey. The historical analysis of the development of the Turkish welfare regime demonstrates that the spread of RMAs cannot be attributed to retrenchments within the welfare state. In fact, the provision of social assistance by central and local state institutions has expanded over the same time period. The paper claims that the rise of RMAs is not only a response to increasing liberalization and economic deregulation, but also an outcome of the rise of religion as a principle line of cleavage within the political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jürgen Habermas once investigated the structural transformation of the modern public using the term 'refeudalization'. He reconstructed how, in the course of the development of economic monopolies, pre-bourgeois forms of power again penetrated the public sphere. It is not only the fact that the social sciences today speak again of a crisis of the public sphere, however, that gives Habermas' concept of 'refeudalization' new relevance. On the contrary, a social change is taking place in numerous areas of present-day society which, in the course of a neoliberal modernization of the economy, is once again re-creating pre-modern social forms, hierarchies and power structures. This does not take place as a relapse into past social forms, but as a paradoxical result of social transformations that generate the old as the new and thereby produce 'neo-feudal' patterns in the distribution of wealth, recognition and power. In this paper 'refeudalization' is presented as a key concept for understanding the development of modern capitalist societies today. It will be shown that the dichotomy of 'progressive' and 'regressive' forms of transformation of capitalism must be complemented by more complex models of paradoxical social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates risk-oriented frameworks for explaining environmental, social, and economic changes faced by fishing and herding communities in the Turkana Basin during and after the African Humid Period (AHP, 15–5 ka). The orbitally-forced AHP created moist conditions, high lake levels, and unusual hydrological connections across much of northern and eastern Africa. As arid conditions set in and rainfall decreased between 5.3 and 3.9 ka in eastern Africa, Lake Turkana (NW Kenya) shrank dramatically. Shoreline retreat coincided with an expansion of open plains, creating new ecological conditions and potential opportunities for early herders in the basin. In this changing landscape, economies shifted from food procurement (fishing/hunting aquatic resources) to food production (herding), likely through both in-migration by pastoralists and adoption of herding by local fishers. Early pastoralists also built at least seven megalithic pillar sites that served as communal cemeteries during this time. Recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics – both during and after the AHP – were complex, demanding a more careful interrogation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Risk-buffering strategies might include mobility, diversification, physical storage, and exchange. Archaeologists working around Lake Turkana have proposed that economic shifts from fishing to pastoralism entailed increased mobility as a risk-buffering strategy to deal with aridity and resource unpredictability, and that pillar sites – as fixed landmarks in an unstable landscape – provided settings for congregation and exchange amongst increasingly mobile herding communities. However, recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics in the Lake Turkana basin – both during and after the AHP – were more complex than previously thought, necessitating re-evaluation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Here, we explore risk buffering strategies (e.g. mobility, diversification, physical storage and/or exchange) as only one category of potential explanation for the new social practices observed in the region at this time. Gauging their applicability requires us to (a) assess the spatial mobility of communities and individuals interred at pillar sites; (b) evaluate whether and how mobility strategies may have changed as pastoralism supplanted fishing; and (c) examine alternative explanations for social and economic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a conceptual framework for interpreting the process of urban change in post-communist cities. The departure from the legacies of the communist past has been effected through multiple transformation dynamics of institutional, social and urban change. While institutional reforms have been largely accomplished, the adjustment of urban land use patterns to new societal conditions is still ongoing. Hence, post-communist cities are still cities in transition. Using this interpretative framework and referring to a wide spectrum of academic work, the paper provides an overview of urban restructuring in post-communist countries over the past two decades with a specific focus on the examples of mutual integration of the three fields of transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to critically examine the emergence of contemporary religious fundamentalisms and how they have been able to acquire influence in a way that has opened new ‘fault lines’ within multiculturalist public policy discourse. Specifically, the paper is interested in understanding the curiously paradoxical place of religion and faith based groupings in the contemporary multicultural polity, and the confusion, and in some instances conflicts, this has caused amongst the Left. This is illustrated through an extended examination of the Shabina Begum case concerning a Muslim schoolgirl and her demands to wear the jilbab, a specific religious headscarf, to school. It is argued that, in part, these ideological fault lines have resulted from an uncritical embrace by some progressives of ideas associated with postmodernist thinking; in particular the uncritical assertion of virtues of anti-universalism and cultural relativism. This then leaves an urgent task for progressives to think through some alternatives based on a re-articulation of a new political discourse of egalitarianism which is unashamedly universalist and secular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The dominance of high-income countries in 'generalised' evidence-making is increasingly recognised as a barrier to advancing understandings of social change processes in international development. Building more equitable and collaborative institutionalised relationships with localities is therefore emphasised. This paper details how a dialogical case study of evidence-making in international development was developed through the single-case ethnography of a youth sexual behaviour change and empowerment intervention in Tanzania. It illustrates how dialogical theorising was applied in both data collection and analyses towards advancing understandings of the ethical and dynamic Self–Other interdependencies through which evidence is made and communicated. The analyses highlight the performativity of monitoring and evaluation activities: how networks of relations perform the logic of rigid predictability that underpins the design and funding of international development interventions. The non-dialogical and inauthentic nature of these relations are found to foster distrust, holding the potential to undermine the 'empowering' goals of the intervention overall. 'The international' in evidence-making is therefore situated as a cultural location that lacks relevance in contexts such as Tanzania where changeability trumps predictability. Fostering equities therefore demands attending to colonialities regarding language use, the authority given to artefacts, and the sociohistorical and accumulative contextualisations of distrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time is often taken-for-granted as abstract and constant, even though the lives we lead are always changing within the context of time and because of time. In this paper, we explore the hidden challenges of hegemonic neoliberal framings of 'flexibility' which urge students to presume that study-time is asynchronous and can be engaged with anytime, eroding recognition that it is contextual and much more structured than expected. Timing is dynamic and shifts in relation to broader economic, spatial and cultural changes, all of which shape the 'temporal dis/positions' we discuss. A study that included 27 interviews with Australian university students is drawn on to illuminate these points. We argue that through the neo-liberalised projection of the university, important contextual dynamics and associated demands are increasingly disguised. This impacts on learning and teaching time and individualises responsibility for time management onto students, many of whom consequently experience guilt and self-blame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual harassment has received unprecedented attention in recent years. Within academia, it has a particularly reflexive relationship with the human sciences in which sexual harassment can be both an object of research and a problematic behavior amongst those engaged in that research. This paper offers a partial history in which these two are brought together as a common object of social psychology's culture of sexual harassment. Here we follow Haraway in using culture to capture the sense-making that psychologists do through and to the side of their formal knowledge production practices. Our history is multi-sited and draws together (1) the use of sexual harassment as an experimental technique, (2) feminist activism and research which made sexual harassment an object of knowledge in social psychology, and (3) oral history accounts of sexual harassment amongst social psychologists. By reading these contexts against each other, we provide a thick description of how sexual harassment initiates women and men into cultures of control in experimental social psychology and highlight the ethical-epistemological dilemma inherent in disciplinary practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa after liberation in 1994 is one of very few countries in the world that is involved in a complete redesigning of its welfare system and has adopted the developmental perspective as the paramount official political goal for social welfare and social work. After several years, it is worth studying the experiences and results in practical social work. Outcomes are important for social welfare and social work in both developing and developed countries. The basic idea in the social development perspective is to link the promotion of human welfare to economic development, thereby redefining the concept of development so that it becomes socially relevant. This perspective on social development was given international recognition in the UN World Summit on Social Development held in Copenhagen in 1995. The White Paper makes explicit references to the definitions of social development and to the World Summit. The opening chapter of the White Paper states, social development and economic development are two interdependent and mutually reinforcing processes.

In this introduction to the special issue, we explore the political salience of emotions in times of large-scale social change, emphasizing the role of personal narratives in understanding and framing these transformations. We introduce the concept of 'deep transformations' to analyse radical shifts in various aspects of life and their emotional and cultural implications. Focusing on cases from the post-socialist world and one contribution from post-2008 Spain, the issue provides novel insights into the interplay between emotions, signification, and social change. We present our contributions as addressing three distinct levels, each underscoring the importance for integrating the sociology of emotions with cultural sociology more closely: remembering change, adapting to change, and imagining change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Hochschild proposed the notion of a 'deep story' to address a collective emotional structure (particularly resentment) underpinning political attitudes and social divisions in the contemporary USA, this category has been widely embraced across social sciences to reflect upon links between sedimented emotions, motivations, actions and means of social mobilization. Simultaneously, however, criticism of this concept has been articulated which pointed out that Hochschild was inconsistent in her understanding of deep stories and the role this category performs in a sociological investigation. Acknowledging critical addresses presented so far, the article aims at the reconstruction of this concept as an analytical device which can be used to account for collective emotional dynamics accompanying prolonged social transformations. I propose that a deep story can be best understood as a social space in which emotions emerge through an interactional, collaborative process of storytelling. I draw, first, from social-psychological investigations into collective processes of meaning-making to analyse the interplay between the emergence of group-based cognitive categories and their affective implications. Second, I employ narrative theories to account for socio-psychological processes in which group-based, collectively generated cognitive and affective elements are integrated into actual lifeworlds and deployed in sense-making. Finally, I consider the insights pertaining to emotions collectively felt and practised to reflect upon the social dynamic of emotion-sharing. I argue that the notion of a 'deep story' is analytically useful only insofar it is embedded in clearly articulated theoretical assertions about cognitive and affective, collective and interpersonal, dynamics of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper puts forward a model of processes of discourse and rhetoric as a way of understanding the attempt of Thatcherism to create a new common sense in British society. The theoretical model is first presented. This includes a notion of the role of a special type of rhetoric (consisting of key words and formulaic phrases) in discursive processes and a notion of the active part played by language users in reproducing and transforming discourses. The aim is to draw a link between macro-processes of social and cultural change and micro-processes of everyday language use. The roots of the rhetoric in the genre of the everyday world facilitate take-up by the mass media and the public and thus the penetration of the discourse of Thatcherism into the language of individual language users. The empirical study which is then presented focuses on the role of one key word, choice, in reproducing and restructuring the discourse of Thatcherism in different sociopolitical domains: official Conservative Party texts and official Labour Party texts (speeches by Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members to the Annual Party Conferences in 1991), print and broadcast news media (news coverage of the Conferences), the arguments of grass-roots Labour Party members (1991) and grass-roots Conservative Party members (1991 and 1992). It was found that in all the domains studied, the discourse of Thatcherism was reproduced and transformed through the selective use by language users of choice in collocation with other rhetorical terms. A degree of resistance to the discourse was also found. The paper concludes with a short account of the fate of Thatcherist discourse in the UK since the time of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its creation, the European Union seems to be guided by the idea that an increase in cross-border flows contributes to more European unity. Thus, emphasis has been placed for instance on lowering customs tariffs and encouraging the free movement of goods and people. However, if the opening up of borders creates new opportunities for some residents of border regions, there are others who may not benefit. For this reason, and in a context characterized by the rise of Euroscepticism, it seems crucial to take a more critical look at actual cross-border integration and to unravel its concrete consequences for the people who live in border regions. This paper aims to do so by focusing on two aspects of this process: the functional dimension, through the number of cross-border activities, and the perceptions border residents have of their neighbours, through the level of mutual social trust. The EUROBAROMETER 422 survey is used in order to produce statistical analyses and maps. This enables us to offer a new image of European cross-border integration and to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, cross-border flows are not uniform and vary greatly from one cross-border area to another. Secondly, cross-border regions in which the intensity of flows between neighbouring regions is high do not necessarily show a high level of mutual social trust between borderland populations. Thirdly, there is not always reciprocity with regard to the mutual social trust that people have towards their neighbours within cross-border areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism is well versed in conversations about engaged scholarship and has provided important critical commentary on Michael Burawoy's campaign for public sociology in recent years. This paper draws from feminist perspectives to argue for reflexivity, praxis, and interdisciplinary work as key pillars for public sociology. I then draw from my own experiences doing feminist work in community-engaged settings to consider various limitations of Burawoy's notions of traditional and organic public sociology. To move past this dichotomy, I put forward a conceptual model for understanding public sociologists as public intellectuals, community-engaged scholars, community educators, and/or advocates and activists. In considering how researchers might navigate these various roles, I argue that discussions of expertise and universities as value-laden institutions are important to build sustainable practices. Overall, the strength of public sociology is that it acknowledges these blurred boundaries and allows for the development of collaborative forms of expertise to address social problems. However, there is additional theoretical work to be done, as well as practical supports developed, to enable feminist researchers in particular to successfully navigate these roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social psychological literature on social change has focused on how groups overcome oppression and inequality. In this paper, we investigate an alternative strategy that groups employ for social change—the emulation of successful outgroups. We propose that lower status group members will be likely to employ a learning strategy when they perceive the status relations as legitimate (i.e., fair system) and unstable (i.e., own position is improvable). In Study 1 (Romanian undergraduate students, N = 31), we manipulated status legitimacy, while in Study 2 (British undergraduate participants, N = 94), we manipulated legitimacy and stability orthogonally. Overall, when they perceived status hierarchies as legitimate and unstable, participants exhibited higher admiration for the higher status outgroup, higher support for learning-related help (e.g., transfer of know-how, training) from the outgroup and had the most positive attitudes toward intergroup help. We propose that social change sometimes occurs gradually, through help and learning from successful models, and this paper offers insight into such gradual social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city has featured as a central image in utopian thought. In planning the foundation of the new and ideal city there is a close interconnection between ideas about urban form and the vision of the moral good. The spatial structure of the ideal city in these visions is a framing device that embodies and articulates not only political philosophy but is itself an articulation of moral and cosmological systems. This paper analyses three different utopian moments in three different historical epochs – Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602), the Choson dynasty foundation of the city of Seoul (1395) and the modernist utopian urbanism of the controversial Le Corbusier (1887–1965). In this analysis attention is drawn to the cosmological and moral visions articulated in these three ‘images of the city’ (Lynch). The opposition between rationalistic/mechanistic and religious/traditional urban design can prove to be an oversimplification that obscures the complex interrelations between the moral geometry and the natural alignments of the ideal urban form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]