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In the past 20 years, divorce has increased in Indonesia. Indonesian statistics show that divorces initiated by women exceed those by men. One issue that is often neglected is how socioeconomic differences also play a role in this matter. Drawing on our collaborative research on Muslim divorces in Indonesia, this paper focuses on the interplay between divorce strategies and socioeconomic differences among Muslim couples. Our in-depth interviews with 93 Muslim men and women and 19 judges from Islamic courts show that class differences shape distinctive dynamics of divorce among Muslim Indonesians. Couples from less educated, lower-income backgrounds accept marriage dissolution more easily, with women becoming much less tolerant of men's behaviors such as infliction of domestic violence, infidelity, and failure to provide financial support. Educated, middle-class urban couples divorce for similar reasons but tend to experience a lengthier process accompanied by complex layers of conflict. Many educated women's narratives emphasize their ability to support themselves through working, and a desire to be free of a bad marriage at any cost. Class and education thus contribute to significant differences in the experience and trajectories of divorce in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity is a complex concept that can be informed by various factors, involving biological, psychological, experiential, and social influences. Specifically, one's social identity refers to the ways in which individuals can adopt attributes from established collective categories, like cultural identities, ethnic identities, gender identities, and class identities, amongst others. Social identity can encompass unique and diverse interactions at an individual level, known as micro-identities, that may be selectively expressed, hidden, or downplayed, contingent on distinct sociocultural settings. However, the formation of social identity is recurrently defined in opposition to perceptions of the Other, which can entail adverse paradigms of marginalisation, stigma, and discrimination. Although this theory of Otherness has been developed across different fields, particularly sociology, it may be important in psychiatric contexts as it can engender inherent risk factors and mental health inequalities. Consequently, this paper seeks to bring attention towards these issues, exploring the construction of Otherness and its detrimental outcomes for psychiatry, such as systemic discrimination and disparities in therapeutic support, alongside recommended initiatives to mitigate against the effects of Otherness. This may require multifactorial approaches that include cultural competency training, interventions informed by micro-identities and intersectionality, patient advocacy, and structural changes to mental health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There appears to be a globally unifying discourse that suggests Muslim communities are not supportive of girls' education12. This paper aims to destabilize such a discourse by inserting the narratives of Muslim parents pursuing girls' education in Assam's Nagaon district. By paying attention to the concepts of bhal suwali (good girlhood) and bhal ghor (good family) articulated by parents in my study, this paper connects the performances of certain types of gender practices with the pursuit of class aspirations. It shows that good girlhood works as symbolic capital that helps Muslim parents to culturally authorize their daughters as legitimate actors in the field of education, while legitimizing themselves as good family. This paper draws attention to three practices of respectable femininity through which good girlhoods are enacted in the field of education, namely: negotiating poverty respectably, prioritizing gendered discipline, and merging career aspirations with marital prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how social capital is divided across classes in Chile, one of the most unequal countries in the world. We analyse the extent to which upper-, middle-, and lower class individuals congregate in social networks with similar others, while following Bourdieu and expecting that in particular the networks of the higher social strata are segregated in terms of social capital. We test our argument with large-scale, representative survey data for the Chilean urban population aged 18–75 years (n  = 2,517) and build an integrated indicator of people's social class that combines measures of education, occupational class, and household income. Our regression analyses show that upper-class individuals have larger networks and access to more varied and prestigious social resources than their middle- and lower class counterparts. Interestingly, however, we found a U-shaped relationship between social class and class homogeneity, indicating that network segregation is high at the top as well as at the bottom of the class-based social strata. In contrast, the classes in the middle have more heterogeneous class networks, possibly forming an important bridge between the "edges" of the class structure. These findings demonstrate that whereas social and economic capital cumulates in higher classes, the lower classes are socially deprived next to their economic disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between women’s social class and their levels of self- and other-objectification. Two online studies comprising of multiple questionnaires were conducted: Study 1 examined the association between the social class (both objective and subjective) of 198 non-student British women and their self-objectification levels, while Study 2 turned towards the relationship between social class and other-objectification among 82 non-student British women. Our results indicated no apparent relationship between social class and each of the relevant objectification measures. As the first paper on the topic of class and objectification, it appears that there is no relationship observed between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materialist thread within health sociology has observed a clear gradient linking inequalities in health with measures of social class and poverty. More recently, Bourdieu's approach to social class complemented the 'economic capital' of Marxist analysis with 'symbolic' capitals such as 'social' and 'cultural'. However, efforts to assess how symbolic capital interacts with health disparities reveal complex or contradictory effects. In this paper, we re‐materialise the study of health and social position via a new materialist focus on the interactions between humans and non‐human matter (NHM). We analyse empirical data to disclose the range of human/NHM interactions in daily life, and how these affect people's health status. These interactions establish physical, psychological and social opportunities and constraints on what human bodies can do, contributing to relative advantages and disadvantages. We argue for a revised materialist understanding of sociomaterial position as constituted by a 'thousand tiny dis/advantages', and suggest that health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to dis/advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative data of an upper‐secondary school in Sweden's primary elite community, Djursholm, I propose how medical diagnosis of students as dyslexics contributes to consecrating them by offering a short cut to successful performance, while at the same time reproducing differences between social classes. The study suggests how students that do not score top can be labeled dyslexic and the social and moral consequences of that. I introduce the concept of "consecrating medicalization" in order to discriminate between the effects of medical diagnosis of members of different social classes. In this way, this paper contributes to further examining some key problems in medical sociology and the sociology of elites, by offering a framework of synthesis and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses ethnographic data to engage a critical reflection on the tension between individual responsibility for the environment and inequality. While research has shown that the majority of sustainable consumers are middle and upper class, educated and white individuals, the study explores how the ethical injunction to ecological sustainability is being introduced to lower‐income neighbourhoods in France. It draws on the observation of a national programme which aims at supporting inhabitants of public housing estates in the process of greening their lifestyle in order to fight climate change and fuel poverty. The paper analyses how environmental responsibilization is specific in that it calls upon a responsibility towards others, towards the common good. Using the Foucauldian concept of 'subjectivation', it describes and analyses the moral work implied by such behaviour change programmes. It demonstrates that a negative representation of poor households and a moral framing of the responsibility for the environment lead to a moralization of their lifestyle under the heading of 'eco‐friendly behaviours'. A paradoxical result of such endeavours is that the social group with the least impactful lifestyle on the environment is the one which is moralized in the most intrusive and resolute manner. The article shows, however, that the tenants manage to resist the normalizing discourse on sustainable living, for reasons which are not anti‐environmentalist. This piece thus provides interesting results for sustainability studies as well as for the sociology of the regulation of underprivileged neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the social relations of class, race, and gender present in the social formation of South Africa resulted in the constitution of a pigmentocratic system of social welfare. The study is qualitative and it's based on the theory of the consubstantiality of class, race, and gender social relations produced by South African critical sociology. For the survey of corpora, literature review and analysis of official documents were carried out. Documents from the last years of the colonial period up to the year 1996 were analyzed. The study identified that the segregation relations generated a comprehensive system of social welfare oriented towards the social empowerment and social protection of white families. Meanwhile, Blacks, Coloureds, and Asians have become increasingly deprived of rights. Even with the end of apartheid, the South African welfare system continues (re)producing pigmentocracy. It stems from the neoliberal conditions that led the transition to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct, non-overlapping, and hierarchically arranged layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the US income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social class-based differences in influence in online review contexts. We explore four mechanisms for how a review writer’s social class may affect readers’ evaluations of the organization. First, we argue that, via a “contagion” process, organizations reviewed by higher-class individuals will be evaluated more positively than organizations reviewed by lower-class individuals. Second, we expect that higher-class reviewers will be seen as more knowledgeable; thus, their opinions will be more influential in shaping others’ opinions. Third, we expect that reviewers will be seen more influential when they review organizations that match their social class. Fourth, we expect people to be more influenced by those who share their own class background. A large-scale observational study of reviews (N = 1,234,665) from finds support for the contagion, the organization-reviewer social class matching, and the reviewer-participant social matching hypotheses, but disconfirms the hypothesis that higher-class reviewers are always treated as having more expertise. Two experimental studies (N = 354 and N = 638) demonstrate that reviewer class plays a causal role in both a contagion process and in an assumption of higher-class knowledge process, but do not provide evidence for the reviewer-participant social matching hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waiting time for non-emergency medical care in developing countries is rarely of immediate concern to policy makers that prioritize provision of basic health services. However, waiting time as a measure of health system responsiveness is important because longer waiting times worsen health outcomes and affect utilization of services. Studies that assess socio-economic inequalities in waiting time provide evidence from developed countries such as England and the United States; evidence from developing countries is lacking. In this paper, we assess the relationship between social class i.e. caste of an individual and waiting time at health facilities—a client orientation dimension of responsiveness. We use household level data from two rounds of the Indian Human Development Survey with a sample size of 27,251 households in each wave (2005 and 2012) and find that lower social class is associated with higher waiting time. This relationship is significant for individuals that visited a male provider but not so for those that visited a female provider. Further, caste is positively related to higher waiting time only if visiting a private facility; for individuals visiting a government facility the relationship between waiting time and caste is not significant. In general, caste related inequality in waiting time has worsened over time. The results are robust to different specifications and the inclusion of several confounders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lay perceptions and experiences of social location have been commonly framed with reference to social class. However, complex responses to, and ambivalence over, class categories have raised interesting analytic questions relating to how sociological concepts are operationalized in empirical research. For example, prior researchers have argued that processes of class dis-identification signify moral unease with the nature of classed inequalities, yet dis-identification may also in part reflect a poor fit between 'social class' as a category and the ways in which people accord meaning to, and evaluate, their related experiences of socio-economic inequality. Differently framed questions about social comparison, aligned more closely with people's own terms of reference, offer an interesting alternative avenue for exploring subjective experiences of inequality. This paper explores some of these questions through an analysis of new empirical data, generated in the context of recession. In the analysis reported here, class identification was common. Nevertheless, whether or not people self identified in class terms, class relevant issues were perceived and described in highly diverse ways, and lay views on class revealed it to be a very aggregated as well as multifaceted construct. It is argued that it enables a particular, not general, perspective on social comparison. The paper therefore goes on to examine how study participants compared themselves with familiar others, identified by themselves. The evidence illuminates social positioning in terms of constraint, agency and (for some) movement, and offers insight into very diverse experiences of inequality, through the comparisons that people made. Their comparisons are situated, and pragmatic, accounts of the material contexts in which people live their lives. Linked evaluations are circumscribed and strongly tied to these proximate material contexts.The paper draws out implications for theorizing lay perspectives on class, and subjective experiences of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present new theorisations of social structure in light of the new sociologies of the individual currently being developed in France. Although these sociologies are little known, they have significant value in rethinking today's society and sociology. Starting from a review of the concept and the main conceptions of social structure, I will focus on the most significant contributions of these new sociologies of the individual. To do this, on the one hand, it will be shown that the two classical traditions of social structure (institutional or cultural and as a class structure) are insufficient to explain today's society, in which the individual has become the main protagonist and key focus of sociology. On the other hand, in contrast with the old sociologies of the individual, which are centred on the micro level of social interaction, this paper analyses new structural constraints that limit the individual's action. The paper concludes with an invitation to develop these new sociologies at an individual scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present new theorisations of social structure in light of the new sociologies of the individual currently being developed in France. Although these sociologies are little known, they have significant value in rethinking today's society and sociology. Starting from a review of the concept and the main conceptions of social structure, I will focus on the most significant contributions of these new sociologies of the individual. To do this, on the one hand, it will be shown that the two classical traditions of social structure (institutional or cultural and as a class structure) are insufficient to explain today's society, in which the individual has become the main protagonist and key focus of sociology. On the other hand, in contrast with the old sociologies of the individual, which are centred on the micro level of social interaction, this paper analyses new structural constraints that limit the individual's action. The paper concludes with an invitation to develop these new sociologies at an individual scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obstetric violence is gaining recognition as a worldwide problem manifesting in a range of geopolitical contexts. While global public health attention is turning to this issue, there has been a lack of theoretical engagement by feminist psychologists with the phenomenon of obstetric violence. This paper contributes to the literature on obstetric violence via a feminist social constructionist analysis of “marginalized” and low-income South African women’s narratives of giving birth in public sector obstetric contexts. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2012 with 35 black, low-income women living in Cape Town, South Africa, the analysis focuses on obstetric violence as a relational, disciplinary, and productive process that has implications for the construction of women’s subjectivities and agency during childbirth. The findings focus on relational constructions of violence and agency in women’s narratives, including (a) the performance of docility as an act of ambiguous agency and (2) resistant bodies and modes of discipline. Framed within a Foucauldian approach to power and using the concept of assemblage, I argue that obstetric violence needs to be conceptualized as more than isolated acts involving individual perpetrators and victims. Instead, the analysis shows that obstetric violence functions as a mode of discipline embedded in normative relations of class, gender, race, and medical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Social–epidemiological explanations of health inequalities usually take the existence of social inequality as a given and ignore the fundamental questions of why social inequality exists in the first place and why it is so persistent. I review here theories of the explanation of social inequality to identify the processes and/or structures responsible for its persistence. Methods: This paper is a review of the relevant sociological literature. Results: The sociological literature suggests that what persists over long periods of time is not a specific manifestation of social inequality but a ‘meta-phenomenon’: the fact that there are different social positions, that these social positions give access to different levels of resources in some graded way and that the distribution of individuals over social positions follows rules that create inequalities in the opportunities for achieving a more advantaged social position. The durability of social inequality in this generic form can then be understood from the persistence of the underlying mechanisms and processes – for example, humans are driven by self-interest, while most objects of their striving are in short supply, therefore a struggle for rewards is present in all societies; humans are unequally endowed, therefore some are more successful in this struggle for resources than others; and the inequalities resulting from these individual level actions are structurally fixated through the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, various societal institutions, and cultural factors. Conclusions: The sociological literature suggests that some mechanisms producing and perpetuating social inequality are more ‘benign’ than others. Health inequalities may be more than a consequence of social inequality and may play a more profound part by amplifying social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for the poor, the marginalised and socially excluded to live healthier and longer lives has in recent times become paramount in the development literature and policy discussions seeking to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In response to this, attempts are being made to redirect the research focus to examine socio-economic factors underpinning disease occurrence and ill health for health planning policies and practices to benefit the poor and vulnerable in society. Tliis paper explores the relationship between socio-economic conditions and health outcomes. It identifies and examines through participatory rural assessment techniques, basic socio- economic factors acting as significant pathways through which poverty increases the susceptibility of rural households to diseases. It seeks to address the reasons why the poor are poorer in health in rural communities of the Amansie West district of Ghana. This paper thus emphasises how social stratification and inequalities could affect quality of life of people in any given society, hence supporting the theory of social suffering and its implications on societal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The branding of ayurveda as a market strategy for the health consumer has become an important factor in the creation of 'New Age orientalist desire'. Using Vedic Village as a case, this paper shows how new age orientalism has been spread in modern India to middle class professionals, entrepreneurs and overseas health tourists. With this representation, ayurveda has become a wellness therapy instead of a means to restore health, and affluent people can now buy a package of 'ayurvedic healthy life' without changing their lifestyles. In addition to Euro-American health tourists, emerging middle class professionals and entrepreneurs in modern India have also become an integral part of the process of 'new age orientalization'. This paper concludes that the commodijied version of ayurveda, which has been developed in the West as part of 'wellness and spa culture', has become popular among the affluent middle class in India and abroad today, and through this the West has claimed and justifies authority over Eastern medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the obstacles to understanding the links between social inequality and mental health distress is the reliance on heterogeneous diagnostic categories. In this paper, it is argued that a solution to this problem is to explore more homogenous experiences of distress. This paper investigates one particular form of distress: paranoia. The relationship between social inequality and paranoia is then examined, focusing on two aspects. Firstly, it is argued that social inequality might affect the experience of paranoia itself since the experience of the surveillance encountered in the everyday use of public space may vary depending on one's location in social categories like gender, 'race' and culture and class (these social categories are, of course, themselves stratified by social inequality). Secondly, mental health service users' locations in these categories may influence the way that the plausibility of ostensibly paranoid claims are evaluated by mental health professionals. Within the discussion of each category, links are drawn between community and clinical samples to understand how the experience of paranoia may be influenced by these social categories. The paper concludes with implications for research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intersection of gender and class concerning welfare clients with medically unexplained symptoms. The study is conducted in Denmark using qualitative interviews with welfare officers and clients. The paper's focus is on how issues of gender and class intersect in the negotiation of illness among welfare officers and clients. The particular client group in question consists of individuals that are defined by their lack of a bio-medical diagnosis. Their 'lack' of identity accentuates how gender and class become central in the categorisation practices, constructing the ill person as either bio-medically sick or as a person who may be suffering but only from diffuse psychological problems. The paper shows that it is predominantly poorly educated women without a bio-medical diagnosis that welfare officers describe as suffering from psychological problems despite the fact that the women themselves focus on physical ailments in their illness stories. Men and better-educated women are described by the welfare officers as tired and exhausted or truly stressed after a long working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to develop perceptual knowledge of dyslexia from adults diagnosed with this condition. Historically, the dominant conceptual frameworks used to study dyslexia stem from psychological or educational practice. These disciplines predominantly draw on professional neuro-biological or educational knowledge that can be broadly summarized within a medical or educational model approach. Both the medical and educational models view dyslexia as resulting from a neurological and learning dysfunction. As such, only a small amount of research has attempted to locate dyslexia within a sociological context. This paper analyses the life narratives of adults diagnosed with dyslexia using the social model of disability. The author investigates the impact that disabling barriers have in education and employment for people with dyslexia. The implications of this are discussed, particularly how issues of disabling barriers and social-class structures affect the lives of people with dyslexia. The paper argues that social-class positioning and institutional discrimination (in the form of disabling barriers) shape the experiences of people living with this condition. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of the sociology of death. It begins by tracing some of the major trends in sociology more generally that have influenced understandings of the social impact of mortality. The question is then raised as to why sociologists of death have hitherto largely failed to research into working-class cultures of death. Following a brief discussion of some of the literature that has considered working-class practices, a number of explanations are offered for this relative neglect: that social class is no longer relevant in postmodern societies; that the creation of death studies as a specialism in sociology has isolated academics from the conceptual concerns of mainstream sociology; that the personal-political agendas of middle-class academics working in this field have shaped the preoccupations of researchers. The last of these explanations is explored in greater depth by linking work on death to the sociology of the body and that of the emotions. To examine some key social class distinctions, the assertion of working-class stoicism is contrasted with a middle-class privileging of verbal communication. The paper concludes with an appeal to sociologists of death to reinstate social class as a significant factor in understandings of the social nature of mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes the results from three different ethnographic projects that examine the impact on distributive justice of Catholic faith-in-action. The contexts include interactions between the Catholic faithful and homeless women and their children, incarcerated juvenile felons, and Appalachian women seeking healthcare services. The research purpose of this analysis is to advance our understanding of the tension between the provision of material goods and services and Catholic religious orthodoxy from the perspectives of the providers and the recipients. Following a brief introduction, the manuscript presents a theoretical grounding followed by descriptions of the settings and results. The paper closes with a discussion of changes to the treatment of the poor by faith-based organizations based upon secular considerations of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for exploring the ways in which class and gender interact in occupational fields. In recent years, very little research has been specifically concerned with the relationship between gender and class. Much of the literature which grapples with the question of how gender and class interact contains theoretical limitations which appear to stem from a reliance on categorical theories of both class and gender. In this paper it is proposed that, when used in conjunction, the approaches of Bourdieu and Butler provide a framework for exploring class and gender in terms of embodied practice. In order to illustrate the possibilities enabled by 'appropriating Bourdieu and adding Butler', the paper suggests ways in which this conceptual framework makes possible the examination of the complex relations between gender and class within one particular area of 'women's work': the field of nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most widely used measure for studying social, economic, and health inequality is the Gini index/ratio. Whereas other measures of inequality possess certain useful characteristics, such as the straightforward decomposability of the generalized entropy measures, the Gini index has remained the most popular, at least in part due to its ease of interpretation. However, the Gini index has a limitation in measuring inequality. It is less sensitive to how the population is stratified than how individual values differ. The twin purposes of this paper are to explain the limitation and to propose a model-based method—latent class/clustering analysis for understanding and measuring inequality. The latent cluster approach has the major advantage of being able to identify potential “classes” of individuals who share similar levels of income or one or more other attributes and to assess the fit of the model-based classes to the empirical data, based on different cluster distributional assumptions and the number of latent classes. This paper distinguishes class inequality from individual inequality, the type that is better captured by the Gini. Once the classes are estimated, the membership of estimated classes obtained from the best fitting model facilitates the decomposition of the Gini index into individual and class inequality. Class inequality is then measured by two relative stratification indices based on either the relative size of the Gini between-class components or the relative number of stratified individuals. Therefore, the Gini index is extended and assisted by model-based clustering to measure class inequality, thereby realizing its great potential for studying inequality. Income data from France and Hungary are used to illustrate the application of the method. INSETS: Figure 1. Gini indices and Lorenz curves for income data...;Figure 2. Empirical income distribution of France in 1990...;Figure 3. Income clustering in France, 1990.;Figure 4. Income clustering in Hungary, 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates contemporary evaluations of the 'success' of Spain's Mondragon cooperative complex within a tradition of debate about the politics of economic transformation. It traces the long-standing suspicion of worker cooperatives among political and social analysts on the left, revisiting both the revolutionary and gradualist socialist critiques of cooperativism. Taking the set of problems identified by Beatrice and Sidney Webb as leading to the inevitable failure of producer cooperatives, the paper examines Mondragon for evidence of 'degeneration.' The ethical decisions made by Mondragon cooperators with respect to product, pay, profit, innovation, management, disputes and membership are discussed with a particular focus on the management of surplus production, appropriation and distribution. The paper calls for more sophisticated analyses of the economics of surplus distribution and the centrality of ethical debate to the construction of diverse economies and non-capitalist economic subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the scope of Basil Bernstein's sociology, indicating some of the research that his ideas have inspired, shaped or provoked. Although it takes a roughly chronological approach to the development of his ideas, the paper emphasizes how consistently he explored the making of societies and social classes, and the structuring of social interaction. The title of the paper reflects how successfully Bernstein met Wright Mills' criterion for a true sociological imagination—that it seeks to grasp the extent to which 'personal troubles' are 'public issues' arising from the changing forms of social inequalities as these are produced from generation to generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classification based on social dimensions is commonly used to handle the multi-label classification task in heterogeneous networks. However, traditional methods, which mostly rely on the community detection algorithms to extract the latent social dimensions, produce unsatisfactory performance when community detection algorithms fail. In this paper, we propose a novel behavior based social dimensions extraction method to improve the classification performance in multi-label heterogeneous networks. In our method, nodes’ behavior features, instead of community memberships, are used to extract social dimensions. By introducing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to model the network generation process, nodes’ connection behaviors with different communities can be extracted accurately, which are applied as latent social dimensions for classification. Experiments on various public datasets reveal that the proposed method can obtain satisfactory classification results in comparison to other state-of-the-art methods on smaller social dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of a psychiatric intervention as an example of an institutional ethnography of psychiatric work. Institutional ethnography, a mode of inquiry outlined by Dorothy Smith (1987), is conceived here as an approach to the analysis of work in institutions as the contingent, local and context-bound insertion of a particular "case" - a patron, a pupil, a client, a patient - into both institutional and other social (e. g. gender, class) relations. The case presented in this paper, shows how a psychiatric factual account is the outcome of a process of the recognition, and/or the production, of "mentionables," followed by the documentary interpretation of mentionables as symptoms. Subsequently it is demonstrated that, and how, the recognition of mentionables depends on non-professional interpretations which by their nature express other social (such as gender, class, etc.) relations. This description of psychiatric diagnostic work is produced by means of a method of discourse analysis that consists of the juxtaposition of the various institutional texts (the two reports) with the transcript of the interview. An analysis of only the interview data would undoubtedly have resulted in some insights about psychiatric interviewing but would have shown neither how the interview functioned as a stage in the institutional process of (re)writing reports nor how ideological evaluations entered the diagnostic process. On the other hand, an analysis of only the two reports would have resulted in some insights about psychiatric reporting but would not have shown how these reports were produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a brief examination of neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian arguments it is demonstrated that the class nature of the new middle class has yet to be established. The paper goes on to show that as well as differences arising out of material conditions (i.e. class differences), inequalities based on expectations of entitlement or norms are also significant in capitalist society. Weber's treatment of status has not encouraged an adequate understanding of the concept, and an alternative is outlined. The paper then argues that the differences between the so-called new middle class and the working class are reasonably understood on a number of criteria as differences between status groups which form part of a single class. Not only does this approach remove a number of difficulties from accounts of the salariat, it also helps explain the different political alignments of social collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the author in this paper is to examine patterns of collaboration more systematically by analyzing 45 multi-party arguments out of a total of 75 that were gleaned from videotapes of unsupervised reading groups in a first-grade classroom. Fifty-four children from eight groups in three classrooms of one elementary school participated in the study. The subjects were Caucasian, native speakers of English and from middle class American families. This paper has aimed to remedy a neglect of multi-party disputes by addressing how those involved in a two-party argument may collaborate with others who are co-present. Collaboration is a complex phenomenon. In the first place, one have seen that disputes, although initially produced by two parties, do not consist simply of two sides. Rather, given one party's displayed position, stance, or claim, another party can produce opposition by simply aligning against that position or by aligning with a counterposition. This means that parties can dispute a particular position for different reasons and by different means. It is therefore possible for several parties to serially oppose another's claim without achieving collaboration. A second complexity, then, is just that collaboration is a negotiated phenomenon.

In this paper we review the empirical legacy that developed out of the theoretical and methodological agendas of class analysis and comparative methods of the 1970s and 1980s. Our review is restricted to studies that examine the variants in the class structures of the developed capitalist democracies. The paper is organized into four main sections. In part one. we examine variations in the organization of capital; part two takes up the still little-studied resurgence of the petite bourgeoisie and small capital; in part three, we review studies that have examined national variations in the size and composition of the new middle class; and part four reviews the postindustial and gendered nature of the working class. Our conclusion highlights important labor market developments of the 1980s that have largely been missed by conventional class models and comments on their significance for the future of empirical research in class analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as a contribution to the formal theory of stratification systems. The paper has five sections. In Section I, a method for analytically inducing an order over a multi-dimensional status is discussed. It is believed that such a technique can aid in the specification of conceptual tasks within stratification theory, as well as serve as a baseline in actual measurements. It is subsequently employed in the axiomatic work of Sections 3 and 4. In Section 2, there is a brief discussion of the axiomatic method as a prelude to the system developed in the following two sections. In Section 3, the axioms are stated. In Section 4, various elementary consequences of the axioms are shown; most importantly, various concepts which are intuitively important in stratification theory are shown to be definable (e.g., a class system with a determinate number of classes). Finally, in Section s, there is a concluding discussion of the picture of stratification which emerges within this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN A RECENT paper Mr. Runciman concludes by inviting replies to his argument that it is logically and conceptually useful to employ the tripartite distinction between `class' `status' and `power' in the analysis of social stratification. Mr. Runciman does not, of course, deny the existence of links between these three dimensions, but suggests that such links must be seen contingent empirical relationships and not necessary logical ones. I hope that the following paper will provide such a reply. It must be clear that the following criticism is directed, in the main, to those parts of the paper in which Mr. Runciman is concerned with the logical and conceptual problem. The essay in question also contains a clear and valuable assessment of the problems encountered in any attempt to measure the three types of inequality. In the first part of the paper I propose to give a critical assessment of certain central aspects of Mr. Runciman's argument and, in the second part, I will put forward a very brief formulation of what I consider to be a more meaningful alternative view of the relationships between class, status, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published in 1899, The Philadelphia Negro provides an important template to examine both the use and promise of heterogeneity as one of the earliest pillars in the establishment of American sociology. In this paper, I locate the notion of heterogeneity within W.E.B. Du Bois's classic The Philadelphia Negro to demonstrate both the historical roots of the concept and also Du Bois's use of the concept as key to his production of new sociological knowledge. As will be shown, Du Bois explicitly and implicitly disrupts existing notions of heterogeneity and of a monolithic Black population by emphasizing the intraracial variation thereof; thus Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro intervention amplifies the role of heterogeneity as a tool for uncovering variation that produces incisive sociological theorization and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the way in which social capital resources are incorporated, appropriated and distributed by different social classes in Europe. Its main goal is to produce a conceptual framework by linking the concepts of social capital with the different theoretical assessments made by the sociology of social classes. We use multivariate analysis to work a set of quantitative indicators from the European Social Survey 2008 in order to assess the relationship between these concepts. Our methodological approach combines transnational levels, i.e., it is not an international comparison between European countries but an analysis of individual people and their belonging to social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Howarth (2007), this paper examines the relationship between class culture and social distinction in the empirical area of death and dying. For Howarth (2007), the sociological neglect of the end-of-life cultural practices of working-class people carries the danger 'of privileging middle-class agendas for change, … [t]here is an urgent need for further studies … and a refinement of existing research to draw out social class distinctions' (p. 433). Drawing on Howarth (2007), and Bourdieu (1984), it is argued below that the connexion between death and class reflects and helps to reproduce class-based identities, advantages and conflicts. Whilst class culture can be a supportive resource for working-class people, for example, in ways which reflect solidarity, more typically the classed nature of death brings acute suffering. Relatedly, it is proposed that stereotypes of declining respectability are reflected in some middle-class conceptions of working-class practices and identity connected to death. Such thinking socially positions working-class tastes as objects of disgust, and working-class people as disgusting subjects. It is concluded that, whilst Howarth's call is much warranted, the debate also needs to problematise the normalisation of middle-class ways to die and grieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of the impact of casualised and independent contractor work place arrangements on the psycho-social health of 72 workers in regional Victoria. It contributes to our understanding of the crisis in rural Australia in its use of qualitative methods focusing on the impact of work on health and well-being. There is some evidence in the literature that casualised work arrangement enhance the health and well-being of workers by giving them a sense of autonomy and freedom to negotiate their conditions of work. On the other hand, these arrangements may make an already vulnerable group even more vulnerable to uncertain work conditions, poor pay and uncertainty for their future with a significantly negative impact on their health and wellbeing. The results of these interviews support this latter perspective and show that these workers do not experience freedom and autonomy, but rather lowered social status, insecurity and serious limitations to their ability to manage their health, psychological wellbeing and social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of mortality. Numerous investigations have linked occupational factors and CVD. Occupational factors such as overtime work have an enormous effect on the CVD risk of industrial workers. However, risk factors for CVD are not systematically reviewed in the workplace. The purpose of the paper is to review work-related risk factors for CVD. Methods: A systematic review of work-related CVD risk factors was performed, yielding 180 articles. All articles were assessed in relation to inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in 44 articles being reviewed. The sole inclusion criteria was work-related environmental factors and intra/inter-personal factors (psychosocial factors), which is based on the socioecological perspective. The articles were also assessed regarding the quality of each study using the scoring methods developed by Cesario et al. and Brown et al. Conclusion: The literature review demonstrated that work environment factors such as shift work, overtime work, and noise and chemical exposures; and psychosocial factors such as job stress, social support, and socioeconomic status cannot be explained or intervened by one single risk factor. Furthermore, certain occupational factors were shown to aggravate or attenuate other risk factors. The implication of these findings is to incorporate work-related environmental and psychosocial factors into assessment of the patient's CVD risks and intervention plan. Future research should also incorporate a well-defined conceptual framework to address the effects of work-related environmental and psychosocial factors on CVD among CVD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an increasing sociological interest in the middle classes and their educational practices, research has largely concentrated on the white middle classes. This paper considers the case of the minority ethnic (ME) middle classes through empirical data from a small, exploratory study conducted in England with 36 minority ethnic, 'middle-class' individuals (parents, pupils and young professionals) from a range of ME backgrounds. It is argued that participants experienced ME middle-class identity as a profoundly conflictual and precarious space, negotiated through a matrix of relational classed and racialized positionings. 'Authentic' middle-classness remains the preserve of white society due to racial inequalities and the dominance of whiteness as the popularly legitimated marker of middle classness. Moreover, attempts to define an acceptable, legitimate and principled ME middle-class identity are compromised by the discursive threats of 'inauthenticity', 'pretension' and 'misrecognition'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the ways in which corporations have become powerful actors in the political and economic landscapes, and the role the state has played in this development. Focusing on the pharmaceutical industry, we find that revolving door practices have been a key instrument in furthering the growth of corporate power, leading us to a reconsideration of the concepts of class struggle and the role of the state in the maintenance of the dominant class' privileges. We conclude that our findings lend support to Harvey's theory of neoliberalism as a specific project to restore power to the dominant class, and also to Marx's conception of state power subordinated to capitalist economic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis on a sexualised muscular body ideal in gay social and cultural settings has been described as facilitating body image dissatisfaction among gay men. Drawing on a concept of reflexive embodiment, this paper uses qualitative interviews to analyse gay men's embodiment practices in relation to discourses and norms that can be found across and beyond any coherent notion of 'gay subculture'. The findings reveal body image to be more complex than a limited focus on subculture or dissatisfaction can account for. In particular, gay men negotiate a gay pride discourse in which the muscular male body generates both social status and self-esteem, and deploy notions of everyday masculinity that imply rationality and control to resist gendered assumptions about gay men's body image relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological knowledge about peasantry do not come exclusively from the rural sociology as a sociological discipline, but also from sociological reasearch done within other sociological disciplines (sociology of family, sociology of work, etc), including research of the vertical dimension of social structure. Since Marx and Weber have been the most influential thinkers inside class theory, in this paper the autor focuses on the analysis of the Marx's and Weber's texts in which they wrote about peasantry as a social class. Analysed views were of a great importance for conceptualisation of peasantry within the studies of class structure of Yugoslav and Serbian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divisions between variable oriented and person-oriented approaches in social and behavioral research are newly drawn. Yet few person oriented approaches have been fully articulated; those that have are predominantly quantitative This work presents an argument for a qualitative, person oriented study of careers; an approach identified as careers in context Based on a national study of scientists, this contextualist approach is grounded by three interacting, but analytically distinct, emphases to suggest how careers can be studied in and beyond science: (1) an emphasis on time and place as under-utilized dimensions on which to direct further study of careers; (2) an emphasis on the subjective career as a concept that qualitatively encapsulates temporal and spatial dimensions; and (3) an emphasis on career study in life course perspective. Subjectively (and objectively), careers are, of course, not static. By situating subjective careers in the times and places in which they occur, we are drawn to how those careers ‘play out’ over the course of the lives of the people leading them. This paper concludes by stressing ways in which contextual studies of careers in and beyond science will advance our understanding in five larger domains of social process: identity construction; institution building; social psychological differentiation; job satisfaction; and mystification of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deep South has often been characterized as the poorest and most backward region in the United States. The Deep South is also unique in that it is the most racially diverse part of the United States and it has the powerful social history of chattel slavery. In this paper, we examine the relationship between race and poverty at the macro (rather than individual) level. Using county-level census data we examine the effects of social segregation on well-being. We find that indeed there is an extremely strong and significant relationship between the racial composition of a county and many measures of well-being (poverty, home ownership, educational attainment, infant mortality and so on). Second, our analysis tests for the effects of racial segregation for whites and African Americans separately. The poverty rate for whites varies little based on the racial composition of the county they live in whereas for African Americans, living in integrated or predominately white counties is significantly correlated with lower levels of poverty. Furthermore, the African American-white poverty gap is significantly lower in integrated and predominately white counties and significantly higher in counties that are racially segregated. Thus, our analysis demonstrates that racial segregation has a more negative and profound effect on the lives of African Americans than it does on whites. We conclude with a discussion of the illustration Hurricane Katrina provides of tins general pattern and we offer a set of suggestions for addressing this kind of structural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to M. Bittman and J. Pixley's paper "Equality and Gender, Divided Versus Multiple Subjectivity: A Response to Allon J. Uhlmann's The Sociology of Subjectivity, and Subjectivity of Sociologists" in volume 55, issue number 3 of the "British Journal of Sociology." The criticism of Bittman and Pixley's book "The Double Life of the Family" focused on a number of selected texts in order to expose some of the analytical dynamics that prevail in the sociology of the Australian family. The book served as an example of a class-unconscious discussion of the family. It was argued that the book overlook systemic differences in subjectivity across class and gender, and did not consider the sociological significance of the variation in the contexts in which members of different classes lead their lives. Bittman and Pixley's response skirts the main issues which have been the focus of the critique.