Suchergebnisse

Americans have a fierce spirit of individualism. We pride ourselves on self-reliance, on bootstrapping our way to success. Yet, we also believe in helping those in need, and we turn to our neighbors in times of crisis. The tension between these competing values is evident, and how we balance between these competing values holds real consequences for community health and well-being. In his new book, The Size of Others' Burdens, Erik Schneiderhan asks how people can act in the face of competing pressures, and explores the stories of two famous Americans to develop present-day lessons for improvi

AbstractThe recent literature on genocide shows signs of taking what might be called a "processual turn," with genocide increasingly understood as a contingent process rather than a singular event. But while this second generation's turn may be clear to those within the literature, the theory guiding the change is insufficiently specified. The theory regarding process and contingency is implicit, and, as such, genocide theory does not realize its full generative potential. The primary goal of this article is to provide a more robust theoretical framework for making sense of the continually evolving dimensions of genocide. It builds on the literature's existing foundations, most notablyMann's (2005) notion of "contingent escalations." In the spirit of the recent revival ofAmerican Pragmatism in sociology, it draws on the work ofDewey,Mills,Follett, andAddams (among others) as part of a theoretical reconstruction using pragmatist concepts such as rupture, perplexity, vocabularies of motive, and experimentation to consider examples from the Rwandan genocide and show how we might explore the potential for non‐teleological intentionality on the part of genocidal actors. The result is an enhanced theoretical framework that offers "fresh eyes" for considering one of the worst (and most under‐theorized) social problems.

This case study illustrates how a documentary method of analyzing qualitative data can help overcome a methodological issue often encountered when researching the relationship between ethnic identities and social outcomes. This issue is how to reconcile the use of top-down definitions of ethnic identity (e.g., in census and survey categories) often deployed in research designs with contemporary theorizations of ethnicity as an identity that is constructed relationally and situationally from the bottom up. We describe how the documentary method of data analysis helped us address this issue with reference to the focus groups we conducted with aging Black Minority Ethnics (BMEs) in London in 2011. Unable to abandon the institutionalized Black Minority Ethnic categorization in our sampling and recruitment strategy, we found that the documentary method allowed us to discern the degree to which participants thus labeled adopted the pre-defined parameters of BME identity in their interactions with each other. We argue that this analytical approach, which can be applied to a range of qualitative data, can help researchers to work with the often homogenizing institutionalized categorizations that facilitate data collection and make results comparable without negating subjects' lived experiences of that categorization.

AbstractCrowdfunding, the practice of asking for money from others using the Internet, is a major private means through which Canadians are funding their health care and education. Crowdfunding has proliferated in Canada during the 2010s and continues to grow, approaching the revenues of Canada's major traditional charities. Proponents describe it as an empowering practice from which anyone can benefit. If its gains are inequitably distributed, however, increasing reliance on this private funding mechanism, especially in core areas of welfare state provision, can further exacerbate inequalities of opportunity and income. This study asks why Canadians turn to health care and education crowdfunding and how equitably funds are raised using this novel method. Based on a mixed methods analysis of 319 campaigns conducted on two prominent crowdfunding platforms between 2012 and 2014, we find that crowdfunding users' needs frequently correspond to known gaps in the contemporary social safety net, including in the area of cancer care, and that campaigns for older and visible minority Canadians face a disadvantage. We argue that health care and education crowdfunding is a response to the shortcomings of Canadian welfare state provision, but one that reproduces offline inequalities with potentially perilous consequences for democratic life and individual suffering.

Scholars typically suggest that deliberation, defined as communication guided by reason‐giving and inclusion, works best behind a veil of ignorance or when personal differences are bracketed. In this article we explore deliberation within ethnically diverse groups. We operationalize ethnicity in three ways: as an aspect of individual identity, as an identity that is made salient through priming, and as an enactment relative to interactions in particular situations. In this way, we can explore the applicability of our previous experimental results to ethnically diverse groups. We find similar results: within ethnically diverse groups, deliberation matters; participants are more likely to reconsider their positions when deliberating than when simply talking about politics. Ethnicity has no adverse effects on the quality of deliberation, indicating that bracketing has no significant impact. On the contrary, when conceptualized as a relational enactment, ethnicity is correlated with increased levels of reason‐giving and inclusion, and hence higher quality deliberation. This suggests deliberation works in multiethnic groups in much the same way as—if not better than—it does in homogeneous groups. Deliberation is a robust form of political communication that not only helps manage, but also embraces diverse subjective experiences as a part of the political process.

This article contributes to the 'cognitive turn' in the study of ethnicity and national identity, which focuses on how individuals construct ethnic identity categories pertinent to social cohesion. Using Mannheim as a methodological and analytical guide, we show how examining ethnicity as a relational enactment devoid of a priori categorisations allows situational identities that intersect with classical sociological concepts other than ethnicity – namely generation, class, and citizenship – to emerge within and across typical ethnic categorisations. We draw on an analysis of micro-level interactions among 40 aging 'black and minority ethnics' (BMEs) engaging in small-group discussions and a large deliberative assembly held in London in 2011.