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Employing a racialized gendered lens, we explore the perceptions of status threat and victimhood among a sample of White Americans following the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, we draw upon such theoretical and empirical work to frame our analyses of the associations between perceptions of a white "victim" ideology and anti-Black Lives Matter (BLM) sentiments and how such associations may be conditioned by support for Trump and holding patriarchal gender normative beliefs. We propose that the BLM movement may be perceived as a "threat" to many White Americans. Furthermore, we believe Whites' anti-BLM sentiments will be enhanced by support for Trump, given his racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and oppressive tendencies. Moreover, we believe that these associations will differ based on gender and beliefs in patriarchal gender norms, as White men and women are likely to feel status threat in varied ways. Mix support for our propositions and complex gendered differences are revealed. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores what air means and entails in penal settings and examines how carcerality attaches itself to air. With inspiration from social science approaches to the study of air, I propose that the lived experience of prison air can be fruitfully analyzed through the notions of breath, smell, and wind. This point is explored through two incidents about prison air drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in Myanmar. Together they illustrate a shift in Myanmar penality from a martial logic of destroying the enemy towards an internationally infused rationality of control and care. The first is a tale of an imprisoned engineer's subversive effort to improve the air quality in prisons; the second, the design and building of tuberculosis wards in prisons that aim to bring prison air in line with international standards. The analysis of these incidents broadens the analytical sensorium of prison air by drawing attention to, on the one hand, a basic empirical and affective sensing of air, recognising air as a scarce and coveted resource that prison actors' appropriate to survive. On the other hand, attention is drawn to the possibility of sensing with air, whereby the discourses, technologies, rules, and practices of air can be utilized as entry points for the analysis of prison governance and the transitional dynamics of penality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing abundance of medical technologies has led to laments over doctors’ sensory de-skilling, technologies viewed as replacing diagnosis based on sensory acumen. The technique of percussion has become emblematic of the kinds of skills considered lost. While disappearing from wards, percussion is still taught in medical schools. By ethnographically following how percussion is taught to and learned by students, this article considers the kinds of bodies configured through this multisensory practice. I suggest that three kinds of bodies arise: skilled bodies; affected bodies; and resonating bodies. As these bodies are crafted, I argue that boundaries between bodies of novices and bodies they learn from blur. Attending to an overlooked dimension of bodily configurations in medicine, self-perception, I show that learning percussion functions not only to perpetuate diagnostic craft skills but also as a way of knowing of, and through, the resource always at hand; one’s own living breathing body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a brief response to Loïc Wacquant's article, 'Homines in extremis'. The response makes four contributions. First, I consider some of the reasons for the confusion surrounding the habitus concept, arguing that this confusion may be lessened (without any obvious loss) if we revert to 'habit' or 'disposition'. Second, I argue that, irre-spective of these terminological quibbles, it is vital that we do not conflate 'habitus' and 'embodied actor' as some accounts do. There is more to the embodied actor than her habits and she can only have habits because this is so. Third, I begin to explore the point of view offered by 'carnal ethnography' and call for further clarification of that point of view. Finally, I note that Wacquant's ethnography has the effect of rendering certain of Bourdieu's ideas in a more concrete manner and foregrounding sociability, which the latter is sometimes inclined to ignore. This, I suggest, is a positive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many in the social sciences and social philosophy who would aspire to overcome the ‘nature/culture binary’, including some who, with at least an implicit nod toward a putatively ‘anti-essentialist’ process ontology, have set out with an orientation toward a paradigm of ‘biosocial becoming’ (Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Such contemporary work, however, in areas such as social and cultural anthropology and sciences studies has often failed to clarify, let alone justify, the warrants of their most basic assumptions and assertions. In what follows, adumbrations will be offered for a comprehensive metaphysics of ‘biosocial becoming’ that can stand accountable both to empirical/descriptive and to normative claims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author proposes that the task of anthropology is to invent relations. He says that the suggestion that relations are always self-evident calls forth perplexed responses because it offends the folk-theory of anthropology. He explains invention as the negative opposite of discovery. He provides brief comments on the terms relations, invention and task. He also offers an example of indigenous categories brought to bear on anthropological thinking, as well as discusses how the anthropological concept of the concept works.

This article applies Jack Goody's critique of Western classifications of historical and ethnographical phenomena to the current discourses of orientalism themselves in an endeavor to understand the sociological basis of what might be called the shift from orientalism to occidentalism. The argument compares the current emergence of anti-civilizational and self-critical discourses to historical examples of similar phenomena and argues that the current shift itself, so well represented in works that may seem similar to Goody's but which are very more narrowly ideological and lacking in a more general critical stance, are reflexes of the declining hegemony of powerful imperial centers within global systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional theories of culture and socialization in the social and behavioral sciences have concentrated on how attitudes and values come to be "internalized" and thus shared by members of a collectivity. The emergence of practice theory challenges the classical theory of socialization and acculturation by shifting the focus of analysis away from explicit symbolic representations and towards tacit,motor-schematic procedures. In this paper I argue that even as they reject the traditional object of older socialization-based accounts, most practice theorists continue to operate with the same outmoded theory of socialization and acculturation inherited from classical sociology. I useWacquant's (2004) "carnal ethnography" of becoming a boxer to outline an alternative approach--grounded in recent research in cognitive neuroscience--which provides a more adequate explanation of how practices come to be acquired and transmitted from person to person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carlos Cornejo's book review on my Von Kunst bis Terror led me to the need to chart out a number of central issues in contemporary psychology that cultural psychology is in a position to resolve. Human subjectivity in all of its richness remains the core of investigation for all psychology, and cultural psychology has a central role to play in innovating psychology's research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on some ethical dilemmas presented by an ethnographic study of prostitution that I conducted in the 1990s. The study drew one research subject into a long and very close relationship with me, and though she was an active and fully consenting participant in the research, she was also objectified within both the field relationship and the textual products it generated. This kind of contradiction has been recognized and discussed as a more general problem for ethnography by feminist and critical ethnographers. In this article it is considered specifically in relation to informed consent as an ethical issue. If an ethnographer secures the free and informed consent of a research subject, does this necessarily make the intimacy of their subsequent relationship ethical? Is it possible for anyone to genuinely consent to being objectified through the research process? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will consider in detail the implications of a diffuse social imagination for existing paradigms of ethnographic audience research. The notion of a 'cultural field' research model will be offered here as an alternative structure for locating media communities as sites of social practice. This is a theoretical framework that reformulates the conception of media audiences as 'imagined communities' by replacing a demographically constituted ethnographic model with an emphasis on surveying the diverse inhabitants of a cultural field constructed around participation in particular instances of media practice. Media audiences, ethnographic practice and the notion of a cultural field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bourdieu was born in Béarn, in the south-west of France. He conducted fieldwork there, publishing the results in 1962. He returned twice to that fieldwork in articles that developed several of the central concepts, concerns and approaches deployed in his major writings. Bourdieu reflected increasingly on the place of biography in the construction of both social and sociological knowledge, invoking his autobiography as a key to explaining his ideas. These articles on Béarn therefore form a privileged corpus for understanding Bourdieu's oeuvre, providing access to the link between biography and theory, and a means of grasping what is at stake in a reflexive sociology. The aim of this article is threefold. First, to consider the contribution of Béarnais material to the development of Bourdieu's thought. Further, to offer a critique of his use of that material from the perspective of an anthropologist who has worked in the region, and who is familiar both with the kinds of materials and also the earlier accounts on which he was drawing. And last, to indicate ways that Bourdieu's reading of the local materials influences the character of his wider theoretical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

June Nash's work spans 50 years of anthropology and reflects important transformations in geopolitics, economic globalization, anthropological theory, and the people and societies we study. Nash's creativity reveals itself as inherently oppositional, even when she has written within major research paradigms. I argue that if we use the concept of ‘repositioning’ to examine the life work of an anthropologist, the notion of stable schools, paradigms and languages of analysis falls away to reveal a much more dynamic picture of anthropological practice. Based on interviews in 2002, this article examines the ways in which Nash has geographically and institutionally repositioned her ethnographic studies as an engaged anthropologist. It traces the ways her intellectual agenda and commitment to social justice have informed her research and ethnographic writing. The article is concerned with the living dimension of ethnographic knowledge, with Nash's fashioning of oral narratives that remember and reconsider her earlier fieldwork - as her published texts inevitably become historical artifacts. In the process, the article poses the question: how can we make ethnographic writing a more dynamic way of representing the human cost of the currents of change we seek to understand? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 90% of infants born in the world live in low- income countries, but most scholarly knowledge about infancy is produced in wealthy countries. We therefore need far more information on infancy throughout the world. There are logistical and cultural difficulties associated with gaining this information, but in this article we focus on the broader ideological context of knowledge production about infancy world-wide. Using a recently-published volume, A world of babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies (DeLoache & Gottlieb, 2000a) as an exemplar, we show that the representation of infancy as an ideology-free or even romanticized zone may do little to forward our understanding of infancy and culture. We suggest a more ideologically informed approach to the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the necessity of materiality for social order, or the performative and integrative capacity of things to help make the society. This means that there is a need to investigate what happens in social settings which constantly problematize materiality and are uncertain as to what exactly count as things. This discussion will draw on an on-line ethnography, extended over 18 months, of people exchanging sexually explicit material and communications over Internet Relay Chat. They set in motion a considerable range of mechanisms of materialization, and they did so in order to establish a sense of ongoing ethical sociality, a social order.

Food is a wonderful entrance into practices, central as it is to both physical survival and social relations. In this article, it is the intention of the authors to interfere in the deadlocked relation between biomedicine and ethics, with the taste of chocolate as a lever. The socio-materiality of chocolate, or more generally, of food, is crucial to the task at hand. Food is loaded with meaning, is grown and cooked by some people for others, who eat it jointly or alone, with all the social specificities this entails, while also being physical.

Since the putative end of the Cold War, modernization is increasingly reimagined as a global process — as an expanding liberal zone of peace, a global civil society, or as emerging forms of global governance. Thus, new forms of modernization theory, what we call neo-modernization, have emerged as important theories of International Relations (IR). Such a convergence of events and theory permit us to examine the logical overlap between IR and modernization theory. IR fails to herald a unique contribution to social theory because it persistently avoids and denies the historical problem from which it surfaces, namely, the problem of what to do about cultural difference. Modernization theory provides an essential contribution to IR's avoidance of this central problem. While modernization theory implicitly relics on IR's freezing of difference into geopolitical containers, it also projects a natural and universal developmental sequence through which all cultures must pass. In this way modernization theory anticipates the eventual total homogenizing of difference into sameness. Surprisingly, while partners with IR in the joint venture to contain and then eradicate difference, modernization theory also offers an alternative vision. This recessive theme, what we call an ethnological politics of comparison, has the potential to transform IR into the science and art of facing, understanding and addressing difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a range of problems centring on the theorization of cultural identity and cultural property by reference to debates about the appropriation of the Maori 'tattoo' or ta moko and the authenticity of contemporary Maori tattooing practices. Through a consideration of the relationship between cultural identity and tattooing, it addresses a problematic concerning the articulation of indigenous 'property', 'ownership' or 'authority' in legal, anthropological and philosophical discourses. Theorizations of 'tattoo' as 'cultural property', for example, generally assume a certain 'proper' relationship between subject and object, pre-comprehended in terms of Western legal-philosophical concepts. Against the background of these issues, the use of ta moko as a form of signature or authorizing mark of identification is taken to highlight issues concerning the complex relationship between the attribution of certain cultural practices, characteristics or 'properties' to a certain group and the notions of authorship and authority that underwrite such designations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article replies to Steve Woolgar's and Geoff Cooper's (W&C) study on urban legends, in this case, referring to Winner's Moses-story. They proposed that the bridge-story is itself a dynamic, shifting and essentially inconcludable narrative, a form of urban legend. Before addressing some of the points W&C raise, the author likes to make clear that his case against Winner was not about the referential adequacy of the bridge-story. However, to be able to make his point, the author has to raise the issue of referentiality. His case against Winner is twofold: 1) that parables should be handled with care in teaching social science, and; 2) that what Winner asserts about technical artefacts is doubtful for any technical artefact, not only for Moses' low bridges.

The article discusses about how does ethnography fare in theoretical physics in response to opinion of authors George Gale and Cassandra L. Pinnick. One of Gale and Pinnick's main points about the limitation of ethnography, when it is confronted with a maximally theoretical science, derives from the lateralmindedness. The ethnography of theoretical theory in physics poses challenges of observability, comprehensibility and relevance to social studies of science. But it also offers the possibility of pursuing and exemplifying a distinctive version of ethnography. The article focuses on W-algebras, BRST-operators, third order polynomials, Fock spaces, and Virasoro cohomologies. Ethnography, one believes, ought to strive for thick description for registering and decoding the layers of meaning that create cultural behavior, like the layers of food that create a sandwich. Thick description exploits modes of interpretation as a way of transforming mundane activities into analytically rich forms of life. But the view of ethnographers as those who preferably bring home thick descriptions that are interpretative decodings of densely layered cultural texts also has its drawbacks.

The article presents information for the scholars who are interested to contribute research papers in this journal and the journal's policies regarding the acceptance of such papers. It is informed that the journal "Social Studies of Science" is devoted mainly to the results of original research, whether empirical or theoretical, which brings fresh light to bear on the concepts, processes, mediations and consequences of modern science and technology. It encourages appropriate contributions from political science, sociology, economics, history, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, social anthropology, and the legal and educational disciplines. It welcomes studies of fundamental research, applied research and development of industrial science and other miscellaneous fields. It is further clarified that the general implications of any paper's findings should be clearly indicated. If authors are confident that their draft papers satisfy these criteria, then they should consider submission to this journal. However, if it is found that an essentially similar paper is under simultaneous review for possible publication elsewhere, the paper will not be published in this journal.

The article focuses on views of sociologists Harry Collins, Stefan Hirschauer and Peter Winch on ethnography, exoticism, surgery, antisepsis and de-horsification. For Collins, ethnography involves a relationship between two internal states, the observer's subjective understanding of exotic beliefs and practices, and actual experience of members of the group studied. Scientific frame of mind requires an orientation to something outside oneself. Collins may be hanging his vision of social science on a logical frame that is ill-suited to comprehending radically different epistemic activities on and beyond science. Hirschauer's ethnography differs profoundly from the traditional image of confrontation between a scientific observer and members of a primitive culture.

This article presents an ethnography of Quebec Science Policy. It adopts an ethnographic approach in order to study how the science and technology staff of the Quebec Government, starting in 1981, went about devising policy measures as part of what they saw as a general science policy framework for biotechnology. In recent years, the sociology of science has been profoundly renewed by the use of an ethnographic approach to the study of scientific practice. The same cannot be said of science policy studies. Only a limited number of authors have studied in detail the construction and application of particular science policy programmes, and their contributions are mostly based on the a posterior examination of public documents. Science policy practices, at least at that stage, appear to be first and foremost representational practices grounded in particular kinds of literary activities characterized by an extended intertextual web. In such a framework, the native category of file or dossier plays a central role, allowing for the basic classificatory operations in which representations are grounded.

The article presents abstracts of sociological research. They include "A Political Mythology of World Order: Carl Schmitt's Nomos," by Mitchell Dean, "The Nostalgias of Situationist Subversion," by Alastair Bonnett, "Accelerating Luhmann: Towards a Systems Theory of Ambivalence," by Ole Bjerg, and "Muslim Reconstructions of Knowledge and the Re-enchantment of Modernity," by Ali Zaidi.