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Gay men experience a different level of brotherhood in a social fraternity than their straight counterparts. This paper will answer: In what ways do the experiences of two Gay men in a social fraternity display aspects of inequality? Theories behind this question have been researched by sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, yet few have taken the time to really create an intimate experience with theory and testimony from the men being studied. In the exploration of this broader question, the paper breaks down some of the the subtle and explicit ways greek life made two gay men feel like outsiders within their community and how the institution maintains fraternities as a heteronormative space. This paper pulls from an epistemology of queer theory, and previous research of masculinity, sexuality, homophobia, as well as power to show the theory behind testimony. Interviews and a brief survey present important data on the specific colleges situation surrounding gay fraternity men. Future studies can and should take this intimate approach, especailly in the exploration of the connected subject of college hazing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers gender inequality in the music industry at every level of gender as a social structure (Risman 2004). It does this through an analysis of individual musical preferences (Last.fm), Billboard top artists of 2016, and Coachella's headliners from 2016 and 2017. This paper finds that the highest level of gender as a social structure, the institutional level, possesses the most gender inequality (Coachella), the lowest level, individual, displays the most equality (Last.fm), and the intermediate level, interactional/cultural level (Billboard top 100) falls somewhere in between. I deem the lack of progress of the highest level institutional stagnation. This paper also finds that groups consisting of more than one woman are most disadvantaged, but that solo women have achieved huge success almost to the point of reaching parity with men on some levels, a phenomenon that I call tokenormativity. Overall, this paper shows the need for change at the highest levels of the music industry, and that the lower levels demand this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes multiple predictors of tie formation among musicians in the popular music industry. Research in the production of culture tradition of sociology emphasizes the importance of structural factors on creativity, and the dynamics of team formation speak to this. Team structures are important in a variety of outcomes, such as popular, peer, and market recognition. As such, I analyze various types of homophily and potential triadic closure in the propensity for two artists to form a tie. I do this using longitudinal, big data collection and employing a repeated discrete-time event history analysis. I find support for the importance of genre as a social signal independent of musical qualities, and evidence of structural effects such as transitivity. The results of this paper and the nature of the data collected show the promise for future research pertaining to network analyses, questions of multiplexity, and the role of categories in career success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In understanding new algorithmic management techniques emerging in online labor platforms, sociologists and technology scholars in other fields have focused on the use of metrics and the impact of quantification on different parts of the labor process. However, these technological systems utilize multiple mechanisms to manage workers and match them with potential clients, including personal profiles, qualitative reviews, and on-platform communication systems. Using interviews and online ethnographic observations of care workers using online labor platforms to find work, this paper examines how this ecosystem of algorithmic management both transforms - and reinforces - the gendered construction of care work. However, these mechanisms do not have universal effects on the diverse population of workers that use these sites to find work. Workers' construct meaningful interactions with these technological systems differently depending on their occupational identities and experience. Experienced, professional care workers use the language of alienation and rationalization, while less experienced and casual care workers use narratives of entrepreneurship and efficiency to navigate the sites' requirements. This paper concludes by calling for a more ecological approach to understanding algorithmic management beyond metrics, and for the continuing importance of occupational cultures in an era of flexible and gig work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to systematize the main ideas on "taste" and "art" in the writings of German sociologist Norbert Elias. Even though Elias's work is mainly known for his theory on "The civilizing process," he developed substantial ideas on problems that were later associated mainly with Bourdieusian sociology: distinction, taste, art, status. Following Elias's insights, the paper argues that "taste" should be understood as the expression of sensibilities that arise from networks of interdependence (or, as he called them, "figurations") that are situated in particular historical contexts. These sensibilities, thus, are historically contingent and sociologists should study them observing their variations over long periods of time. The paper analyses the key texts were Elias developed these ideas, above all his books "The Court Society" and "Mozart: Portrait of a Genius", and his essays on kitsch, German lyric poetry, and African art. The paper makes contributions to both the understanding of Norbert Elias's work and the theoretical vocabulary of the sociology of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much sociological research has questioned how religion influences people. While some focus on the effects of religion in people's personal religious lives, others look at how religion influences the work of organizations and similar groups of people. For some scholars, we can think of religion in terms of the social capital that it affords organizations. For other scholars, religion is important in terms of the internal value religious adherents place on it. This paper presents the argument for a more complicated understanding of how religion and work are connected. That religion affects what people is not as interesting a question as how people groups and situations interact and the result of that interaction on the things people say and do. I integrate the work on group styles from the sociology of culture to show how religion and groups affect each other in the field of international development. I posit that the group styles are the primary factor (the "hinge") in how groups coordinate their activities. My research draws on 9 months of ethnographic observations of medical mission groups in Jamaica. The paper concludes that group styles, not religious identity or beliefs, directly causes how groups coordinate their actions on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral judgments of individuals suffering economic hardship either naturalize or problematize inequality with far-reaching consequences for cultural beliefs about economic justice more generally. This paper introduces a relational model of moral economic judgment. The lessons people draw from a time of economic hardship, their ideas of "deserved" outcomes, are informed not merely or primarily by their own experience, but by the experiences of other people they are in close contact with. Data for this paper comes from an interview and survey-study with 41 respondents in the context of post-socialist former East Germany. I demonstrate that friendship ties are understood as "deserved" just as much as economic outcomes are, thus illuminating an important qualitative mechanism that allows to go beyond the culture/economics dualism in explaining inequality beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quasi-realism is an assertion about a degree: a matter of attention and how this structure of intelligibility alters what we take to be real. Given the partial separation of language from thought as the justification for an anti-foundationalist epistemology and calls to phrase the human sciences in cognitive scientific terms, the intelligibility of sociology's own central subject matter is becoming a political matter that the mere assertion of theoretical pluralism alone cannot address. These politics become clear when one examines the sociological theorizing that delineates cognitive sociology from the contemporary debate in the sociology of culture & cognition, a lingering ambiguity regarding what "environment" means. In light of this debate, this paper seeks to articulate Durkheim's arguments according to two different structures of intelligibility. In doing so, the paper revisits Durkheim's articulation of the dualism of human nature, its relationship to Goffman's cognitive sociology, and the prospect of a quasi-realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has seen a revival of cultural studies, with many urban and community scholars especially interested in the ways in which culture brings about strategies for action (see Swidler 1986). In the present paper, we examine a sample of people who are part of an expat "digital nomad: subculture, and ask what cultural "toolkit" nomads use to solve their problems back home? To do so, this paper analyzes data from fieldwork and 70 formal interviews to examine a sample of creative class professionals who left their homes in order to become expat digital nomads, "professionals who prefer a locationindependent lifestyle that allows them to travel and work anywhere in the world" (Mohn 2014). Given that interacting, social communities depend, in part, upon shared values in order to flourish, we identified the five core values that inform digital nomads' decisions to take action to leave home and engage in nomad community building abroad. We label these values: individualism, selfimprovement, sharing and helping, positivity and hustle, and minimalism. As each value is significant to the character of their communitybuilding, we first discuss them individually and then describe their confluence in Bali's digital nomad community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the debates about a financialisation of 'life' in Anglo-American countries are possibly premature, this paper explores the potential emotion-rules and time-orientations in financial organisations. It is a work in progress for new research which queries the extent that Anglo-American financial rules have been imposed on other financial capitals of the world, eg Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore/KL or Mumbai. Debates on emotion-rules (eg Flam, Barbalet and obviously Hoschchild and Goffman) are mentioned in passing, so too the relation between culture and emotions in economy (eg Berezin). The paper explores the specific time-orientations in Anglo-American finance organisations (theoretically extremely interesting, given the prominence of utopian orientations to time in Mannheim and in contemporary physics, cf. orthodox economics or sociology for that matter) and draws on a certainty construction typology (Zinn) which is stretched and modified, to investigate qualitative interview material with informed sceptics in the financial world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"When it comes to being a part of hip hop in a black community, it still feels like I'm on the outside looking in," explains Dropjaw, a white rapper from Chicago's underground hip hop scene. "I have to almost prove something to everybody. To be respected as an MC and an artist by black people is more of a challenge." This project was fueled by a single question: How do white rappers create and maintain authenticity when they are deemed inauthentic by the standards of hip hop culture? Using data from an interview-based ethnographic study of 25 white rappers from Chicago, this paper investigates the complex interplay between culture and authenticity. Though the term authenticity is used often in the culture literature, here the concept is unpacked to examine the actual social mechanisms at work. In doing so, this paper offers a more nuanced understanding how outsiders select and reject culture to create authentic identities and cultural objects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past thirty years, the ideology of "diversity" has become pervasive in the U.S. Drawing upon five and a half years of ethnographic data, this paper examines diversity discourses and practices in an urban neighborhood, a public university, and a multinational corporation. Organizational participants in all three sites consider diversity to be relevant to local social problems of institutional or organizational access, such as homeownership and displacement of poor people, college admissisons for racial minorities, and advancement for female and minority employees. Diversity discourses and practices express and formalize within organizations different interpretations of difference and inequality. The paper outlines a typology of common diversity discourses, corresponding uses of these discourses, and key organizational "access points" for these discourses (Giddens 1990) -speech acts, law, social science, and adminstrative procedures, particularly skill-development programs and metrics. The paper builds on cultural analysis and studies of inequality by arguing that a cultural object has different implications for routine organizational activity and organizations' solutions to social problems, depending on both its meanings and the specific ways in which it is formalized within organizations. Findings help to explain why diversity ideology has become so popular, especially among elites, and the implications when organizations use it to address concerns about inequity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the promotion of consumption, cultural intermediaries produce goods and experiences for sale in the consumer marketplace, and mobilize and motivate others to participate in the reproduction of consumer culture. The paper examines the occupation of personal training as an ideal case study of the characteristics of cultural intermediary work. Based on a discourse analysis of personal training occupational texts from 1990 to 2000, the paper employs a cultural economy perspective to examine how the work of trainers, and cultural intermediaries more generally, is shaped by normative codes of professionalism, an investment of personal resources and aesthetic labor (such as attitude, appearance and belief), and the tension between cultural and economic categories. Personal training is a particularly revealing case because of its explicit tensions between culture (e.g. a professional, service-oriented ethic) and economy (e.g. the entrepreneurial aspects of selling services). Trainers are encouraged to adopt a vocational attitude to reconcile these tensions, suggesting how cultural intermediary work more generally involves particular dispositions, which are the outcomes of negotiating between economy and culture-and the personal and professional-in specific occupational contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that "shopping locally" isn't always about "thinking globally," as the popular bumpersticker suggests. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this paper makes a two-fold argument about the ways residents of a small town understand the importance of shopping "locally." First, residents connected their sense of belonging in a rural community to a belief that membership in this community discouraged the "excessive materialism" they perceived as endemic to suburban and urban communities. Second, while many Viroquans supported the idea of shopping locally, they differed in their definitions of "local," and in their rationales for doing so. These differences reflect both different orientations to communal belonging in Viroqua, but different orientations to the political and economic value of patronizing local businesses. The different logics of "local" residents used to organize their thinking about consumption implied different sets of political and community priorities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a micro-sociological analysis of the "state effect" produced by policies of historic preservation through the recording of ancient buildings and objects. Records of historic items are produced through expert investigation in villages, churches and private homes. What does the practice of such "field work" say of the reason of state in relation to the nation's people and monuments, and the forms of resistance offered by the latter? What does the bureaucratic-expert culture of surveyors say of the state's modalities of power over its population and territory? Post-Foucaultian scholarship has mainly captured the state's "gaze" in the abstract terms of an institutionalist approach from which agents are absent, or in which they are reduced to a sort of bureaucratic vocation that makes them act out their rationalizing obsessions through disembodied planning schemes which they applied at a grand scale. But what do the concrete practices of viewing say of this mechanic of surveillance on the ground? And what does practice tell us that neither organizational nor institutional approaches really account for? These are the questions I answer here.This paper is a contribution to the culturalist agenda of state studies that has developed over the past six years. Its object is the state as a "state effect"-that is, as a powerful cultural construct about the rational management of space, yet a construct grounded in concrete practices and interactions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ariston bathhouse marks the site of the first raid on a predominantly gay bathhouse clientele, and the story of that raid and the ensuing criminal trials are important for understanding the development of modern sexuality in the early 20th century. While the raid itself demonstrates the extent of state surveillance of persons deemed sexually deviant, the trials of the five defendants more broadly illuminate the cultural terrain of turn-of-the-century sexuality. This paper examines the defense strategies of five men arrested in the Ariston raid. Through an analysis of trial transcripts, I will show how the discursive space of the courtroom constructed normative sexuality during a time period when modern notions of hetero and homosexuality took root. Specifically, this paper evaluates sodomy defenses centering on the act itself and the sexual subjectivities of the defendants. Act-centered strategies concern the physical practice of sodomy. Following this tact, some attorneys emphasized the bodily impossibility of the sexual scenarios described by the prosecution and the presumed absurdity that anyone would do it in public. The second strategy hinged on a connection between sodomy and sexual identity. Identity-centered defenses highlighted the manly character of the defendant encoded in his class status and desire for women. I explore the implications of my study for gay historiography and for understanding the legal construction and policing of sexuality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformation in the focus of the preservation movement in inter-war Britain. Specifically, this research details the first major change to the mission of the National Trust, a private charity preserving British national heritage. I show that during the 1930s the Trust received and responded to pressure from members of the aristocracy to shift its efforts to preserving country houses and great estates. At a time when the anachronism of an aristocracy was increasingly recognized, members of this social group, through co-opting the Trust, were able to obtain many benefits for their social class. By gaining concessions from the government allowing the Trust to take on their properties, members of the aristocracy now had an avenue out of crippling taxes and death duties. Rather than selling off or abandoning their properties, many families continued living on site in return for allowing minimum public access. The aristocracy was able to shore up their social position by framing their culture, their lifestyle, and indeed their social group, as an important facet of national heritage worthy of the tremendous resources needed for its preservation. They could now claim a newfound importance as 'guardians of the nation's heritage.' This paper provides evidence to suggest that elite co-optation of this national preservation organization led to dramatic changes in the definition of what constituted national heritage. As a result of elite influence, between the 1930s and the 1950s the Trust shifted its concern-and its definition of national heritage-towards elite domestic estates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With similar research having gone relatively stagnant in recent years, this study attempts to revive the sociological interpretation of bathroom graffiti by means of content analysis. Hence, this paper displays the findings of research on male bathroom graffiti in the university setting. Unlike most of the former research studies on restroom graffiti, this paper will not serve to compare and contrast graffiti between men's and women's restrooms, locations of restrooms within a given university setting, or restrooms in various types of post-secondary educational institutions. Rather, it will attempt to establish a theoretical base in order to explain the patterns found in male graffiti content. The theory developed in Michael S. Kimmel's "Masculinity as Homophobia" (1994) will serve as the primary source for this analysis, while several other theories will play supplementary roles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few words in the current American lexicon are as ubiquitous and ostensibly uplifting as diversity; however, actual meanings and functions of the term are difficult to pinpoint. In this paper we use in-depth interviews conducted in four major metropolitan areas to explore conceptions of diversity in everyday discourse. Although most Americans respond positively to initial questions on the topic, our interviews reveal that their actual understandings of diversity are undeveloped and contradictory. We highlight the tensions within the discourse between the idealized conceptions and complicated realities of social difference as well as the challenge of balancing the recognition of group-based commitments against traditional values of individual freedom and choice. We also find that respondents define diversity in abstract, universal terms even though most of their concrete references and experiences involve interactions with racial others. We situate these findings in the context of the unseen privileges and presumptions of whiteness in mainstream U.S. culture. The paper concludes with a description and discussion of the inability of respondents-even our most articulate and politically-engaged respondents-to talk coherently about society inequality in the context of a conversation focused on diversity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When culture is invoked to understand the consequences of growing up in disadvantaged communities, the isolation of ghetto residents from mainstream individuals and mainstream culture is often emphasized. This paper is an attempt to reorient current thinking about what is important about culture in disadvantaged neighborhoods when it comes to adolescent decision-making and well-being. It argues that rather than being characterized by the dominance of "oppositional" or "ghetto-specific" cultures, disadvantaged neighborhoods are characterized by cultural heterogeneity: a wide array of competing and conflicting cultural models. Using survey data from Addhealth, it shows that disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibit greater heterogeneity in cultural goals and frames regarding teenage pregnancy and education, but that conventional views dominate numerically. This paper also investigates the consequences of cultural heterogeneity for adolescent outcomes, showing that in more heterogeneous neighborhoods adolescents are less likely to act in accordance with the goals and frames that they articulate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dimensions of "Arab-ness" have always marked Arabs in the Americas. In spite of hailing from various Arab backgrounds and affiliations, being Arab American implies the acceptance not only of a new cultural identity predicated on an ethnic heritage, but also constitutes a socio-political declaration, asserting a national and ethnic identity that exists in cultural ideology, if not in political or legal terms. Therefore, in the absence of any collective Arab State that can bring together various cultural Arabs under one law and nationality or offer a locus of affiliation, the only venue that had been available historically has been to assert this Arabity through cultural attestation of belonging to something bigger and larger than parochial subdivisions. This paper examines Arab American youth in Dearborn (Michigan), many of whom are born in the United States, and all of whom are raised there, can in fact be "Arab", highlighting the elements that define Arab ethnicity in America. The paper suggests that these youth are not Arab in the way their parents would like (or theoretically think of them) and they are not American in the way that mainstream society may perceive them, but a new hybrid culture. Although they are supposed to not to "fit" easily in both cultures, making it difficult for them to adjust to either, nonetheless, the "Arabics" of Dearborn are thriving because ultimately they do not see themselves deficient, rather they count themselves as whole individuals, intuitively accepting their hybrid natures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers this question; How do cultural producers distinguish themselves from members of their culture and from outsiders? Much of CCCS or CCCS inspired research focused on elements of style as the primary means of distinction between subcultures and the mainstream. These influential theories had much less to say about intra-cultural distinctions. Bourdieu's conceptualization of cultural production as a complex web involving various forms of capital and practices within a field seems to help explain better both inter and intra-cultural distinctions. Hip-Hop provides an excellent case study because of its early oppositional history and its current ubiquity in American and global culture. Of particular interest were Hip-Hop DJs, widely considered the originators of the culture. This paper is an engagement with these issues by way of ethnographic research methods and 33 in-depth interviews with DJs in the SF bay area and Atlanta, GA Metro area. Through this research we are able to more fully understand how Hip-hop DJs distinguish themselves from other DJs inside and outside of Hip-Hop, how cultures redefine and restructure themselves and how distinctions are made within cultures. I believe research of this nature is useful in the sociology for the building of better theories and methods for understanding music, culture and society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that for the full revitalization of South Africa to take place, a critical step is to engage the synergistic effects of "ubuntu" or "humanness", a philosophy that informs the thinking fo a majority of South Africans, and which has been suppressed by businesses informed by western value systems. "Ubuntu" acknowledges that people are not just rational beings, but are social beings who also possess emotions such as anxiety, hope, fear, anger, excitement and remorse. The position taken here is that openly recognizing these human dimensions and accomodating them in the workplace is good for business. The paper gives examples of situations in which "ubuntu" manisfests itself in the workplace, and provides lessons that can be learnt from those situations. Among the advantages that can arise from harnessing "ubuntu" are improvements in employee satisfaction, productivity, workplace harmony and, ultimately, the development of a vibrant economy that can enhance global competitiveness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, the particular emotive and cognitive framing techniques utilized in fourteen anti-war songs from the Vietnam era, seven of which were in the Top Ten and seven that never charted on the Billboard Hot 100, were coded to compare which framing techniques were considered more likely to build oppositional ideologies amongst two groups: activists and non-activists. Specifically, emotive framing techniques that could build oppositional ideologies such as anger, suspicion, fear as well as hopefulness and compassion were coded within the songs. In addition, four cognitive frames were looked at: (i.e., the blaming elites frame, the war is senseless frame, the Vietnam specific frame, and the interdependence frame). The findings from this coding analysis are examined and the paper ends with discussing the implications of these findings for the broader field of social movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological conversations about cultural products like books have a long history, to which this paper contributes. In addition, sociologists have long been interested in questions about how social norms and ideas are sometimes reproduced and sometimes resisted. This paper is rooted in a tradition of sociologists who study the novel as a source of data. Like these sociologists, I look to the American novel for information about social ideologies and structured representations; like them, I look to the history of American book publishing for information about how texts come to exist and circulate. Unlike them, though, I focus on the cultural content and publishing history of American children's novels, and on each text's willingness to resist the reproduction of dominant social arrangements which are based upon inequality. Further, literary scholars argue that modern feminist fiction emerged during the 1970s, as a component of second wave feminist political activity. This sociological study also critiques and transforms definitions of 'the feminist novel,' and suggests that feminist, or subversive, children's novels existed well before the late-twentieth-century eruption of second wave feminism. By using a less-individualistic theory of social stratification and resistance than previous research, the paper uncovers a range of narrative strategies that explicate and resist overlapping forms of oppression. This paper conceptualizes children's novels as (potentially) containing narratives of resistance, which permits a connection to feminist theories of narratives, since they offer the best models for these types of questions and goals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls into question the color-blindness of racial democracy in Peru by examining the extent to which Peruvians of African descent are full citizens and are free to exercise their cultural rights. This paper contributes to our understanding of the extent to which the marginalization of Afro-Peruvians inhibits democratic governance and access to full citizenship and impinges on Afro-Peruvians' cultural rights. Specifically, the paper will focus on the interplay between Afro-Peruvian cultural amalgamation and racial democracy in Peru. I will probe the following three questions. 1) What does the incorporation of Afro-Peruvian cultural forms into national or regional culture mean for the incorporation of Afro-Peruvians into the Peruvian nation as full citizens? 2) Does the appropriation of Afro-Peruvian cultural forms into national identity constitute an infringement on cultural rights or an acceptance and celebration of an integral part of the Peruvian mestizo (white/Indian) nation? 3) In what ways do individual and collective cultural amalgamation lead Peru closer to racial democracy?This paper first includes an in-depth discussion of mestizaje, cultural rights, and racial democracy, as well as an overview of the extant literature on the subjects. Subsequently, I make use of the data I have collected to assess Afro-Peruvian participation in mestizaje. Then, I consider the extent to which Afro-Peruvian cultural forms have been incorporated into the Peruvian nation through mestizaje. Finally, I consider whether or not a cultural rights framework is appropriate for understanding Afro-Peruvian participation in racial democracy and mestizaje in Peru. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how postmortem/funerary photography has created an historical as well as a cultural construction of visual images in the grieving process. Social practices of the display and use of postmortem photos are compared from the 19th through 20th century to assess changes in societal attitudes over time. A new grieving ritual is observed which emerged for the post-September 11th terrorist attack. Modern rituals reflect the continued need to memorialize our loved ones using a cherished keepsake, souvenir or memento, such as a photograph. This paper acknowledges the rarity of postmortem photography in the 21st century as a socially acceptable practice; the value of using postmortem photos as an historical and cultural grieving ritual; and the need for further research that examines attitudes towards the use of postmortem photography as an acceptable bereavement practice in contemporary U.S. culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mythopoetic men's movement is a popular and controversial force on the American cultural landscape today. While much has been written about this phenomenon, little sustained participant-observer research has been done to explore its complexities and nuances. Based on over six years of ethnographic research, the paper is an in-depth study of the ideological dynamics of the mythopoetic men's movement. Developed is a theoretical perspective drawing on new advances in cultural sociology, creating a synthesis between these and the theoretical achievements of recent work in the field of masculinity studies. The paper then uses this semiotic cultural approach to examine the dynamics of power, hegemony, exclusion, identity, belief, motivation, ideological contestation and social change within the realm of the mythopoetic men's movement. Uncovered is a discourse of liberational masculinity, mobilized by group members to understand and critique what they identify as hegemonic masculinity, a force they see as fundamentally damaging themselves and those around them. Struggling to understand and evaluate the events in their world, these men explore, share, argue and contest the symbolic meaning of their life experiences. Through complex processes of ideological contestation, the men battle over the moral and political soul of masculinity and their identities, creating a discourse that is feminist in central ways but confused and contradictory about its ultimate position. They are developing an emergent world view to understand and address what they see as the oppressive, unjust, emotionally and spiritually dysfunctional social world of contemporary America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a careful consideration and emphasis on culture, this paper demonstrates the lack of utility of theories of oppositional culture and downward assimilation in describing the trajectories of disadvantaged second generation youth. The paper compares working class and poor second generation teenagers in London and New York City by using school ethnographic, interview (n=130), and survey (n=191) data. Finding that youth in both cities express positive attitudes toward school and education; strong preferences for African American-inspired hip-hop music and styles; and the need to act tough and maintain self-pride, the paper concludes that Nondominant Cultural Capital (NDCC) is a better concept to explain minority urban youth. Urban youth create their own socio-cultural world with its own set of rules, taste preferences, and interactional styles. NDCC buys status for youth within their peer worlds. The most successful teenagers are able to succeed academically as well as within their peer world of NDCC. Indeed, this, rather than rejecting mainstream society and norms, is what most youth say they strive for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists recognize the diversity of families in contemporary American society. Lesbian and gay 'families of choice' are a cultural category of family structures that has been largely understudied. I propose that studying 'families of choice' can expand and transform sociological discussions of family transitions and diversification and of family as a site of doing gender and sexuality. In addition, the study of lesbian and gay 'families of choice' highlights the role of sexuality in the study of gender and power. This paper asks how family is constructed in the gay and lesbian community through the performance of gender and sexuality. Data for this study consist of personal narratives and systematic accounts of chosen families as they appear in books and articles that were written primarily for gay and lesbian audiences. I consider these intercommunity written texts as forms of distribution of community knowledge. The main argument of this paper is that the stories that gay men and lesbians tell in the data are drawn from a historically located, structurally restrained cultural 'tool kit' and use gender and sexuality to construct family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper surveys the recent sociological literature on the culture wars and applies insights contained therein to an examination of the 2004 Election. The culture wars hypothesis is defended here against the findings of survey researchers who purport that voter attitudes remain much more centrist than cultural warriors or portraits of a polarized nation would lead one to believe. The importance of the symbolic dimensions of politics is examined in order to (1) defend the culture wars hypothesis against authors who assert it is not supported by surveys of pubic opinion and (2) clarify the sources and functions of the culture wars amongst competing conceptualizations. The paper argues that the culture wars function chiefly to frame pubic culture to conservative advantage, thereby mobilizing popular consent behind a more authoritarian and pro-business class agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese avant-garde art occupies an uneasy place in both domestic and global arenas of cultural production. This art emerged and developed under the crossfire of an authoritarian socialist state and an unappreciative domestic audience in the late 1970s, and finally established itself in the 1980s as a form of "unofficial art" that exhibited political dissidence and formalistic transgression. Alongside China's unprecedented market liberalization in the post-89 era, the previously politically committed "dissident" Chinese avant-garde art that emphasized on aesthetic formalism, rationalism and political disobedience has been transformed into a different kind of avant-garde that celebrates cynicism, playfulness, irrationality, politically detachment, and distinctively "postmodern" forms of expressions. In order to decipher the prevalent irony, nonchalance and sarcasm observed in post-89 Chinese avant-garde art works vis-à-vis the previous politically committed works of the pre-89 avant-garde, the author frames her analysis in an "epochal cultural-pragmatic dissonance" paradigm. Namely, after 1989, there has been a clash or dissension, between an emergent "demystified" or "de-idealized" conception of the West in the symbolic realm and the increasingly important role Western agents and institutions play pragmatically in the Chinese art world, subsequent to China's integration into the international art market. The paper argues that the cultural-pragmatic dissonance that took place in the post-89 art world inspired the "Postmodern" style in Chinese avant-garde art today. The data used in this paper was drawn from extensive interviews with Chinese artists, curators, art dealers, Western agents; as well as art journals, exhibition catalogues, artist biographies and numerous online resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a society with pre-existing subgroups based on qualitative characteristics such as race, gender, or ethnicity. Mechanisms based on sociobehavioral engines such as self-esteem, justice, or status generate an individual's orientation and loyalty to one of three entities: self, subgroup, or society. Because these propensities are generated in everyone -- that is, in all pre-existing subgroups -- there arise three new emergent subgroups -- Selfistas, Subgroupistas, and Groupistas -- each of which includes persons from all the pre-existing subgroups and thus may be thought of as a coalition. A recent paper introduced the framework for analyzing Selfistas, Subgroupistas, and Groupistas, and presented results for the special case in which the sociobehavioral engine is the sense of justice (Jasso 2005). This new paper extends the work, deriving predictions for the cases in which the sociobehavioral engines are status and potential power. This new paper then contrasts all the results, thus answering the question, What are the effects of caring about one sociobehavioral engine rather than another and what are the effects of valuing one kind of resource versus another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations between the U.S. and Europe and their manner of representation and reinstitution through the media has drawn much attention in the turbulent period following the terrorists attacks of September 11 and the following military attack of Iraq. The American-led military operation in Iraq came into being in a concrete symbolic universe of war and diplomacy, sovereignty and coalition, friend and foe, power and universal values. The current paper asks about how American media, in particular the New York Times, represented international relationship between the U.S. and Europe in the period between the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, leading up to the current war in Iraq, and up until the U.S. official declaration on end of combat operations in Iraq in May 2003. The paper also asks how this representation has changed over time. Data includes 1390 New York Times articles published between September 11, 2001 (attack on the World Trade Center in New York) and May 12, 2003 (End of combat operations in Iraq as announced by the occupying forces). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the claims citizens make on authorities in a content analysis of "letters to the editor" from a post-socialist Russian locality. The analysis maps out the topics, protagonists and narrative structures of the letters to isolate the principles authors use to justify claims. The writing reveals that, rather than judge authorities based on policy, citizens applied standards of personal character to assess the worthiness of leaders and bosses. The paper interprets this form of claim making as a reflection of the authors' position in patronage relationships. The findings contribute to researchers investigating the relationship between culture and patronage as well as to those uncovering the survival strategies of citizens in post-socialist Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the backlash fueling the controversy over same-sex marriage was, at heart, a sex panic. It examines the contest in one battleground state: Oklahoma, which was a key player in deciding party control of the U.S. Senate. Oklahoma was also one of eleven states to pass a constitutional amendment in the November election. This paper draws on queer theory to investigate how core anxieties over sex preserved the normalization of heterosexuality and, at the same time, exposed its core assumptions. I contend that these crucial instances of denaturalizing heterosexuality are a necessary condition to advancing lesbian and gay rights, as they represent ruptures in the armor of Christian morality that maintain the boundaries of sexual Otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses three distinct ways that culture has been studied within the framework of network analysis. The author notices the convergence of interest in texts, structure, and analytic tools in both cultural studies and network analysis and further argues that recent advances in network cultural analysis stem from this common interest (Wuthnow, 1987; Wuthnow and Witten, 1988; Carley, 1993; Pichardo, 1997; Batagelj et al., 2002). Thus, this paper discusses the ways in which texts can be analyzed to study culture as a structure by using graph theoretic methods and tools. In addition to a comparison of network text analysis with the conventional content analysis, the need for comparisons of structural (dis)similarities of multiple textual and non-textual network structures is stressed and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines stories of coerced prostitution voiced in New York City's Court of General Sessions from 1908 to 1915. During these years, the problem of "white slavery," or forced prostitution, received an unprecedented amount of attention from journalists, politicians, and anti-vice activists. Court records provide valuable information about the the gender order wherein sex crimes were perpetrated and prosecuted. Legal documents reveal competing narratives designed to resonate with prevailing sensibilities about proper masculinity and femininity. Using transcripts of compulsory prostitution trials tried in New York City, this paper interrogates the connection between the cultural production of white slavery narratives outside the courtroom and the invocation of those narratives inside the courtroom. The white slavery stories found in the reform literature provided a template for attorneys, complainants, defendants, and other legal actors to articulate and understand the practice of commercial sex. Yet, legal actors often deviated from the standard white slavery script and advanced different stories about life in early urban American. Comparing white slavery narratives with legal testimony about compulsory prostitution demonstrates the embedded relationship between the legal sphere and popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the importance of the concept of an autopoietic system for the sociological study of culture. The autopoietic model of culture provides a more sociological definition of cul-ture. It offers fresh insights into such classic problems as the autonomy of culture, the relation between producers' intent and receivers' meanings, and the political effects of the everyday use of culture. The paper concludes by showing the value of the autopoietic model to potential re-search projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining recent work in cultural theory in social movement research, political economy, and cognitive psychology, and foundational work in these areas, this paper presents a synthetic model of cognitive processes in the context of political contention. Despite broad interest in the intersection between culture and cognition, and in the cultural dynamics of social movements, there has been little systematic effort to understand the cognitive processes of change in social movement settings. The paper constructs and illustrates a model of cognitive change with reference to a case study of opposition to workfare in New York City, where the legal and political construction of workfare workers has been marked by considerable ambiguity. In tracing the ways in which activists changed their minds about strategy and definitions, the paper integrates environmental, cognitive, and relational dynamics in explanations of political contention to advance a non-individualist, broadly materialist and pragmatist theory of cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper contains two complementary essays, one on the logic of comparison and the fallacies of structural Westernism, the other on the history of Japanese prisons. Usually, when Western social scientists find a non-Western historical case that resembles well-known examples from their own cultures, they tend to analyze the non-Western case by imposing standards of measurement acquired from their prior studies. However, such a method of inquiries often misses the opportunity of theory elaboration that an in-depth explication of non-western cases could uniquely offer. By using the case of Japanese prison history, this paper attempts to show an alternative method of comparative inquiries. The invention of the Japanese correctional institution in the late eighteenth century coincided with the rise of the prison reform movement in Europe and North America. Through a detailed examination of the Japanese case that developed independently without knowledge of western penology, the paper offers a multi-causal and relational analysis of the origin of prisons, distinct from the existing Western models such as Marxist labor control theory. The Japanese case calls for a simultaneous \"re-economizing\" and \"re-politicizing\" of penal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing ethnographic research methods, this paper provides a description and reflection on my fieldwork with a group of men working as day laborers at a casual work site in Brooklyn, New York City. The participants are diverse across various characteristics, in particular nationality, race, and ethnicity. This paper focuses on the interactions between the fieldworker and one of the different groups working at this intersection influenced by social positions of nationality, ethnicity, race, and gender. As significant as are the persons and social action that are the focus of study in fieldwork, there are also the participants? own interpretations of the fieldworker. I consider the participants? conceptions and thus, their social construction of the ethnographer and then go onto reflect how this experience informed and contributed to the interpretation of social meaning in the field. The overall project attempts to advance our understanding of the incorporation of new immigrants into American society, by considering the factors shaping these processes and the effects on American culture. And in this paper, the ethnographer?s work in interpreting meaning reflects the multiple realities and shifting identities of the various actors, including the researcher herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

?Diversity? has become a fashionable and plastic buzzword over the past thirty years. With the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning affirmative action at the University of Michigan, the concept of diversity has received even greater public scrutiny. The existing scholarly literature that examines discourses about diversity usually relies on macro-level, legal, or text analyses, overlooking people?s interpretations of diversity in their everyday practices. The proposed paper helps to fill in this gap. It draws on over a year of ethnographic evidence about how interests groups involved in the lawsuits against UM?including university administrators, pro- and anti-affirmative action activists, legal professionals, and political leaders?politically and legally mobilized around the lawsuits and then responded to the Court?s decisions. The paper builds on cultural analyses of the law and collective action by examining how various interest groups negotiate different socio-legal paradoxes around diversity. Preliminary findings show how nearly every group is in favor of ?diversity,? but they all confront challenges when defining this concept and putting it into practice. For example, outsider activists?both in favor of and opposed to affirmative action?talk about diversity by simultaneously endorsing it and questioning its relevance, meaning, or existence. The proposed paper concludes with a discussion of how ideas related to law acquire constituencies, constitute the categories through which people construct the world, and ultimately shape their efforts to address different social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a study of the development of modern European cuisine through an examination of the socio-cognitive schemes that shape the way social actors think of and about food. While the historical phase that spans from the late middle ages to modernity has been widely studied --mainly by historians-- I advance a new interpretation that focuses on the influence of cognitive patterns on the structure of cuisine --the ways of eating, cooking and serving food. Thus, the shift in the mode of classification helps explain, I argue, the origin of the modern configuration of cuisine built on the polarity between the sweet and savory tastes. Using the case of cuisine, I propose to see the cultural schemes that define thinking in a socio-historical context as providing the conditions of possibility for transformations in a cultural sphere to occur. This paper attempts in this way to contribute to our understanding of the relation between cultural practices and cognitive schema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the production and uses of chapbooks within poetry communities. While books are usually longer than chapbooks the key differences between the two are that chapbooks are cheaply produced and distributed hand-to-hand. This paper examines how the meaning of ?cheaply produced? varies according to social and historical contexts, as do the identity and motives of participants in hand-to-hand sales or distribution. My analysis draws from in-depth interviews with poets as well as ethnographic observation of literary events. I explore key constitutive tensions within the field of poetry production and address the ongoing and historical context of chapbook production, distribution and use/consumption. Through teasing out the implications and enmeshments of the field of poetry, the traditions surrounding chapbooks, and the forms and uses of contemporary chapbooks I argue that chapbooks and the practices surrounding them make manifest the tensions of the field of poetry production. I conclude that chapbooks help to support, maintain and enrich the artistic values (symbolic capital) of the poetry field in a way that resists commodification and challenges the values and profit motive of the culture industry and larger fields of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the strategies used by a group of knitters to meet the challenge of maintaining a coherent self-concept. Using ethnographic data I argue that women in the group embrace a self-concept that is potentially inconsistent with knitting. Therefore, they self-consciously work to reconcile the image associated with knitting with the image they have of themselves. This paper explicates the ways group members construct alternative meanings around knitting in an attempt to align the activity with self-concept. Through the image of the grandma knitter, the language of human fulfillment, and language that stresses the importance of difficulty and skill, members legitimate knitting as an activity for young, hip, profession women. I argue that this identity work (Anderson and Snow 1987) is an attempt to align their behavior with their identities. Contrary to theories that treat the self-concept as fractured, shifting, or muted, the ways in which these women act in relation to knitting suggest that people act with the goal of aligning behavior to self-concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the increasing audience garnered by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and the expansion of auto racing into an American sports culture that has historically been dominated by football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. By comparing NASCAR’s recent growth and increased visibility to the historical factors facilitating other sports’ cultural dominance, this paper argues that auto racing has cemented a presence in the limited sports space in the U.S., despite its presence having previously been ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a demographic perspective, the lives of Pacific Island elders in the United States remain largely unexplored. This knowledge gap is the result of a number of factors including the small size of the Pacific Island population, the historic inability on the part of government statistical agencies to collect small population statistics and the fluid nature of Pacific Island self identification. All of these factors have worked together to limit our understanding of this small, though rapidly growing component of the US population. This paper uses data from the 2000 Census of Population to examine this understuudied population. The paper illistrates how Pacific Islanders differ from Asian Americans and how the internal differences in the cultural perceptions of different Pacific Island populations impact their lives in the United States [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethnic conflicts around the globe have sparked renewed attention to the long-debated, oft rejected concept of national culture (or national character) and its effect on politics. Japan, with its Western institutions and East Asian culture, enhanced by its economic successes, has been one natural locus classicus of this debate. Led by empirical findings about networks of extended reciprocity among political organizations in Japan, this paper considers national culture and other explanations for these findings. The network approach allows empirical distinction among different relational qualities and sanctions that can generate power. This paper distinguishes among tangible-coercive, practice-normative and symbolic-emotive relational exchanges, operationalized (imperfectly) as political support, expected reciprocity, and information, respectively. In Japan, national culture has strong symbolic and normative qualities stressing relational harmony. The findings indicate that distinct practice-normative exchanges stressing harmony ?glue? together the Japanese polity. But in the US, more tangible-instrumental relationships predominate, while in Germany, a norm of role-formalism seems pervasive. The contrasts arise from historical, demographic circumstances as well as specific relational content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]