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This study is the first to analyze data from a national survey to investigate the significance for deaf identity of the different forms of social and technological support that deaf people rely upon. Data were derived from a survey among 839 deaf people and were analyzed with regard to social identification as deaf, hearing, bicultural, and marginal. Findings showed connections between technology and identity, including the use of a range of technology to support being culturally deaf. Findings also showed that the deaf and hearing groups had strong homophilous social networks, while the bicultural group tended toward more mixed but equally strong social connectivity. The marginal group had a much thinner social connectivity and relied more upon institutional social support, findings that are in line with previous research revealing a sub-group struggling with social participation and well-being. Theoretically, the paper builds bridges between the fields of social identity and microsociology and shows how a microsociological perspective brings attention to the significance of reiterated social relations and practice for constructing social identity.

Managerial coaching is an important and arguably emblematic example of the transformation of managerial techniques that has occurred in the last decades, where more equal work relations and empowerment of employees is increasingly promoted. In the literature on managerial coaching, the role of the manager-coach is to open up a space for the employee to formulate her desires and attempt to clear the way for their realization. Tensions between the desire of employees and that of managers, although to some degree acknowledged in parts of the literature, is not sufficiently addressed. Furthermore, there is a marked lack of recognition of how the fact that coaching takes place in the context of hierarchical organizations, operating on markets with the aim of creating profit, affect the praxis of managerial coaching. We address these issues by conducting a Lacanian discourse analysis of managerial coaching literature, and show that it operates with a paradoxical notion of autonomy: The autonomy of employees is only called upon in so far as it can be aligned with the aims of management. Through a transposition of Lacan's four discourses, we furthermore situate the phenomena of managerial coaching in the context of the history of management forms. We argue that managerial coaching is emblematic of a shift from what Lacan calls the University discourse (under Taylorist management), to what is best understood as a semblance of the psychoanalytical discourse. It is only a semblance, since the manager-coach in reality retains the position of master in relation to employees.

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This article outlines a micro-social social status theory to explore how inclusive education works out for adolescents with hearing loss. Advanced medical treatment and hearing aids enable inclusive education across societies, but research finds communicative and psychosocial peer difficulties indicating barriers to inclusion. Social status is not explored much in the hearing loss field. Framing our theory against the backdrop of the biosocial model, we advance a theory of how social status is an evolutionary trait of humans' normative and emotional perception to acknowledge and evaluate each others worth. We determine how insider status derives reciprocal exchange relations of attentiveness within primary reference groups, generating a person-to-group standing of equality. One-way exchange relations generate inequality, pushing towards outsider standing. In line with key insights from medical sociology, disability originates in variable but persistently constraining impairment effects that we qualify as fatigue, miscommunication, and behavioural withdrawal from the peer group. A key contribution is our design of an analytical status continuum of insider, peripherical, marginal and outsider person-to-group standings that we employ in a comparative case study of person-to-group standings among 15 adolescents with hearing loss in general elementary schools versus a boarding school. In the former, they experienced diverse social statuses compared to their insider status as a co-enrolled group at an independent boarding school supporting mixed peer groupings across disabilities and backgrounds. We explain why and provide recommendations in support of inclusive education.

Micro-sociology has generally overlooked a decisive yet general condition of human socialization: how disabilities matter. This article outlines a micro-social social status theory to explore inclusive education among adolescents with hearing loss. Advanced medical treatment and hearing aids enable inclusive education across societies, but research highlights communication and peer relation challenges, indicating social barriers to inclusion. Social status is not explored much in the hearing loss field. Framing our theory against the backdrop of the biosocial model, social status is a basic evolutionary trait of normative and emotional attentiveness (evaluative) to each other's worth/standing in the encounter. Insider status derives from reciprocal exchange relations of attentiveness within primary reference groups, generating a person-to-group standing of equality. One-way exchange relations generate inequality, pushing towards outsider standing. In line with key insights from medical sociology, we define and explore hearing loss as a disability originating in variable but persistently constraining impairment effects: fatigue, miscommunication, and behavioural withdrawal from peer group exchange. A key contribution is a status continuum of insider, peripherical, marginal and outsider person-to-group standings. We employ the theory in a comparative case study of person-to-group classes among 15 adolescents with hearing loss in general elementary schools experiencing diverse social statuses compared to insider status at an independent boarding school supporting mixed peer groupings across disabilities and backgrounds. This shows how social status is decisive for inclusive education thus making boarding schools important alternative options to acquire insider status regardless of disability.

It is a scientifically robust insight that hearing loss constrains communicative capacities necessary for everyday life. Risks of marginalization, social withdrawal, depression, and loneliness are elevated across age spans. We suggest a new agenda to explore how advanced medical hearing technology is changing the nature of constraints on social participation for children and adolescents. Much medico-clinical research into auditory-language outcomes demonstrates very good outcomes. However, minor research fields also report highly variable outcomes when it comes to pragmatic language capacities, and psychosocial and peer relation difficulties. This suggests that there is a difference between medico-clinical results and the manners the technology works to support social participation. In order to explore this further, this paper outlines a principle of how successful interaction rests on micro-rhythmic entrainment among certain participants in a bounded situation. Rhythmic entrainment is the processes of becoming entrained in each other’s verbal and non-verbal micro-rhythms and emotions. The result is positive emotional ties, commitment to others, and high emotional energy for participants. The paper suggests that Cochlear Implant users face constraints on such capacities, which it demonstrates with empirical data on how situations of noise, multi-talker, and group conversation present a barrier to interaction and thus bond formation.

The technological advance of cochlear implants (CIs) has provided deaf and hearing-impaired persons with new opportunities to acquire hearing and thus partake in social life on more equal terms. However, recent studies have also documented communicative and emotional difficulties for some CI users, in particular concerning how crowded and noisy situations may lead to high mental energy use and communicative constraints on social participation. Despite this accumulating evidence, few attempts have been made to provide sociological explanations of such aversive outcomes. Here, the authors develop and outline a micro-sociological framework suggesting impaired verbal interactions as a source of emotional energy drain and subsequent dis-integrations and estrangement in the social bond. The authors demonstrate the relevance of this theoretical explanation through a qualitative analysis of eight interviews with adults who had CIs placed as children. The authors discuss the implications of this framework and findings for CI research and users.

This chapter is a micro-sociological exploration of the justifications that Danish general practitioners adopt to support antibiotic usage in their clinical practices. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 21 general practitioners in Denmark, the chapter looks upon the clinic as a particular social world (a justificatory regime) in which different antibiotic treatment strategies are qualified and justified in regard to moral and societal concerns. The chapter demonstrates how the medical application of antibiotics is accompanied by different justifications concerned with efficiencies, general civic interests, localized knowledge and more pervasive ‘green issues’ linked to how to secure sustainable societal usage through political intervention.

The medical professions will lose an indispensable tool in clinical practice if even simple infections cannot be cured because antibiotics have lost effectiveness. This article presents results from an exploratory enquiry into “good doctoring” in the case of antibiotic prescribing at a time when the knowledge base in the healthcare field is shifting. Drawing on in-depth interviews about diagnosing and prescribing, the article demonstrates how the problem of antimicrobial resistance is understood and engaged with by Danish general practitioners. When general practitioners speak of managing “non-medical issues,” they refer to routines, clinical expertise, experiences with their patients, and decision-making based more on contextual circumstances than molecular conditions—and on the fact that such conditions can be hard to assess. This article’s contribution to knowledge about how new and global health problems challenge professional actors affirms the importance of such a research agenda and the need for further exploration of the core problems posed by transnational sociology of professions.

Cochlear Implantation is now regarded as the most successful medical technology. It carries promises to provide deaf/hearing impaired individuals with a technological sense of hearing and an access to participate on a more equal level in social life. In this article, we explore the adoption of cochlear implantations among Danish users in order to shed more light on their social and political implications. We situate cochlear implantation in a framework of new life science advances, politics, and user experiences. Analytically, we draw upon the notion of social imaginary and explore the social dimension of life science through a notion of public politics adopted from the political theory of John Dewey. We show how cochlear implantation engages different social imaginaries on the collective and individual levels and we suggest that users share an imaginary of being “wired to freedom” that involves new access to social life, continuous communicative challenges, common practices, and experiences. In looking at their lives as “wired to freedom,” we hope to promote a wider spectrum of civic participation in the benefit of future life science developments within and beyond the field of Cochlear Implantation. As our empirical observations are largely based in the Scandinavian countries (notably Denmark), we also provide some reflections on the character of the technology-friendly Scandinavian welfare states and the unintended consequences that may follow in the wake of rapid technology implementation of life science in society.

This paper is concerned with how forms of publics come into being in situations of technological innovation and change. The paper attends to sudden social formations which arise as responses to what is perceived of as threatening socio-technical inventions into the routine of everyday social life. We revisit the Dewey-Lippmann debate, and we look at spontaneous citizens’ reactions towards emerging technologies such as Google Street View as well as we discuss some institutionally organized events of public engagement with science. As we explore the formation of publics inside and outside various institutional contexts, we suggest a concept of mobilizing unexpected agencies that we call the public spectre. Crowds emerge spontaneously, and assume the figure of a ‘public spectre’ that resides in the unforeseen. When repeated as collective events, crowds stabilize and assume the figure of publics. The notion of the public as a spectre draws attention to the plurality of forms in terms of which publics emerge and take form.

This paper presents the development of an experimental methodology for empirical and participatory ethics of science and technology. It is designed to detect, understand and mediate public concerns. Science and technology evolve rapidly as a result of their internal dynamics as well as the optimization of subsidy for research and innovation in recent times. Ethical frameworks for governing these developments are confronted with considerable tensions in mediating the velocity of new innovations while securing more robust institutional guarantees in order to manage and regulate in time. We argue that existing frameworks need to evolve to become more sensitive to the diversity of technological and societal challenges, of envisioning futures, and of what counts as legitimate concerns. For this reason, we give socio-technical imaginaries a key role in developing an ethical framework. Our experimental approach is seeking to establish criteria for mediating a wide range of public opinion in ways that can become embedded in legitimate, institutional procedures. Our methodological approach is also seeking to mediate between lay ethics and the discourse of professional ethicists, recognizing the fragmented character of both. We draw on theoretical constructs in current STS research, notably, those dealing with complex relations between communities, real or imagined, and the rise of new publics whose voices can be distilled and heard through mediating channels. This experimental methodology forms the central component of an ongoing European Union FP7-funded project, TECHNOLIFE.

This paper presents the development of an experimental methodology for empirical and participatory ethics of science and technology. It is designed to detect, understand and mediate public concerns. Science and technology evolve rapidly as a result of their internal dynamics as well as the optimization of subsidy for research and innovation in recent times. Ethical frameworks for governing these developments are confronted with considerable tensions in mediating the velocity of new innovations while securing more robust institutional guarantees in order to manage and regulate in time. We argue that existing frameworks need to evolve to become more sensitive to the diversity of technological and societal challenges, of envisioning futures, and of what counts as legitimate concerns. For this reason, we give socio-technical imaginaries a key role in developing an ethical framework. Our experimental approach is seeking to establish criteria for mediating a wide range of public opinion in ways that can become embedded in legitimate, institutional procedures. Our methodological approach is also seeking to mediate between lay ethics and the discourse of professional ethicists, recognizing the fragmented character of both. We draw on theoretical constructs in current STS research, notably, those dealing with complex relations between communities, real or imagined, and the rise of new publics whose voices can be distilled and heard through mediating channels. This experimental methodology forms the central component of an ongoing European Union FP7-funded project, TECHNOLIFE.

A self-pulsating DFB laser has been used as the clock recovery unit in an OTDM demultiplexing system experiment. Error free demultiplexing from 40 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s is achieved