Intersecting oppressions; intersecting struggles: Race, class and subalternity

This article offers intersectional theories of racism another way to think about Gramsci’s work; it will explore how Gramsci operationalizes the category of subaltern groups. It begins by briefly reviewing how Gramsci’s work is discussed in contemporary theoretical approaches to racism in the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Michael Omi and Howard Winant and Stuart Hall. It will stress important similarities regarding the relationship between structural and social forces, political ideologies and consciousness. It will note how both ‘intersectionality’ and ‘articulation’ (one variant of this concept discussed by Hall) show how racism can be amplified through the overlapping or overdetermination of identities, representations and societal effects. It continues by exploring how racism was overdetermined in the Italian national context during the time that Gramsci had lived (and relates it to contemporary theoretical frameworks that organize our understandings of race, racialization and racism). The article then explores how subalternity has been theorized away from the context in which Gramsci employed the term and interpreted, instead, from the twin perspectives of absolute domination and radical autonomy. The article concludes by reading subalternity alongside of race, class and as a substantive cultural question and, in addition, a question of strategy and political organization.

The Inequality Mirror: Using a Student Survey to Teach Social Stratification

Social inequality is a central theme in sociology study plans (both in research and education), but it is often one of the most difficult topics to teach. This article presents an innovative student-centered strategy for teaching social inequality that uses a survey to collect data on students’ socioeconomic characteristics and perceptions of inequality. To stimulate reflection and discussion on the social mechanisms that reproduce inequality, this information is subsequently presented to them in conjunction with a comparative analysis to general population data. The exercise seeks to make social inequality less abstract for students by involving them in the research process and by using data relative to their own lives and families. Ultimately, the strategy boosts students’ sociological imagination and their capacity for critical thinking by encouraging them to see the connections between individual biographies and broader social forces.

Grammar and variation in the classroom

Grammar is the structural foundation of successful communication, language use, and literacy development. Grammar is therefore sometimes viewed as the heart of language with an important place in language teaching. In a classroom setting, regulation of grammar knowledge through teachers is strongly influenced by teachers’ linguistic competence and beliefs. In this paper, we will first show the diversity in this knowledge by means of teacher interviews and speeded grammatical-acceptability data from pupils and students. We will then sketch a socio- and psycholinguistic perspective on several selected morphosyntactic variables in German. These will be discussed with reference to social forces that determine what is standard in a language (language norm authorities, language experts, model texts, and codifiers). Finally, we will draw a roadmap for teachers, language practitioners and editors looking for a qualified solution to grammatical cases of doubt in contemporary German and provide practical examples by drawing upon the German reference corpus.

From the Margins to the Core of Haute Couture: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Coco Chanel

We trace the history of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s entrepreneurial journey as a fashion designer from her early years as an outsider (early 1900s) to her rise to success and consecration as an icon within the French haute couture field (early 1930s)—a field controlled by powerful insiders. Our study sheds light on the social forces and historical circumstances underlying an outsider’s journey from the margins of an established field to its core. Drawing on unique historical material, we develop a novel process view that highlights the shifting influence of forces operating at different levels in the accumulation, deployment, and conversion of various forms of capital (i.e., human, social, economic, and symbolic) that outsiders need to promote their ideas. In particular, our multilevel perspective accounts simultaneously for the individual’s efforts to push forward these ideas (micro-level), as well as the audience dynamics (meso-level) and exogenous forces (macro-level) that shape their recognition. Chanel’s historical case analysis also affords a window into one of the first female entrepreneurs with global impact in business history, with the added challenge of establishing herself in what at the time was a male-dominated and mature field.

How to Be a Man Differently: Intersectionality of Gender and Disability in the Life Course of a Powerchair Athlete

This article focuses on the intersection of gender, dis/ability and other social forces in the life course of a young man who has had physical impairments from an early age. Drawing on interactionist theories and applying an ethnographic approach, we analyze the life experiences taking place in multiple social spheres throughout the life phases of Simon, a Swiss powerchair hockey player with cerebral palsy. During his childhood and adolescence, Simon was not in a position to embody the familial ways of performing hegemonic masculinity, and he was functionally dependent on women. Through his ongoing transition to adulthood, his commitment to sport and the process of technologizing his body enabled him doing gender differently and emancipate himself from the familial masculine figure, while remaining reliant on the care provided by women. Thus, we show how the body, context, and life phases contribute to the performances of gender and dis/ability.

Immigrant academic mothers negotiating ideal worker and mother norms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Duoethnography as a co-mentoring tool for transformative learning

How are immigrant academic mothers negotiating the confounding terrains of work and family during the pandemic? How can they support each other in learning how to resist the prevalent notions of ideal working and mothering amidst the demanding schedule of working remotely and parenting? This study addresses these questions through sharing a narrative of how two immigrant mothers in academia challenged and began the journey of transforming their gendered work and family identities. Building on personal essays and 6 weeks of extensive journaling that reflected our positionalities and experiences of motherhood, work-life, and intersections between work and home during the pandemic, we offer a fine-grained understanding of how we helped each other as co-mentors to identify moments of our lived experiences as triggers for transformative learning. In doing so, we realized how duoethnography could be more than just a research methodology in helping us co-construct a relational space to empathize and challenge each other’s perspectives about our roles as mothers and professors and the gendered nature of social forces shaping those roles.

Coming Out, Going Home

Despite the historical centrality of Western cities as sites of queer cultural settlement, larger global economic and political forces have vociferously shaped, dispersed, and altered dreams of mobility for gay Taiwanese millennials in the age of globalization. While Taiwanese gay millennials follow a seemingly universal “rural-to-urban,” “East-to-West” movement trajectory, this study also explicates local nuanced ramifications running against the common trend. Drawn upon five-year ethnographic studies in Taiwan, this study examines how parents could to some extent conform to societal pressures by co-creating a life narrative to the society. Parents/family appear to contribute to how participants' decision on spatial movement but gay male millennials with supportive parents are eventually “going home.” However, the concept of home is configured by multiple economic and social forces involving (1) the optimal distance with the biological family and (2) the proper performances of consumption policed and imposed by the gay community in the neoliberal Taiwanese society.

Social Development with Public Value: An International Comparison

Social development around the world has been stunted by the lack of a comprehensive understanding and definition of public value. Public value theory can provide guidance, and inform a universal standard for social development. However, it is difficult to define and measure public value due to its philosophical complexity. Public values are driven by various economic, political, and social forces, and can be created by many stakeholders including enterprises, governments and non-governmental organisations. Government is central to human society and is primarily responsible for inclusive social development, which requires setting and maintaining public values orderly and synchronously according to the plurality of views held by those in society. Social development failure may occur when some key public values are ignored. This study uses thirty economic, social, and political indicators to measure public value, and the results demonstrate strong correlations among them. Through a principal component analysis and a cluster analysis, these thirty indicators can be reduced to four principal components. The first one, which represents economic value, can explain 65.8% of the total information, identifying that economic value is playing a fundamental role among plural public values. Countries are clustered and their development neighbors are identified in order to compare countries with similar levels of development. Public value theory can help to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different countries, and advance the social and economic progress steadily and authentically.

Research on the construction of rural public sports service system in Sichuan province from the perspective of urban-rural integration

From the perspective of urban-rural integration, this paper analyzes the current situation of public sports service system in rural areas of Sichuan Province. In order to break through the dilemma of the Rural Public Sports Service System in Sichuan Province, we must seize the opportunity of the integration of urban and rural areas, conform to the regional characteristics of Sichuan, plan the steps of the supporting reform between urban and rural areas as well as the farmers’ personal sports needs; and increase the farmers’ economic income, meanwhile, we should introduce and attract social enterprises and social forces to invest a lot in the human, material and financial resources of rural public sports. Promoting the development of rural public sports service in Sichuan Province by optimizing the allocation of resources.

The Social and Political Significance of Technology-Driven Organisational Change: Discursive Battles to Frame, Define and Decide in ‘a Space of Points of View’

Struggles over new organisational technology are, almost without exception, studied inside organisations. This paper aims to advance our understanding of how technology is embedded in social forces and relations of power that reach beyond individual organisations. It examines the ongoing discursive struggles in public media outlets between consultant doctors and regional actors concerning a controversial electronic health record (EHR) system, called the Health Platform, which was implemented in 20 Danish hospitals. A theoretical framework inspired by Bourdieu’s understanding of discursive activity in a field subsumed in a multi-level and cultural understanding of framing is used to examine the interests connected to platform design and its organisational future states. It is demonstrated that winning the support of the public is pivotal in the construction of frames by both groups of actors in their efforts to define problems and solutions and, ultimately, influence a political decision concerning the platform’s future.