Societies — Open Access Journal of Sociology

Based on ethnographic research at Brooklyn Community High School (BCHS), a transfer high school in New York City I demonstrate that students narrate their educational histories in terms of their experience of care, or lack of care, from teachers. Contributing to research on student-teacher relationships, care, resilience and retention, I develop the concept structural care, arguing that teachers’ ability to demonstrate care for their students, and students’ ability to perceive that care, is enabled or constrained by larger, socio-structural forces such as the national educational policy landscape, widespread cultural beliefs about schools and students, and processes of racialization, criminalization, and marginalization. Full article

Background: Concern has existed for many years about the extensive use of hospitals by dying persons. In recent years, however, a potential shift out of hospital has been noticed in a number of developed countries, including Canada. In Canada, where high hospital occupancy rates and corresponding long waits and waitlists for hospital care are major socio-political issues, it is important to know if this shift has continued or if hospitalized death and dying remains predominant across Canada. Methods: Recent individual-anonymous population-level inpatient Canadian hospital data were analyzed to answer two questions: (1) what proportion of deaths in provinces and territories across Canada are occurring in hospital now? and (2) who is dying in hospital now? Results: In 2014–2015, 43.9% of all deaths in Canada (excluding Quebec) occurred in hospital. However, considerable cross-Canada differences in end-of-life hospital utilization were found. Some cross-Canada differences in hospital decedents were also noted, although most were older, male, and they died during a relatively short hospital stay after being admitted from their homes and through the emergency department after arriving by ambulance. Conclusion: Over half of all deaths in Canada are occurring outside of hospital now. Cross-Canada hospital utilization and inpatient decedent differences highlight opportunities for enhanced end-of-life care service planning and policy advancements. Full article

This paper provides a synthesis of qualitative studies, examining youth empowerment projects and initiatives that have encouraged young people to have a voice in local, regional, and national political debates. Specifically, the article examines the role of English youth services in building the spirit of citizenship in young people against the challenging question of the changing behavioural pattern and profiles of young English electorates. To do this, the paper draws on four case studies to help rethink the critical moments for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in their journeys towards citizenship, and how English youth services understand and respond to the experiences of young people. The article presents the strengths and limitations of the youth sector to enrich and furnish the spirit of citizenship in today’s youth, and argues for a more innovative role in the part played by the state in an era of austerity. Full article

The status change riot model opens up a new avenue of riot explanation. One that takes into consideration ethnic group relations and factors of group status and honor—i.e., dignity. The riot model asserts that the potential for a riot arises when new and old concepts about group statuses, and as such, ideas about appropriate intergroup behaviors, give rise to disputative intergroup interactions. The model affirms that a trigger event either by itself or in accumulation with other events drives actors to a dignity threshold that prompts them to riot. The model further relates that, once started, a riot will follow a general riot pattern that ends in either a status resolution or an increased strain in ethnic group relations. Full article

In this article, I examine the subject of justice as it relates to gender and climate change by focusing on two specific strategies, namely, the geoengineering strategy of ocean fertilization, and renewable energy as a means of mitigation (where mitigation is understood as the adoption of technologies and practices that aim to slow the rise of greenhouse gas emissions). My overarching argument is that iron fertilization geoengineering is not consistent with the feminist values of justice embedded in feminist standpoint theory and feminist contextual empiricism. Alternative mitigation strategies, on the other hand, go much further in meeting these objectives and virtues. Full article

Healthcare services are one of the twelve determinants of population health. While all types of healthcare services are important, timely access to hospital-based care when needed is critical. For three decades, long waits and wait lists for hospital admission and inpatient care have been a concern in Canada. Undersupply of hospital beds to meet population needs may be the cause of this as hospitals were downsized due to government funding cutbacks and hospital expansion has not occurred since despite population growth and aging. The availability of hospital beds for palliative population health needs may therefore be an issue, particularly as longstanding concern exists about terminally-ill and dying people being frequently admitted to hospital and having long hospital stays. A decline in hospital deaths in many developed countries, including Canada, could indicate that palliative population needs for hospital-based care are not being met. This paper compares the number of hospitals and hospital beds that exist in 9 Canadian provinces and 15 developed countries in relation to population and spatial considerations in an attempt to determine an optimal number of hospital beds for the general public and thus also palliative population health needs. Methods: Document analysis. Publicly-available hospital, population, and geographic information was sought for 9 Canadian provinces and 15 developed countries and compared. Results: Major differences in citizen to hospital bed ratios and citizen to hospital ratios across provinces and countries were found. The availability of hospitals and hospital beds clearly varies. Conclusion: Some regions may have too few hospitals and hospital beds to meet the palliative and other care needs of their citizens. Sufficient beds should exist so necessary admissions to hospital can occur without harmful delay. Full article

This project report captures 10 years of work by the Women’s Refugee Commission on the inclusion of disability in humanitarian responses. The report covers early research on refugees with disabilities and subsequent work on disability inclusion, including the target areas of gender-based violence, child protection, and sexual and reproductive health. Later presented work focuses on engaging organizations of persons with disabilities (DPOs) in humanitarian responses—both as expert resources to inform humanitarian actors as well as sources of information, services, and social support for refugees with disabilities living in their host communities. The report concludes with recent work on soliciting input from DPO networks on the Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, which are currently under development. Full article

This essay analyzes and syntheses key theories and concepts on neighborhood change from the literature on anchor institutions, university engagement, gentrification, neighborhood effects, Cold War, Black liberation studies, urban political economy, and city building. To deepen understanding of the Columbia University experience, we complemented the literature analysis with an examination of the New York Times and Amsterdam newspapers from 1950 to 1970. The study argues that higher education’s approach to neighborhood revitalization during the urban renewal age, as well as in the post-1990 period, produced undesirable results and failed to spawn either social transformation or build the neighborly community espoused by Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy. The essay explains the reasons why and concludes with a section on a more robust strategy higher education can pursue in the quest to bring about desirable change in the university neighborhood. Full article

How tightly linked are the strength of a country’s welfare state and its residents’ support for income redistribution? Multilevel model results (with appropriate controls) show that the publics of strong welfare states recognize their egalitarian income distributions, i.e., the stronger the welfare state, the less the actual and perceived inequality; but they do not differ from their peers in liberal welfare states/market-oriented societies in their preferences for equality. Thus, desire for redistribution bears little overall relationship to welfare state activity. However, further investigation shows a stronger relationship under the surface: Poor people’s support for redistribution is nearly constant across levels of welfarism. By contrast, the stronger the welfare state, the less the support for redistribution among the prosperous, perhaps signaling “harvest fatigue” due to paying high taxes and longstanding egalitarian policies. Our findings are not consistent with structuralist/materialist theory, nor with simple dominant ideology or system justification arguments, but are partially consistent with a legitimate framing hypothesis, with an atomistic self-interest hypothesis, with a reference group solidarity hypothesis, and with the “me-and-mine” hypothesis incorporating sociotropic and egotropic elements. Database: the World Inequality Study: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,0000 individuals. Full article

Marcus Gardley’s play The Road Weeps, the Well Runs Dry (2013) traces the development of a Black Seminole community in the Indian Territory from 1850 to 1866, with occasional flashbacks to the days of the Seminoles’ removal from Florida. Rather than positing a unified ethnicity, the action reveals a complex web of Othernesses, including characters identified as “black”, others as “full-blood Seminole”, and still others as “black and Seminole”. Given the lack of ethnic unity, the new community constructs an identity in its distinction from and enmity with the neighboring Creeks, pointing to an underlying irony since the Creeks actually represent a main component in the ethnogenesis of the Seminoles in the 18th century. By calling attention to this simulacrum of Otherness, the play questions identity formation based on difference from an Other. Finally, Christian and pagan beliefs and customs live side by side in the community and compete for dominance over it. The multiple frictions caused by inner-group disputes, external conflicts with a constructed Other and religious discord lead to outbursts of violence that threaten to tear the community apart. Only a re-integration of its component parts can save it. Full article

This paper focuses on the science fiction (SF) novel Cosmonaut Keep (2000)—first in the trilogy Engines of Light, which also includes Dark Light (2001) and Engines of Light (2002)—by the Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, and analyzes from a transmodern perspective some future warfare aspects related to forthcoming technological development, possible reconfigurations of territoriality in an expanding cluster of civilizations travelling and trading across distant solar systems, expanded cultural awareness, and space ecoconsciousness. It is my argument that MacLeod’s novel brings Transmodernism, which is characterized by a “planetary vision” in which human beings sense that we are interdependent, vulnerable, and responsible, into the future. Hereby, MacLeod’s work expands the original conceptualization of the term “Transmodernism” as defined by Rodríguez Magda, and explores possible future outcomes, showing a unique awareness of the fact that technological processes are always linked to political and power-related uses. Full article

The aims of this article are to identify, describe, and sociologically understand the different somatic cultures in contemporary Portuguese society—i.e., the distinct ways in which different generations have thought about, used and lived the body from the time of the Estado Novo (the New State, which was the regime that governed Portugal from 1933 to 1974) until the present day. Beginning with the hypothesis that there are different, historically institutionalized, somatic modes of attention to the “young body”, the author uses the most relevant institutions of the socialization of the body as analytical dimensions and investigates their main incorporation strategies and models of corporality. This hypothesis is informed by different generational conditions that change people’s uses of their body, their experiences of living in it, and their thoughts on the matter. Using these analytical dimensions, the article presents a typology that identifies, describes, and comprehends the three somatic cultures in the recent history of Portuguese society: the culture of physical invigoration that forms part of the legacy of the New State; the culture of physical rejuvenation inherited from youth cultures of the 1960s and 70s, along with the growth of body design industries in the 1980s; and the culture of physical perfection inherited from the biotech culture in the 1990s, accompanied by the radicalization of the body design industry. This approach entails the discussion and reinterpretation of a corpus of historical literature, presenting research data on the body in a defined time period (1930 to date) and space (Portugal), analyzed from an embodied perspective of generational change. Full article

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, Britain’s young people have been disproportionately affected by policies of welfare retrenchment. Youth disillusionment with austerity has been cited as a reason for the youthquake witnessed in the 2017 General Election, where the Labour Party’s better-than-expected performance resulted in the loss of the ruling Conservative Party government’s parliamentary majority. The degree of one-party dominance among younger voters was unprecedented, with Labour’s aggressively pro-youth agenda paying dividends. However, this paper takes the attention away from voting behaviour and towards non-electoral forms of youth political participation in the UK. What are the strongest predictors of non-electoral political participation among young British people? Three possible predictors are explored: educational attainment, level of trust in politicians, and party identification. Three forms of non-electoral participation are considered: signing a petition, taking part in a boycott and sharing political messages on social media. Using a bespoke representative survey commissioned by Hope Not Hate, this paper finds that educational attainment does not have a particularly strong effect on non-electoral participation, with Labour Party identification being significantly associated with all three forms. A strong relationship is also discovered between identifying with a ‘minor party’ and non-electoral political participation among Britain’s young people. Full article

Set against a backdrop of austerity and neoliberal policies affecting many young people adversely, the Nuit Debout protest movement in France began in March 2016 when people gathered in public spaces to oppose the Socialist government’s plan to introduce neoliberal labour legislation. Like other post-2008 movements, Nuit Debout was leaderless, non-hierarchical, and relied on social media for political communication and to mobilise participants. The Nuit Debout was also a movement inspired by powerful moral-political emotions such as righteous anger and hope. In this article, the authors address two questions. First, what features of Nuit Debout distinguished it from earlier social movements in France? Second, what role did moral emotions play in mobilising people to act as they did? Drawing on interviews with young protestors and their own testimonies, we argue that Nuit Debout was a distinctive form of protest for France. One distinguishing feature was the way young people—the “precarious generation”—were motivated by a strong sense of situated injustice, much of which related to what they saw as the unfairness of austerity policies, being deprived of a decent future and the feeling they had been betrayed by governments. Full article

Inequality poses one of the biggest challenges of our time. It is not self-correcting in the sense that citizens demand more redistributive measures in light of rising inequality, which recent studies suggest may be due to the fact that citizens’ perceptions of inequality diverge from objective levels. Moreover, it is not the latter, but the former, which are related to preferences conducive to redistribution. However, the nascent literature on inequality perceptions has, so far, not accounted for the role of subjective position in society. The paper advances the argument that the relationship between inequality perceptions and preferences towards redistribution is conditional on the subjective position of respondents. To that end, I analyze comprehensive survey data on inequality perceptions from the social inequality module of the International Social Survey Programme (1992, 1999, and 2009). Results show that inequality perceptions are associated with preferences conducive to redistribution particularly among those perceived to be at the top of the social ladder. Gaining a better understanding of inequality perceptions contributes to comprehending the absence self-correcting inequality. Full article

Local public transport companies provide important mobility services to the general public. Although these services are usually subsidised, companies rely on revenues generated by ticket sales. Therefore, fare evasion (i.e., people using a transport service without paying for it) and ticket forgery (the production of an illegal ticket facsimile) have considerable influence on the companies’ economic sustainability. As existing research regarding the economic perspective is limited, this paper presents a Delphi study that investigates the phenomena with a survey of experts in public transport companies and transport associations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The findings of the survey provide insights into the overall perception and discuss relevant aspects of both fare evasion and ticket forgery, thereby not only highlighting practical implications, but also helping policy makers shape adequate policies for public transport in societies. Full article

Armed conflicts and violence have always been concomitant with human history but it is undeniable that our perception of them has undergone some disturbing evolution of late. Whereas in the past wars and organized violence were mainly regarded as being temporary, that is, originating in a number of reasons and tensions that might become eventually solved and confined to very specific zones on the world map, nowadays most people feel that nobody can escape the scourge of indiscriminate violence and this is mainly due to terrorism, in particular to that associated with Muslim fundamentalism. The aim of this paper will be to discuss the origins of this form of terrorism, together with its inextricable relationship with the so-called ‘civilized’ West, putting the emphasis on its more secular aspects and implications so as to show how Tabish Khair’s novel, Just Another Jihadi Jane denounces the effects that this conflict can have upon average people, all the more so if they happen to be Muslim women living in the western world. Full article

In an area of increasingly widespread practices, the strengthening of the self through physical activities is exponentially reinforced by the inflexible laws of wild nature, now seen as a supreme judge. The knowledge of one’s personal limits and their overcoming through the verdict of an implacable, inscrutable but fair nature, allows access to the powerful source of meaning of green spirituality. This phenomenon is closely linked to an unprecedented imagery of nature. In contemporary Western society there is a widespread trend to sacralise nature, but in the terms of a “disneyfied” object—to paraphrase David Lyon. The ritual of “symbolically challenging death”—to say it with David Le Breton—through extreme sports, forces wild nature to manifest its transcendent properties: Getting out of this trial unharmed means being able to recognise one’s higher qualities. Challenging death and coming out unscathed means giving back to the disoriented contemporary individual a right and “nomized” cosmos—in the words of Peter Berger—capable of recognising the “chosen ones”, that is to say the ones that deserve salvation. I conclude that the growing phenomenon of extreme sports in the wilderness represents the attempt of experiencing an amplification of the self in order to “enter into resonance” with nature, to become “one” with it. Nature strengthens the ultimate meanings of experience, integrating them into a sort of green eschatology. Full article

This article seeks to develop a preliminary analysis of how neo-liberal thought and policies have impacted on youth political engagement in the UK, specifically by attempting to understand how macro-economic and other public policies can influence the individual psychology of citizens and their subsequent behaviour. The article sets out a clear definition and explanation of neo-liberalism and summarises six key neo-liberal impacts particularly pertinent to political engagement: marketisation and the tension this brings with democratic norms; responsibilisation narratives; increased inequality; the changing character of the state through privatisation and deregulation; the preference among policy-makers for ‘expert rule’; and repression of labour. It argues that the main psychological effects that result, and which underpin and define the personal experience of neo-liberal policy, are declines in political efficacy and increases in individualism, the ramifications of which for political engagement are discussed. Full article