Entsicherte Verhältnisse – (Un)Möglichkeiten fürsorglicher Praxis

Starting point of the article are the upheavals of employment relationships in modern, post-Fordist societies. These are characterised by the increasing relevance of efficiency in social lives because of blurring boundaries between paid work and private life or growing processes of precariousness through uncertainties of social regulation. The author argues that these processes are accompanied by shifting conflicts between paid work and private care responsibilities, which are still oriented at the Fordist gendered division of work and gender classification but should not be seen as a simple repetition of those. By presenting three case studies from an empirical research project on the retail trade in Brandenburg and Berlin, specific problems of the reconciliation between paid work and private care as well as ways to solve these are analysed. The article ends with a discussion whether (often forced) changes in life style open some (often precarious) capabilities for questioning the gendered division of labour which has been formerly taken for granted.     

Die Verortung der Gesellschaft: Durkheims Verwendung des Begriffs „Substrat“

This article presents and discusses Durkheim’s idea that society can be considered as a thing, an object. It shows that this “objective” character immediately begs the question of the location of society, of its position in space. The article detects in Durkheim’s work several changes of position, but concludes nonetheless that the sociologist eventually took the social to be “inside us, yet without us”: the social consists entirely in representations, but in representations of a specific kind insofar as they are not the product of individual thought and directly constrain it. How, exactly, can the mental life of individuals be taken to be the ultimate location of society? This question is discussed from the perspective of the relationship of society to the material world, i.e., in Durkheim’s vocabulary, from the perspective of the “substratum” of society.     

Geschlechtergleichheit oder „exklusive Emanzipation“? Ungleichheitssoziologische Implikationen der aktuellen familienpolitischen Reformen*

Focusing on gender and social inequalities, we analyse two current reforms in German family policy: the 2007 parental leave reform and the discussion on a reform of the joint taxation of married couples. These reforms lead to changes in policy instruments and objectives that are not adequately described by the thesis of a change towards an adult worker model. Rather, so our first argument, the reforms lead to a thoroughgoing change of the interplay between (de-)familialization and (de-)commodification, as they not only put a stronger focus on labour market activation, but also try to increase birth rates via financial incentives. However, both reform projects mainly provide incentives for higher labour market participation and birth rates among highly qualified women, which means an important shift away from the objective of redistribution that has been an important impetus for German familiy policy so far. This development has severe consequences for social inequalities, as it promises an ?exclusive emancipation“ for highly qualified women only.     

The politics and economics of “retraditionalization” in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

This paper analyzes attitudes of women enrolled in secular and religious universities in the capital cities of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan toward family life and the role of Islam in the private and public sphere. Survey data indicate that women from both types of universities in both countries sympathize with retraditionalization, or “a return to traditional values, family life, and religion, which entails, in part, women being moved out of the work force.” Thus far, there is no statistical evidence of this phenomenon in the literature. Sympathy for retraditionalization is unfolding in the context of ongoing economic uncertainty that has plagued Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan since the Soviet Union's collapse, and its manifestations produce political responses. I argue that Kyrgyz and Tajik elites push a particular gender norm implying female secularization to counter expressions of retraditionalization among young women. In conclusion, I highlight counterintuitive findings of the survey regarding Islam's role in Central Asian society and discuss collective versus individual acts of resistance to female secularization policies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.     

“弃老”风俗在中日文学中的表现及成因——以《爸爸爸》与《楢山节考》为例

"弃老"是中日两国共有的古老风俗,尽管与"敬老"的传统相悖,但确是两国漫长的农业文明社会中客观存在的一种文化现象。日本小说《楢山节考》与中国小说《爸爸爸》中关于"弃老"的故事均能在中日民间传说中找到故事原型。"弃老"风俗中,老人或是被家庭遗弃,或是为了家庭、种群的存续和繁衍主动放弃生命,这反映了家庭养老能力在残酷的现实生活面前显得弱不禁风。通过对故事原型以及小说文本的分析,分别从物质层面与精神层面挖掘"弃老"现象的深层原因,其根源在于物资匮乏和粮食短缺,此外还受制于村落共同体形成的集体无意识等因素。中日同为东亚国家,目前又是人口老龄化颇为严重的国家,探讨"弃老"风俗不仅具有文学价值,亦有一定的社会意义。     

Die Entwicklung der Europasoziologie aus der Differenz national/europäisch

The terms ?national“ and ?European“ mark different spacial frames which are relevant for the interpretation as well as political regulation of the society. In the case of progressive European integration, these spacial frames are increasingly compete. Attitudes and interests of different actor groups relate to these spacial frames, thus turning ?national“ and ?European“ into the poles of a conflict relationship. In this way tensions become visible, which are crucial for the Europeanization of society hence fundamental for the development of the Sociology of Europe. Sociology needs to be adapted to this constellation by overcoming its nationally framed categories and by understanding spacial frames that develop in practice as empirical data and thus as a part of its subject.     

Amtliche Statistik,Sichtbarkeit und die Herstellung von Verfügbarkeit

This essay analyses the programmatic dimension (?Normalerzählung“ or ?normal account“) of official statistics as a social institution and identifies the two concepts of visibility (?Sichtbarkeit“) and availability (?Verfügbarkeit“) as basic principles of modern official statistics. Up to the 18th Century, the proto-statistical attempts at the quantification of the social can still be described as producing ?visibility without availability“. But with the birth of official statistics as an institution in 19th Century the two basic principles are closely coupled. This coupling in statistic visibility regimes of different ranges and depths appears to be unbroken up to the 1970s and 1980s. Towards the end of the 20th Century, however, these principles are increasingly put to the question. This article argues that this can be interpreted as an indication of a reflexive modernization of the official statistics. These developments will finally be illustrated by empirical examples from the public discourse of unemployment statistics.     

Nationale und globale Ungleichheit

The impact of globalization on the structure of social inequality is controversial discussed in actual debates. The national focused research is challenged by globalists. The article concentrates on the problem of order and shows how this is solved by the national structures of social inequality. In the next step the reasons for and against the national solution are presented. Finally the possibility of transnational constituting structures of social inequality is examined. How probable is the structuration of global inequality if basic elements of order are missing on this level?     

Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

Familie und Beruf im Leben von Männern

In this paper empirical results on general changes in marriage and fertility, as well as on the relationship of family and work, are presented with a focus on men. In contrast to the long standing neglect of men’s roles in family research and family politics, current empirical studies indicate crucial points in men’s lives affecting their realization of marriage and fatherhood. Especially the individual employment history, career development, private life pattern and experience in the family of origin play an important role. Men contribute to the general changes in marriage and parenthood with their own history. Additionally, the reverse perspective, namely the impact of private life patterns on the professional careers of men, points to a crucial change in Western Germany: the former positive effect of a marriage on a man’s professional career is no longer as significant. Only taking the life histories of both women and men into account gives an appropriate insight into the general change of family, fertility and work.     

„Care“ leisten und „Care“ erhalten zwischen Individualisierung und Refamilialisierung<Superscript>1</Superscript>

In industrialized, capitalist welfare states, men could be de-familialized because they could also abandon their caring needs and obligations to women, who therefore remained bound to the family. The focus on women, and precisely on the reasons why they remained bound to the family, has increasingly highlighted that not only incomplete individualisation was at issue, but the overall issue of care. There is a need to reformulate the concept of autonomy in order to include the relationships of interdependence that develop around care giving and care receiving along the life course and to incorporate care giving and care receiving both conceptually and in practice in the structure of social rights and social citizenship themselves. The author discusses how different countries are addressing the issue of care following women’s increasing labour market participation and the ageing of the population, showing that there are contrasting trends both across and within countries.     

Positioning the product: Indonesian migrant women workers in Taiwan

There are two important phenomena at work relating to migrant labourers, and in particular to “caregivers” or “carers,” in the labour market of contemporary Taiwan. First, the formulation and promotion by brokers of nationality-based stereotypes that tend to channel migrant workers of different nationalities into different segments of the labour market. In terms of gender, women are predominantly channelled into sectors that are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. In the category of care giving, we see a trend toward a hierarchical structuring between Filipinas and Indonesians, with Indonesian women often doing the dirtier and more demanding jobs of caring for the sick and elderly. Second, despite the fact that the majority of Indonesian women workers are contracted to work as carers, a significant number actually work in various capacities in family businesses as well as working as maids in the family home. This reality does not reflect the picture projected by government statistics on migrant workers in Taiwan. Nor indeed is it given sufficient recognition in the research on Filipina domestic workers in Taiwan, which, for the most part, focuses on domestic workers working in that capacity. What appears to be a tightly controlled arena for migrant workers is, in fact, open to manipulation often resulting in a “double-exploitation” of the Indonesian woman worker.     

Liberal governmentality in Spain: bodies,minds, and the medical construction of the “outsider,” 1870–1910

Abstract

This paper traces the fragility of the subject in the period extending from the aftermath of the Sexenio through to the early twentieth century. In particular, two case studies are focused upon: the question of gender “deviance” and the figure of the genius, in order to understand how medicine participated in the construction of “outsider” identities within the context of the emerging liberal order. How did liberal rationales exclude or curtail certain wayward expressions of identity and subjectivity? What consequences did the marking of “excessive” figures or outsiders have for notions of inclusiveness and citizenship within the late-nineteenth-century liberal order? By concentrating primarily on medical texts and journals published during the period, this study builds on existing research to tease out answers to these questions.     

Die Geschlechtersegregation beim Berufseinstieg – Berufswerte und ihr Erklärungsbeitrag für die geschlechtstypische Berufswahl

In the German labour market, occupational sex segregation remains very stable, especially for persons with vocational education at career entry. The present study examines the explanatory power of work values for gender typical occupational choices of those persons, using data of the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP). Human capital theory postulates that women prefer jobs that can be combined with family responsibilities, whereas men have higher preferences for jobs offering extrinsic resources. Furthermore, from socialization theory it is assumed that women value social aspects of work as more important than men. Those supply side theories expect that the described preferences are associated with working in gender typical occupations. Analyses however show that only social work values have effects that are in line with the theoretical arguments. Therefore, socialization theory seems to explain occupational sex segregation among persons at career entry better than human capital theory; an assumption that is underlined by an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. Furthermore, especially for women gender typical occupational choice is affected by a traditional parental gender role behavior, for example a traditional division of domestic labor between parents (intergenerational transmission).     

The “Rights Awakening” of Chinese Migrant Workers: Beyond the Generational Perspective

ABSTRACT

?In the spring of 2010, the strike of the Honda workers in Nanhai instigated an on-going discourse on the “rights awakening” of the “new generation of migrant workers.” Since then, much has been written about these young workers, generally described as more pro-active and ready to stand up against their employers than the older and more subservient generation. Drawing from statistical findings from two factory-gate surveys in the metal mechanics and garment sectors in Shenzhen, this paper tests two hypotheses: (a) that workers of the younger generation are more cognizant of their legal rights than older workers; (b) that the younger generation wants to work fewer hours and to enjoy life more. We argue that this popular image of the younger generation of migrant workers is one-dimensional and reductive, as it focuses only on generational differences as an explanatory factor for worker activism, while ignoring other issues such as types of industries and payment systems. In this paper, we purport that these elements play important roles in shaping the attitude of this younger generation toward their work and rights.     

Malaysia's Foreign Policy: The First Fifty Years: Alignment,Neutralism, Islamism

Abstract

What is the role of new media in driving political change in China? How do we understand the interaction of rapid increases in connectivity, regime censorship and democratic outcomes? This article seeks to assess the democratic implications of new media in China through the lens of three key and nested criteria derived from general theories of deliberative democracy: information access, rational-critical deliberation and mechanisms of vertical accountability. The key finding is that connectivity expands political opportunity. How this opportunity is exploited is up to users, who often vary widely in their political preferences, values, and norms of behaviour. The results are multiple mechanisms of change taking place simultaneously and the development of a more interactive and pluralistic public sphere. While China obviously still has to develop far more formalised and institutionalised mechanisms for managing state-society relations, political pluralism in the form of online deliberation might be considered a foundational condition for a more interactive and liberalised political order rooted in greater public deliberation and societal feedback. Moderate forms of discourse and societal feedback are tenuous and increasingly exist in a chaotic and diversified online discourse defined equally as much by new methods of authoritarian propaganda and virulent nationalist ideas.     

Indonesia and the “conflictual consensus”: a discursive perspective on Indonesian democracy

In this essay we propose an alternative approach to assessing the state of democracy in Indonesia. We focus not on institutional indicators (as is usually the case) but on manifestations of political discourses in the public sphere. In applying post-Marxist political theory through the work of Slavoj ?i?ek and Chantal Mouffe, we argue that democracy’s main defining feature is that it allows antagonistic discourses about alternative policies to coexist, yet still manages to coalesce around a minimal consensus on how these discursive conflicts are to be dealt with in a fair way. Applying this approach to democracy analysis to Indonesia, we suggest that the major obstacles to democratic practice do not emerge from institutional problems, but from an overbearing political discourse that imposes broad consensus and harmony on most political issues. Political discourse in Indonesia is generally structured around “Islam” and “the people.” These themes provide a basis for a political consensus that conceals economic and social contradictions and reveals considerable depoliticization in Indonesian democratic practice.     

Howzat! Navigating Gender Disruptions in Australian Young Women’s Cricket

ABSTRACT

“Howzat” is colloquially used by cricketers to ask the umpire “How is that?” when they believe a batter is out. We employ this question here to frame interrogations of young women’s experiences as they navigate elite pathway cricket in an era of significant change. The global sports entertainment industry is, it seems, undergoing a form of gender disruption. The remuneration for Australian women cricketers rose by over 500 per cent between 2012 and 2017, providing opportunities for women and girls to transition to professional sport in ways quite different from historical amateur pathways. While on the surface this shapes as a time of great opportunity for aspiring sportswomen, there are unintended consequences that warrant consideration—particularly for females involved in sports with a legacy of masculine privilege. This article draws on qualitative research concerning five female pathway players and their respective parents, coaching and administrative staff who support them as they navigate the demands of playing elite cricket during adolescence. We employ Foucault’s concept of a “history of the present” to make sense of this dispositif to problematise how young women navigate gendered experiences in sports with “masculine” traditions amid a growing profile of women’s sport in Australia.     

Bildungsunterschiede zwischen Migrantengruppen in Deutschland: Schulabschlüsse von Aussiedlern und anderen Migranten der ersten Generation im Vergleich*

This contribution explores the educational achievements of immigrants who migrated to Germany as minors during the large influx that began in 1987. Differences in education levels between the following two immigrant groups are the analytical focus of this analysis: ethnic German resettlers (? Aussiedler“) and other first-generation immigrants who used different legal channels to enter German territory. What accounts for the fact that “Aussiedler” youth have higher chances of reaching a medium-level school certificate, whereas the majority of their immigrant peers finish their general education with no more than the low-level “Hauptschul” certificate? Analyses of the third DJI Youth Survey, conducted in 2003, demonstrate that this educational gap between groups can only partially be explained by factors central to educational opportunities, such as their social background. The ?Aussiedler“ immigrant status exerts an additional positive impact on educational achievement due to particular immigration and integration policies as well as (mainly linguistic) incorporation processes specific to this immigrant group.     

La nacionalización del hogar en España

The nationalization of the domestic sphere in Spain is a topic that has been largely ignored. Recently, the interest in the study of banal nationalism and the impact of nationalism on everyday life has been on the rise, particularly for the Francoist and democratic era; however, its origins are not clear at all. An examination of developments in domestic architecture, interior decoration, and even gardening shows that the domestic sphere was nationalized during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Regionalist architecture was in vogue for villas and country-houses and furniture was increasingly modeled after local artisanal traditions. Domestic practices such as cooking, consuming, and cleaning were also increasingly connected with supposedly “national” traditions. During this period Spanish cuisine and many of its regional dishes were “invented”. The first phase of the nationalization of the domestic sphere in Spain is analyzed using a wide array of primary sources (press, manuals, speeches, etc.), thus contributing to the history of nationalism, gender studies, the history of architecture, and food studies, which by focusing on modernization processes largely disregarded this profound nationalization of the private sphere.