Inventing the Ties That Bind

Inventing the Ties That Bind PDF Author: Francesca Polletta
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673434X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
At a time of deep political divisions, leaders have called on ordinary Americans to talk to one another: to share their stories, listen empathetically, and focus on what they have in common, not what makes them different. In Inventing the Ties that Bind, Francesca Polletta questions this popular solution for healing our rifts. Talking the way that friends do is not the same as equality, she points out. And initiatives that bring strangers together for friendly dialogue may provide fleeting experiences of intimacy, but do not supply the enduring ties that solidarity requires. But Polletta also studies how Americans cooperate outside such initiatives, in social movements, churches, unions, government, and in their everyday lives. She shows that they often act on behalf of people they see as neighbors, not friends, as allies, not intimates, and people with whom they have an imagined relationship, not a real one. To repair our fractured civic landscape, she argues, we should draw on the rich language of solidarity that Americans already have.

Inventing the Ties That Bind

Inventing the Ties That Bind PDF Author: Francesca Polletta
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673434X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
At a time of deep political divisions, leaders have called on ordinary Americans to talk to one another: to share their stories, listen empathetically, and focus on what they have in common, not what makes them different. In Inventing the Ties that Bind, Francesca Polletta questions this popular solution for healing our rifts. Talking the way that friends do is not the same as equality, she points out. And initiatives that bring strangers together for friendly dialogue may provide fleeting experiences of intimacy, but do not supply the enduring ties that solidarity requires. But Polletta also studies how Americans cooperate outside such initiatives, in social movements, churches, unions, government, and in their everyday lives. She shows that they often act on behalf of people they see as neighbors, not friends, as allies, not intimates, and people with whom they have an imagined relationship, not a real one. To repair our fractured civic landscape, she argues, we should draw on the rich language of solidarity that Americans already have.

Fair Share

Fair Share PDF Author: Gary Alan Fine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226823822
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
A deeply researched ethnographic portrait of progressive senior activists in Chicago who demonstrate how a tiny public wields collective power to advocate for broad social change. If you've ever been to a protest or been involved in a movement for social change, you have likely experienced a local culture, one with slogans, jargon, and shared commitments. Though one might think of a cohort of youthful organizers when imagining protest culture, this powerful ethnography from esteemed sociologist Gary Alan Fine explores the world of senior citizens on the front lines of progressive protests. While seniors are a notoriously important—and historically conservative—political cohort, the group Fine calls “Chicago Seniors Together” is a decidedly leftist organization, inspired by the model of Saul Alinsky. The group advocates for social issues, such as affordable housing and healthcare, that affect all sectors of society but take on a particular urgency in the lives of seniors. Seniors connect and mobilize around their distinct experiences but do so in service of concerns that extend beyond themselves. Not only do these seniors experience social issues as seniors—but they use their age as a dramatic visual in advocating for political change. In Fair Share, Fine brings readers into the vital world of an overlooked political group, describing how a “tiny public” mobilizes its demands for broad social change. In investigating this process, he shows that senior citizen activists are particularly savvy about using age to their advantage in social movements. After all, what could be more attention-grabbing than a group of passionate older people determinedly shuffling through snowy streets with canes, in wheelchairs, and holding walkers to demand healthcare equity, risking their own health in the process?

Religion, Feminism, and the Family

Religion, Feminism, and the Family PDF Author: Anne E. Carr
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664255121
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Contemporary women's movement and the future of the American family.

Inventing Secularism

Inventing Secularism PDF Author: Ray Argyle
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476684219
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Jailed for atheism and disowned by his family, George Jacob Holyoake came out of an English prison at the age of 25 determined to bring an end to religion's control over daily life. This first modern biography of the founder of Secularism describes a transformative figure whose controversial and conflict-filled life helped shape the modern world. Ever on the front lines of social reform, Holyoake was hailed for having won "the freedoms we take for granted today." With Secularism now under siege, George Holyoake's vision of a "virtuous society" rings today with renewed clarity.

Insurgent Communities

Insurgent Communities PDF Author: Sharon M. Quinsaat
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022683168X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
"The term "diaspora" is used so commonly that its definition, a community of people living away from their ancestral homeland, seems self-evident. But how do migrants come to form a group, and how do they understand that homeland? In this book, sociologist Sharon Quinsaat sheds new light on the meaning of diaspora through the stories of Filipino migrants who, on first arrival to their new homes in the Netherlands and the US, don't necessarily connect to their Filipino identity or other Filipinos. They maintain ties to the homeland through family, often in the form of remittance payments, but they don't see themselves as part of a Filipino community abroad. After all, how much common ground could there be between a masters student at a private US university and an undocumented domestic worker earning less than minimum wage? Quinsaat shows that these gaps are bridged when Filipinos become engaged in political activism. Quinsaat analyzes three distinct protest movements--against the regime of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, for migrants' rights abroad, and around cultural memory of the Marcos regime--that strengthened Filipino identity among migrants as they gathered collectively to make shared demands in public. These movements bring together very different migrants with a newfound shared goal, requiring them to openly address their different experiences and relationships to their homeland and its history. Social movements thus provide an essential space not just for coming together as diasporic subjects, but for openly negotiating and working through the diversity of migrants' experiences. She also shows that this local engagement with other migrants in a new country of residence quickly ties into a global network of activism. Activist groups forge connections with others living abroad, creating new diasporic identities that crisscross the globe by way of shared political commitments. Spanning five decades, Quinsaat's project helps us understand not just a major migrant group, but how people come to see themselves as part of a collective"--

Anonymous

Anonymous PDF Author: Thomas DeGloma
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022676513X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
"In recent years, anonymity has rocked the political and social landscape. The examples are many: an anonymous whistleblower revealed a quid-pro-quo verbal promise made by Donald Trump to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the hacker group Anonymous compromised more than 100 million Sony accounts, and the bestselling author Elena Ferrante insistently refused to reveal her real name and identity. In Anonymous, Thomas DeGloma sets out to provide a sociological theory that accounts for the many faces of anonymity, describing the social forces that give anonymity its unique power in our society. He asks a number of pressing questions about the social conditions and effects of anonymity: What is anonymity, and why, under various circumstances, do individuals act anonymously? How do individuals accomplish anonymity? How do they use it, and, in some situations, how is it imposed on them? What are the implications of anonymous actions, for various relationships, and for society in general, for better or for worse? To answer these questions, DeGloma tackles anonymity thematically, dedicating each chapter to a distinct type of anonymous action. These span what DeGloma calls protective anonymity (when anonymity allows people to take action that would be impossible or unsafe if their identity were known), subversive anonymity (when actors use anonymity to escape scrutiny or punishment, whether for liberatory or nefarious purposes), or ascribed anonymity (when people become effectively anonymous because their individual attributes are subsumed in a generic category such as racial typification). Ultimately, he uncovers how meanings are made and conveyed in anonymous interactions and situations, explores the ways that anonymity can be imposed on individuals in some relationships, and helps us better understand the consequences of anonymous performances and ascriptions of anonymity for all those involved"--

Deserved

Deserved PDF Author: Till Hilmar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231558112
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were completely disrupted, and the meanings attached to work were drastically altered. How did people who found themselves living under state socialism one day and capitalist democracy the next adjust to the changing social order and its new system of values? Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Republic to offer new insights into the power of narratives about economic change. Despite the structural nature of economic shifts, people often interpret life outcomes in individual terms. Many are deeply attached to the belief that success and failure must be deserved. Emphasizing individual effort, responsibility, and character, they pass moral judgments based on a person’s fortunes in the job market. Hilmar argues that such frameworks represent ways of making sense of the profound economic and social dislocations after 1989. People craft narratives of deservingness about themselves and others to solve the problem of belonging in a new social order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with engineers and care workers as well as historical and comparative analysis of the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe, Deserved sheds new light on the moral imagination of capitalism and the experience of economic change. This book also offers crucial perspective on present-day politics, showing how notions of deservingness and moral worth have propelled right-wing populism.

The Power of Morality in Movements

The Power of Morality in Movements PDF Author: Anders Sevelsted
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030987981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This Open Access book explores the role of morality in social movements. Morality has always been central to social movements whether it be in the form of the moral foundations of movement claims, politics and ideologies, the values motivating participation, the new moral principles envisioned and practiced among movement participants, or the overall struggle over society’s moral values that movements engage in. This is evident in movements emerging from recent interlinked crises: the crisis of human rights, the climate crisis, and the developing crisis of democracy. In analyzing these current events through a variety of theoretical, methodological, and empirical lenses, this book brings morality to the forefront of the discussion, allowing for a rethinking of its role. The book is divided into five parts. The first part introduces and explores the central concept of the book, outlining the dominant existing approaches to morality and ethics in the extant movement and civil society literature. The following three parts investigate morality in relation to topics and movements that are either prominent to contemporary politics or salient to the question of morality. In these empirically informed parts, the authors apply a diverse selection of methods spanning fieldwork, historiography, traditional and novel statistical analytical methods, and big data analysis to a diverse selection of data. Topics discussed include refugee solidarity movements, male privilege and anti-feminism movement, environmental and climate justice movements, and religious activism. The fifth and closing part of the book focuses on the more abstract theoretical question of the relationship between morality and ethics and activist practices and points to future research agendas. This book will be of general interest to students, scholars and academics within the disciplines of political sociology, -science and -anthropology and of particular interest to academics in the subfields of social movement and civil society studies.

Evangelical Christian Women

Evangelical Christian Women PDF Author: Julie Ingersoll
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814737706
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Evangelical Christian Women draws on two years of ethnographic research nationwide to shed new light on the gender conflict faced by women in evangelical Christianity. Julie Ingersoll goes beyond previous attempts to find avenues of empowerment for fundamentalist women to offer a more nuanced look at the challenges they face when they occupy positions of leadership which violate traditional gender norms. She looks where other studies do not—at women who, while remaining entrenched in and committed to evangelical Christianity, are also resisting accepted gender roles. Evangelical Christian Women offers a look at conservative women who challenge gender norms within their religious traditions, the fallout they experience as part of the ensuing conflict, and the significance of the conflict over gender for the development and character of culture. In the face of a growing number of scholarly studies of conservative religious women that argue that submission is somehow “really” empowerment, this book seeks to get at the other side of the story; to document and explore the experiences of the women caught in the middle of the conservative Christian culture war over gender.

Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2

Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2 PDF Author: Steven Hitlin
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031320220
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This handbook articulates how sociology can re-engage its roots as the scientific study of human moral systems, actions, and interpretation. This second volume builds on the successful original volume published in 2010, which contributed to the initiation of a new section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), thus growing the field. This volume takes sociology back to its roots over a century ago, when morality was a central topic of work and governance. It engages scholars from across subfields in sociology, representing each section of the ASA, who each contribute a chapter on how their subfield connects to research on morality. This reference work appeals to broader readership than was envisaged for the first volume, as the relationship between sociology as a discipline and its origins in questions of morality is further renewed. The volume editors focus on three areas: the current state of the sociology of morality across a range of sociological subfields; taking a new look at some of the issues discussed in the first handbook, which are now relevant in sometimes completely new contexts; and reflecting on where the sociology of morality should go next. This is a must-read reference for students and scholars interested in topics of morality, ethics, altruism, religion, and spirituality from across the social science.