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Human agents and social structures
The structure/agency debate has been among the central issues in recent discussions of social theory. It has been widely assumed that the key theoretical task is to find a link between social structures and acting human beings - to reconcile the macro with the micro, society and the individual. The contributors to this book reject this solution to the problem. For them, both the concept of 'society' as an entity and the freely-acting 'individual' are theoretical fiction. Rather, the immediate task of the social sciences is to take the social world seriously, to understand the ways in which tha.
eBook
Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology
Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, while apparently similar in topic and approach, are radically different sociological perspectives. Garfinkel's notion of a plenum is used to illustrate this difference with regard to their approaches to the concept of interaction. Ethnomethodology's rejection of the concepts of actor and context, and its different treatment of meaning, are contrasted with symbolic interactionism's terms of reference.
Journal Article
Fish Losses for Whom? A Gendered Assessment of Post-Harvest Losses in the Barotse Floodplain Fishery, Zambia
Few studies examine post-harvest fish losses using a gender lens or collect sex-disaggregated data. This mixed-methods study assessed fish losses experienced by female and male value chain actors in a fishery in western Zambia to determine who experiences losses, why, and to what extent. Results indicate that participation in the fishery value chain is gendered and most losses occur during post-harvest activities. Discussions with fishers, processors, and traders suggest the value chain is more fluid than often depicted, with people making calculated decisions to sell fresh or dried fish depending on certain conditions, and mostly driven by the need to avoid losses and attain higher prices. The study shows that gender norms shape the rewards and risks offered by the value chain. This could be the reason why a greater proportion of women than men experienced physical losses in our study sample. Female processors lost three times the mass of their fish consignments compared to male processors. Technical constraints (lack of processing technologies) and social constraints (norms and beliefs) create gender gaps in post-harvest losses. Addressing unequal gender relations in value chains, whilst also promoting the use of loss-reducing technologies, could increase fish supply and food security in small-scale fisheries.
Journal Article
Framing the riots
An analysis of commentary on the UK’s August 2011 riots reveals shifts in the way the media and politicians now construe concepts of youth, race, criminality and deprivation. By comparing the response to these events with that which followed the riots of 1981, these changes can be clarified and illuminated. This analysis reveals that discussions of ‘social problems’ exploited by ‘infiltrators’ (1981) have been replaced by notions of ‘pure criminality’ and ‘mob rule’. The implications of these changes for contemporary protest, and some ways in which the riots and other forms of protest can be related, are drawn out.
Journal Article
Extracellular Hsp72 concentration relates to a minimum endogenous criteria during acute exercise-heat exposure
Extracellular heat shock protein 72 (eHsp72) concentration increases during exercise-heat stress when conditions elicit physiological strain. Differences in severity of environmental and exercise stimuli have elicited varied response to stress. The present study aimed to quantify the extent of increased eHsp72 with increased exogenous heat stress, and determine related endogenous markers of strain in an exercise-heat model. Ten males cycled for 90 min at 50% VO2peak in three conditions (TEMP, 20 °C/63 % RH; HOT, 30.2 °C/51%RH; VHOT, 40.0 °C/37% RH). Plasma was analysed for eHsp72 pre, immediately post and 24-h post each trial utilising a commercially available ELISA. Increased eHsp72 concentration was observed post VHOT trial (+172.4 %) (p<0.05), but not TEMP (-1.9 %) or HOT (+25.7 %) conditions. eHsp72 returned to baseline values within 24 h in all conditions. Changes were observed in rectal temperature (Trec), rate of Trec increase, area under the curve for T rec of 38.5 and 39.0 °C, duration Trec≥38.5 and ≥39.0 °C, and change in muscle temperature, between VHOT, and TEMP and HOT, but not between TEMP and HOT. Each condition also elicited significantly increasing physiological strain, described by sweat rate, heart rate, physiological strain index, rating of perceived exertion and thermal sensation. Stepwise multiple regression reported rate of Trec increase and change in Trec to be predictors of increased eHsp72 concentration. Data suggests eHsp72 concentration increases once systemic temperature and sympathetic activity exceeds a minimum endogenous criteria elicited during VHOT conditions and is likely to be modulated by large, rapid changes in core temperature.
Journal Article
Structure and agency as the products of dynamic social processes
Marx, for many sociologists, is a liminal thinker. He is seen to stand between the bogeys of political economy and idealist philosophy on one side and the realm of mature social science on the other. His work is not naïve enough to be that of a mere ancestor, like Hobbes or Comte, but he lacks the sophistication of the other founding figures, Durkheim and Weber. Either he is a (rather too philosophical) critic of, and contributor to, modern economic thought or he is a Hegelian throwback, trying to shore up the ‘science’ of dialectics in the face of empiricism (although,
Book Chapter
On the reception of Foucault
Much of the energy devoted to ‘resolving’ the structure–agency ‘dispute’ derives from particular readings of sociology’s founding fathers: Durkheim, Marx and Weber. The contemporary dominance of theorists such as Bourdieu, Giddens and Habermas, however, did not emerge seamlessly. There was no smooth transition in Anglophone sociology between the ‘structuralist’ Marxism of the early 1970s – as filtered through Antonio Gramsci (by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) and Louis Althusser (in the sociology of education and ‘welfare’) – and today’s theoretical doldrums. Many sociologists used Michel Foucault’s ideas to supplement, and then replace, the left-structuralist consensus of the 1970s and
Book Chapter