Review of \u3cem\u3eInvisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City\u3c/em\u3e. Javier Auyero. Reviewed by Danielle Docka-Filipek

Javier Auyero (Ed.), Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City. University of Texas Press (2015), 280 pages, $24.95 (paperback)

Enemies of the Nation: Understanding the Hungarian State’s Relationship to Humanitarian NGOs

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) occupy a very ambiguous role in society. Historically, NGOs have been both heralded as democracy in action and criticized for being complicit supporters of neoliberalism. Now, in certain contexts, they are rendered as enemies of the nation. In this article, we examine the evolution of nongovernmental organizations in Hungary, a nation where this transformation is exceedingly clear. Hungary provides a pertinent case example to explore the manner in which civil society as an amorphous, ill-defined category becomes a stand-in for whatever the state needs to protect its interests. The current discourse on NGOs in Hungary plays out during and in the aftermath of what has been dubbed the “refugee crisis” of the summer of 2015. Therefore, in this article we explore how the civil sector evolved in Hungary following the end of the Soviet era, the nongovernmental response to the refugee crisis, and the manner in which NGOs and individual volunteers have been characterized in political discourse as “enemies of the state,” due to the government’s anti-migrant stance. As a result of public rhetoric and policy changes, the civil sector in Hungary has no choice but to either shrink considerably or reframe their activities as decidedly anti-government

Beyond the nuclear family? Familism and gender ideology in diverse religious communities

Religious familism, or ideology about ''the good family,'' has been central to the culture and practice of local religious communities in the United States. Recent research has suggested that the ''Ozzie and Harriet'' familism dominant among mainstream religious groups in the 1950s religious expansion has remained formative for many local religious communities in the intervening decades. This research suggests that religious familism shapes how gender is symbolized and enacted in local religious communities and leads to differences in the meaning of religious participation for contemporary men and women. However, this work has been based largely on studies of white, middle-class religious communities. In this article, we analyze the relationship between family ideology and gender in three congregations chosen to exemplify those social locations where we would expect considerable distance from the 1950s ''Ozzie and Harriet'' ideal-one Hispanic Catholic parish, one African-American congregation in the black Church tradition, and one white liberal Protestant congregation that has adopted an open and affirming stance toward homosexuality and same-sex unions. We find considerable innovation in family-oriented rhetoric and ministry, and a range of gendered practices that prove considerably more inclusive than those found in previous research. We also find considerable symbolic affirmation of the value of more traditional gender roles and practices, particularly in the realm of the family, than we expected to find. We explore the implications of these findings for how we understand the production of gender in local religious communities and for the capacity of local religious communities to become truly gender-inclusive spaces

Case studies in compassion: need interpretation, gender, and family in an era of faith-based provision

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2013. Major: Sociology. Advisors: Dr. Penny Edgell, Dr. Kathleen Hull. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 407 pages, appendices A-F.As a result of provisions codified in the 1996 PRWORA, and later, through presidential Executive Order, many Americans now encounter the welfare state through small programs run by local churches. Both liberal and conservative worship communities in the US have embraced and maintained a `traditional' family ideology in which nuclear family ideals are normative--despite increasing levels of diversity in the way the majority of Americans organize their family lives. The central concerns of this dissertation revolve around whether and how programs receiving funds associated with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) are organized around the needs of families that do not fit the traditional nuclear male-breadwinner ideal. I pose three primary questions: 1) How do institutionalized models of family and gender in faith-based organizations inform service providers' interpretations of clients' needs? 2) Do the models of family circulating in faith-based organizations have consequences for the ways these organizations become gendered social spaces? 3) In environments where models for the "Ideal Family" exist in tension with other forms of family life, will organizational rhetorics about family and gender reflect this diversity? To answer the above questions, interviews and participant-observation in four case study organizations (one theologically liberal, two theologically conservative, and one "community-based"), as well as 39 interviews with program authorities in 27 different organizations (drawn across a Midwestern, metropolitan area) were conducted. Although the organizations profiled exhibited a good amount of practices accommodating family diversity, organizational rhetorics did not always reflect the full diversity of participants' family lives. Significantly, I observed a deep ambivalence surrounding non-nuclear family models, a pattern I argue is attributable to the way such family forms call into question dominant beliefs and practices related to the social construction of gender. Furthermore, I found that in settings of community and faith-based social service provision, rhetoric associated with the ideology of religious neoliberalism is pervasive, and extends beyond the discourse circulated by the theologically conservative coalition of elites with which it is normally associated. I argue the pervasiveness of religious neoliberalism is driven by structural conditions compelling organizations to resort to individualistic "moral resources" in the absence of material resources, which limits providers' capacity to promote and access alternative discursive resources that might otherwise reference structural inequality. Lastly, my data indicates that organizations' self-definition as either community-based or faith-based does not indicate "more" or "less" religion, as many other analyses otherwise presuppose. The boundaries between organizations with religious characteristics and those with "non-religious," or more secular, self-presentations are porous, in that they shift over time and in both directions (i.e., organizations become more explicitly expressive of their religious character, or they choose to consciously abandon elements of their religious identity as time passes and their structure develops)