Den empiriske nærværsmetafysikkens forjettelse. Et svar

Artikkelen er et debattinnlegg om norsk sosiologi med utgangspunkt i Gunnar C. Aakvaags innlegg i dette nummer av Sosiologi i dag. Forfatterne deler idealet om en empirisk informert og teoretisk forankret holistisk sosiologi, men avviser forestillingen om at dette kan realiseres ved å gå tilbake til eldre og nyere klassikere. Utfordringene sosiologien står overfor i komplekse samfunn kan bedre møtes ved å frembringe spesifikke modeller. I modelleringsarbeidet kan det være fruktbart å anvende begreper og perspektiver fra ulike teoribygg, og mangfoldet i faget kan derved forstås som en styrke, ikke bare som bekymringsfull fragmentering. I Clifford Gertzââ¬â¢ ånd hevder forfatterne at teorier og begreper viser sin kvalitet først når de konfronteres med den virkelige verden. Den raske utviklingen av empiriske kilder, som longitudinelle databaser og nye former for kvalitative analyser, vil kreve stadig mer sofistikerte teorier og modeller og drive frem avansert teoretisering. Moderne sosiologisk analyse kan derved ha mye å hente ved å åpne seg for innsikter fra andre fag. Tilbakeskuingen mot fagets klassikere, eller drømmen om en generell teori hvor store spørsmål kan håndteres på et høyt abstraksjonsnivå, vil neppe resultere i noen empirisk velinformert teoretisering

Fuzing Play and Politics: On Individualized Collective Action in Leisure

Today, widespread use of digital technologies transform cultural forms, among them leisure and art. This article analyzes nine creative, political enactments on the ground, communicated on the Internet. Five are rooted in the vitality and freedom of leisure, and four spring from the dedicated work of professional artists. The techniques applied in all of these actions are knitting/crocheting, allowing crowd production and crowd financing. Amateurs seem to experience less strain and more sociability in this type of activism than professionals do. Their efforts may be modest and imbued with individual gratification, but those who take part are nevertheless able to move among “peers,” announce a project, share in the construction of a political space, and likely to bring this positive experience to future civic/political involvements. The article’s proposition is that the digital turn has opened a participatory political potential growing directly out of pleasurable, everyday leisure

The doctor-nurse relationship: how easy is it to be a female doctor co-operating with a female nurse?

The doctor-nurse relationship has traditionally been a man-woman relationship. However, in recent years, the number of women studying medicine has increased in all West-European countries, and in 1997, 29% of active Norwegian doctors were women. The doctor-nurse relationship has often been described as a dominant-subservient relationship with a clear understanding that the doctor is a man and the nurse is a woman. This article examines what happens to the doctor-nurse relationship when both are women: how do female doctors experience their relationship to female nurses? It is based on two sets of data, qualitative interviews with 15 doctors and a nationwide survey of 3589 doctors. The results show that in the experience of many doctors, male and female, the doctor-nurse relationship is influenced by the doctor's gender. Female doctors often find that they are met with less respect and confidence and are given less help than their male colleagues. The doctors' own interpretation of this is partly that the nurses' wish to reduce status differences between the two groups affects female doctors more than male, and partly that there is an "erotic game" taking place between male doctors and female nurses. In order to tackle the experience of differential treatment, the strategies chosen by female doctors include doing as much as possible themselves and making friends with the nurses. The results are considered in light of structural changes both in society at large and within the health services, with emphasis on the recent convergence of status between the two occupational groups.Doctor-nurse relationship Gender differences Female physicians