Beings in their own right? Exploring Children and young people's sibling and twin relationships in the Minority World

This paper examines the contributions that the sociological study of sibship and twinship in the Minority World can make to childhood studies. It argues that, in providing one forum within which to explore children and young people's social relationships, we can add to our understanding of children and young people's interdependence and develop a more nuanced understanding of agency. As emergent subjects, children, young people and adults are in a process of ‘becoming’. However, this does not mean that they can ‘become’ anything they choose to. The notion of negotiated interdependence (Punch 2002) is useful in helping us to grasp the contingent nature of children and young people's agency

Genes flow by the channels of culture: the genetic imprint of matrilocality in Ngazidja, Comoros Islands

International audienc

Documentary criminology: Girl Model as a case study

Visual and cultural criminology are integrated with documentary filmmaking to develop a theoretically grounded, practice-based approach called ‘documentary criminology’. The first section establishes the need for documentary filmmaking in criminology and outlines methodological opportunities. The second section examines theoretically the aesthetics and substance of documentary criminology. The third section takes the film Girl Model (Redmon and Sabin, 2011) as a case study to demonstrate how documentary criminology embedded in lived experience (in this case, the experience of scouts that recruit young Russian girls, purportedly for the modelling industry) can depict sensuous immediacy. The final section contrasts the aesthetic and ethical consequences of documentary criminology within Carrabine’s (2012, 2014) concept of ‘just’ images to a documentary filmmaking approach that remains interpretively open-ended. Readers can access Girl Model at https://vimeo.com/29694894 with the password industry

Public understandings of addiction: where do neurobiological explanations fit?

Developments in the field of neuroscience, according to its proponents, offer the prospect of an enhanced understanding and treatment of addicted persons. Consequently, its advocates consider that improving public understanding of addiction neuroscience is a desirable aim. Those critical of neuroscientific approaches, however, charge that it is a totalising, reductive perspective–one that ignores other known causes in favour of neurobiological explanations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose has argued that neuroscience, and its associated technologies, are coming to dominate cultural models to the extent that 'we' increasingly understand ourselves as 'neurochemical selves'. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews conducted with members of the Australian public residing in the Greater Brisbane area, we challenge both the 'expectational discourses' of neuroscientists and the criticisms of its detractors. Members of the public accepted multiple perspectives on the causes of addiction, including some elements of neurobiological explanations. Their discussions of addiction drew upon a broad range of philosophical, sociological, anthropological, psychological and neurobiological vocabularies, suggesting that they synthesised newer technical understandings, such as that offered by neuroscience, with older ones. Holding conceptual models that acknowledge the complexity of addiction aetiology into which new information is incorporated suggests that the impact of neuroscientific discourse in directing the public's beliefs about addiction is likely to be more limited than proponents or opponents of neuroscience expect

‘Remembering as Forgetting’: Organizational commemoration as a politics of recognition

This paper considers the politics of how organizations remember their past through commemorative settings and artefacts. Although these may be seen as ‘merely’ a backdrop to organizational activity, they form part of the lived experience of organizational spaces that its members enact on a daily basis as part of their routes and routines. The main concern of the paper is with how commemoration is bound up in the reflection and reproduction of hierarchies of organizational recognition. Illustrated with reference to two commemorative settings, the paper explores how organizations perpetuate a narrow set of symbolic ideals attributing value to particular forms of organizational membership while appearing to devalue others. In doing so, they communicate values that undermine attempts to achieve equality and inclusion. Developing a recognition-based critique of this process, the discussion emphasizes how commemorative settings and practices work to reproduce established patterns of exclusion and marginalization. To this end, traditional forms of commemorative portraiture that tend to close off difference are contrasted with a memorial garden, in order to explore the potential for an alternative, recognition-based ethics of organizational commemoration that is more open to the Other

Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Practices

Background: The universality of marriage in human societies around the world suggests a deep evolutionary history of institutionalized pair-bonding that stems back at least to early modern humans. However, marriage practices vary considerably from culture to culture, ranging from strict prescriptions and arranged marriages in some societies to mostly unregulated courtship in others, presence to absence of brideservice and brideprice, and polyandrous to polygynous unions. The ancestral state of early human marriage is not well known given the lack of conclusive archaeological evidence. Methodology: Comparative phylogenetic analyses using data from contemporary hunter-gatherers around the world may allow for the reconstruction of ancestral human cultural traits. We attempt to reconstruct ancestral marriage practices using hunter-gatherer phylogenies based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. Results: Arranged marriages are inferred to go back at least to first modern human migrations out of Africa. Reconstructions are equivocal on whether or not earlier human marriages were arranged because several African hunter-gatherers have courtship marriages. Phylogenetic reconstructions suggest that marriages in early ancestral human societies probably had low levels of polygyny (low reproductive skew) and reciprocal exchanges between the families of marital partners (i.e., brideservice or brideprice). Discussion: Phylogenetic results suggest a deep history of regulated exchange of mates and resources among lineages tha

New materialist social inquiry: designs, methods and the research-assemblage

This paper discusses issues of research design and methods in new materialist social inquiry, an approach that is attracting increasing interest across the social sciences as an alternative to either realist or constructionist ontologies. New materialism de-privileges human agency, focusing instead upon how assemblages of the animate and inanimate together produce the world, with fundamental implications for social inquiry methodology and methods. Key to our exploration is the materialist notion of a ‘research-assemblage’ comprising researcher, data, methods and contexts. We use this understanding first to explore the micropolitics of the research process, and then – along with a review of 30 recent empirical studies – to establish a framework for materialist social inquiry methodology and methods. We discuss the epistemological consequences of adopting a materialist ontology

Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States Final Report

On April 9, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. issued Executive Order 14023 establishing this Commission, to consist of “individuals having experience with and knowledge of the Federal judiciary and the Supreme Court of the United States.” The Order charged the Commission with producing a report for the President that addresses three sets of questions. First, the Report should include “[a]n account of the contemporary commentary and debate about the role and operation of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system and about the functioning of the constitutional process by which the President nominates and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints Justices to the Supreme Court.” Second, the Report should consider the “historical background of other periods in the Nation’s history when the Supreme Court’s role and the nominations and advice-and-consent process were subject to critical assessment and prompted proposals for reform.” Third, the Report should provide an analysis of the principal arguments for and against particular proposals to reform the Supreme Court, “including an appraisal of [their] merits and legality,” and should be informed by “a broad spectrum of ideas.” The Report begins by explaining the genesis of today’s Court reform debate, including by identifying developments that gave rise to President Biden’s decision to issue the April 2021 Executive Order, particularly the debates surrounding the most recent nominations. This Introduction emphasizes that the Court’s composition and jurisprudence long have been subjects of public controversy and debate in the nation’s civic life: The Court serves as a crucial guardian of the rule of law and also plays a central role in major social and political conflicts. Its decisions have profound effects on the life of the nation. Though conflict surrounding the processes by which the President nominates and the Senate confirms Justices is not new, it has become more intensely partisan in recent years. The Introduction also articulates three common and interrelated ideas frequently invoked in reform debates and throughout the Chapters of the Report: the importance of protecting or enhancing the Court’s legitimacy; the role of judicial independence in our system of government; and the value of democracy and its relationship to the Supreme Court’s decisionmaking. These important ideas can mean different things to different people. The Introduction discusses the range of meanings ascribed to these terms, with the aim of clarifying how they are deployed in arguments for and against reform

Knowledge systems, health care teams, and clinical practice: a study of successful change

Clinical teams are of growing importance to healthcare delivery, but little is known about how teams learn and change their clinical practice. We examined how teams in three US hospitals succeeded in making significant practice improvements in the area of antimicrobial resistance. This was a qualitative cross-case study employing Soft Knowledge Systems as a conceptual framework. The purpose was to describe how teams produced, obtained, and used knowledge and information to bring about successful change. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to maximize variation between cases. Data were collected through interviews, archival document review, and direct observation. Individual case data were analyzed through a two-phase coding process followed by the cross-case analysis. Project teams varied in size and were multidisciplinary. Each project had more than one champion, only some of whom were physicians. Team members obtained relevant knowledge and information from multiple sources including the scientific literature, experts, external organizations, and their own experience. The success of these projects hinged on the teams' ability to blend scientific evidence, practical knowledge, and clinical data. Practice change was a longitudinal, iterative learning process during which teams continued to acquire, produce, and synthesize relevant knowledge and information and test different strategies until they found a workable solution to their problem. This study adds to our understanding of how teams learn and change, showing that innovation can take the form of an iterative, ongoing process in which bits of K&I are assembled from multiple sources into potential solutions that are then tested. It suggests that existing approaches to assessing the impact of continuing education activities may overlook significant contributions and more attention should be given to the role that practical knowledge plays in the change process in addition to scientific knowledge