Family solidarity in the Netherlands

Family relationships are an important part of the glue that holds society together and they have traditionally been regarded as one of the key determinants of social cohesion. But important social developments — such as the increasingly ‘fragile’ nature of relationships, decreasing family size, social and spatial mobility, and individualisation — have had a major impact on the position of the family within society. Family issues are the subject of frequent and ongoing debate, particularly in the political arena. Though social scientists have made progress in the way they describe how and to what extent family relationships are changing, many questions remain and little is understood about the causes and potential implications of changing family pattern

Copyright and cultural work: an exploration

This article first discusses the contemporary debate on cultural “creativity” and the economy. Second, it considers the current state of UK copyright law and how it relates to cultural work. Third, based on empirical research on British dancers and musicians, an analysis of precarious cultural work is presented. A major focus is how those who follow their art by way of “portfolio” work handle their rights in ways that diverge significantly from the current simplistic assumptions of law and cultural policy. Our conclusions underline the distance between present top-down conceptions of what drives production in the cultural field and the actual practice of dancers and musicians

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games

Writing : A Versatile Resource in the Treatment of the Clients’ Proposals

This chapter investigates how writing serves as a resource in decision-making at the Clubhouse and how writing activities relate to professionals’ responses to clients. The ideology of the Clubhouse is one of interaction, and in accordance with this perspective, support workers and clients should be treated equally in decision-making processes related to the activity of the Clubhouse. However, as demonstrated in previous research, encouraging clients in mental health rehabilitation to participate actively in interaction and decision-making can be difficult. Therefore, support workers carry a substantial responsibility for promoting clients’ participation in interactions; this responsibility is supported by how they respond to clients. The focus in this chapter is on a certain type of participation-encouraging response—that is, a response that promotes the documentation of vaguely expressed ideas in written documents and encourages a dialogue between support workers and Clubhouse clients around the formulations in a text-in-production.This chapter investigates how writing serves as a resource in decision-making at the Clubhouse and how writing activities relate to professionals’ responses to clients. The ideology of the Clubhouse is one of interaction, and in accordance with this perspective, support workers and clients should be treated equally in decision-making processes related to the activity of the Clubhouse. However, as demonstrated in previous research, encouraging clients in mental health rehabilitation to participate actively in interaction and decision-making can be difficult. Therefore, support workers carry a substantial responsibility for promoting clients’ participation in interactions; this responsibility is supported by how they respond to clients. The focus in this chapter is on a certain type of participation-encouraging response—that is, a response that promotes the documentation of vaguely expressed ideas in written documents and encourages a dialogue between support workers and Clubhouse clients around the formulations in a text-in-production.Peer reviewe

Tapes, transcripts and trials:The routine contamination of police interview evidence

This article addresses a serious, but currently unacknowledged, problem of evidential consistency regarding police-suspect interview evidence. It sheds light on flaws in current criminal procedure through the lens of linguistics, focusing on key stages of currently accepted practice which fly in the face of what linguists have long known about language. It demonstrates that, in stark contrast to the strict principles of preservation applied to physical evidence, interview data go through significant transformation between their creation in the interview room and their presentation in the courtroom, especially through changes in format between written and spoken text. It argues that, despite the safeguards provided by PACE 1984, there is nonetheless a level of routine distortion and contamination unintentionally built in to the current system of presenting police interviews as evidence in England & Wales

The Patriarchal Bargain in a Context of Rapid Changes to Normative Gender Roles: Young Arab Women’s Role Conflict in Qatar

Social norms in patriarchal countries in the Middle East are changing at differing rates. In Qatar, expectations about education have shifted, and women’s participation in higher education is normative. However, women’s participation in the workforce remains relatively low, and women still are expected to perform all household and child-rearing activities. Interviews with 27 18–25 year-old Qatari women enrolled in college in Qatar are used to illustrate the conflict between norms about education, workforce, and family. Many young women resolve this normative conflict by giving preference to family over work and education. Other women hold conflicting norms and goals for their future without acknowledging the normative conflict. Overall, young women in this sample feared divorce, were uncertain about customary family safety nets, and thus desired financial independence so they would be able to support themselves if they were left alone later in life due to divorce, or the death of their husband. The Qatari government should revisit the appropriateness of continuing to emphasize the patriarchal family structure and socially conservative family norms, if they desire to advance women in their society

The impact of family structure and disruption on intergenerational emotional exchange in Eastern Europe

Demographic trends across Europe involve a decrease in fertility and mortality rates, and an increase in divorce and stepfamily formation. Life courses and living arrangements have become less standardized and the structure of families has changed. In this article, we examine to what extent contemporary family structure and composition resulting from demographic changes affect emotional exchange between children and their parents, both from adult child to parent and from parent to child. Because the general level of well-being has been shown to be lower in Eastern Europe, thereby potentially affecting emotional exchange within families, we focus our research on Eastern Europe. We use the “conservation of resources theory” to derive hypotheses on how family structure may affect intergenerational emotional exchange. Family ties are assumed to be important resources of affection that people want to obtain and retain throughout their lives. Data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) are used to test our hypotheses. In general, our data offer more support for the idea that families are resilient than for the often heard assumption that families are in decline as a consequence of the changed family structure and composition

Doing Machismo: Legitimating speech acts as a selection discourse

This article explores the relationship between machismo and implicit power processes at a conceptual and empirical level. Implicit power processes are the taken-for-granted ways in which organizational members reproduce sexual divisions in their organizations. The empirical data are derived from the Argentine auto components industry. This is a male-dominated industry and machismo was used to explain and justify selection decisions that favoured men. Machismo is intrinsically linked to masculinity and power and should be defined as a set of hegemonic masculinities. Machismo represents four images of the dominant ideal of manhood in the Argentine society. These images are the authoritarian image, the breadwinner image, the virility image and the chivalry image. Machismo can then be studied as a discourse on masculinity that, when translated into particular selection discourses, implicitly leads to the exclusion of women from this industry. Machismo and implicit power processes are thus intertwined; both sexes routinely reproduce the male standard. In order to show how discourses on masculinity implicitly shape selection processes, this article presents a typology. The typology consists of four types, the power of natural differences, the power of denial, pastoral or caring power, and the power of the male standard. The typology serves as an analytical tool to reveal the intertwining of machismo and implicit power processes at the shop floors of Argentine auto components firms. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005