Social Boundaries Research Articles

The Research on the Women's Clothing Types of Fashion Brands under the Influence of Feminism

Under the influence of feminism, fashion brands have also continuously designed and produced clothing with corresponding themes. In the process of continuous development of feminist clothing, it has also brought a certain impact on individuals and society. This paper takes the design and development of feminist clothing of different fashion brands under the influence of feminism as the research object, and explores the concept and development of feminism, as well as its manifestation in clothing. At the same time, it analyzes the specific display forms and influences of feminist clothing of different fashion brands. Through the literature reading method, the results of this paper find that feminist clothing is reflected in different brands such as Dior, Prada, Givenchy, Saint Laurent. In terms of influence, it mainly includes enhance women's self-confidence for self-expression, and eliminate social boundaries and demonstrate female power. The author hopes that through this research, it can provide relevant contributions for scholars who study this field in the future.

Using (Visual) Humor to Demarcate Social and Symbolic Boundaries

While humor has a long résumé as a “window into the unconscious,” the boundaries it strikes against are understudied. Are people offended in particular, predictable ways? This online survey (N=1,178) that gathers demographic, biographic, and psychological data in combination with responses to 22 wordless cartoons, reveals distinct social patterns in offend ability. With reference to anthropological, psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific traditions, “offend ability” is conceptualized in cultural sociological terms, by which “offense” is read as the “striking against” of a symbolic boundary (separating profane from the too-sacred-to-play-with). As such, offense is proposed as a supremely meaningful metric in defining groups in terms of what they believe most deeply. With attention both to marginal groups and to liminal identities, analysis crystalizes an intriguing trend, namely: the significance of micro (individual) level factors (e.g. age, gender, psychological characteristics) and macro (social) factors (e.g. ethnicity, nationality) in predicting sensitivity to offense, in comparison to the seeming irrelevance of the mesa (interactional). This builds on major sociological work that cites the increasing solitariness of modern life; here, “sacred” boundaries are seen to be individually determined, in combination less with lived experience than with membership in abstract, often innate groups. Regression models explore meaningful variables in greater detail [1, 2]. Of particular note: sexual preferences were the greatest predictor of sensitivity to offense, with women attracted to women reporting the highest sensitivity. Across the board, those who were uncomfortable before disclosing particular information (e.g. sexual, political preferences) were disproportionately members of groups who were more sensitive to offense (e.g. “queer”, right-leaning): identity discomfort manifests as symbolic discomfort.

Systemic knowledge integration in transdisciplinary and sustainability transformation research

While knowledge integration has been well framed conceptually, the structural aspects that support co- learning and knowledge integration in transdisciplinary research remain only modestly addressed. Addressing this gap, we enlighten how a conceptual framework – building on former work by Ostrom, Giddens and Whaley – could help to structure and analyse systemic knowledge integration processes. The conceptual model is based on a transdisciplinary research project, ‘Region Römerland Carnuntum 2040’, aiming to investigate and trigger regional sustainability transformations via the experimentation with a new governance format “Future council”. The present article is based on the Future Council’s patching of rules for knowledge integration as well as a well thought-through accompanying research, which consist of a series of surveys and interviews to reveal subliminal values, capabilities, knowledge and emotions of the regional stakeholders involved in the FC. The conceptual model helped to provide a more equal playing field for systemic knowledge integration in a heterogenous group as well as just representation of marginalized groups (e.g. youth). On the other hand, our findings reveal that structural adaptability comes with the danger of reproducing power structures (e.g. of mayors). For the future we identify a need for more research on social boundaries, values and emotions and their important structuring role for transdisciplinary knowledge integration.

Startup category membership and boundary expansion in the field of artificial intelligence

PurposeAn important but neglected area of investigation in digital entrepreneurship is the combined role of both core and peripheral members of an emerging technological field in shaping the symbolic and social boundaries of the field. This is a serious gap as both categories of members play a distinct role in expanding the pool of resources of the field. I address this gap by exploring how membership category is related to funding decisions in the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI).Design/methodology/approachThe first quantitative study involved a sample of 1,315 AI-based startups which were founded in the period of 2011–2018 in the United States. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 32 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define the boundaries of their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.FindingsThe author finds that core members in the newly founded field of AI were more successful at attracting funding from investors than peripheral members and that size of the founding team, number of lead investors, number of patents and CEO approval were positively related to funding. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 30 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is one of the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to bring empirical evidence that investors adapt their funding strategy to membership categories (core and peripheral members) of a new technological field in their resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, I find that core and peripheral members claim distinct roles in their participation and contribution to the field in terms of technological developments, and that although core members attract more resources than peripheral members, both actors play a significant role in expanding the field’s social boundaries.Practical implicationsCore AI entrepreneurs who wish to attract funding may consider operating in fewer categories in order to be perceived as core members of the field, and thus focus their activities and limited resources to build internal AI capabilities. Entrepreneurs may invest early in filing a patent to signal their in-house AI capabilities to investors.Social implicationsThe social boundaries of an emerging technological field are shaped by a multitude of actors and not only the core members of the field. The author should pay attention to the role of each category of actors and build on their contributions to expand a promising field.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to study the resource acquisition strategies of entrepreneurs in a newly establishing technological field.

Attitudes of Muslim Americans Regarding Prejudice and Discrimination Displayed by Non-Muslims

<h1>Abstract</h1> Muslim Americans have reported experiencing racial profiling, physical threats, and verbal abuse based on their religion, ethnicity, and color (Samari, 2016). These types of lived experiences can have negative personal consequences for Muslim Americans and influence their attitudes and behavior toward non-Muslims. A literature review conducted by Simon et al. (2018) suggests the need for research that explores the point of view of minorities regarding intolerance displayed by majority members. Intolerance is defined as the refusal and unwillingness to tolerate or respect individuals from different social or minority groups who hold different beliefs. Prejudice and discrimination can hinder the discovery of new information needed to promote positive social change by influencing social boundaries among groups based on their negative lived experiences (Ellis & Abdi, 2017). Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the attitudes of Palestinian Muslim Americans in Cleveland, Ohio, regarding prejudice and discrimination displayed by non-Muslims. The theory of planned behavior was used as the theoretical framework for this study. Purposeful and convenience sampling were used to recruit the 10 participants in this study. Giorgi’s (2012) psychological method, coding, and template analysis were used to perform data analysis. The study revealed the participants described prejudice and discrimination among Muslims and non-Muslims as “good and bad” or “it depends.” The study also found participants used the terms “we versus they” or “us versus them” when describing the behavior displayed by non-Muslims. Information discovered from this study can be used to develop new social strategies that can help improve the social interactions among Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States.

The people that survived by a miracle: on ethnic self-presentation of the kashubians

The article focuses on the discursive strategies of presenting ethnicity that are employed by the present-day Kashubians of Poland. Kashubians are a West Slavic minority ethnic group which was legally recognized as a regional linguistic community in 2005. Drawing on the materials of anthropological fieldwork conducted in areas inhabited by ethnic Kashubians, I describe some of the practices of ethnic and national self-definition of the locals and address the ways in which Kashubians experience otherness and use the rhetoric of otherness. Analyzing a range of themes and topics related to the ethnicity of the informants, I show how Kashubians of different generations reflect on the ethnic and linguistic specificity of their community, construct, maintain, and cross the traditional and new social boundaries, as well as ponder over the issue of preserving their group identity within the framework of the Polish national state.

Manifestation of the Yezidi Identity

Abstract This article aims to examine the relationship between cemeteries and Yezidi identity by focusing on the Goristana Hesen Begê (Hesen Beg Cemetery), which belongs to the villages of Geliyê Sora (Güneli), Mezre (Çilesiz), Xanik/Berhokê (Mağaracık), and Efşe (Kaleli), and is located in Nusaybin in southeastern Turkey. It will analyse the tombstones’ architectural features and symbols and question how the Yezidi identity reconstructs and transforms itself in modern monumental funerary architecture in southeastern Turkey. Ritual practices in the Goristana Hesen Begê indicate that death rituals can be employed to strengthen and integrate the social boundaries of the community. Thus, it will discuss the meaning of places of memory and mortuary practices for the exiled Yezidis and their roles as identity markers in the reproduction of social relations within the Yezidi community.

Religiosity and Spirituality in Linda Mary Montano’s Anorexia Nervosa

Abstract This paper presents a close-up reading of American artist and ex-member of the Maryknoll Sisters, Linda Mary Montano. Her performance in the video work, Anorexia Nervosa (1981) is analyzed in view of contemporary performance and video art by women artists in the second wave feminism. By positioning the experience of self-starving in the Catholic tradition of holy fasting and asceticism of self-starvation, this paper regards Montano’s video work as a continuation of Catholic women utilizing social agencies. Montano’s own performance in Anorexia Nervosa can be seen as one of many forms of keeping the faith while exercising contemporary art with a mission of disrupting social boundaries and norms. Montano’s understanding of the body as a vehicle of performance art is still resonant with her religiosity of elevating self-starving to a miraculous intervention. Her mundane narrative of the extraordinary supports her view that her life is art; art is life.

"I am not a junkie": Social categorization and differentiation among people who use drugs.

Substance use stigma is a form of group-based exclusion, and delineating pathways from stigma to poor health requires a deeper understanding of the social dynamics of people who use drugs (PWUD). Outside of recovery, scant research has examined the role of social identity in addiction. Framed by Social Identity Theory/Self-Categorization Theory, this qualitative study investigated strategies of within-group categorization and differentiation among PWUD and the roles these social categories may play in shaping intragroup attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Data come from the Rural Opioid Initiative, a multi-site study of the overdose epidemic in rural United States. We conducted in-depth interviews with people who reported using opioids or injecting any drug (n=355) living in 65 counties across 10 states. Interviews focused on participants' biographical histories, past and current drug use, risk behaviors, and experiences with healthcare providers and law enforcement. Social categories and dimensions along which categories were evaluated were inductively identified using reflexive thematic analysis. We identified seven social categories that were commonly appraised by participants along eight evaluative dimensions. Categories included drug of choice, route of administration, method of attainment, gender, age, genesis of use, and recovery approach. Categories were evaluated by participants based on ascribed characteristics of morality, destructiveness, aversiveness, control, functionality, victimhood, recklessness, and determination. Participants performed nuanced identity work during interviews, including reifying social categories, defining 'addict' prototypicality, reflexively comparing self to other, and disidentifying from the PWUD supra-category. We identify several facets of identity, both behavioral and demographic, along which people who use drugs perceive salient social boundaries. Beyond an addiction-recovery binary, identity is shaped by multiple aspects of the social self in substance use. Patterns of categorization and differentiation revealed negative intragroup attitudes, including stigma, that may hinder solidary-building and collective action in this marginalized group.

Allison Glazebrook. Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts.

Allison Glazebrook’s monograph, Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts, is the product of the author’s expertise on sexual laborers in ancient Athens. The book comes at a time when several monographs dedicated to sexual labor have appeared, but it carves a notable space for itself in the literature. Glazebrook distinguishes her work from that of, for example, Konstantinos Kapparis and Edward Cohen, both by topic and form. She is not interested in writing “a social history of sexual labor” (5) but rather in using the figure of the male and female sex laborer in forensic oratory as a means for exploring Athenian ideas and attitudes on gender, the body, the household, and citizenship. Counting herself among historians such as Josiah Ober and Matthew Christ, she differentiates her method by eschewing the tendency to mine the orators for historical data at the expense of the text’s literary character. Glazebrook “is interested in how speakers manipulate the attitudes and practices in their discourses around sexual labor to cement and problematize social and civic boundaries” (4). Thus, she embraces the literary quality of the texts in the service of revealing Athenian ideology. To do so, each chapter treats a single court speech holistically. As opposed to the clever and privileged hetaira of other genres, oratory presents a broad range of sex laborer types that threaten the stability of the household and the city. Her readings make use of the anxieties revealed by the orators to shine a light on broader questions of, for instance, women’s status and pederasty.

Taking control of one’s everyday life - a qualitative study of experiences described by participants in an occupational intervention

BackgroundSick leave due to stress-related ill-health is increasing and is often caused by occupational imbalance. These types of issues tend to affect both the ability to work and cope with everyday life, as well as the overall experience of health, negatively. There is still little knowledge on how to prepare people and workplaces for the return-to-work process after participation in a work rehabilitation program due to stress and occupational ill-health. Therefore, this study aimed to describe what is needed to achieve a balanced everyday life that includes paid work as experienced by individuals who had participated in a ReDO® intervention due to occupational imbalance and ill-health.MethodsThe concluding notes from 54 informants’ medical records were used for qualitative content analysis. The informants had participated in an occupational therapy group intervention to promote occupational health and regain full work capacity.ResultsThe analysis resulted in one major theme and four categories describing how the informants perceive that they must take control of their everyday life as a whole. By doing so, they need to work with structurization and prioritization, social interaction, boundary setting, and occupational meaningfulness.ConclusionThe study indicates a highly relational process, where it is impossible to divide life into private and work, and presupposes balance in everyday life in multiple dimensions. Its contribution includes the formulation of perceived needs in the transition between intervention and return to work and could, through further research, be used to generate a more effective and sustainable return- and rehabilitation models.

몸의 주체성 확립 과정에 대한 자문화기술지

The purpose of this study is to show the experience and reflection on how my body has established its subjectivity in the personal, familial, and social boundaries of each stage of life development. The research question is ‘what I have reflected through the experience of the body in the process of life development?’. As a research method, the auto-ethnography was used. In order to collect research data, diary, personal counseling journal, program records, and writings for literary creative contests were collected based on self-recall materials. Then organized and signified according to the research theme. As a result of the data analysis, the subjects of the body according to the stages of life development were named as ‘childhood - the rough body of a great tomboy’, ‘adolescence - the shameful body trapped in the gaze of others’, ‘the young adulthood - the body of the struggle for recognition in the bridle of society’, and ‘middle age - the body that accepts me, others and society’. Through the research process, the researcher has noticed the transformation of beings who want to pursue life from ‘instrumentalized body’ to ‘expanded body’, and intends to carry out self-care to apply it to the everyday world. Based on the results, this study suggests ways to support children and adolescents to form an autonomous and positive image of their bodies.

From listing religions to tabulating nationalities: Ottoman identity policies and enumeration practices

Two features are attributed to modern state censuses: measurement and classification. Yet the real contribution of the modern census is tabulation, one of the most important and yet ignored part of statistics. The literature on censuses ignores tabulation, probably because it is not possible to separate it from statistics. Tabulation is not just a geometrical drawing, rather a tool for ordering, hierarchizing, simplification and exposing of data. Its most important function is to provide comparable data, both classifications and numbers. This study demonstrates the contribution of tabulation, by comparing premodern surveys (tahrir) to modern censuses (sayım) of the Ottoman Empire. The ethno-religious identities were listed in surveys but tabulated in censuses. This study argues that the emergence and use of tabulation emanates from the change in state-subject and state-minorities relations. In other words, it originates from the politicization of population and identity. The tabulation became a tool in the hands of the modernized empire to expose social boundaries and make comparable the ethno-religious identities.

Hygienic Boundaries: Roma Communities and the Racialisation of Public Health Discourses during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public health measures instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic included both social distancing measures (including lockdowns), as well as personal hygiene measures (i.e., washing hands, wearing masks), with the purpose of preventing the spread of the virus. Using primary data obtained from stakeholder interviews, surveys, and desktop research from seven non-EU countries in Eastern Europe, this article shows how a new discursive fault line with hygiene as its core emerged across these countries in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, symbolically (and sometimes physically) separating the Roma from the non-Roma. Lockdowns reduced the ability of the Roma people to earn a living, due to the often-informal nature of their employment; as a result, many faced difficulties in covering basic living costs. These difficulties were compounded by poor living conditions, which limited the extent to which Roma people were able to follow social distancing rules and the measures regulating personal hygiene. All these factors were used to depict Roma communities as both lacking in personal hygiene and as wilfully non-compliant with public health rules. Public discourses emphasised the gap between the (self-perceived) clean and rule-observing non-Roma, and Roma communities, constructed as lacking in discipline and personal hygiene. These discourses, centred on hygiene, reinforced social boundaries and justified abuse and exclusion.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

Clothing Norms in Tertiary Institutions: Negotiating Fashion Towards Social Hegemony

Public discourse and scholarship espouse the subjective influence of clothing norms over the natural body as visual markers of the social boundaries of fashion. As a backlash to student fashion on campus with growing incidences of immodest dressing, most tertiary institutions particularly in Nigeria introduced dress standards. Scholars have elaborated on how fashion has been used to negotiate social boundaries of power, identity, status, gender, etc.They differed on the approval/acceptability and disapproval/unacceptability of the institutional control over clothing behaviour of adults. This article underscores the role fashion plays as an effective driver of social control and hegemony. Also, by underpinning sartorial practices in conformity to established institutional expectations and standards of appropriate nuances of formal dressing in institutions of higher learning. From an ethnographic standpoint, the study analysed the institutional standards of formal dressing or dress codes of different tertiary institutions in Nigeria as posted on their websites in addition to the participant method. This information is equally published in the students′ handbooks of these institutions. The post-structural Foucaultian approach to Discipline and Punishment is applied as an analytical framework. This explains disciplinary power as a mechanism of social control of the body in contemporary society through conformity to approved dress standards in a formal environment like the university. It is argued that the framework provides an understanding of the significance of social control which may be hampered by misconceptions about what other people think of clothing norms.

Analysis of connectivism as a tool for posthuman university classrooms

In the posthuman era, teaching and learning through technologies are becoming increasingly important, most especially in the university system. Connectivism, a theory of learning that emphasises the importance of connections between people and information, is one of the most influential educational philosophies driving today’s educational dynamism. In a posthuman world, where technology is constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, connectivism is argued to provide a framework for understanding how students learn and how can technology be used to facilitate learning. This study argues that connectivism is one of the ways in which classroom stakeholders can be made to prepare for the posthuman era. The study is located within the transformative paradigm to enable the researcher to tailor the argument toward transforming the university classrooms towards developing a new way of thinking about society's present social boundaries by pursuing truth within a postmodern framework. In the same vein, conceptual analysis was adopted to make sense of the argument since it helps to interoperate and dismantle complex and ambiguous concepts toward meaning-making. The analysis begins by presenting connectivism and its potential assumptions. The assumptions were juxtaposed with the posthuman agenda by arguing the relationship between posthumanism and connectivism and lastly, how it prepares classroom stakeholders for building students’ capacity ahead of the emerging interaction between human (students) and non-human (technologies). The study concludes that connectivism viewpoint is one of the unavoidable philosophies of the future.

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City ed. by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube

Reviewed by: Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City ed. by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube Paul G. Feller-Simmons Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City. Edited by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube. (Collection "Épitome musical.") Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. [ 312 p. ISBN 9782503598871 (paperback), €70; ISBN 9782503598888 (e-book), €55.] Music examples, tables, illustrations, index. The essay collection Theatres of Belief is the result of a collaborative project between a transnational group of musicologists who share interest in the convergence of religion, sound, and early modern urban spaces. Eleven chapters by different authors provide multiple case studies drawn from cities located in Europe and the Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. These studies showcase a variety of approaches to religious confession, conversion, and soundscape. A leading thread of this volume is interactions between sound and confessionalization in the early modern world. In this regard, the authors' tendency to eschew the overarching narratives that have conflated local experience with universal developments related to religious change is a potentially generative model. Many chapters demonstrate how confessionalization traversed dynamic and distinctly localized trajectories. For instance, Philip Hahn considers the incremental introduction of Lutheran music culture in Ulm following its Reformation in 1531. The chapter advances that the city became an exemplary case of a long, acoustic Reformation. Lutheran theologians tried to introduce church [End Page 395] musical practices in a way that conflicted with Ulm's Zwinglian history and thus repeatedly found resistance. Hahn then challenges a unidirectional model for the cultural development of the Reformation that has tended to sideline the realities of sacred music in many regions of central Europe. In discussing the distinction between opposition to musical performance in urban and rural areas surrounding Ulm, Hahn addresses issues of sonic conversion between social boundaries. In a state of pluriform religious cultures, sacred music served to "experience and express religious belonging" (p. 169). Alexander Fisher also explores the role that sound and music played in the strategies of conversion of confessional spaces in southern Germany. Fisher focuses on sonic conversions within worship spaces and the reconfiguration of space particularly delimited by bell signals, processions, and popular singing. Whereas Protestants demarcated confessional boundaries through the sounding of sermons in the vernacular and congregational singing, Catholics responded by producing orthodox songs for the laity and reconfiguring church architecture. As Hahn shows to be the case in Ulm, Fisher demonstrates that polemics surrounding the control of the soundscape were rooted in confessional politics that functioned as markers of social identity. For example, while processions in Catholic locations such as Munich sacralized the public space, they could also serve as a medium of religious confrontation and negotiation. The sonic conversion of physical structures and the interdependence of landscape and soundscape features most strongly in Iain Fenlon's contribution. He provides a chronological exposition of the Christianization of Cordova, Spain, through architectural, ritual, and musical conversions between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the wake of the reconquista, the construction of a cathedral and royal chapel on the site of the old mosque and the reorganization of the liturgy and music chapel forcefully changed the urban soundscape. Echoing ideas developed by Hahn and Fisher, Fenlon proposes that public music and ritual were functional to displaying Catholic identity and monarchical loyalty in Cordova. In this instance, polyphony performed by the musical forces of the cathedral's chapel gained growing importance in processions throughout the sixteenth century. This "spectacular display of civic and religious belief" (p. 60) thus provided a sonified distinguishability to Catholic devotional identity. Emilio Ros-Fábregas also illustrates how sonic practices identify a Catholic community, albeit in the form of networks interconnected through devotional practices. His chapter focuses on a 1661 publication of Jesuit spiritual exercises dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament based on the traditions of Perpignan and Barcelona. The source provides details about the music that accompanied these exercises and includes an unexpected reference to Juan de Palafox y Mendoza that leads Ros-Fábregas to propose a further connection to Madrid. The chapter frames the source as a key to understanding the extent of the international...

Being a master of metaphors

Being a master of metaphors