Societal Membership Research Articles

Use of Offensive Animal Metaphor as an Interactional Activity in Online Forum Discussions

ABSTRACT This paper investigates offensive animal metaphors in blog comments about the management of donations of money and medical relief during the coronavirus pandemic in China. Rather than understanding the metaphorical usage of language as a cognitive process, we consider its situational usage as a social action and invoke insights from Conversation Analysis. Based on data retrieved from Sina Weibo, we show how discussants use animal metaphors to accomplish varying actions and construct intelligibility between themselves and others about the relationship between actions, moral accountability, and description of social events. We therefore argue that CA with its focus on topicality, action and societal membership can complement the cognitive understanding of the proximity between the source and the target domains.

Reflections on reform intervention: a reply to critics

ABSTRACT Here, I reply to four commentaries on my recent book, Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention. I clarify and extend several topics from the book, including the relationship of ‘reform intervention’ to other ways of promoting global justice, the implications questions of identity and societal membership have for my theory of reform intervention, the status of individuals and collectives in my theory, and how my account of toleration relates to other liberal values and historical practices of toleration.

Actualizing societal membership in imaginary interaction: The "real construction of society" in the opening of current affairs TV discussion.

The wonder of modern mass-scale society has preoccupied sociological theorists for centuries. How does the whole live on and function? At the extreme of strong empirical traditions, conversation analysis focuses on studying the interactional organization of ongoing action and identities. My article puts these two inquiries together to explore the broader relevancies of situated talk and evidence the skillfulness of social actors in managing multi-scaled cultural memberships simultaneously. Approaching society as a processual accomplishment, this article investigates the instantiation of "societal membership" in a mundane institutional setting of broadcast television. The aim of the article is to experiment with how classical theoretical conceptualization can feed into methodological insight and how detailed empirical scrutiny can enrich our theoretical understanding of the mysteries of modern co-existence. This entails casting an analytic eye on the duality of structure and action. The article re-examines the structural scope of on-site interactional achievements. From an opposite angle, it highlights how integrative societal structures are made real and maintained in the art of interactional encounters. This two-way dynamic is exemplified by scrutinizing a fragment of a televised current affairs program. A set of theoretical key concepts is introduced to shed light on the societal orientations of participants in the opening talk of the program. The opening talk addresses an imaginary audience directly via the camera. It provides a view of the interactional methods used by journalists to invoke relevant identifications for the anticipated recipient at a distance. The encounter is imagined, yet instead of imagining a community in the reception, the analytic focus of the article is on actualizing society in the production of the talk. The spatially and temporally organized societal membership materializes in social relations and interdependencies, which are constituted through intersubjective interpretations, normative positionings, and interactional choices by intentional and knowledgeable actors in the routines of everyday life. The article reverse-engineers the relational framework of the deliberative public sphere enacted in mediated interaction as a collaborative scene of the democratic system. This is achieved by explicating the contextually embedded acts of societization taking place in a journalistically regulated field of participation by means of quasi-interactive public speech.

Financial Barriers to Surgical Conferences: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Registration Fees.

Scientific meetings provide much educational value to participants of all career stages. There is a paucity of literature surrounding the costs of attending scientific meetings and how this may affect participation, especially among trainees. The objective of this study is to assess the accessibility of surgical conferences for attendees by analyzing costs related to surgical society membership and conference registration. Societal membership and conference registration fee data were collected according to career stage (i.e., student, resident, fellow, and staff) for the fourteen surgical specialties recognized by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). Fees for participants from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and for virtual-only attendance options were also collected when available. Overall, we included data from 46 surgical societies (32 North American, 14 European or global). The median conference fees for students in the member and non-member categories were 191.55 USD (IQR 42.22-320.99) and 452.40 USD (IQR 294.06-555.00), respectively, representing a 136.2% price increase if not a member. Median conference fees for residents, fellows, and staff in the member category were 65.5%, 66.9%, and 230.9% greater than that for students, respectively. Median prices for residents, fellows, and staff in the non-member category were 49.9%, 54.9%, and 49.9% greater than that for member trainees of the same category, respectively. Our results highlight the substantial costs associated with attending surgical conferences, especially for trainees, representing a significant barrier to already financially burdened trainees, especially those from LMICs, smaller institutions, or less well-off backgrounds.

Argumentation, Ideology and Discourse in Evolving Specialized Communication

In the digital age, the transformation process of information into ‘knowledge’ is characterized by hyper-connected communities, where a potentially infinite amount of information is ubiquitously accessible to individuals or community users and is instrumental in the creation of shared knowledge, but also in building consensus across community participants, societal membership and grouping, through the argumentative ideological representation of assumptions, values and practices. This Special Issue of “Lingue e Linguaggi” on the theme Argumentation, Ideology and Discourse in Evolving Specialized Communication explores the interface between these three dimensions and combines an array of perspectives into a distinctly unified volume, offering synchronic, diachronic, comparative, interlinguistic and intercultural approaches over a range of specialized knowledge domains. The volume integrates quantitative and qualitative approaches, making use of Corpus Linguistics, alongside other methods incorporated in theoretical approaches such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Appraisal Theory and Argumentation Theory, focusing on the pragma-linguistic features of different texts and genres, together with their ideological purposes for different audiences in various contexts of use. The collection of essays investigates argumentative styles and patterning along with the discursive socio-construction of ideology in the dynamics of recontextualization, rescripting and remediation which affect the multi-faceted nature of contemporary communication.

The end goal of the post-communist transition in Bulgaria: societal transformation or EU membership?

The end of the Cold War resulted in an unprecedented geopolitical situation in Europe, presenting a challenge to the security in the continent and the integration achieved so far. The only solution to this geopolitical problem was the integration of the post-communist Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) into the European Union (EU). The CEE countries therefore had to undergo deep societal reforms, while simultaneously pursuing a new foreign policy agenda away from the orbits of Russia. The EU was perceived as a solution to all existing problems. The results of the research conducted in Bulgaria, presented in this article, demonstrate that preparation for meeting the membership criteria which on the surface seemed to correspond to the aims of the transition, substituted the due structural reform. Thus, the EU accession instead of being an instrument for achieving sustainable long-term goals, became an end goal in itself, as if it would be an international testimony of a successful transition. The reforms carried out became a formality, were partial and superficial, and therefore reversible. As a result, the rule of law is deteriorating, and we can observe a facade democracy.

Theorizing interactions of migrant transnationalism and integration through a multiscalar approach

The aim of this article is to theorize interactions between migrant transnationalism and integration using a multiscalar approach. For migrant transnationalism scholars, attention to simultaneity in transnational social fields is given. However, much migration research in Europe continues to suffer from an ‘integration bias’, which under-appreciates the salience of simultaneity within transnational social fields in many migrants’ lives, and implicitly assumes a zero-sum approach to societal membership. Drawing on interviews with migrants in Oslo (Norway) a multiscalar analytical approach is adopted. The salience of where things happen and how they are understood, depending on the perspective of involved actors, across time, space and position, emerges when using this multiscalar approach. Identifying the roles of nested, taxonomical, but also emergent and perspective scales allows a fresh theoretical engagement with interactions between migrant transnationalism and integration, showing how simultaneity and (productive) friction result from additive, synergistic and even apparently antagonistic interactions.

Determinants of integrated pest management (IPM) practices dis-adoption in vegetables production in Bangladesh

The identification of factors influencing the dis-adoption of IPM can play a crucial role in the development of the agriculture sector. The present study identifies the determinants of IPM dis-adoption using a bivariate probit model. A total of 350 vegetable farmers were interviewed in order to achieve the objectives. The findings indicated that 120 farmers had initially adopted IPM. About 29% of the adopters were later dis-adopted the IPM practices. Farmers who have larger farm size, own spray machine and have perceived that IPM is slow to work have dis-adopted the practices. Societal membership and awareness about the beneficial effects of IPM negatively influenced dis-adoption. Policy implications included the use of technology-based approaches for widespread dissemination and adoption. Modification of the existing extension approach through the use of mass media and other modern communication techniques can increase initial adoption and thereby reduce dis-adoption. Farmers groups in societal organizations can play an important role in increasing knowledge, awareness and reducing the dis-adoption of IPM practices.

Health workforce planning in Namibia: assessing a pilot workforce survey of pharmacists.

Southern Africa lacks resources necessary to combat presenting health challenges. This crisis will likely be remedied through the in-country training of healthcare professionals, for example, in Namibia. Monitoring the workforce will be essential to inform planning in health services and training. A national pilot workforce survey in Namibia using a multi-modal sampling approach aimed to test methodology for describing the pharmacy workforce and quantifying preferences towards further training. The survey tool included questions relating to socio-demographics, professional and practice aspects. A conjoint analysis approach was utilised to quantify preferences around study programme, modality of study and cost. Respondents (N=135; ~20% response) represented a diverse range of individuals in various pharmacy sectors in Namibia. The majority of respondents reported female gender, private sector working, studying outside Namibia and societal group membership. Societal membership and pharmacy ownership - indicators of professional engagement - were associated with higher age; ownership was also associated with study outside Namibia and practice in community pharmacy. Regarding further study preferences, respondents placed more importance on study programme and modality over cost with the most preferred scenario being a 2-year full-time Masters programme in pharmaceutical industry/regulation by distance learning at the highest cost bracket. This national survey sampled the population of pharmacists in Namibia exploring the composition of the profession and preferences towards training. Further work will validate the findings and provide ongoing monitoring of the pharmacy workforce that can be expanded to other professional groups over a larger geographical area.

Jerusalemites and the Issue of Citizenship in the Context of Israeli Settler-Colonialism

This article aims to unmask the relationship between the Zionist settler-colonial project and its policies towards the citizenship of the indigenous Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. The article analyses Zionist citizenship politics in detail and how they play together the role of destroying the three (legal, national belonging, and societal membership) dimensions of citizenship for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. I argue that settler-colonialism presents a more accurate typology for the analysis of the situation in Jerusalem in comparison to the other typologies of equality, occupation, neocolonialism, ethnocracy and open ethnocracy.

The Human Resource Component and the Role of Societal Membership in the Public Administrative Organization in Pre- and Post-Colonial Sri Lanka

Public sector management in Sri Lanka has a long history which goes centuries beyond colonial administration. With the introduction of the colonial administrative system, drastic changes were made in the traditional indigenous public management mechanism that existed in pre-colonial Sri Lanka, resulting in extensive modifications in the human resource component. Although both traditional and post-colonial societies have been researched under many aspects, attention paid on the social organization in a human resource management perspective, focusing the human resource component and the role of organizational members in the administrative effort is near to the ground. Thus, this paper aims at distinguishing the attributes of traditional and post-colonial public administrative organization of Sri Lanka, with special emphasis on its human resource component and the role of societal members in the public administrative domain. Further, this paper searches the possibilities of reframing the role of citizens in order to improve the public service in the modern era, utilizing the themes underlying the attributes of the traditional system. This, being a desk research, the secondary data gathered for it from archival sources was comprehensively reviewed and analyzed with the support of memoing and constant comparison, in order to arrive at conclusions. In the traditional system, public administration was organized extending its structure over the entire social organization and all the societal members were acknowledged as direct stakeholders of the public administrative organization, constituting its human resource. In contrast, the colonial administrative mechanism formed a separate organization consisted of officers to manage the public affairs. As a result, the societal members’ role as active members of the public administrative system diminished and the citizens became mere service receivers. Alienation of citizens from direct involvement in public services created a sense of loss of ownership which made ground for less accountability, less responsibility and less commitment in communal matters. Even though the contemporary society is quite different from the traditional context, the shared values arising out of the traditional system may open new arenas for enforcing the commitment of citizens for better management of public resources and services by increasing their involvement.

Policing the borders of church and societal membership: immigration and faith-based communities in the US South

ABSTRACTPolicing the borders of church and societal membership: immigration and faith-based communities in the US South. Territory, Politics, Governance. This paper examines processes of border crossing and border policing within churches engaged in immigrant-outreach in the US South. Based on interviews with pastors and on focus groups with immigrant and non-immigrant congregants in 35 churches in the US South, we explore how border politics and anti-immigrant racialization intersect with the practice of faith. We argue that the complex border work undertaken by clergy members and congregants can be understood in terms of differential inclusion, that is, the extension of partial membership that may lead to a widening, rather than a diminution, of social inequalities. Immigrants themselves are cognisant of this border work and tread carefully in making claims of belonging in the church and in the state. Paying attention to the affective, emotional and performative dimensions of borders, we argue that border work needs to be understood as a diffuse set of practices undertaken by ‘ordinary’ people in the spaces of everyday life who position themselves and others as legitimate or illegitimate members of society in new immigrant destinations.

Immigrant workers’ responses to stigmatized work: Constructing dignity through moral reasoning

In the past few decades, scholarship on immigrant workers has produced two contrasting images that remain theoretically unresolved. In the 1970s and 1980s, low-wage immigrant workers were viewed as target earners whose attachment to jobs in the US was seen as temporary. By contrast, recent scholarship has depicted immigrant workers as a potent social force whose quest for dignity and full societal membership is seen as having galvanized a moribund labour movement. This study draws from the lived experience of low-wage immigrant workers to examine how they relate to their socio-economic circumstances, and what, if anything, motivates their resistance to the status quo. Analysing interview data from immigrant workers in janitorial and nursing assistant occupations in the US, I delineate how workers construct dignity by reframing the meaning of work, transferring aspirations for social mobility to their children, and resisting stereotypes of immigrant workers to generate dignified collective identities. I conclude with a discussion that aims to shed light on the contrasting and contentious views of immigrant workers and their position in the American labour movement.

Adoption of raised bed technology in some selected locations of Rajshahi District of Bangladesh

The study evaluated the adoption and farmers’ practice of raised bed technology at farm level since the close of the Soil Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SMCRSP) through a follow-up survey conducted at Durgapur Upazila of Rajshahi district. Data for the study were collected from 195 adopters and 65 non-adopters through a pre-tested interview schedule during May, 2011. The survey findings showed that the raised bed technology had a strong demonstration effect and were adopted well (56%) by the respondent farmers. The probability of adopting this technology was significantly influenced by extension contact, societal membership, and the number of male member in the household. Due to lack of machine, most farmers prepared raised bed by hand (82.7%) without maintaining recommended bed size. The most cultivated crops on bed were wheat (cultivated by 97.95% farmers) maize (27.69%) onion (16.41%) and mungbean (12.31%). Respondent farmers mentioned various positive benefits of bed technology and willing to continue this practice in future with increased area of land. This immerging technology increased cop productivity and farmers’ income to some extent. To popularize the raised bed technology among farmers, bed planter should be available to the farmers and the positive benefits should be broadcasted in the mass mediaBangladesh J. Agril. Res. 40(4): 551-566, December 2015

The Sociology of International Migration: Where We Have Been; Where Do We Go from Here?1

Controversies about international migration expose the changing structure of and underlying assumptions about societal membership in many nations. The sociology of international migration has emerged as an increasingly important subfield over the past decade in large part because it has tended to move beyond more narrow economic and demographic problems and has begun to address this fundamentally sociological issue. In the future it will be particularly important that sociologists pay attention to how demographically changing societies define who is and is not a member. As such, legal status and the role of the state has become critically important.

Immigration, places of worship and the politics of citizenship in the US South

This article considers the ways in which places of worship serve as sites of citizenship politics in immigrant‐receiving liberal democracies. We approach citizenship in terms of the social practices and everyday spaces through which individuals and groups negotiate the terms of societal membership. Places of worship are both the objects of political debates about immigrant assimilability and citizenship, and sites of political agency in which immigrants (and non‐immigrants) formulate and implement narratives of societal membership that mesh with their moral outlooks. Our arguments are based on research in the US South – a region where recent immigration has destabilised a deeply entrenched racial and religious order. We discuss Hindu temples and the notions of multicultural citizenship expressed by Indian immigrants before turning to two diversifying Christian churches to analyse the politics of citizenship between immigrants and non‐immigrants. Overall, our analysis suggests that while religious beliefs and spaces exist in tension with secularism, places of worship and faith communities remain intertwined with political life, albeit in complex and contradictory ways.

Membership Contests: Encountering Immigrant Youth in Finland

This article discusses different aspects of social and societal membership, when minority groups of young immigrants living in Finland are under consideration. During its history, Finland has mainly been a country of emigration. In the 1990s the direction of moving turned to the contrary and the amount of immigrants in Finland increased relatively quickly. Especially, young people now meet this new condition in their everyday surroundings: at school, in youth clubs, and so on. The article is based on results of a research project of several researchers and discusses the ideas of immigrants’ membership in the frames of everyday interaction, life course, positions among welfare structures, and hegemonic societal discourses. The concept of membership is used to cover these different stages of life and to bind together different studies behind this article. Young immigrants who live in current Finland are pioneers, who are forced to meet the confusion of the receiving culture. At the moment, young immigrants see anti-immigrant sentiments as self-evident and something they have to learn to live with. Their areas of membership are often guarded and limited, and it seems that a lot of anti-racist work is still needed in Finland.

Construction of adulthood and disability.

A discussion of adulthood in general and that of individuals with severe cognitive impairments was presented. The meaning of adulthood in our culture raises issues regarding the disparity between status as an adult and status as a person with a severe cognitive impairment. An examination of the traditional roles, rites, and rituals of adulthood (e.g., voting, marriage, consensual sex, and moving out of the family home) was provided. Personal deliberations on how the first author intends to assist her daughter in accessing these markers of adulthood are included. Our overall goal in this article is to promote discussion regarding adulthood and significant disabilities and to encourage additional movement toward full societal membership of adults with severe cognitive impairments.

Health or healthy: Why people are not sick in a Southern Ontarian town

The purpose of this paper is to explore ‘being healthy’ and what it means to people living in a small Ontarian town. It begins by setting out different definitions of health, concluding that ‘being healthy’ may help in understanding how we see ourselves and others in the world. After briefly discussing the site and method of investigation, the paper runs to drawing the distinction between health and ‘being healthy’ empirically. It goes on to examine what respondents see as shaping healthiness, contrasting this with current determinants of health views. There follows discussion on how ‘being healthy’ is negotiated for the self and how it is viewed in others. ‘Being healthy’ is seen as a moral code that is vital for ‘normal’ societal membership. Individuals are seen as negotiating, through use of the ‘sick role’, the cause of their health status in order to maintain healthiness and their place-in-the-world. If cause is linked to individual behaviour, then the individual is seen as being at fault for his/her illness, is unhealthy and therefore deviant. The paper concludes by revising the conceptualization of health.

Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Political Regimes

It is often argued that internationally recognized human rights are common to all cultural traditions and adaptable to a great variety of social structures and political regimes. Such arguments confuse human rights with human dignity. All societies possess conceptions of human dignity, but the conception of human dignity underlying international human rights standards requires a particular type of “liberal” regime. This conclusion is reached through a comparison of the social structures of ideal type liberal, minimal, traditional, communist, corporatist and developmental regimes and their impact on autonomy, equality, privacy, social conflict, and the definition of societal membership.