Wider Structures Research Articles

RECONCEPTUALIZING WOMAN BEAUTY IN DRAMA SERIES MY ID IS GANGNAM BEAUTY

Women and beauty are a unity. Beauty as the characteristic of femininity has taken root in a wider social system. It is culturally programmed. The modern beauty myth which is centered on women's bodies is reproduced continuously. The most dominant way of reproduction is through the media. The beauty myth is represented through advertisements, idol appearances, films, and TV series. Beauty myths are felt torturing women, so lately the movement to free women from the shackles of beauty myths is increasingly being voiced. This effort is carried out in various ways for example through writing, criticism, and popular culture. One of them is a drama series My ID is Gangnam Beauty. It is a Korean drama but watched by people around the world, dubbed in many language versions, including English. It carries out a universal issue: the beauty myth. It deconstructs the definition of woman beauty. This paper analyzes what and how beauty is defined in this series. The descriptive qualitative method is used in the analysis process. The result shows that in this series, beauty is still put as women's identity and allure, but beauty is defined as kindness and good behavior. The female main character has an ugly face so she does plastic surgery. People then call her a plastic monster, but she is loved by the most popular boy on her campus. Through this story, the audience is told that true beauty is not good-looking, but it is about attitude and behavior.

Taking Aging Parents on Holiday: A Social Practice Perspective

Family travel with aging parents has emerged as a growing market in China. This study applies social practice theory to examine family travel practices and related sociocultural factors. Qualitative interviews with 23 families were conducted to identify parents’ and adult children’s subjective experiences of intergenerational differences and action logics throughout the trip. The findings reveal that, because of urban-rural distinctions, the two generations have differing travel habits, preferences, and capabilities, which foster interdependency but also induce tensions. Influenced by reciprocal filial piety, both generations feel obligated to make compromises and gratify the other’s needs to fulfill their desirable prospects of family travel. The urban-rural distinctions are gradually resolved as the ongoing negotiations unfold. This study advances existing research by integrating the zooming-in and zooming-out lenses of practice theory to highlight the interplay between family travel practices and wider social structures.

“You suck it up and you deal with it”: Blind spots in investigative reporting and how to overcome them

Investigative journalism is about uncovering what shall not be covered, yet, blind spots remain. This paper explores what topics investigative journalists consider to be neglected in different regions of the world, why these topics are not covered, and how journalists strive to report them in spite of difficulties. We theorize the blind spots by drawing on the Hierarchy of Influences Model, meaning that blind spots in investigative reporting are deeply rooted in these influences. We explore these issues in a global comparative approach and conducted qualitative face-to-face interviews at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019 with 90 investigative journalists from 60 countries. Our findings show that many topics can’t be worked on due to repercussions from four levels of the Hierarchy of Influences Model (esp. from the wider social system), leading to self-censorship. The journalists overcome these obstacles with resourceful individual actions (e.g. publishing from abroad) since their media outlets and organizations are often not fit to help them due to resource constraints. Thus, journalists may defy the hierarchy and see it as their mission to persist, also and especially in countries in the Global South. However, obstacles are found globally and directly affect the nuts and bolts of journalism, such as access to information and sources.

LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST FOREST FIRE BASED ON PANCASILA IDEOLOGY

Forest fire law enforcement carried out by formal institutions, such as courts and the government shows a formalist, deterministic attitude, the law is understood narrowly and involutively even uprooted from the ideological/philosophical roots of Pancasila. The attitude of law enforcers who often ignore the community's sense of justice with controversial and discriminatory decisions adds to a series of law enforcement problems. local wisdom in Indonesia. This legal paper uses a philosophical approach to examine in depth the ideology of Pancasila in forest fire law enforcement. The sources of material in this paper were obtained from observations, research and literature studies. Laws, especially those relating to the Environment, fail to transform the ideological/philosophical foundation of Pancasila which has become the values ​​and spirit for the long journey of the Indonesian nation. This happens due to the lack of attention to local wisdom and national interests. The theory put forward by Robert B. Seidman, namely "The Law of Non-Transferability of Law" concludes that the law of a nation cannot be taken over, without having to take over the aspects that surround (the socio-cultural aspect) where the law stands. To borrow Satjipto Rahardjo's term, law does not exist in a vacuum, but it exists together with other social sub-systems, within a wider social system. Therefore, a legal culture that is rooted in the noble values ​​of Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution must be accommodated in the preparation of laws and regulations as well as adopting laws that grow and develop in people's lives in forest fire law enforcement to confirm the authenticity of Indonesian law.

Living Well Together Online: Digital Wellbeing from a Confucian Perspective

The impact of social media technologies (SMTs) on digital wellbeing has become an increasingly important puzzle for ethicists of technology. In this article, we explain why individualised theories of digital wellbeing (DWB) can only solve part of this puzzle. While an individualised conception of DWB is useful for understanding online self-regulation, we contend that we must seek greater understanding of how SMTs connect us. To build an account of this, we locate the conceptual resources for our account in Confucian ethics. In contrast to individualised conceptions of human flourishing that are found in the Western tradition, Confucian thinkers strongly emphasise that individuals cannot flourish alone, but need wider social structures (partner, family, society, nation). Not only do strands of Confucian ethics explain how individuals are defined by the roles they take up in relationships, but this perspective also makes practical suggestions for how these roles can be cultivated. We conclude our article by identifying the Confucian notions that seem to have most promise for the future design of SMTs.

Exploring the lived experience of Long Covid in black and minority ethnic groups in the UK: Protocol for qualitative interviews and art-based methods.

Some people experience prolonged symptoms following an acute COVID-19 infection including fatigue, chest pain and breathlessness, headache and cognitive impairment. When symptoms persist for over 12 weeks following the initial infection, and are not explained by an alternative diagnosis, the term post-COVID-19 syndrome is used, or the patient-defined term of Long Covid. Understanding the lived experiences of Long Covid is crucial to supporting its management. However, research on patient experiences of Long Covid is currently not ethnically diverse enough. The study aim is to explore the lived experience of Long Covid, using qualitative interviews and art-based methods, among people from ethnically diverse backgrounds (in the UK), to better understand wider systems of support and healthcare support needs. Co-created artwork will be used to build on the interview findings. A purposive sampling strategy will be used to gain diverse experiences of Long Covid, sampling by demographics, geographic locations and experiences of Long Covid. Individuals (aged >18 years) from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds, who self-report Long Covid symptoms, will be invited to take part in a semi-structured interview. Interviews will be analysed thematically. A sub-sample of participants will be invited to co-create visual artwork to further explore shared narratives of Long Covid, enhance storytelling and increase understanding about the condition. A patient advisory group, representing diversity in ethnicity and experiences of Long Covid, will inform all research stages. Stakeholder workshops with healthcare professionals and persons, systems or networks important to people's management of Long Covid, will advise on the integration of findings to inform management of Long Covid. The study will use patient narratives from people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, to raise awareness of Long Covid and help inform management of Long Covid and how wider social systems and networks may inform better healthcare service access and experiences.

Why norms rarely die

Significant challenges to core international norms have prompted debate over whether or not norms decay, decline, or die. We argue that claims of norm death are empirically incorrect and theoretically misleading. Norms rarely die, and the processes that happen instead are far more complex. The idea of norm death embodies two misconceptions borne out of methodological incentives in empirical constructivism; that norms are single entities that exist separately from larger structures, and that compliance is the most effective way to measure if a norm is under challenge. We argue that the literature on “norm death” epitomizes the pitfalls of this approach, and as a result neither empirically or theoretically captures what happens when norms are under challenge. Norms are fundamentally resilient and can withstand even high levels of non-compliance. We examine four cases of alleged norm death—the norms against mercenary use, unrestricted submarine warfare, and torture, and the norm requiring declarations of war—and demonstrate that in these cases norms are not disappearing, but are rather subject to processes of obsolescence, replacement, and modification. We further argue that once we recognize that norms are embedded in wider structures, and move away from the notion that compliance indicates norm strength, it is possible to see why norms are generally resilient.

The study-to-work transition of Chinese international students: Navigating a future in the global labour market

In the global competition for talents, the massive inflow of Chinese students into the UK has drawn great attention. However, only few studies examine students’ interactions with socioeconomic structures in their study-to-work transition. This study used HESA data and interview data collected from Chinese postgraduate students, and it aims to: investigate structural factors that influence post-study migration patterns of Chinese students; and explore how Chinese students interact with wider social structures. This study found that different configurations between student’s ‘goals’, ‘actions’, and ‘reflexivity’ would lead to different employment outcomes. Three different study-to-work transition strategies were identified: ‘proceeding without a fixed plan’; ‘reaching a compromise’; and ‘knowing goals and approaching to goals’. Findings suggest that transition between study and work is more complex than what is described in human capital and push-pull approaches. Better understanding of students’ decision-making process would help HEIs in preparing graduates for careers in global labour market.

Recognition of power: The agency of Kurdish women in their everyday practices

Anthropological work on Kurdish women has hitherto adopted western stereotypes of power, representing it as non-existent, as women being deprived of agency in everyday practices, or totally politicized. In order to challenge prescriptive gender stereotypes, moving beyond objectification to subjectivity and offering a more complex analysis of gender relations, this study examines the position of women within their family and wider social structures in Şırnak in Turkish Kurdistan based on a sample of local women who are not employed in paid work, and their children. The implications of the results are discussed in order to enable understanding of the social structures that make it possible for women in Şırnak to exercise informal decision-making authority or to be part of the social power structures as subjects, highlighting their importance in household management and showing that ‘power’ does not necessarily equate straightforwardly with western understandings.

Assessing the Contribution to Market System Change of the Private Enterprise Programme Ethiopia

An impact evaluation of a pro-poor market system development programme, ‘Making Markets Work for the Poor’ (M4P), poses several methodological issues for evaluators. M4P interventions intend to change the contextual conditions in which stakeholders take business decisions so that it triggers change processes in the wider social system and ultimately benefits poor people. An impact evaluation design for such a programme thus needs to be robust enough to adequately capture these systemic outcomes, acknowledging dynamic changes in intervention delivery as well as in market conditions over time. Theory-based evaluation can provide learning and accountability when it incorporates methods that allow a critical reflection on the key causal steps in an intervention’s theory of change. We present our learnings about indicators and methods to reflect on the importance of the contributions to market system change of a large M4P programme in Ethiopia.

Children�s everyday work in rural Muslim Yor�b� communities in North Central Nigeria

Proponents of children�s freedom to work agree that work is socially, culturally, and relationally constructed. However, more remains to be known about these constructions, particularly in rural sub-Saharan Africa. This article explores the cultural childrearing beliefs or ethnotheories of Yor�b� parents in rural Northern Nigeria, and parents� role in organising children�s everyday intra-familial and intra-communal work. Data were generated within a broader ethnographic study which explored parents� perspectives and practices around formal schooling. Participant observation, including after school observations of children, and partly structured interviews were employed. Findings reveal children�s activities aligned with parents� ethnotheories about what and how children should learn towards becoming functional, communal adults or ?m?l��b�s. Parent�s ethnotheories also broadened to accommodate new realities, resulting in additional expectations of children. The article highlights the need to further examine the wider structures which underpin parents� ethnotheories and thereby determine children�s capabilities to realise their everyday lives.

(Per)Forming Italian American (In)Famous Ties: Revisiting the “Mean” Streets through Louisa Ermelino’s Spring Street Trilogy

Abstract Italian American iconic images of cultural and gender identity are analyzed as a performative practice in Louisa Ermelino’s Spring Street Trilogy, which challenges traditional senses of identity by situating masculine and feminine archetypes within wider structures of power. In contrast to the trope of the “mean” streets traditionally associated with men’s urban performances, Ermelino’s three novels interrogate normative gender roles and ethnic affiliations. This representation is generated from the vantage point of the microcosm of a street, which is therefore worth analyzing as a recurring trope of the author’s work.

‘You can’t Google everything’: the voluntary sector and the leadership of communities of place

Responding directly to the themes of the Special Issue, this paper addresses a surprising absence to date of the voluntary sector’s important role in the constitution of place leadership. Drawing on an empirical study of locally rooted voluntary sector organisations in a district of the Midlands of England, we aim to untangle the complex relationship between leadership, place and the voluntary sector, building on recent advances in the collective and critical approaches to leadership studies. A thematic analysis of a rich qualitative dataset highlighted three core themes of the voluntary sector contribution to collective place leadership: their ability to draw on and mobilise local knowledge, their positioning in a web of dense local relationships, and the notion that their intrinsic characteristics are a key source of their distinctiveness and value to the local governance network that constitutes the district’s place leadership. In addition to contributing to a nuanced understanding of the voluntary sector’s place in both the leadership and place leadership studies corpus, our findings shed light on the multiplexity and tensions of leading in the collective, as well as the extent to which the voluntary sector is constrained by wider structures and macro-dynamics.

8.L. Skills building seminar: How to operationalise ‘masculinities’ in gender-transformative reproductive healthcare?

Abstract Reproductive health care has been described as feminised and, in a neoliberal fashion, focussing on the individual patient rather than on their various relations within health care infrastructures, wider community and close social ties. In this context, there seems to be an implicit assumption of what a man actually is; namely partnered, cisgendered and heterosexual who are, generally speaking, not considered reproductive. As a consequence, men's sexual and reproductive health and rights are often marginalised and not meaningfully included in (co-)managing their own and their community's health outcomes. Furthermore, gender-transformative health scholars warn from possible pitfalls including simply ‘bolstering' gender onto existing policies, and continuing to look at men's and women's health as monolithic practices that are cordoned off from wider structures of intersectional inequalities. Within this area of research, the sociological concept of masculinities argues that gender is inherently relational, that means gender identity is not an inherent feature to ‘a' body but emerges and changes in response to its specific environment. It recognizes power imbalances within a hegemonic order and between genders. Looking across, beyond and between simple variables is therefore an essential skill to develop gender-transformative health care. Skills for gender-inclusive public health scholars must lie in developing a community-driven, feminist-inspired, rights-based approach, avoiding to fall back onto familiar assumptions as to how men do health, and demonstrating a radical openness towards new types of co-constituted masculinities. Specifically, this workshop operationalises masculinities in health care, building skills on four levels: conceptual framing of research; study and method design; data analysis and theory building; responding to broader societal discourses. The workshop will take the following structure: (1) Icebreaker (7 min): Participants present their own definition of masculinities; we reflect on assumptions and emerging questions; (2) Capacity Building (23 min): Chairpersons hold a presentation on a) social implications of a focus on masculinities within public health research; b) How men are marginalized in reproductive public health and why this affects everyone; c) and real-world implications of how gender-blind health research and care; Collaborative learning (15-20 min): Participants critically reflect on short excerpts in public health discourses on what men (supposedly) do and are (e.g. policy documents of UN and ICPD) and why certain depictions might be problematic for all and why; (4) Reflections, implications (10 min): We reflect on learnings, and on what we can do in terms of public health research methods, policy and practice; (5) Post-workshop: Participants are granted access to a shared folder with further readings and can continue to formulate policy and practice through a dedicated online space. Key messages We highlight masculinities as avenue towards gender-transformative reproductive health care, building skills for public health researchers and practitioners. We open up a collaborative platform and galvanise the political impetus towards gender-transformative best practices across health care.

Being to become? Childhoods, life courses and relational identities in pre-Roman northern Apulia and Basilicata

The paper analyzes notions of childhood in pre-Roman south-east Italy based on more than 170 funerary features with subadult depositions at three sites, viz. Ascoli Satriano and Ordona in northern Apulia and Ripacandida in the Basilicata. In order to understand early age both in a regional view and in its local manifestations, we discuss this dataset in terms of spatial placement, equipment with grave-goods as well as funerary and post-burial practices of subadult burials. The paper employs a twofold theoretical approach: A life-course perspective allows to sketch how conceptions of social age shift over early life and dynamically intersect with other social categories such as gender and status. A relational approach positions childhood in wider social structures and is sensitive to how funerary assemblages and practices constitute the post-mortem identity of children, reconfigure the social identities of the bereaved and deploy strategies of coping with loss. In integrating these two strands, we investigate whether and how mortuary performances and assemblages represent age-based identities, relate to infant needs and development and reflect how subadult individuals were embedded in, but also contributed to, their communities in life.

Mechanisms and processes involved in women's pathways into alcohol dependence and towards recovery: a qualitative meta-synthesis

Women's heavy drinking is often rooted in trauma and histories of abuse, while socio-cultural factors affect both the initiation of use as well as pathways to recovery. Research has largely focused on the epidemiology of alcohol use, and considerably fewer studies have examined the elements that facilitate recovery and the socio-cultural specificities that affect women's lives. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative meta-synthesis in which we employed a holistic approach to exploring women's pathways into alcohol dependence and towards recovery. Twenty-three qualitative studies from 1998 to 2018 were identified from relevant databases and synthesized to delineate the mechanisms that led to dependence and how these affected recovery processes. Results highlight the complex interplay between adverse childhood experiences, sense of 'self', and wider dynamics of power. Alcohol was initially used as a corrective agent and as a tool of temporary empowerment, regulating structural and familial imbalances. However, drinking became progressively compulsive and overpowered every aspect of life. Initiation of recovery was often hindered by shame and stigma and facilitated by belonging to and being accepted by recovery groups and a revision of ‘the self' within wider social structures. Implications for treatment, policy, and practice are discussed.

Toward a Discursive Approach to the Hybridization of Practice: Insights from the Case of Servitization in France

Hybrid practices incorporate conflicting institutional logics and are recognized for their capacity to cope with societal problems. Previous literature has concentrated on the hybridization mechanisms inherent in organizations. This focus on an entity has diverted attention away from equivalent mechanisms that operate in wider social systems – specifically, in organizational fields. In this article, I show how discourses can enable such mechanisms. To that end, descending hierarchical classifications were performed on media outlets to study the discourse on the emergence of servitization in France. The results reveal two original mechanisms enabled by discourses and supporting the hybridization of the practice under study: (1) practice renaming and (2) the pivotal role played by the institutional logic of environmental protection. Based on these results, I propose a model detailing how institutional logics and discourses interact to bring about a hybrid practice. This model offers original insights to develop knowledge on hybrid organizing and promote practices that realign business goals with those associated with social welfare and preservation of the natural environment.

Gender inequality in urban water governance: Continuity and change in two towns of Nepal

AbstractGender‐based inequality has long been recognized as a challenge in water governance and urban development. Women do most of the water collection‐related tasks in the majority of low‐income country's urban areas, as they do in rural areas for drinking, household consumption, kitchen gardening, and farming. However, their voice is rarely heard in water governance. When climate change exacerbates water scarcity, it becomes harder for people to secure water with more pronounced effects on women. Drawing on the narratives of men and women involved in water management practices and also the views of the stakeholders who are part of water resource management in two towns in Nepal, this paper demonstrates emerging forms of gender inequality concerning access to and control over water resources, as well as associated services such as sanitation. We found that women's voice in water governance is systematically excluded, and such gender‐based disadvantage intersects with economic disadvantage as women in low‐income poor urban settlements are experiencing additional difficulty in accessing water and sanitation services. Gender inequity persists in the urban water sector, and of course the wider social structures, despite some progressive policy changes in recent years, such as the 30% quota reserved for women in local‐level water management bodies in Nepal. The paper concludes that tackling gender inequity in water management requires a transformative approach that seriously takes into account women's voice, critical awareness, and open deliberation over the causes and consequences of the current approaches and practices. Moreover, gender‐inclusive outcomes on water management are linked to changes in areas outside of the water sector, such as property ownership structures that constrain or enable women's access to water and related services.

"Why didn't we do it"? Reproductive loss and the problem of post-mortem consent.

Informed consent has been a much debated topic within the social sciences. It often forms a central feature of discussions on research in medical settings and in social research methods more broadly. While sympathetic to its' underlying principles of autonomy and choice, social scientists have tended to argue that these are seldom enacted in research or clinical practice. Rather, such principles are often circumscribed by wider social structures and by a culture of medical dominance. Drawing on data from a qualitative study on perinatal post-mortem, this paper explores informed consent in the emotionally charged clinical arena of perinatal pathology. Our in-depth analysis will provide fresh insight into post-mortem decision-making in the sensitive arena of baby loss. Our findings show how parents often found it difficult to give consent for post-mortem, and also for professionals to take consent from parents. It was also not uncommon for parents to experience regret over non-consent later on. One of our key findings, however, related to the sense of emotional and diagnostic closure often afforded by post-mortem when consent had been given. We conclude by arguing that, although we cannot resolve the tension between the principles of consent and their enactment in practice, we can develop a reflexive approach with which to navigate the process. In doing so, the paper contributes to wider sociological discussions on the meaning and use of informed consent in various settings beyond medical contexts.

Social media: A challenge to identity and relational desistance

Society has witnessed a rapid growth in the prevalence and use of social media. The influence and impact of this expansion has sparsely, if at all, been considered within the context of desistance from crime. This article draws upon the narratives of male and female service users subject to community supervision by a Community Rehabilitation Company, collected as part of a doctoral thesis. Evidence demonstrates how social media plays a largely negative role, with some gendered difference on a service user’s identity and relational desistance, alongside individual agency and wider social structures. This enables the article to develop the evidence base of interactionist perspectives of desistance, while also recognising gender.