scholarly journals Orders of Hunger and Heaven: Neoliberalism, Christian Charity and Homelessness in Taiwan

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 239
Author(s):  
Scott R. Beck
Keyword(s):  
Homeless People ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Charity Organization ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Field Setting ◽  
The Welfare State

Based on an ethnographic study of a Christian charity in Taipei, Taiwan, this paper examines how the mixing of “orders of worth” (Boltanski and Thevenot) is negotiated among charity workers and homeless people in the field setting. The organization, Grace Home Church, has two official goals: (1) to glorify God; (2) to assist homeless people. This mix of sacred and secular purposes often produces tensions, with the fundamental tension being between what the charity seeks to provide (salvation) versus what the homeless commonly want to be provided (food). As an analytic tool, I utilize Boltanski and Thevenot’s framework to link emergent tensions with broader social forces, such as neoliberalism, the welfare state, and religion. I will argue that charity workers as well as homeless individuals who have accepted Christianity attempt to separate the market and inspired orders through signifying practices that maintain a symbolic order, thereby justifying a sacred mission (for the charity organization) and self-worth (for the homeless).

Mechanisms of biopower and neoliberal governmentality in precarious work: Mobilizing the dependent self-employed as independent business owners

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Moisander ◽  
Claudia Groß ◽  
Kirsi Eräranta
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Direct Sales ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Self Worth

In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging ‘gig economy,’ standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy and self-worth as individuals. The article contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.

scholarly journals Ethnographic study on homeless people in a big urban center

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguir Terezinha Vieccelli Donoso ◽  
Marisa Antonini Ribeiro Bastos ◽  
Camila Rodrigues de Faria ◽  
Aurelino Alves Costa
Keyword(s):  
Homeless People ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Center

Collecting visual voices: Understanding identity, community, and the meaning of participation within gay rodeos

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshoula Capous-Desyllas ◽  
Marina Johnson-Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Photo Elicitation ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
A Site

Rodeos have been an integral part of American cowboy culture since the 1800s, however, it wasn’t until the 1970s when gay rodeos began to form and challenge some of the assumptions about ‘cowboys,’ ‘sexuality,’ and ‘masculinity.’ The purpose of this ethnographic study was to utilize participant-driven photo-elicitation (PDPE) method to understand how individuals who participate in gay rodeos experience their identities and the meanings they attribute to their participation in this queer subculture. The diverse images shared by the participants illustrate their unique identities and the various meanings they attribute to their participation in gay rodeo. The findings from this study serve to highlight various aspects of the gay rodeo subculture and the role of gay rodeo as a site of support and solidarity for LGBTQ communities. In this study, gay rodeo emerges as a space of contestation, resistance and reification of gender norms and heterosexuality. The findings call into question tensions that exist when trying to dismantle sexual minority stereotypes while simultaneously perpetuating white hegemonic masculinity through the pervasive image of the gay cowboy. Interrogating the ways in which gay rodeo participants simultaneously reinforced and challenged hegemonic masculinity helps to understand how the idealized (hetero)sexual images of cowboys connected to symbolic power, strength and self-worth, position gay rodeo participants. This research study also reveals that participants of gay rodeo, who travel within and across the USA in order to participate in rodeo events, experiment with multiple non-heterosexual identities as they search for spaces and communities away from compulsory heterosexuality.

Anticonsumption as Tactical Response to Institutionalized Subordination: The Case of Materially Deprived Anticonsumers

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Cherrier ◽  
Ronald Paul Hill
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Homeless Services ◽  
The Status

Whereas most anticonsumption research focuses on middle- to upper-class consumers who reduce, avoid, or control consumption, this study analyzes anticonsumption among materially deprived consumers. Such an anticonsumption focus runs contrary to the conventional subordination of homeless people to the status of inferior and deficient, whose survival is dependent on social housing support and food charities. Findings from an ethnographic study in Australia show that materially deprived consumers avoid social housing and food charities as a tactical response against institutionalized subordination, which specialized homeless services reinforce. In this context, anticonsumption is thus not about projecting a self-affirming identity or generating a collective force to change consumer culture. Rather, anticonsumption among materially deprived consumers aims at overcoming institutionalized subordination and represents tactics of survival rather than strategies for illusionary emancipation.

Introduction: Themed Section on Exploring Multiple Exclusion Homelessness

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dwyer ◽  
Peter Somerville
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Meaningful Involvement ◽  
The Welfare State

Many of New Labour's welfare initiatives were underpinned by a stated desire to combat social exclusion among disadvantaged sections of the population. Allied to this, a commitment to end street homelessness/rough sleeping was an enduring feature of their term in office (for example SEU, 1998; DCLG, 2008). Of course, concerns about social exclusion predate New Labour, and a lack of meaningful involvement in many key areas of wider social life (for example, democratic and legal systems, the labour market, the welfare state, familial and (local) community networks) have long been identified as symptomatic of social exclusion (Commins, 1993). Previous research has also noted that homelessness rarely occurs in isolation and that many homeless people often carry with them a variety of other problems and experiences. It is clear that many homeless people experience ‘exclusion across more than one domain or dimension of disadvantage, resulting in severe negative consequences for [their] quality of life, well-being and future life chances’ (Levitas et al., 2007: 9), and, as such, can be viewed as experiencing multiple and/or deep social exclusion. This situation has been recognised by Carter (2007) who, noting a lack of resources, rights and opportunities, adopts the phrase ‘multiple exclusion homelessness’ (MEH) as a shorthand term to characterise the reality of many homeless peoples’ lives.

scholarly journals Marketing and compromising for sustainability

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Finch ◽  
Susi Geiger ◽  
Rachel Joy Harkness
Keyword(s):  
Petroleum Industry ◽  
Regulatory Compliance ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Market Order ◽  
Service Companies ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Marketing Systems ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive ◽  
Theory Framework

The purpose of our article is to propose that compromising is a constitutive characteristic of those marketing systems that entail matters of public interest or concern. In such markets, actors design compromises as they encounter criticisms of and contending justifications for the market’s products, as these refer to price, efficiency in production and use, regulatory compliance or ecological sustainability. Tests and justifications are vital in order to determine what is valuable and by which measure. As a theory framework, the economic sociology of conventions provides a basis for assessing these contests, compromises, and justifications over the issue of worth in a marketing context. Through an ethnographic study of the regulated activities of chemicals service companies supporting the upstream petroleum industry, we assess how actors evaluate and justify the market’s products and services in this environmentally sensitive setting by means of tests drawing from different orders of worth: the green, the industrial and the market order. Our contributions show that by artful and pragmatic compromising around exchanges, actors in marketing systems can balance several conflicting orders of worth over the question of worth without needing to converge on an overriding institutional logic.

Ill and against the Law: The Social and Medical Control of Heroin Users

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorie Klein
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Heroin Users ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Illicit Markets ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Political Economic

This discussion focuses on the criminalization and medicalization of heroin users in the United States in two historical periods: the late teens to early twenties, and the late sixties to early seventies. Comparative analysis reveals that while different social circumstances have stimulated specific state responses, class and ethnic patterns of drug use have played a leading role in shaping overall policy. Continuous clashes and adjustments between licit and illicit markets have reflected deeper economic and ideological conflicts. The essence of official policy, whether under a public health or a criminal justice rubric, has been the attempt to effect a real and symbolic order. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the advocates of reform and of the medical approach to addiction have accommodated more than they have challenged law enforcement. Doctors' professional interests and the uses of medical rhetoric to justify state policy have changed, but the control aspects within the medical model stand out sharply. This analysis of the limits of conflict and structures of resolution between specific heroin policymakers draws on an appreciation of more general political, economic, and social forces which shape the interplay of “deviance” and the official reaction to it. This theoretical orientation departs from the leading paradigms in the sociology of drug control developed within labelling and interest-group frameworks.

Wither the welfare state: The new global adventures of higher education

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-104
Author(s):  
Wesley Shumar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Faculty Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Welfare State

This summary article situates the articles in this collection within the historical unfolding of the commodification and neoliberalisation of higher education. From the 1970s to the present, the article suggests that commodification and neoliberalisation are two social forces that in many nations are difficult to disentangle. It is important to see these forces as analytically distinct as they set up contradictions whilst transforming higher education in many nations in the world. While commodification begins the process of turning university programmes and degrees into commodities that a consuming public buys, neoliberalism puts pressure on universities to document that people are getting value for the money they spend. Neoliberalism also questions how we measure the quality of a product. Together these forces create an increasingly contradictory space where faculty work becomes very conflicted. The article then goes on to situate each of the articles in this contradictory university space. Finally the article discusses some ways faculty can move beyond resistance and collusion and find ways to reclaim higher education.

scholarly journals Violence, Self-Worth, Solidarity and Stigma: How a Dissident, Far-Right Group Solves the Collective Action Problem

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Meadowcroft ◽  
Elizabeth A Morrow
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Club Goods ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Street Protest ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Selective Incentives ◽  
The Uk

How do dissident, far-right groups overcome the collective action problem inherent to political organisation in order to recruit sufficient activists willing to bear the costs of participation and not free-ride on the participation of others? An original ethnographic study of the UK anti-Islamic street protest organisation, the English Defence League, shows that it solved the collective action problem by supplying selective incentives to members in the form of the club goods of access to violence, increased self-worth and group solidarity. These benefits were offset against the costs of stigma, time, money and unwanted police attention that also accompanied English Defence League membership. The personal benefits the English Defence League provided to its members enabled it to supply what Mancur Olson has termed the first unit of collective action, but limited its ability to supply the additional units required to build a broader, more mainstream movement.

Whose ‘fault’ is it? Becoming homeless in Singapore

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (16) ◽  
pp. 3579-3595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Tan ◽  
Helen Forbes-Mewett
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Subsequent Loss ◽  
The Government ◽  
Work Family ◽  
Specific Pathway

Singapore is a country that prides itself on providing cheap affordable public housing for its citizens. Nonetheless, the increased visibility of older people sleeping rough in public spaces has led to a contentious debate in recent years about why they are becoming homeless. The article first examines this debate from the different interpretations offered by the government, the national print media and local internet blogs and forums. Homelessness tends to be invariably attributed to personal problems for which the government is not held responsible or to broader structural problems resulting from government policies and bureaucracy. Our findings, from a two-year ethnographic study of older homeless people in Singapore, show that such one-sided causal explanations of homelessness are fundamentally flawed and provide inadequate explanations of why older people become homeless. Rather than asking whose fault is it, we adopt the pathways approach to highlight homelessness as a process involving personal decisions as well as structural factors. The article thus presents two key findings of our research. First, older people in our study did not become homeless from a specific pathway but encountered multiple pathways during their lives. Second, these older people began to sleep rough when the multiple pathways led to the weakening and subsequent loss of structural resources from work, family and friends and government assistance in Singapore.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document