Pipe Dream for the Ladies: Constructs of Rights of Prostituted Women among Social Actors in the Sex Industry of Olongapo City, Zambales

Author(s):  
Jonalyn Paz

Although recognized as illegal, prostitution in Olongapo is widely practiced, even actively backed by the state. Euphemisms related to sex trade activities and personas such as guest relations officers, entertainers, clients, and managers were employed as cloaks to legitimize its operation. Bars, massage parlors, street solicitations, and private escort services are among the few settings that sustain the sex industry. The historical, political, and economic dimensions of prostitution have been widely researched; however, there remains a dearth of social inquiry pertaining to the sociocultural dimension of the trade, specifically the social construction of rights afforded to the women by those involved in the industry. Underpinned by constructivism theory, this article explores the constructs of the social actors in the prostitution sector pertaining to the rights of prostituted women. It asserts that reality is consistently being shaped through the making, sharing, and reciprocation of a construct system among the social actors in a series of definitive events. The article juxtaposes these constructs with the policies and laws and examines how these translate to social structures and materialization of rights. Findings reveal that the laws and policies on prostitution are largely dissociated from the construct system of the prostituted women. The material conditions in Olongapo, combined with the punitive nature of these ordinances, legitimize exclusion, enable sexual predation, sustain sex buying, stifle the materialization of the rights of prostituted women, and deprive them of legal remedies. A comprehensive and extensive evaluation of the said laws based on the construct system of prostituted women and active involvement of prostituted women in crafting new measures are highly recommended.

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-99
Author(s):  
Olesia Rozovyk

This article, based on archival documents, reveals resettlement processes in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932–34, which were conditioned by the repressive policy of the Soviet power. The process of resettlement into those regions of the Soviet Ukraine where the population died from hunger most, and which was approved by the authorities, is described in detail. It is noted that about 90,000 people moved from the northern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR to the southern part of the republic. About 127,000 people arrived in Soviet Ukraine from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) and the western oblasts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The material conditions of their residence and the reasons for the return of settlers to their previous places of inhabitance are described. I conclude that the resettlement policy of the authorities during 1932–34 changed the social and national composition of the eastern and southern oblasts of Ukraine.


Author(s):  
Catrin Heite ◽  
Veronika Magyar-Haas

Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Shay Hershkovitz

Marxist criticism is most discernible; despite the oft-repeated claim that it is now irrelevant, belonging to an age now past. This essay assumes that criticism originating in the Marxist school of thought continue to be relevant also in this present time; though it may need to be further developed and improved by integrating newer critical approaches into the classic Marxist discourse. This essay therefore integrates basic Marxist ideas with key concepts from ‘social systems theory’; especially the theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's. In this light, capitalism is conceptualized here as a ‘super (social) system’: a meaning-creating social entity, in which social actors, behaviors and structures are realized. This theoretical concept and terminology emphasizes the social construction of control and stability, when discussing the operational logic of capitalism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (53) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Fabio Perocco

Abstract During the last two decades of rising anti-migrant racism in Europe, Islamophobia has proven to be the highest, most acute, and widely spread form of racism. The article shows how anti-migrant Islamophobia is a structural phenomenon in European societies and how its internal structure has specific social roots and mechanisms of functioning. Such an articulate and interdependent set of key themes, policies, practices, discourses, and social actors it is intended to inferiorise and marginalise Muslim immigrants while legitimising and reproducing social inequalities affecting the majority of them. The article examines the social origins of anti-migrant Islamophobia and the modes and mechanisms through which it naturalises inequalities; it focuses on the main social actors involved in its production, specifically on the role of some collective subjects as anti-Muslim organizations and movements, far-right parties, best-selling authors, and the mass-media.


Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Ferraz

Teaching in universities, especially in management schools, is today orientated to solving-problems and operational skills’ development, short-term productivity gains and to a vocational perspective. This represents an impoverishment of a deeper learning, an obstacle to the development of competences in a broader and integrative sense and the absence of a critical thinking practice. These are important tools to enhance in students and future managers, as specific social actors, abilities to act in a conscious, autonomous and long-term efficacious manner in society. This essay’s objective is to problematize the role that sociology could assume in the overcoming of that impoverishment, namely within the curricular unit of organizational behavior in two ways. First, teaching the social and macro dimensions that contribute to explain organizational structuring and behavior. Secondly, enhancing reflexivity and contextualization on the practices and discourses of all social actors involved and disassembling the dominant ideological, naturalized and simplistic individualized view on the reality of labor, employment and organizations. This is especially relevant in hospitality management studies because the dominant discourse about hospitality organizations hide, under a hegemonic paradigm of naturalized and individualized explanations, the macro-social dimensions of its organizational culture, work conditions, employees’ behaviors, management styles and market labor.


MANUSYA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Phennapha Klaisingto ◽  
Wirote Aroonmanakun

This study examines the linguistic structure used for uncovering gender ideologies through crime news headlines. It’s based on the idea that languages represent reality and different linguistic choices indicate different points of view of reality. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 1990,VanDijk 1995, Simpson 1993) is used in this study. The main objectives of the study are 1) to study the differences of representation between male and female social actors (Van Leeuwan 2008) in crime news headlines and 2) to study power relations, gender identities and the reproduction of patriarchal society through crime news headlines. Samples of 1,815 crime news headlines are analyzed in this study. The result shows that Thai crime news constructs gender identities based on gender ideology. Thai crime news headlines convey a variety of linguistic meanings which allow for varying forms of representation of social actors, including exclusion and inclusion of social actors. The exclusion of male social actors in headlines may be ideologically motivated by obscuring the responsibility of male actors for negative actions, whereas the exclusion of female social actors does not have the same effect because their referents can be inferred from the headline context. In addition, the inclusion of social actors varies according to the social actor’s sex. Male actors are usually referred to using a functionalization form or an appraisement form, whereas female actors are usually referred to using an identification form. These representations reflect the role of masculinity and femininity among men and women in the society.


2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER JACKSON

AbstractThe rise of the ‘cultural turn’ has breathed new life into the practice of international history over the past few decades. Cultural approaches have both broadened and deepened interpretations of the history of international relations. This article focuses on the use of culture as an explanatory methodology in the study of international history. It outlines the two central criticisms often made of this approach. The first is that it suffers from a lack of analytical rigour in both defining what culture is and understanding how it shapes individual and collective policy decisions. The second is that it too often leads to a tendency to exaggerate the importance of the cultural predispositions of individual or collective actors at the expense of the wider structures within which policymaking takes place. The article provides a brief outline of the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu – which focuses on the interaction between the cultural orientations of social actors and the structural environment that conditions their strategies and decisions. It then argues that Bourdieu’s conceptual framework can provide the basis for a more systematic approach to understanding the cultural roots of policymaking and that international historians would benefit from engagement with his approach.


2010 ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Franco Prina

The socio-legal perspective on the alcohol legislation, including the norms concerned with the relationship between individuals and alcoholic drinks, helps answering some essentials questions: what was/is the "social construction" of the alcohol problem in different eras and different cultures and, consequently, which objectives are deemed to be worthy of pursuit through the creation or amendment of legislation? Which social actors have the ability, in a given period of time, to inscribe the relevance of innovative alcohol legislation on the political agenda and what kind of dialectic is used among those who champion points of view, competences and above all, different interests? Which interests and values would appear to meet with legislatory protection time after time? What tools, of the ample range available, are chosen to achieve the aims set out? To what extent is legislation implemented (or not implemented), and why? Which aspects of the implementation process prove to be most significant, i.e. define the actual content of the legislation "in force", and are therefore tangibly experienced by the law's end target? How much of an impact does legislation have on behavior which is subject to regulation or on problems which stem from such behavior?


Sociologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-179
Author(s):  
Nadine Sieveking

Seit 2015 werden in Dakar Koranlektürekurse von einer Organisation angeboten, die verspricht, mittels einfacher und effizienter Methoden die Fähigkeiten zum eigenständigen Lesen des Korans innerhalb von drei Monaten zu vermitteln. Diese kostenpflichtigen Kurse sind auf eine spezielle Zielgruppe in frankophonen urbanen Bildungsmilieus zugeschnitten, die als „Intellektuelle“ bezeichnet wird. Der Artikel untersucht den Erfolg der Kurse und die soziale Positionierung der Beteiligten, die sich aus arabophonen (Lehrende) und frankophonen (Lernende) Bildungsgruppen rekrutieren. Letzteren wurde nach der Unabhängigkeit ein exklusiver Status als nationale Bildungselite zugeschrieben, der durch anhaltende Islamisierungsprozesse ‚von unten‘ zunehmend in Frage gestellt wird. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Kurse dazu beitragen, die symbolischen Grenzen zwischen francisants und arabisants abzubauen und den frankophonen Teilnehmenden helfen, einen sozialen Status aufrecht zu erhalten, der respektable Modernität verkörpert. Eine wichtige Rolle für den Erfolg der Kurse spielen außerdem das effektive Zeitmanagement, die pädagogischen Methoden sowie die bürokratischen, räumlichen und materiellen Organisationsstrukturen, die dem Habitus der in säkularen, modernen Bildungssystemen sozialisierten Zielgruppe entsprechen. Qur’an Reading Courses for “Intellectuals” in Dakar, Senegal: Religious Adult Education in Francophone Middle Class Milieus Since 2015, a certain type of Quran reading course has been offered in Dakar. With their simple but efficient methods, these courses promise attendees the ability to read the Quran within three months. They are subject to fees and target a specific social group, identified as “intellectuals” and located within francophone educated urban milieus. The article examines the success of these courses and the social positioning of its participants, who are drawn from Arabic-speaking (teachers) and francophone (students) educated groups. Since Senegal’s independence, the latter have been ascribed an exclusive status as the national educated elite – a status that is increasingly questioned in ongoing Islamization processes ‘from below’. The analysis shows that the courses contribute to a weakening of the symbolic boundaries between francisants and arabisants and help the participants to reinforce a social status that embodies notions of respectable modernity. The specific method and pedagogy of the courses also play an important role in their success, as do their effective time management, their bureaucratic structures, and their spatial and material conditions, since these all correspond to the habitus of the target group whose members have been socialized within modern secular education systems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Teodora Hurtado Saa

Resumen: Este artículo versa sobre el actual estado    de la teorización, de la terminología y del conocimien- to empírico relativo a la producción social y ejercicio del trabajo sexual, con atención especial a las teorías    y conceptos que estructuran el tema de la participación diferenciada de las mujeres en general, y de las muje- res con características étnicas/raciales subalternizadas en particular, en el mercado del sexo. Se delinea una postura alternativa a los planteamientos convenciona- les higienistas, criminalistas o victimistas desde donde tradicionalmente se ha analizado la cuestión. Adicio- nalmente, se reflexiona sobre el crecimiento, expansión y modernización de la industria del sexo, en la que algu- nos países post-industrializados asumen la condición de demandantes y los países en vía de desarrollo, la de ofer- tantes de mano de obra para el consumo de experiencias sexuales de diferente índole. De igual modo, se delibera sobre la importancia que tiene la comercialización del sexo, para el desarrollo económico de algunos países y el trabajo sexual como estrategia de “rebusque” frente a los embates de la vida cotidiana. Asimismo, describimos las formas de explotación y de ejercicio del oficio de tra- bajadoras del sexo.Palabras claves: Mercado global del sexo, construcción de la ocupación, interseccionalidad, trabajo sexual, mu- jeres afrocolombianas, sexualidades disidentesFrom the Hygienist Paradigm to Intersectionality. The Social Construction of Sexual WorkAbstract: The present article deals with the current state of the theorizing, the terminology and the empirical knowledge about the social production and exercise of sex work, with special attention to theories and concepts that structure the subject of the different participation in the sex trade of women in general, and of women with subalternized ethnic/racial features in particular. It de- lineates an alternative view to conventional hygienist approaches, or criminal or victimization approaches, traditionally used to analyze the issue. In addition, this paper reflects on the growth, expansion and moderniza- tion of the sex industry, in which some post-industrialized countries provide the demand and developing countries provide the supply of labor for the consumption of sexual experiences. Similarly, it discusses the importance of the commercialization of sex for the economic development of some countries and of sex work as a strategy of look- ing for informal work while coping with the ravages of everyday life. It also describes the forms of exploitation of sex workers in the exercise of their profession. Key words: global sex market, occupation, intersection- ality, sex work, Afro-Colombian women, dissident sexu- alities


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