Sociology

An OLS multiple regression model is ran on five demographic variables that include gender, length of unemployment and part time status, with the labor force participation level as the dependent variable. Results show that the strong assumptions in the literature about baby boomers retiring and skills mismatch as the cause of low levels of labor force participation in the post 2008 era are greatly exaggerated. The average length of unemployment has the only statistically significant impact on Labor Force Participation in the model. Discussion of structural changes to the labor market, and the need to restructure policy to deal with time is presented.

The labor force is not typically seen as a social institution in and of itself without collective bargaining. However, economic social institutions respond to social and economic forces in labor markets on an institutional level regardless of organized labor, suggesting that another institutional force is at play. A modification of Marx’s Circuit model is presented in a way that may explain the labor force as a social institution in and of itself. A discussion of Veblen, Weber and C. Wright Mills’ views of labor are in support of the modified circuit model, and in considering the labor force as an institution in its own rite.

The author lays the claim that Wall Street is a social institution with cultural norms and values, which it seeks, as an institution of power, to transfer onto the rest of corporate America. Part of the culture of Wall Street is to make labor expendable, or a liquid asset. Through participant observation, and interviews, Karen Ho not only makes her case, but also leaves much to think about philosophically in Sociology and Economics. Karen Ho opens the door to research questions that may take decades to answer, and at the same time, shows that they definitely need to be answered for the betterment of society.

The 2008 global financial crisis has redefined issues of poverty, labour, class and the welfare state that have had long term structural shifts, both socially and economically. This is a perfect opportunity for Sociology to use econometrics as an exploratory tool to examine these deeper social issues, and regain a seat at the policy table that has often gone to Economists. This paper will use a simple econometric model as an example to examine the methodological differences and commonalities between Economics and Sociology. It will also show how the two can compliment each other. This paper is not a critical assault on Economics or Sociology, but rather shows a way for both fields to come together to gain a better understanding of how labour is dealing with socioeconomic crisis in the face of austerity, and map a path in economy and society. Policy implications are discussed.

As the debate over what precarious labour really is continues, what is generally missing is an analysis of the shared, lived experiences of those facing the living conditions that result from precarious labour. Using grounded theory, and an ethnomethodological approach, I examine one precarious labour group, long haul truck drivers in North America, to suggest that precarious labour is facing a sense of chaos out of an ordered sense of self, on temporal and special planes, leading to the question: How would considering negotiations between social constructs of time and space together within meaning-making help us to understand precarious labour better? I suggest that the Marx-Mead synthesis of Edgework theory and Time Work, bridged within a Sociology of Emotions is a way of interrogating this question, in how precarious labour negotiates the boundary between their sense of order and chaos, as the conditions of labour has become intertwined with irreducible, and shifting spatial-temporal experiences.

Stephen Lyng’s concept of edgework represents a crucial shift in understanding particular kinds of risk taking, as intrinsically and phenomenologically rewarding. Although it has been widely and usefully used since then, scholars have observed limitations in its applicability across class, race, and gender lines. A good deal of recent work has endeavored to address this problem. However, a critical feminist perspective reveals the levels on which this issue is not merely one of scope but a paradigmatic issue. I offer a deconstruction of the edgework concept in order to illustrate this, and an expansion of the model in order to render it more applicable for a wider range of thrill-seeking behaviors. Drawing on four years of ethnographic field work in an SM (sadomasochism) community, I provide an empirical example of the applicability of this amendment for the study of voluntary risk taking across gender boundaries.

Despite a good deal of work on pain as a social/emotional construction, the assumption persists that pain is understood and experienced as inherently and originally negative. Postmodern and constructionist treatments of pain alike focus on negotiations and mediations of pain from that point forward. This article explores the ways in which members of an SM (sadomasochism) community frame, cast, and understand the role of pain in their SM activities, toward the ultimate achievement of authenticity in experiences of power-imbalanced social interaction. This analysis, based on an in-depth ethnographic study of an SM community, identifies four main discourses of pain, three of which conform to hegemonic understandings of pain as intrinsically negative experience. It reveals the complex strategies SM participants employ to make sense of pain and contrasts this with a minority discourse in the community in which the provision and experience of pain is framed as a desirable social, carnal, and emotional experience.

Based on a four-year ethnographic study of an SM community, this article blends analytic and interpretative approaches to ethnographic writing, in order to illustrate the value of incorporating subjectivity into traditional ethnographic analysis. I juxtapose field notes about my own participation in SM with stories of outsiderness among members of the community. I argue that analytical attention to my own experience of “becoming” a member of this community illuminated for me some of the discursive, psychological, and carnal processes through which SM comes to be a central and fulfilling part of participants' lives. This elucidates the intellectual reciprocity between ethnographic introspection and ethnographic understanding, and offers additional insight into an understudied community.

Based on extensive ethnographic research in a public SM (sadomasochism) community, this paper frames SM as recreation. Drawing on Robert Stebbins’ work on “serious leisure” (1982), I posit that in order to more adequately understand SM as it occurs in this community, we need to shift from mainstream assumptions of SM as (simply) “kinky sex” to a more nuanced perspective. I explore the unique skills required in order to engage in SM, as well as the benefits and rewards that participants derive from it, in order to illustrate that SM can be more usefully understood as serious leisure.

This paper conceptualizes eroticism as emotional experience. I use the Renaissance Faire to illustrate the construction of asexual eroticism along three dimensions: the carnal experience of Faire, its focus on physicality, and intimations of increased interpersonal access. This approach forefronts the complexity of eroticism and situates the erotic squarely in the sociology of emotion, providing a model for understanding a range of emotional, embodied, and nonsexual charges as erotic. More broadly, the analysis seeks to contribute to the study of all emotion as embodied.

Nearly every ethnographer has observed the growing reach and increasingly uncomfortable power of the IRB. As IRB restrictions have grown tighter, the consequences have become more dire. The failure of most IRBs to understand ethnography at all, along with increasing concerns about litigation that trump the welfare of both researchers and " subjects, " and the usurping of faculty power by the administration in universities, has left us with a difficult challenge: how can ethnographers and participant observers continue to do their research, without losing their jobs? This paper introduces a new methodology (" surrogate ethnography "). We posit that surrogate ethnography provides three distinct benefits: (1) it represents a methodological and ethical resistance to excessive IRB control, (2) it can help us rescue ethnography and participant observation—at least in a certain form—from IRBs, and (3) it addresses some of the longstanding concerns with autoethnography by proposing an alternative reflective analytic approach to one's experiences in the field. We share the results of our initial foray into surrogate ethnography, offering our analyses of each other's stories (one from volunteer work in a prison, and one from participation in sadomasochism/BDSM) in the context of constraints and challenges facing ethnographers in the current academic climate.

While participation in the activities like bondage, domination, submission/sadism, masochism that fall under the umbrella term BDSM is widespread, stigma surrounding BDSM poses risks to practitioners who wish to disclose their interest. We examined risk factors involved with disclosure to posit how sex education might diffuse stigma and warn of risks. Semi-structured interviews asked 20 adults reporting an interest in BDSM about their disclosure experiences. Most respondents reported their BDSM interests starting before age 15, sometimes creating a phase of anxiety and shame in the absence of reassuring information. As adults, respondents often considered BDSM central to their sexuality, thus disclosure was integral to dating. Disclosure decisions in nondating situations were often complex considerations balancing desire for appropriateness with a desire for connection and honesty. Some respondents wondered whether their interests being found out would jeopardize their jobs. Experiences with stigma varied widely.

This paper proposes a solution to the problem of client dissatisfaction with long waiting times associated with some services. This solution is a smart queue management system that provides real-time visual and audio updates to service requests via a smartphone app. Users receive digital tickets and are free to leave the waiting area until it is their turn to be served. If they choose to remain in the area, they have the option of listening to the signal of the television set that is typically muted for a better experience. The system comprises connected units forming a web of things. There are units for ticket registration and verification, audio capturing and streaming, queue management, and user units as smartphone applications. We have tested this system to ensure its functionality and report our results and possible improvements.

One of the most pervasive topics of discussion surrounding the social web is the issue of the public availability of personal information. Beginning with webcam broadcasting, continuing into the height of the personal blog, and now in the age of Facebook and Twitter, there are constant tensions between the publicity and privacy of the information that social media users share. The social web is predicated on this information sharing, but the world at large is not yet comfortable with the new practices and norms surrounding this social setting.
In response to these tensions, social media sites have implemented a variety of tools which allow their members to control access to that personal information. One of the earliest sites to do so was the personal blogging and social networking site LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com), which gives its users extremely fine-grained control over access to their content. Like most other social networking systems, LiveJournal defines user relationships in terms of “friendship” and membership in the “Friends List” (or FList). In addition to this, however, LiveJournal also allows members to create sub-lists of friends, most often called “filters”. Based on these categories, the LiveJournal user can control access to their posts; an individual post may be public, visible to only the authorʼs LiveJournal friends, visible to one or more filters, or private (visible only to the author). It must also be noted that both membership in the Friends List and filters as well as the access status of any given journal or post are dynamic; the LiveJournal member may add or remove members from the Friends List or filters at any time, or change the access status of any post at any time.
LiveJournal users leverage these access controls in a variety of ways and in so doing, treat access to their information as either inclusive or exclusive. On the surface, this seems patently obvious; how else would they think about access? Closer examination reveals that the differentiation of inclusive and exclusive access management also hints at the ways in which the think about their personal information more generally. Using the exact same set of technological tools, some users keep people out, blocking access to personal information; while others choose to share information with selected readers. The subtle variations in these approaches reveal fundamental differences in the ways that LiveJournal users think about their personal information and shape the ways in which they use the tools provided by social media systems.
This project is an examination of the ways in which LiveJournal users think about public and private and how that translates to using access tools in an inclusive or an exclusive manner. Using survey data, observation, and interviews, I will relate bloggersʼ ideas about publicity and privacy to their use of technological tools to control access to personal information and draw connections to broader social shifts in the meanings of public and private.

Persistent evolution of multidrug resistance bacteria due to inappropriate use of conventional antibiotics is undermining treatment intervention for infectious diseases, thus constituting substantial proportion of the global public health problem. This, necessitated the search and development of new drugs particularly from plant origin that are effective against such superbugs. Therefore, the present study was designed to determine the phytochemical constituents in Sida acuta and their antibacterial effects on pathogenic bacterial species of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus subtilis. The phytochemical components of the extract were identified using standard methods. Furthermore, the antibacterial activity of the leaf extract against the bacterial pathogens were assessed using agar well diffusion and broth dilution method, at varying concentrations of the extract (37.50, 75, 150 and 300 mg/ml), and using Commercially obtained ciprofloxacin ...