Pub Date : 2023-07-06DOI: 10.1177/14407833231183988
Fabian Cannizzo, Ben Spies-Butcher
Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian sociologists connecting global interest around UBI to emerging patterns of inequality and insecurity stemming from Australia's precarious labour market and expensive housing market. Those discussions broadened to reflect on Australia's colonial history and patriarchal economy, and the potential to recognise more diverse contributions and values. Evolving through the Covid crisis, the issue now incorporates the remarkable alternatives that were, briefly, made possible. The articles reflect both scepticism and optimism towards UBI, but all reveal how basic income can provide a useful lens for Australian sociology – a simple tool responding to an increasingly complex society.
{"title":"A basic income for a complex society: Introduction","authors":"Fabian Cannizzo, Ben Spies-Butcher","doi":"10.1177/14407833231183988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231183988","url":null,"abstract":"Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian sociologists connecting global interest around UBI to emerging patterns of inequality and insecurity stemming from Australia's precarious labour market and expensive housing market. Those discussions broadened to reflect on Australia's colonial history and patriarchal economy, and the potential to recognise more diverse contributions and values. Evolving through the Covid crisis, the issue now incorporates the remarkable alternatives that were, briefly, made possible. The articles reflect both scepticism and optimism towards UBI, but all reveal how basic income can provide a useful lens for Australian sociology – a simple tool responding to an increasingly complex society.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45042367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-21DOI: 10.1177/14407833231181273
Joe Chrisp, J. De Wispelaere
In the wake of several recent crises, universal basic income has emerged as a serious policy solution. Not only is basic income pitched as a tool to mitigate the effects of a diverse set of emergencies, it has been argued that successive crises have importantly contributed to the surge in media and policy interest in basic income. In this article we critically examine this proposition. We first argue against the inherent functionalism of many accounts and instead propose a political economy framework that ties basic income directly to a series of mechanisms that may explain the opening up of basic income policy windows during recent crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic. It is equally important to carefully distinguish between different types of crises and we argue that two key competing types – cyclical and permanent crises – face a distinctive set of political economy constraints. We illustrate our approach by analysing the prospects of basic income in six distinct crisis events.
{"title":"A basic income for every crisis? Building blocks of a political economy framework","authors":"Joe Chrisp, J. De Wispelaere","doi":"10.1177/14407833231181273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231181273","url":null,"abstract":"In the wake of several recent crises, universal basic income has emerged as a serious policy solution. Not only is basic income pitched as a tool to mitigate the effects of a diverse set of emergencies, it has been argued that successive crises have importantly contributed to the surge in media and policy interest in basic income. In this article we critically examine this proposition. We first argue against the inherent functionalism of many accounts and instead propose a political economy framework that ties basic income directly to a series of mechanisms that may explain the opening up of basic income policy windows during recent crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic. It is equally important to carefully distinguish between different types of crises and we argue that two key competing types – cyclical and permanent crises – face a distinctive set of political economy constraints. We illustrate our approach by analysing the prospects of basic income in six distinct crisis events.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42674053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/14407833211055225
W. Shen, Jin Jiang
Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.
{"title":"Institutional prestige, academic supervision and research productivity of international PhD students: Evidence from Chinese returnees","authors":"W. Shen, Jin Jiang","doi":"10.1177/14407833211055225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833211055225","url":null,"abstract":"Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":"59 1","pages":"552 - 579"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46181157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-11DOI: 10.1177/14407833231167222
Roger Patulny, Ben Spies-Butcher
International studies using the European Social Survey (ESS) reveal higher support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in poorer countries with less generous welfare systems, and among individuals with lower income and education, and leftist political leanings. We present data from the 2019−20 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes mirroring the ESS question. Australia falls in the middle of European opinion, with 51% supporting a UBI, increasing slightly during the onset of Covid-19. We also find higher support among two different groups: (1) those facing greater ‘material’ precarity, including younger, low-income, unemployed, suburban renters, and (2) those who have more post-materialist concerns, including Green-left voters and those favouring redistributive values. Unlike in other countries, higher education predicts more support, while homeownership predicts less. The article concludes with challenges to introducing UBI to Australia, including potentially contradictory strategies for different support bases (material vs post-material), ongoing commitments to means-testing, and negative framing in the media.
{"title":"Come together? The unusual combination of precariat materialist and educated post-materialist support for an Australian Universal Basic Income","authors":"Roger Patulny, Ben Spies-Butcher","doi":"10.1177/14407833231167222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231167222","url":null,"abstract":"International studies using the European Social Survey (ESS) reveal higher support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in poorer countries with less generous welfare systems, and among individuals with lower income and education, and leftist political leanings. We present data from the 2019−20 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes mirroring the ESS question. Australia falls in the middle of European opinion, with 51% supporting a UBI, increasing slightly during the onset of Covid-19. We also find higher support among two different groups: (1) those facing greater ‘material’ precarity, including younger, low-income, unemployed, suburban renters, and (2) those who have more post-materialist concerns, including Green-left voters and those favouring redistributive values. Unlike in other countries, higher education predicts more support, while homeownership predicts less. The article concludes with challenges to introducing UBI to Australia, including potentially contradictory strategies for different support bases (material vs post-material), ongoing commitments to means-testing, and negative framing in the media.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48351632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-25DOI: 10.1177/14407833231172270
Sylvia Ang
{"title":"Book Review: Alanna Kamp Intersectional Lives: Chinese Australian Women in White Australia","authors":"Sylvia Ang","doi":"10.1177/14407833231172270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231172270","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":"59 1","pages":"794 - 795"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42855856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1177/14407833231162865
J. Zinn
Even though risk-taking is a common and widespread social experience sociological theorizing on the concept is scarce. This contribution aims to systematize and advance understanding of risk-taking and its different forms and how these connect to social inequalities and the social machinery. It considers risk-taking in the context of the debate about Bourdieu's theory of practice and Archer's theory of morphogenesis before suggesting a conceptual framework that outlines different rationales, dimensions, and the role of agency for understanding risk-taking as an individual and as a collective activity. The concept highlights the ambivalent character of risk-taking as an expression and mode of reproducing inequalities and a crucial resource to overcome disadvantage and foster social change.
{"title":"Risk-taking and social inequality","authors":"J. Zinn","doi":"10.1177/14407833231162865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231162865","url":null,"abstract":"Even though risk-taking is a common and widespread social experience sociological theorizing on the concept is scarce. This contribution aims to systematize and advance understanding of risk-taking and its different forms and how these connect to social inequalities and the social machinery. It considers risk-taking in the context of the debate about Bourdieu's theory of practice and Archer's theory of morphogenesis before suggesting a conceptual framework that outlines different rationales, dimensions, and the role of agency for understanding risk-taking as an individual and as a collective activity. The concept highlights the ambivalent character of risk-taking as an expression and mode of reproducing inequalities and a crucial resource to overcome disadvantage and foster social change.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47110466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1177/14407833231162637
Brittany Ralph
Critically engaging with prevailing theories of change in masculinities, this article offers a feminist poststructuralist account of Australian men's increasingly intimate same-gender friendships. Per Beasley, feminist poststructuralists treat social change as a consequence of contestation between discourses. In line with this, I contend that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic counter-discourses in recent decades has destabilised (but not overridden) masculinist discourse in the context of men's friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. Here, I define each of these counter-discourses, demonstrate how they challenge the discursive components of masculinism and use snippets of data from an intergenerational study of Australian men's friendships to illustrate how this shapes men's homosocial practices. Ultimately, I argue that by applying a feminist poststructuralist lens, scholars can examine how men navigate new and contentious discursive terrain, and better account for the complexity of social change in masculinities.
{"title":"The destabilising effect of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic counter-discourse: A feminist poststructuralist account of change in men's friendships","authors":"Brittany Ralph","doi":"10.1177/14407833231162637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231162637","url":null,"abstract":"Critically engaging with prevailing theories of change in masculinities, this article offers a feminist poststructuralist account of Australian men's increasingly intimate same-gender friendships. Per Beasley, feminist poststructuralists treat social change as a consequence of contestation between discourses. In line with this, I contend that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic counter-discourses in recent decades has destabilised (but not overridden) masculinist discourse in the context of men's friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. Here, I define each of these counter-discourses, demonstrate how they challenge the discursive components of masculinism and use snippets of data from an intergenerational study of Australian men's friendships to illustrate how this shapes men's homosocial practices. Ultimately, I argue that by applying a feminist poststructuralist lens, scholars can examine how men navigate new and contentious discursive terrain, and better account for the complexity of social change in masculinities.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46353004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-06DOI: 10.1177/14407833231161369
Justine Topham, Naomi Smith
This article traces how misinformation occurs and is negotiated in What I Eat In A Day (WIEIAD) videos. Data were collected from 84 WIEIAD videos across 59 YouTube accounts. Our discourse analysis demonstrated that misinformation is presented in ways that invoke expertise, scientific credibility and personal experience, making it more difficult to identify and respond to. Our analysis illustrates how misinformation arises in seemingly mundane sites of discourse and argues that identifying and responding to misinformation is not a binary task. The WIEIAD genre demonstrates the complexity of contemporary wellness discourses and their broader role in health and risk management, which results in the (re)circulation of misinformation. The tension between the sensory and the rational in WIEIAD videos highlights the complexities present in how misinformation, wellness and health are entangled on social media.
{"title":"One day of eating: Tracing misinformation in ‘What I Eat In A Day’ videos","authors":"Justine Topham, Naomi Smith","doi":"10.1177/14407833231161369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833231161369","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces how misinformation occurs and is negotiated in What I Eat In A Day (WIEIAD) videos. Data were collected from 84 WIEIAD videos across 59 YouTube accounts. Our discourse analysis demonstrated that misinformation is presented in ways that invoke expertise, scientific credibility and personal experience, making it more difficult to identify and respond to. Our analysis illustrates how misinformation arises in seemingly mundane sites of discourse and argues that identifying and responding to misinformation is not a binary task. The WIEIAD genre demonstrates the complexity of contemporary wellness discourses and their broader role in health and risk management, which results in the (re)circulation of misinformation. The tension between the sensory and the rational in WIEIAD videos highlights the complexities present in how misinformation, wellness and health are entangled on social media.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":"39 4","pages":"682 - 698"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41247087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-08DOI: 10.1177/14407833221146785
Shiva Chandra, J. Wilkinson
There is limited in-depth theorisation of positive coming-out experiences within families of origin. This is especially true for diasporic South Asian communities living in majority Anglophone contexts. The article draws on a study of 15 gay men of South Asian descent, in Australia, to analyse how coming out can lead to positive developments in family relations, even if they exist alongside negativity about one's sexuality. Coming out can introduce greater intimacy into family attachments, which at times turns family members into friends, and intimacy and friendship might serve as a reason for coming out in the first place. These processes strengthen familial ties, and data illustrates that concepts such as intimacy, friendship, and suffusion, can be used to conceptualise positive outcomes. We recommend further exploration of such stories in diasporic South Asian communities, to challenge the negativity often associated with this group in relation to their same-sex-attracted kin.
{"title":"Making friends with the family: A fresh look at coming out","authors":"Shiva Chandra, J. Wilkinson","doi":"10.1177/14407833221146785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833221146785","url":null,"abstract":"There is limited in-depth theorisation of positive coming-out experiences within families of origin. This is especially true for diasporic South Asian communities living in majority Anglophone contexts. The article draws on a study of 15 gay men of South Asian descent, in Australia, to analyse how coming out can lead to positive developments in family relations, even if they exist alongside negativity about one's sexuality. Coming out can introduce greater intimacy into family attachments, which at times turns family members into friends, and intimacy and friendship might serve as a reason for coming out in the first place. These processes strengthen familial ties, and data illustrates that concepts such as intimacy, friendship, and suffusion, can be used to conceptualise positive outcomes. We recommend further exploration of such stories in diasporic South Asian communities, to challenge the negativity often associated with this group in relation to their same-sex-attracted kin.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44549175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-03DOI: 10.1177/14407833221146793
Gisèle Sapiro
This review essay of Fields, Capitals, Habitus first discusses how this in-depth inquiry into the lifestyles and cultural practices in Australia contributes to the rich discussions sparked by the publication and translation of Bourdieu's Distinction. It then turns to research directions that this survey opens up, especially in comparative perspective, in the context of neoliberalism and multiculturalism. One of these directions is to study the rise of Indigenous capital. A second is to compare the way that transnational, Indigenous and migrant cultures challenge the national habitus. A third invites researchers to compare more systematically gendered practices across fields and countries, a study that should be supplemented by the impact of the feminisation of cultural intermediaries.
{"title":"The metamorphoses of cultural capital in a neoliberal and multicultural era: Towards a comparative approach","authors":"Gisèle Sapiro","doi":"10.1177/14407833221146793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833221146793","url":null,"abstract":"This review essay of Fields, Capitals, Habitus first discusses how this in-depth inquiry into the lifestyles and cultural practices in Australia contributes to the rich discussions sparked by the publication and translation of Bourdieu's Distinction. It then turns to research directions that this survey opens up, especially in comparative perspective, in the context of neoliberalism and multiculturalism. One of these directions is to study the rise of Indigenous capital. A second is to compare the way that transnational, Indigenous and migrant cultures challenge the national habitus. A third invites researchers to compare more systematically gendered practices across fields and countries, a study that should be supplemented by the impact of the feminisation of cultural intermediaries.","PeriodicalId":47556,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociology","volume":"59 1","pages":"310 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46455136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}