Jeffrey E. Nash

Weekend Racing as an Eventful Experience Understanding the Accomplishment of Well-Being

preted as a highly individualistic exercise, a retreat from sociality In contrast, Nash argues that running is an activity situated within complex forms of social interaction Rather than being solely an expression of individualism, running reflects a multiplicity of social activities which contributes to the &dquo;well-being&dquo; of participants Nash’s study identifies both the individual and social characteristics which shape running as a social process involving participation m a social

Animal rights as a new environmental cosmology

The secularization and modernization of society have created opportunities for broad interpretations of fundamental questions of life. The Animal Rights Movement (ARM) challenges Judeo-Christian cosmology and offers an alternative. ARM redefines the distinctions between humans and animals and gives them a new meaning within the generalized environmental other. As an emerging cosmology, it functions to give believers a means of dealing with questions of order and chaos, suffering, good and evil, and justice. It also creates a community of people who seek redemption through saving animals. The Animal Rights Movement goes beyond moral protest and takes on the role of a religious cosmology.

Learning from the Pros - Violence in Youth Hockey

Perhaps no other professional sport has dealt as openly nor as self-consciously with the issues of violence in sport as hockey. Law suits, brawls involving fans and players, and the exposis of journalists have focused public attention on hockey as a violent sport. Coaches, players and owners are sensitive to questions about “fighting,” and they are seriously concerned with the image of the game. In the past twenty years, programs in youth hockey have proliferated, especially in Eastern and Midwestern cities (Synder and Spreitzer, 1978: 47). Children as young as six years old are now playing organized hockey. Critics of youth hockey point to the “violence” of pro hockey and caution parents and organizers about the deleterious effects of hockey on children. Incidents d o take place, such as the “riot” that occurred at the end of an important high school game in Eastern Massachusetts the night after the infamous North’ Stars vs. Bruins brawl that set a record 406 minutes in penalties. Whenever this occurs, the question of the impact of the violent model of professional hockey on youth is inevitably raised.1

WORKING AT AND WORKING Computer Fritters

Computers may affect the work of ethnographers by transforming the organization of working. The concept of fritter captures a distinction between working and working at doing ethnography. A computer fritter, then, is a way of working at doing work that functions to organize and impart meaning to using computers in research and writing. Several types of computer fritters are identified and described, and these are depicted as a logic-in-action for ethnography on the computer. Since the computer fritter embodies the character of work on the computer, understanding its many forms and uses may further an understanding of the developing tension between new meanings of doing work and old ways of accounting for when work has been done.

Relations in frozen places: Observations on winter public order

AbstractThe effects of prolonged winter weather on public order have been overlooked in sociological research literature. A naturalistic observational study conducted over a two year period using team field research methods documents several phenomena characteristic of winter public order. First, there were exaggerated body glosses or “officious displays,” second, decreased numbers of people, third, displays of a festive attitude, and fourth, an attitude of adventure and exploration. These observations allow a generalization that winter public behavior differs from that described by Goffman in that conditions provide greater freedom to the individual in the uses to which urban territory can be put. This democratization of urban space is explained in terms of Homans model of group processes which suggests that public norms will be suspended with decreased activity and interaction. If it be true that the temper of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in different climates, the laws ought to be inrelation...to the variety of those tempers. Montesquieu,The Spirit of the Laws, 1784.

Lying about running: The functions of talk in a scene

The running scene rests upon a system of beliefs (a code) about the “qualities” of running performances. Membership in the scene entails the interrelated use of conversational forms and the presentation of a “team” identity. The forms consist of nomic talk, ritualized lying and code truth telling. Within each form, the runner may “lie” about or manage information regarding running performances in order to construct, maintain or attack the system of beliefs. The “lie,” then, plays a major role in the scene as a device of social interaction.

What's in a Face? The Social Character of the English Bulldog

The English Bulldog is introduced as a cultural product through ethnographic description. Its peculiar physiology relates to its social meanings and three categories of the dog are discerned: show dogs, celebrities, and pets. Each type of dog embodies a selective character, which is depicted and then analyzed in terms of ambiguous semantic categories. As a cultural product, the Bulldog is a living symbol of ambiguous relationships between society and nature. In the context of everyday life, it provides an occasion for understanding these relationships.

Typing on the Phone: How the Deaf Accomplish TTY Conversations

Transcriptions from teletypewriter conversations are described and analyzed as supplemental to the pre-existing social organization of the deaf community. The features of TTY conversations include patterned “errors,” openings and closings, and compensatory devices (for the limitations imposed by the system). Within these features such phenomena as typing-through, short-cutting, and using pidgin (or Sign-influenced) English are identified. A remarkable range of meaningful and genuinely personal exchanges is accomplished by TTY users. Several relationships among the characteristics of TTY users and the features of their conversations are depicted and related to symbolic interactionist literature.

Individual differences in ratings of words combined in sentences

To examine the efficiency of regression-compounded group means as predictors of individual ratings of words combined in sentences, a study by Heise (1969) was replicated and extended to obtain pre- and postcombination ratings from the same subjects. Heises model efficiently predicted group ratings for words combined in sentences (R2=0.86), but neither group-weighted (R2=0.19) nor individually weighted (R2=0.28) regression equations efficiently predicted the rating of individual subjects. The findings are consistent with several findings that question the applicability of widely studied models of attitude change to individual differences and alternative approaches to this problem are discussed.