Ravn
Biographic Data
| ID | 49801 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ravn |
| FAMILY NAME | Ravn |
| SIGNATURE | RAVN |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5289-2942 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 199 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
‘A self-launch to work…’
Several studies have explored how students are using extracurricular activities to stand out in increasingly competitive labour markets. Focusing on one extracurricular activity, that is, university clubs, this paper uses positional conflict theory to explore why Australian university students seek club leadership roles and how they view their roles in relation to the labour market. The paper is based on eight in-depth interviews with Australian …
Journal of Sociology
In this anniversary editorial we look back to the early days of the journal as we seek to honour its history and legacy. We outline the contents of the special anniversary features curated for this issue, including a section of shorter articles engaging with Alan Davies’ article on ‘children's outlooks’ in the first issue of the journal; an interview with Professor Fran Collyer about the history of sociology in Australia; and a section featuring …
A matter of time? Institutional timescapes and gendered inequalities in the transition from education to employment in Australia
This article explores why women miss out in the transition from the educational system to the labour market. Using nationally representative longitudinal data (2001-18) from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we compare how long after graduation it takes men and women with tertiary qualifications (n = 2030) to achieve key labour market milestones: (1) getting a full-time job; (2) getting a permanent contract; (3…
Affected by STEM? Young girls negotiating STEM presents and futures in a Danish school
This article explores how Danish school girls affectively engage with and relate to STEM subjects, and what draws the girls to STEM subjects and pushes them away, respectively. We draw on Ahmed’s work to shed light on the ‘sticky’ affects that become attached to STEM subjects as well as student subjects in constituting these as affectively (un)attractive for girls. We explore the discourses on STEM subjects that circulate amongst the students bef…
In Search of Non-Linear Futures
Feminist and queer thinkers are increasingly problematising linear time and developing other ways of theorising and exploring non-linear time and temporalities. In this article, we join such work as we formulate a set of methodological-analytical reading strategies that can assist us as scholars in writing up alternative futures from empirical data. We focus on young women whose ‘successful’ futures are typically represented as a linear trajector…
The Hope Burden
Captured and captioned
This article examines how practices of family photography are being transformed in the digital sphere, specifically on Instagram. While research on ‘digital intimacies’ focusses on romantic or peer interactions, the digital practices of families – especially intergenerational interactions – remain understudied. We use Janet Finch’s notion of ‘family display’ to consider how Instagram affords new modes of performing and sharing family life. This c…
Reframing immobility
Mobility is high on the agenda in both policy and research and being mobile is a positive descriptor, not least for young people. The downside of the focus and value placed on mobility as the path to success is that ‘immobility’ has clear, negative associations: being immobile equals being ‘stuck’, a ‘failure’ and not being aspirational. In this paper I seek to problematise dominant representations of decisions to stay in regional and rural locat…
Exploring Future Narratives and the Materialities of Futures. Material Methods in Qualitative Interviews with Young Women
This paper contributes to the ‘future’ methods literature by exploring the methodological potentials of material methods in qualitative research on young women’s imagined futures. Existing research has demonstrated how producing knowledge about imagined futures remains a challenge, often leading to abstract or generic accounts of such futures. Arguing for a double focus on materiality as method and the materiality of methods, this paper extends m…
Navigating the Tensions of Normative Masculinity
Building on research identifying sexting as an important aspect of contemporary youth cultures, this article critically explores the ways that homosocial bonding is bound up with, and produced in the context of, young adult men’s discussions of sexting. Drawing on a focus-group study with 37 undergraduate young men based in Melbourne, Australia, we find both deviations from and continuations with the literature that has emphasised men’s homosocia…
It Feels Like Life Is Narrowing
Analyses of young feminine identities have often focused on consumption, career and intimate life as separate spheres. In this article, we bring these together to nuance the concept of the 'top girl'. Drawing on a qualitative study of young Norwegian 'top girls'' alcohol consumption and lifestyles we explore how 'appropriate' feminine identities are configured in the present and in the future. We analyse how the egalitarian context shapes the con…
Narrative sense-making and prospective social action
The ways in which humans narratively make sense of their lives shape how they navigate the future. At least, that is what prominent philosophers like Sartre, Ricoeur and MacIntyre proposed. Philosophically this idea has roots in the long-standing thesis of mimesis; like art imitates life and life imitates art in the Aristotelian sense, so do life and stories imitate each other (Bruner, 1987). Despite the tenacity of the idea, relatively little re…
Towards a Sociological Understanding of Sexting as a Social Practice
This article makes the case for understanding young people's engagement with 'sexting' as a social practice. Moving away from the dominant focus on teenagers and (sexual) risk and instead approaching sexting as an 'everyday' practice sheds light on how sexting is perceived and situated as a normalised part of contemporary youth culture. Drawing on 10 focus groups with 37 undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, our data reveal young men's signi…
What Is “Publicly Available Data”? Exploring Blurred Public–Private Boundaries and Ethical Practices Through a Case Study on Instagram
This article adds to the literature on ethics in digital research by problematizing simple understandings of what constitutes "publicly available data," thereby complicating common "consent waiver" approaches. Based on our recent study of representations of family life on Instagram, a platform with a distinct visual premise, we discuss the ethical challenges we encountered and our practices for moving forward. We ground this in Lauren Berlant's c…
The currency of images
This paper examines contemporary gender relations among young people by taking young men’s experiences with and understandings of “sexting” as a case in point. Based on a focus group study with university undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, we analyse what is seen as having value and what is seen as constituting a risk when engaging in sexting, and how this is perceived as different for men and women. We demonstrate how value and risk are …
Gendered and generational inequalities in the gig economy era
Over the last few decades, there has been a radical transformation of Australia's labour market and education sector, with intersecting implications for gender and generational inequalities. First, the composition of the labour force has changed. There has been a significant increase in women's participation in paid work, which has been driven by the changing industrial landscape as well a significant expansion of higher education opportunities f…
Making pathways? A mixed methods analysis of young women who have left school early in 'the new work order
Much research has investigated how young women with tertiary education fare in contemporary labour markets and pointed to persistent gender inequalities. However, very little is known about how young women who leave school early fare in the present climate. In this article we shed light on the challenges facing these women in the 'new work order'. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate how young Australian women who have …
Imagining futures, imagining selves
This article proposes a narrative approach to studying 'risk'. A narrative approach moves away from common attempts to identify individuals 'at risk' of social problems on the basis of static characteristics - risks - that are assumed to have uniform 'effects' on individuals. Instead, a narrative approach to analysing 'risk' entails a focus on how people make consequential links between events in their lives. By focusing on three cases from a qua…
Youth, Risk, Routine
Young people's lives continue to be the topic of public scrutiny and recurring 'moral panics'. Smoking cannabis, speeding, and engaging in street-level fights are depicted as activities based on 'poor choices' or simple hedonism, putting young people's futures at risk. Based on comprehensive, qualitative research with young people in Denmark, this book illustrates how such individualised accounts miss out on the inherently social character of ris…
Playing the game or played by the game? Young drug users’ educational trajectories
This article analyses the relationship between cannabis use and educational trajectories among 42 young drug users, recruited at addiction treatment centres in Denmark. Quantitative research shows regular cannabis use to be associated with poor school performance and drop-out. However, these studies do not pay much attention to differences between educational tracks or to the links between the educational field and other fields. Drawing on a Bour…
I Would Never Start a Fight but
This article explores the link between masculinity and violence in socially integrated young men’s discussions about risk-taking and violence. Traditionally, violence, or rather the capability of violence, is depicted as a key cultural marker of masculinity. However, recent theoretical developments point to changes in the normative boundaries for performing appropriate masculinities not least among young people. These discussions about potential …
It feels as if time has come to a standstill’
This paper focuses on the everyday lives of young people with a severe mental illness living temporarily at a social psychiatric housing facility in Denmark. In the paper we take a temporal approach to the analysis of this and we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythm analysis to investigate the differences between the rhythms of everyday life within the institution and the rhythms of what is perceived as the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ youth. W…
Figures in Space, Figuring Space
This article argues for a need for spatial analyses in the study of youth cultures and youth subjectivities. With this aim, we propose a theoretical framework drawing on concepts from cultural class analysis and human geography. Empirically, the article is based on 10 focus groups with young people (n = 80) in four different parts of Denmark. The interviews included a photo elicitation exercise and the analysis in this article focuses on one part…
Out of sync
The paper analyzes young cannabis users' experiences of time from two different perspectives, one looking at how their everyday life is related to social time structures and another looking at their actual time management strategies. The paper shows that intense drug use is a reason behind the interviewees' underinvolvement in interaction time, institutional time, and cyclic time. Yet, drug use may also be an attempt at solving problems with time…
Steroids, it’s so much an identity thing!’ perceptions of steroid use, risk and masculine body image
This paper explores how taste and distaste, body image and masculinity play into young people’s perceptions of risk related to steroid use. Data are drawn from a qualitative study on risk-taking among 52 Danish youths enrolled in high school or vocational training. A number of ‘risky’ practices such as drug use, fights, speeding, etc. were discussed. In contrast to these practices, which were primarily described in relation to ‘physical risks’, s…
Cannabis careers revisited
Captured and captioned
This article examines how practices of family photography are being transformed in the digital sphere, specifically on Instagram. While research on ‘digital intimacies’ focusses on romantic or peer interactions, the digital practices of families – especially intergenerational interactions – remain understudied. We use Janet Finch’s notion of ‘family display’ to consider how Instagram affords new modes of performing and sharing family life. This c…
Exploring Future Narratives and the Materialities of Futures. Material Methods in Qualitative Interviews with Young Women
This paper contributes to the ‘future’ methods literature by exploring the methodological potentials of material methods in qualitative research on young women’s imagined futures. Existing research has demonstrated how producing knowledge about imagined futures remains a challenge, often leading to abstract or generic accounts of such futures. Arguing for a double focus on materiality as method and the materiality of methods, this paper extends m…
What Is “Publicly Available Data”? Exploring Blurred Public–Private Boundaries and Ethical Practices Through a Case Study on Instagram
This article adds to the literature on ethics in digital research by problematizing simple understandings of what constitutes "publicly available data," thereby complicating common "consent waiver" approaches. Based on our recent study of representations of family life on Instagram, a platform with a distinct visual premise, we discuss the ethical challenges we encountered and our practices for moving forward. We ground this in Lauren Berlant's c…
From recreational to regular drug use
This article analyses the process of going from recreational use to regular and problematic use of illegal drugs. We present a model containing six career contingencies relevant for young people's progress from recreational to regular drug use: the closing of social networks, changes in forms of parties, intoxication becoming a goal in itself, easier access to drugs, learning to recognise alternative effects of drugs and experiences of loss of co…
Explanations and expectations
This article analyses how young people enrolled in drug addiction treatment in Copenhagen, Denmark, explain their cannabis careers and how they view their possibilities for quitting drug use again. Inspired by Mead and narrative studies of health and illness, the article identifies four different drug use 'aetiologies' drawn upon by the interviewees. These cover childhood experiences, self-medication, the influence of friends and cannabis use as …
Narrative sense-making and prospective social action
The ways in which humans narratively make sense of their lives shape how they navigate the future. At least, that is what prominent philosophers like Sartre, Ricoeur and MacIntyre proposed. Philosophically this idea has roots in the long-standing thesis of mimesis; like art imitates life and life imitates art in the Aristotelian sense, so do life and stories imitate each other (Bruner, 1987). Despite the tenacity of the idea, relatively little re…
The currency of images
This paper examines contemporary gender relations among young people by taking young men’s experiences with and understandings of “sexting” as a case in point. Based on a focus group study with university undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, we analyse what is seen as having value and what is seen as constituting a risk when engaging in sexting, and how this is perceived as different for men and women. We demonstrate how value and risk are …
Figures in Space, Figuring Space
This article argues for a need for spatial analyses in the study of youth cultures and youth subjectivities. With this aim, we propose a theoretical framework drawing on concepts from cultural class analysis and human geography. Empirically, the article is based on 10 focus groups with young people (n = 80) in four different parts of Denmark. The interviews included a photo elicitation exercise and the analysis in this article focuses on one part…
Out of sync
The paper analyzes young cannabis users' experiences of time from two different perspectives, one looking at how their everyday life is related to social time structures and another looking at their actual time management strategies. The paper shows that intense drug use is a reason behind the interviewees' underinvolvement in interaction time, institutional time, and cyclic time. Yet, drug use may also be an attempt at solving problems with time…
Reframing immobility
Mobility is high on the agenda in both policy and research and being mobile is a positive descriptor, not least for young people. The downside of the focus and value placed on mobility as the path to success is that ‘immobility’ has clear, negative associations: being immobile equals being ‘stuck’, a ‘failure’ and not being aspirational. In this paper I seek to problematise dominant representations of decisions to stay in regional and rural locat…
Imagining futures, imagining selves
This article proposes a narrative approach to studying 'risk'. A narrative approach moves away from common attempts to identify individuals 'at risk' of social problems on the basis of static characteristics - risks - that are assumed to have uniform 'effects' on individuals. Instead, a narrative approach to analysing 'risk' entails a focus on how people make consequential links between events in their lives. By focusing on three cases from a qua…
Managing Drug Use in Danish Club Settings
The article analyzes Danish clubbers’ strategies for taking drugs in night clubs. This exploration is framed within the discussion of a possible normalization of youth drug use. Thus, the article investigates how young drug-users experience the level of acceptability of drug use in clubs and how this perceived acceptability—or rather lack of acceptability—affects their practices around drug-taking. The analysis points towards two distinct strateg…
It Feels Like Life Is Narrowing
Analyses of young feminine identities have often focused on consumption, career and intimate life as separate spheres. In this article, we bring these together to nuance the concept of the 'top girl'. Drawing on a qualitative study of young Norwegian 'top girls'' alcohol consumption and lifestyles we explore how 'appropriate' feminine identities are configured in the present and in the future. We analyse how the egalitarian context shapes the con…
Gendered and generational inequalities in the gig economy era
Over the last few decades, there has been a radical transformation of Australia's labour market and education sector, with intersecting implications for gender and generational inequalities. First, the composition of the labour force has changed. There has been a significant increase in women's participation in paid work, which has been driven by the changing industrial landscape as well a significant expansion of higher education opportunities f…
I Would Never Start a Fight but
This article explores the link between masculinity and violence in socially integrated young men’s discussions about risk-taking and violence. Traditionally, violence, or rather the capability of violence, is depicted as a key cultural marker of masculinity. However, recent theoretical developments point to changes in the normative boundaries for performing appropriate masculinities not least among young people. These discussions about potential …
Towards a Sociological Understanding of Sexting as a Social Practice
This article makes the case for understanding young people's engagement with 'sexting' as a social practice. Moving away from the dominant focus on teenagers and (sexual) risk and instead approaching sexting as an 'everyday' practice sheds light on how sexting is perceived and situated as a normalised part of contemporary youth culture. Drawing on 10 focus groups with 37 undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, our data reveal young men's signi…
Navigating the Tensions of Normative Masculinity
Building on research identifying sexting as an important aspect of contemporary youth cultures, this article critically explores the ways that homosocial bonding is bound up with, and produced in the context of, young adult men’s discussions of sexting. Drawing on a focus-group study with 37 undergraduate young men based in Melbourne, Australia, we find both deviations from and continuations with the literature that has emphasised men’s homosocia…
Playing the game or played by the game? Young drug users’ educational trajectories
This article analyses the relationship between cannabis use and educational trajectories among 42 young drug users, recruited at addiction treatment centres in Denmark. Quantitative research shows regular cannabis use to be associated with poor school performance and drop-out. However, these studies do not pay much attention to differences between educational tracks or to the links between the educational field and other fields. Drawing on a Bour…
Putting the party down on paper
Club studies
Club studies are sociological investigations of youth drug use in the social situation of the club. By being present at the club the researcher tries to gain access to a somehow hidden population of drug users who only to a lesser extent perceive their drug use as problematic. In spite of impressive club studies conducted in both Great Britain and in the United States, it seems that, broadly speaking, previous efforts can be characterized as eith…
It feels as if time has come to a standstill’
This paper focuses on the everyday lives of young people with a severe mental illness living temporarily at a social psychiatric housing facility in Denmark. In the paper we take a temporal approach to the analysis of this and we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythm analysis to investigate the differences between the rhythms of everyday life within the institution and the rhythms of what is perceived as the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ youth. W…
In Search of Non-Linear Futures
Feminist and queer thinkers are increasingly problematising linear time and developing other ways of theorising and exploring non-linear time and temporalities. In this article, we join such work as we formulate a set of methodological-analytical reading strategies that can assist us as scholars in writing up alternative futures from empirical data. We focus on young women whose ‘successful’ futures are typically represented as a linear trajector…
Steroids, it’s so much an identity thing!’ perceptions of steroid use, risk and masculine body image
This paper explores how taste and distaste, body image and masculinity play into young people’s perceptions of risk related to steroid use. Data are drawn from a qualitative study on risk-taking among 52 Danish youths enrolled in high school or vocational training. A number of ‘risky’ practices such as drug use, fights, speeding, etc. were discussed. In contrast to these practices, which were primarily described in relation to ‘physical risks’, s…
Contested identities
This article examines young recreational drug users’ identity constructions. Combining a poststructuralist theoretical framework with focus group method, the article investigates how the participants in a focus group interview position themselves and others, thereby negotiating an identity as responsible drug users. The article studies this recreational drug culture and its internal distinctions, conceptions and norms as they are expressed discur…
Club studies
Club studies are sociological investigations of youth drug use in the social situation of the club. By being present at the club the researcher tries to gain access to a somehow hidden population of drug users who only to a lesser extent perceive their drug use as problematic. In spite of impressive club studies conducted in both Great Britain and in the United States, it seems that, broadly speaking, previous efforts can be characterized as eith…
From recreational to regular drug use
This article analyses the process of going from recreational use to regular and problematic use of illegal drugs. We present a model containing six career contingencies relevant for young people's progress from recreational to regular drug use: the closing of social networks, changes in forms of parties, intoxication becoming a goal in itself, easier access to drugs, learning to recognise alternative effects of drugs and experiences of loss of co…
Contested identities
This article examines young recreational drug users’ identity constructions. Combining a poststructuralist theoretical framework with focus group method, the article investigates how the participants in a focus group interview position themselves and others, thereby negotiating an identity as responsible drug users. The article studies this recreational drug culture and its internal distinctions, conceptions and norms as they are expressed discur…
Managing Drug Use in Danish Club Settings
The article analyzes Danish clubbers’ strategies for taking drugs in night clubs. This exploration is framed within the discussion of a possible normalization of youth drug use. Thus, the article investigates how young drug-users experience the level of acceptability of drug use in clubs and how this perceived acceptability—or rather lack of acceptability—affects their practices around drug-taking. The analysis points towards two distinct strateg…
Communicating Trust Between Parents and Their Children
This article discusses how Danish parents and their children communicate trust. Based on Niklas Luhmann’s sociological theory, the article explores new aspects of communication about alcohol-related rules. The analysis shows how the parents emphasize the importance of communicating trust, while the adolescents, on the other hand, observe the parents’ communication on the basis of their own, more instrumental, logic. Trust becomes a functional sol…
Masculinities in the Criminological Field
Over recent decades criminological research has changed from a gender-blind discipline which equated crime with men and thus ignored questions about gender, to an approach that studied gender by showing statistical differences between men and women, and then finally to a more inclusive and elaborate gender-theoretical approach to crime and crime control. However, despite this development, research on gender – and in particular research on gendere…
Putting the party down on paper
Cannabis careers revisited
Steroids, it’s so much an identity thing!’ perceptions of steroid use, risk and masculine body image
This paper explores how taste and distaste, body image and masculinity play into young people’s perceptions of risk related to steroid use. Data are drawn from a qualitative study on risk-taking among 52 Danish youths enrolled in high school or vocational training. A number of ‘risky’ practices such as drug use, fights, speeding, etc. were discussed. In contrast to these practices, which were primarily described in relation to ‘physical risks’, s…
Explanations and expectations
This article analyses how young people enrolled in drug addiction treatment in Copenhagen, Denmark, explain their cannabis careers and how they view their possibilities for quitting drug use again. Inspired by Mead and narrative studies of health and illness, the article identifies four different drug use 'aetiologies' drawn upon by the interviewees. These cover childhood experiences, self-medication, the influence of friends and cannabis use as …
It feels as if time has come to a standstill’
This paper focuses on the everyday lives of young people with a severe mental illness living temporarily at a social psychiatric housing facility in Denmark. In the paper we take a temporal approach to the analysis of this and we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s work on rhythm analysis to investigate the differences between the rhythms of everyday life within the institution and the rhythms of what is perceived as the everyday life of ‘ordinary’ youth. W…
Figures in Space, Figuring Space
This article argues for a need for spatial analyses in the study of youth cultures and youth subjectivities. With this aim, we propose a theoretical framework drawing on concepts from cultural class analysis and human geography. Empirically, the article is based on 10 focus groups with young people (n = 80) in four different parts of Denmark. The interviews included a photo elicitation exercise and the analysis in this article focuses on one part…
Out of sync
The paper analyzes young cannabis users' experiences of time from two different perspectives, one looking at how their everyday life is related to social time structures and another looking at their actual time management strategies. The paper shows that intense drug use is a reason behind the interviewees' underinvolvement in interaction time, institutional time, and cyclic time. Yet, drug use may also be an attempt at solving problems with time…
Youth, Risk, Routine
Young people's lives continue to be the topic of public scrutiny and recurring 'moral panics'. Smoking cannabis, speeding, and engaging in street-level fights are depicted as activities based on 'poor choices' or simple hedonism, putting young people's futures at risk. Based on comprehensive, qualitative research with young people in Denmark, this book illustrates how such individualised accounts miss out on the inherently social character of ris…
Playing the game or played by the game? Young drug users’ educational trajectories
This article analyses the relationship between cannabis use and educational trajectories among 42 young drug users, recruited at addiction treatment centres in Denmark. Quantitative research shows regular cannabis use to be associated with poor school performance and drop-out. However, these studies do not pay much attention to differences between educational tracks or to the links between the educational field and other fields. Drawing on a Bour…
I Would Never Start a Fight but
This article explores the link between masculinity and violence in socially integrated young men’s discussions about risk-taking and violence. Traditionally, violence, or rather the capability of violence, is depicted as a key cultural marker of masculinity. However, recent theoretical developments point to changes in the normative boundaries for performing appropriate masculinities not least among young people. These discussions about potential …
What Is “Publicly Available Data”? Exploring Blurred Public–Private Boundaries and Ethical Practices Through a Case Study on Instagram
This article adds to the literature on ethics in digital research by problematizing simple understandings of what constitutes "publicly available data," thereby complicating common "consent waiver" approaches. Based on our recent study of representations of family life on Instagram, a platform with a distinct visual premise, we discuss the ethical challenges we encountered and our practices for moving forward. We ground this in Lauren Berlant's c…
The currency of images
This paper examines contemporary gender relations among young people by taking young men’s experiences with and understandings of “sexting” as a case in point. Based on a focus group study with university undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, we analyse what is seen as having value and what is seen as constituting a risk when engaging in sexting, and how this is perceived as different for men and women. We demonstrate how value and risk are …
Gendered and generational inequalities in the gig economy era
Over the last few decades, there has been a radical transformation of Australia's labour market and education sector, with intersecting implications for gender and generational inequalities. First, the composition of the labour force has changed. There has been a significant increase in women's participation in paid work, which has been driven by the changing industrial landscape as well a significant expansion of higher education opportunities f…
Making pathways? A mixed methods analysis of young women who have left school early in 'the new work order
Much research has investigated how young women with tertiary education fare in contemporary labour markets and pointed to persistent gender inequalities. However, very little is known about how young women who leave school early fare in the present climate. In this article we shed light on the challenges facing these women in the 'new work order'. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate how young Australian women who have …
Imagining futures, imagining selves
This article proposes a narrative approach to studying 'risk'. A narrative approach moves away from common attempts to identify individuals 'at risk' of social problems on the basis of static characteristics - risks - that are assumed to have uniform 'effects' on individuals. Instead, a narrative approach to analysing 'risk' entails a focus on how people make consequential links between events in their lives. By focusing on three cases from a qua…
Narrative sense-making and prospective social action
The ways in which humans narratively make sense of their lives shape how they navigate the future. At least, that is what prominent philosophers like Sartre, Ricoeur and MacIntyre proposed. Philosophically this idea has roots in the long-standing thesis of mimesis; like art imitates life and life imitates art in the Aristotelian sense, so do life and stories imitate each other (Bruner, 1987). Despite the tenacity of the idea, relatively little re…
Towards a Sociological Understanding of Sexting as a Social Practice
This article makes the case for understanding young people's engagement with 'sexting' as a social practice. Moving away from the dominant focus on teenagers and (sexual) risk and instead approaching sexting as an 'everyday' practice sheds light on how sexting is perceived and situated as a normalised part of contemporary youth culture. Drawing on 10 focus groups with 37 undergraduate men in Melbourne, Australia, our data reveal young men's signi…
Captured and captioned
This article examines how practices of family photography are being transformed in the digital sphere, specifically on Instagram. While research on ‘digital intimacies’ focusses on romantic or peer interactions, the digital practices of families – especially intergenerational interactions – remain understudied. We use Janet Finch’s notion of ‘family display’ to consider how Instagram affords new modes of performing and sharing family life. This c…
Reframing immobility
Mobility is high on the agenda in both policy and research and being mobile is a positive descriptor, not least for young people. The downside of the focus and value placed on mobility as the path to success is that ‘immobility’ has clear, negative associations: being immobile equals being ‘stuck’, a ‘failure’ and not being aspirational. In this paper I seek to problematise dominant representations of decisions to stay in regional and rural locat…
Sociology (30 works) · Psychology (23 works) · Social science (19 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (16 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Economics (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Futures contract (8 works)