Abstract:This paper presents a new way of understanding local land-use conflicts, also called NIMBY, developing from justification theory and literature from the sociology of engagements. The article builds on the multiple systems of valuation used by people to perceive local land-use cases as conflicts, following the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot (1999, 2006). The conflicts are shown to be not only about conflicting interests of the residents, but also about broader conflicting systems of valuation. Empirically, land-use cases in Helsinki, Finland are analysed to show the variety of argumentation used by residents opposing land-use. Over 500 dispute letters are analysed, vast majority of which base their argumentation on common good. About 40% also use argumentation based on individual interest. Argumentation based on close familiar affinities is rare but existing, which might be because of the type of data used in the article. The framework used allows for the non-moralising use of the concept NIMBY when describing the conflicts.
In this paper we study social aspects of using the Like button for purposes of impression management, identity construction, and maintenance of social ties online. On the theoretical level our investigation combines Goffman’s notion of face-work with concepts of social network analysis, shedding light on what we dub ‘nano-level’ interaction and sociality on social networking sites. Our data come from a 2013 classroom survey in which 26 Finnish university students were asked about their motives for and ways of using the Like button. Our results show that though the Like button was designed to allow users to express their positive evaluations of the contents of Facebook posts, comments, and pictures, it was in actual fact used for a wide variety of purposes, from dating efforts to conversation regulation and maintenance of social ties. Our results also reveal that the networked Facebook audience affects the users’ liking behavior, and that users reflect their liking based on previous likes.
This article explores the role of individual interests within the pragmatic sociology of engagements expounded by Laurent Thévenot. He developed the idea of multiple regimes of engaging with the world-cognitive models of information-processing and what kind of good is engaged in different situations. In this article I argue that the way the sociology of engagements is currently formulated does not sufficiently allow for analysing public participation and disputes in situations where individual interests play a crucial role in public debates. The article presents a slight reformulation of what Thévenot calls the grammar of individuals in a liberal public (sic), based on a) an understanding of how individual interests relate to the common good and general will, b) the constitution of legitimate actors within polities, and c) the separation between the levels of generality and publicity. This reformulation might be called the grammar of individual interests, clarifying and simplifying earlier terminology .
We argue that ‘topics’ of topic models can be used as a useful proxy for frames if (1) frames are operationalized as connections between concepts; (2) theme-specific data are used; and (3) topics are validated in terms of frame analysis. Demonstrating this, we analyse 12 climate change frames used by NGOs, governments and experts in Indian and US media, gathered by topic modeling. We contribute methodologically to topic modeling in the social sciences and frame analysis of public debates, and empirically to research on climate change media debates.
Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the visibility of business actors correspondingly decreases, (5) ecological ideas are increasingly adopted by political and business elites and (6) a compromise emerges between ecological and economic evaluations, in the form of the argument that climate change mitigation boosts, rather than hinders economic growth.
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