Picture this:researching child workers

Visual methods such as photography are under-used in the active process of sociological research. As rare as visual methods are, it is even rarer for the resultant images to be made by rather than of research participants. Primarily, the paper explores the challenges and contradictions of using photography within a multi-method approach. We consider processes for analysing visual data, different ways of utilising visual methods in sociological research, and the use of primary and secondary data, or, simple illustration versus active visual exploration of the social. The question of triangulation of visual data against text and testimony versus a stand-alone approach is explored in depth.

Connecting a sociology of childhood perspective with the study of child health, illness and wellbeing:introduction

In the last decades we have seen a growing interest in research into children's own experiences and understandings of health and illness. This development, we would argue, is much stimulated by the sociology of childhood which has drawn our attention to how children as a social group are placed and perceived within the structure of society, and within inter-generational relations, as well as how children are social agents and co-constructors of their social world. Drawing on this tradition, we here address some cross-cutting themes that we think are important to further the study of child health: situating children within health policy, drawing attention to practices around children's health and well-being and a focus on children as health actors. The paper contributes to a critical analysis of child health policy and notions of child health and normality, pointing to theoretical and empirical research potential for the sociology of children's health and illness.

Comparison of subjective and objective methods to determine the retinal arterio-venous ratio using fundus photography

Purpose: To assess the inter and intra observer variability of subjective grading of the retinal arterio-venous ratio (AVR) using a visual grading and to compare the subjectively derived grades to an objective method using a semi-automated computer program. Methods: Following intraocular pressure and blood pressure measurements all subjects underwent dilated fundus photography. 86 monochromatic retinal images with the optic nerve head centred (52 healthy volunteers) were obtained using a Zeiss FF450+ fundus camera. Arterio-venous ratios (AVR), central retinal artery equivalent (CRAE) and central retinal vein equivalent (CRVE) were calculated on three separate occasions by one single observer semi-automatically using the software VesselMap (ImedosSystems, Jena, Germany). Following the automated grading, three examiners graded the AVR visually on three separate occasions in order to assess their agreement. Results: Reproducibility of the semi-automatic parameters was excellent (ICCs: 0.97 (CRAE); 0.985 (CRVE) and 0.952 (AVR)). However, visual grading of AVR showed inter grader differences as well as discrepancies between subjectively derived and objectively calculated AVR (all p < 0.000001). Conclusion: Grader education and experience leads to inter-grader differences but more importantly, subjective grading is not capable to pick up subtle differences across healthy individuals and does not represent true AVR when compared with an objective assessment method. Technology advancements mean we no longer rely on opthalmoscopic evaluation but can capture and store fundus images with retinal cameras, enabling us to measure vessel calibre more accurately compared to visual estimation; hence it should be integrated in optometric practise for improved accuracy and reliability of clinical assessments of retinal vessel calibres. © 2014 Spanish General Council of Optometry.

Connecting a sociology of childhood perspective with the study of child health, illness and wellbeing:introduction

This chapter focuses on concepts and theoretical points of departure found in child health and wellbeing studies. Firstly, seeing children as a social group draws attention to the ways this group is placed and perceived in the structures of societies. Children as a social group need to be understood in relation to other social groups. Secondly, understanding children as social agents and as co-constructors of their social worlds is fundamental to studying their experiences and ways of dealing with health and wellbeing in everyday life. Thirdly, in recent years, there has been a turn towards seeing children as beings. The chapter discusses the child health issues and concerns in contemporary society. Children are diagnosed with an increasing range of conditions and are subject to more and more elaborate child health and welfare interventions, reflecting a medical perspective on the changing panorama of illness and health risks in the 21st century.

How can economic sociology help business relationship management?

Purpose – By analyzing organizations as social actors and business relationships as social relationships, sociology can improve business relationship management. This paper aims to explore the issues involved. Design/methodology/approach – A business relationship is an interactive exchange between two organizations embedded in a network of business connections. The paper reviews theories of social actions and social actors and the concepts of economic field and embeddedness to illustrate some social dimensions of business relationships. Findings – Social action and social actor theories emphasize that co-operation is always encumbered with conflicts, that consciousness about the relationship is fundamental for both strongly and weakly structured actors, and that actors (people involved in a business relationship) always have some freedom of manoeuvre. The concept of economic field underscores the specificity of each business relationship and the critical need for concrete analysis. The concept of embeddedness highlights that no business relationship is possible without personal bonds. Research limitations/implications – These are the first results of a deeper and broader research directed towards a conceptual model of business relationship management. Practical implications – The paper can help managers to analyze more deeply the social dimensions of business relations with both suppliers and buyers. Consciousness, the ongoing presence of conflicts, the unavoidable role of personal bonds, and interactivity are always relevant in business relationship management. Originality/value – The paper integrates sociological and business marketing approaches. It applies essential sociological theories and concepts to business relationship management.

A közgazdaságtan és a szociológia határán - az identitás-gazdaságtan által felvetett elméleti kérdések (On the borders of economics and sociology. Theoretical questions raised by identity economics)

A tanulmány az identitás-gazdaságtan megközelítését és az általa felvetett elméleti kérdéseket kívánja bemutatni. E tan kiinduló tétele George A. Akerlof és Rachel E. Kranton szerint az, hogy a közgazdaságtanban használt hasznosságfüggvénybe be kell emelni az emberek énképének és az ezzel kapcsolatos egyéni mérlegelésnek a szempontjait. Ezt az indokolja, hogy az emberek társadalmi csoportokhoz/kategóriákhoz tartoznak, amelyekhez normarendszer társul, azaz ha viselkedésükkel megsértik a normákat, akkor önképük sérül, és ezáltal csökken a hasznosságuk is. A tanulmányban bemutatjuk, hogy ez a szemlélet az embereket "túlszocializált" társadalmi szereplőkként mutatja be, akik kevéssé reflektálnak a helyzetükre. További kérdéseket vetnek fel az elmúlt években végzett szociálpszichológiai és viselkedés- gazdaságtani kísérletek, amelyek rámutatnak, hogy az identitás- gazdaságtani elmélet egyik alapját jelentő normák erősen függnek szituációs tényezőktől. _____ The paper introduces the approach of identity economics and the theoretical questions raised by its arguments. According to Akerlof and Kranton, individual identity and personal calculations in relation to this identity should be incorporated into the utility function applied in economics, so that people are placed in social categories that involve normative systems. In line with this, if their actions breach the social norms, this affects negatively their self-image, so in turn decreasing their utility. The paper argues that this approach presents humans as "overly socialized" social actors who do not reflect on their situation. Further questions could be raised by experiments in social psychology and behavioral economics conducted in recent years. The results highlight the fact that the norms which serve as the basis for the theory of identity economics depend strongly on the context and given situation.

A youth vision of the city: The socio-spatial lives and exclusion of street girls in Bogota, Colombia

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. ^ This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. ^ Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it.^

The 2008 Terrestrial Vegetation of Biscayne National Parko FL, USA Derived From Aerial Photography, NDVI, and LiDAR

Established as a National Park in 1980, Biscayne National Park (BISC) comprises an area of nearly 700 km2 , of which most is under water. The terrestrial portions of BISC include a coastal strip on the south Florida mainland and a set of Key Largo limestone barrier islands which parallel the mainland several kilometers offshore and define the eastern rim of Biscayne Bay. The upland vegetation component of BISC is embedded within an extensive coastal wetland network, including an archipelago of 42 mangrove-dominated islands with extensive areas of tropical hardwood forests or hammocks. Several databases and vegetation maps describe these terrestrial communities. However, these sources are, for the most part, outdated, incomplete, incompatible, or/and inaccurate. For example, the current, Welch et al. (1999), vegetation map of BISC is nearly 10 years old and represents the conditions of Biscayne National Park shortly after Hurricane Andrew (August 24, 1992). As a result, a new terrestrial vegetation map was commissioned by The National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program South Florida / Caribbean Network.

Evaluating High-Resolution Aerial Photography Acquired by Unmanned Aerial Systems for Use in Mapping Everglades Wetland Plant Associations

Mapping of vegetation patterns over large extents using remote sensing methods requires field sample collections for two different purposes: (1) the establishment of plant association classification systems from samples of relative abundance estimates; and (2) training for supervised image classification and accuracy assessment of satellite data derived maps. One challenge for both procedures is the establishment of confidence in results and the analysis across multiple spatial scales. Continuous data sets that enable cross-scale studies are very time consuming and expensive to acquire and such extensive field sampling can be invasive. The use of high resolution aerial photography (hrAP) offers an alternative to extensive, invasive, field sampling and can provide large volume, spatially continuous, reference information that can meet the challenges of confidence building and multi-scale analysis.

Documentation of glaciers and mountain chains in the Nordvestfjord of Scorsby Sound (East Greenland, July 2016) by landscape photography during Maria S. Merian cruise MSM56

From the 12th until the 17th of July 2016, research vessel Maria S. Merian entered the Nordvestfjord of Scorsby Sound (East Greenland) as part of research cruise MSM56, "Ecological chemistry in Arctic fjords". A large variety of chemical and biological parameters of fjord and meltwater were measured during this cruise to characterize biogeochemical fluxes in arctic fjords. The photo documentation described here was a side project. It was started when we were close to the Daugaard-Jensen glacier at the end of the Nordvestfjord and realized that not many people have seen this area before and photos available for scientists are probably rare. These pictures shall help to document climate and landscape changes in a remote area of East Greenland. Pictures were taken with a Panasonic Lumix G6 equipped with either a 14-42 or 45-150 objective (zoom factor available in jpg metadata). Polarizer filters were used on both objectives. The time between taking the pictures and writing down the coordinates was maximally one minute but usually shorter. The uncertainty in position is therefore small as we were steaming slowly most of the time the pictures were taken (i.e. below 5 knots). I assume the uncertainty is in most cases below 200 m radius of the noted position. I did not check the direction I directed the camera to with a compass at the beginning. Hence, the direction that was noted is an approximation based on the navigation map and the positioning of the ship. The uncertainty was probably around +/- 40° but initially (pictures 1-17) perhaps even higher as this documentation was a spontaneous idea and it took some time to get the orientation right. It should be easy, however, to find the location of the mountains and glaciers when being on the respective positions because the mountains have a quite characteristic shape. In a later stage of this documentation, I took pictures from the bridge and used the gyros to approximate the direction the camera was pointed at. Here the uncertainty was much lower (i.e. +/- 20° or better). Directions approximated with the help of gyros have degree values in the overview table. The ship data provided in the MSM56 cruise report will contain all kinds of sensor data from Maria S. Merian sensor setup. This data can also be used to further constrain the position the pictures were taken because the exact time a photo was shot is noted in the metadata of the .jpg photo file. The shipboard clock was set on UTC. It was 57 minutes and 45 seconds behind the time in the camera. For example 12:57:45 on the camera was 12:00:00 UTC on the ship. All pictures provided here can be used for scientific purposes. In case of usage in presentations etc. please acknowledge RV Maria S. Merian (MSM56) and Lennart T. Bach as author. Please inform me and ask for reprint permission in case you want to use the pictures for scientific publications. I would like to thank all participants and the crew of Maria S. Merian Cruise 56 (MSM56, Ecological chemistry in Arctic fjords).

The sociology of late secularization : social divisions and religiosity

Peer reviewed

Photography student working in darkroom

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].