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Research Focus

In this section we highlight several pieces of current or recently completed work being undertaken by members of staff. Please feel free to contact individual staff members if you wish to find out more about their work. E-mail addresses are listed on the departmental website.

John Brewer, Steve Bruce and Francis Teeney are conducting an ESRC-funded study of the role of the churches in Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Even though religion is not the substance of the conflict in Northern Ireland, we are familiar with the role its plays in representing the groups between whom there is conflict. Religion is the form through which the conflict is experienced even though it is not about religion. This research focuses on religion as an arena of reconciliation and examines the role of the churches in the Northern Irish peace process. Some churches and para-church organizations have tried to obstruct reconciliation, and some have used religion as a resource to mobilize against peace, but it is part of folklore that some key churchmen and women have been hugely instrumental to the peace process. This contribution will be systematically explored by means of in-depth interviews with churches and para-church organizations, politicians and paramilitary groups, and peace activists. Northern Ireland will be used as a case study to explore the role of civil society in political transformation and, in particular, to address its ambivalent role in divided societies and in settings where religion is the form through which social conflict is experienced. The research is intended to have policy relevance to these sorts of situations in ways that enable the church to be a positive agent for peace.

John D Brewer and Steve Bruce have received Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowships.

While on leave from 2007-2008, John Brewer will undertake the completion of his book on the sociology of peace processes. Issues of war and peace are topical concerns. If new kinds of war help to define global society, late modernity is also marked by new kinds of peacemaking. The attention in social science has been on the changing character of organized violence rather than peace. What work there is on peace processes is from a ‘good governance’ and human rights perspective. The book addresses peace processes from a sociological perspective. It focuses on sociology’s contribution to understanding peace processes as it contrasts with governance and human rights approaches. This involves developing a taxonomy of the different types of post-violence society, contrasting the ways in which peace is achieved. Attention is focused on post-violence societies based around negotiated peace processes. The book explores the sociological features of peace processes, such as civil society, gender, emotions, memory, truth recovery, victimhood and citizenship education and draws heavily on the experiences of societies like Northern Ireland, South Africa, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and various South American countries. It addresses contemporary and historical cases to illustrate its themes.

While on leave for two-years, Prof. Bruce will continue his work on religion in Britain during the last 50 years.

Debra Gimlin has received a British Academy grant to continue her study entitled, ‘National Repertoires for Evaluating Cosmetic Surgery: Assessing the Relevance of Changing Cultural Practice.’

Although cosmetic surgery has become increasingly common in the US and Great Britain, the popular media and academic literature in both countries continue to link the practice to women’s internalised oppression, self-loathing and vanity. Such associations require women who have had their bodies surgically altered to narrate their actions in a way that seeks to normalise them. For these accounts to be convincing, they must utilise the ‘repertoires of evaluation’ (Lamont and Thévenot 2000: 8) deemed legitimate within the speaker’s social environment. Reflecting the ‘widely shared mental maps’ that people use ‘to demonstrate an idea’ and ‘to vouch for certain claims’ cultural repertoires inform explanations of belief and action and privilege some accounts over others. To date, comparative research has examined cultural repertoires as the product of existing values and institutions, but has ignored how these repertoires may vary over time and alongside shifting norms and practices. Similarly, analyses of cosmetic surgery have failed to address how the arguments and evidence used to justify aesthetic procedures may change as such procedures become increasingly commonplace. This research addresses such omissions in the literature by examining both national and temporal variations in women’s accounts of cosmetic surgery.

New Europe Centre, Aberdeen (NEC)

NEC is directed by Claire Wallace. Other people at the NEC include Florian Pichler,  Bernadette Hayes, Kathryn Vincent, Ivo Vassilev, Matt McGovern

The NEC includes a number of social scientists, both within and outside the University of Aberdeen, working on projects aimed at understanding Europe in terms of  people, values and behaviour. Much of the centre’s work addresses policy measures and implications.

The NEC is funded through a range of projects on topics such as household strategies, work-life balance, social capital, European social policy, gender, European identity, migration, youth and generations. These projects draw upon a variety of materials, including policy documents, surveys carried out by the Centre, in-depth interviews and secondary data analysis. Two examples of NEC’s work include:

1. Patterns of Migration in the New European Borderlands

This project is funded by INTAS (European Commission) and lasts from October 2005 to October 2007. Headed by Claire Wallace at the University of Aberdeen, the study’s partners are located in Germany, Belarus, Molodova, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia. The project looks at migration from these new EU borderland countries. It begins with an “ethnosurvey” of a cross-section of 400 households split across two regions in each country. The households where migrants are present are followed up with an in-depth interview to find out about their migration strategies, remittances and relationships between home and host countries in terms of welfare, finances and family arrangements.

INTAS http://www.intas.be/

2. WORKCARE: Social Quality and the Changing Relationships between Work, Care and Welfare in Europe

This project is funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union and will last from October 2006 to September 2009. It explores the relationships between, at the macro level, structural changes in the labour market, economic policies, demography and welfare and, at the micro level, changes in individual orientations to work and care.

The study is designed to go beyond the existing literature on individual attitudes and welfare regimes to integrate perspectives of gender and care into an analysis that encompasses Europe as a whole, including New Member States.  In order to do so we develop an analytical framework that takes into account the orientation, actions, capabilities and satisfaction of actors with relevant work and care systems in constructing a work-life balance. The combining of objective and subjective, macro and micro perspectives can best be synthesised under the model of “Social Quality”.

The project looks at the different actors involved in balancing work and care: the household, individuals and the state. It is based on the analysis of relevant indicators from existing sources and supplements them with qualitative interviews from five countries. The project introduces methodological as well as theoretical innovations in the combination of policy analysis, qualitative and quantitative research to understand models of change and hence the development of different European Social Models. Finally, it contributes to key European issues, providing a better understanding of the impact of social policies on work and care, the effects of the competing demands of work and care on fertility decisions and the consequences of flexibility and working times on the organisation of work, care and welfare.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/index_en.cfm?p=7

For additional information about NEC’s work, contact Prof. Claire Wallace or visit  http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/research/nec/.