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The title of this chapter was inspired by Martin, a prisoner the author met while conducting fieldwork. Martin remarked that, despite the common rhetoric around prisoners ‘maintaining’ their family ties, the reality was that during imprisonment it became more about trying to cling on to them. Imprisonment is perhaps one of the most brutal disruptions a family can undergo, leaving them little choice but to adapt to this enforced transition. Immediately, the spaces where family life can happen narrow severely and become dictated by the prison environment and the plethora of rules that regulate it. The immediate physical separation, onerous restrictions on physical contact and the heavily surveilled nature of family contact during imprisonment constricts space for emotional expression, often rendering romantic relationships clandestine and fatherhood attenuated. Further, the temporal space for family is reduced as limited opportunities for visits lead prisoners to eschew contact with wider family members and prioritise their ‘nuclear’ family. Drawing on empirical research conducted at two male prisons in England and Wales, this chapter then, will detail the complexities of how families navigate this transition and the limitations on what family can mean in the prison environment. The chapter will conclude with the implications of these restrictions for the ultimate transition when prisoners return ‘home’.

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.

The ‘Terrible Mother’ traditionally connotes monstrous aspects of motherhood and devouring femininity, encompassing two stereotypical representation of women in myth, fairy tale and fantasy: The Seductress and the Wicked stepmother. The Seductress personifies female malevolence and is characterized as rebellious, manipulative and relentless. Furthermore, she often adopts male aggressiveness, especially sexual, thus usurping male prerogative. Ironically, the temptress is condemned for exhibiting traits which the male hero is lauded for, while also embodying a warning to other women regarding their fate should they rebel against male authority. These narrative strands converge in Cersei, who becomes an embodiment of male anxiety and stands as the chief moral foil and greatest sociopolitical threat to male hegemony.

Concomitantly, Cersei plays the part of the wicked stepmother to Sansa Stark, the series' archetypal damsel in distress. Like Sansa, Cersei began with starry-eyed dreams of womanhood, but quickly grew disillusioned. Despite this, Cersei subjects Sansa to the same injustices she suffered. This re-enactment of her own mistreatment situates Cersei as the female accomplice to the patriarchy. Yet, Cersei also attempts to educate Sansa about women's position vis-à-vis the patriarchy and the tools at their disposal, thus layering the role of the wicked stepmother. Furthermore, Cersei's narrative is complicated as she becomes a point of view character: her focalization becomes a fertile ground for myriad challenges to an androcentric culture, opening avenues for social criticism and possible reimagining of gender roles.

Stanford contributed significantly to the organizational culture movement that occurred in organization studies from 1970–2000. This chapter traces developments at Stanford and puts the contributions of its researchers and scholars in the context of the many influences that shaped the study of organizational culture during this period. In addition to the historical account, there is speculation about why the culture movement at Stanford more or less ended but might yet be revived, either by those studying institutionalization processes or by those who resist them.

The chapter explores the role of law in society and its relation to ethical conflicts as reflected through the prism of the film The Third Man. By focusing on the complexities of life in post-war Vienna, the film exposes dilemmas that prevail in ordinary times and in functioning democracies as well. Our analysis suggests that one way to manage these dilemmas and balance the conflicting loyalties and interests they raise is to sustain open channels between the law and other narrative-generating practices from which normative stances are evaluated. The law-and-cinema discourse is one such channel and The Third Man presents, in our eyes, the vitality of that channel, due to its rich aesthetical language and its unique representation of the ethical tensions (and their consequences) in the modern era.

Martin Bronfenbrenner was born in Pittsburgh in 1914. His father was an eminent bacteriologist and immunologist. His mother was a pioneering historian of science who died in an automobile accident a few months after his birth. Martin received his BA in political science from St. Louis University in 1934 and his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1939. He received a Certificate in the Japanese language from the University of Colorado enabling him to interrogate Japanese prisoners of war (he later said that the experience “developed skills that still come in handy on oral examinations” (Bronfenbrenner, 1987)). He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Michigan State, the University of Minnesota, Carnegie Tech, Aoyoma Gakuin, and Duke University. He was president of the Southern Economic Association, the History of Economics Society, and the Atlantic Economic Association and served as vice president of the American Economic Association. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association.

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

This chapter examines the main methodological issues involved in the comprehension of the cost structure of the airport industry and suggests considerations for future airport cost analyses. Such understanding has become a crucial concern for policy makers, regional planners, and managers in order to deal with optimal market design (e.g., regulation and market configuration) and airport strategies (e.g., pricing, investments, and alliances). An in-depth analysis of the economics of cost functions is presented, together with a description of the relevant multi-output cost economies measures (average incremental costs, scale and scope economies, and cost complementarities). We also discuss the assumptions underlying estimates of total versus variable cost functions and the importance of estimating a sufficiently flexible functional form. Moreover, we provide a critical survey of the international empirical literature on the cost structure of the airport industry, which highlights how econometric estimates strongly depend on the sample choice and the empirical model considered. Indeed, while econometric studies on international samples based on long-run cost function estimates show that long-run scale economies are never exhausted, single country studies mostly estimate variable cost functions and find lower values for scale economies at median sample points that tend to decrease with size. We discuss why we believe that studies based on the estimation of short-run variable cost functions offer more reliable results, given the reasonable assumption of airport overcapitalization in the short run. We conclude our work by noting that underlying policy issues related to planning and regulation, as well as to the optimal market structure of the airport sector, need to take into account the role played by vertical relationships between airports and airlines.