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This chapter addresses the potential for knowledge, learning, and collaboration (KLC) cultures in public sector organizations. Public sector organizations are among the most complex for introducing or nourishing a KLC approach because there are multiple levels of cultures with varying levels of influence. We describe these complex cultures as tiers. First, we define public sector organizations’ business goals, purpose, and strategies. Then, the authors translate and interpret all five levels of culture for public sector organizations. The chapter also details the nature of cultural complexity, namely the four tiers of public sector cultures: (1) the company culture (Tier 1); (2) the public service culture (Tier 2); (3) the culture of the external environment (Tier 3); and (4) the internal KLC cultures (Tier 4). This chapter establishes a framework for describing an organization’s complex culture and determining the best KLC approach for the context.

Musical experiences play a formative role in shaping individuals, culture and society. This chapter descriptively analyzes a six-week study abroad program based in Budapest, Hungary that focuses on music, popular culture, and the politics of everyday life. I begin by describing the program's rationale, goals, and objectives. I then provide insight into the program's content as it relates to music's formative role in sociology and learning. Lastly, I discuss the usefulness of Kotarba and Vannini's (2006) special issue of Symbolic Interaction to assist student learning about music in everyday life. I show how the study abroad program focused on the conceptual, methodological, and substantive significance of music practices in everyday life. I also show how including the special issue of Symbolic Interaction with more general scholarship on music, culture, and society, allowed students and me to share an in-depth, collaborative focus on interactionism that would not be so easily achieved in a normal classroom setting. I close by commenting on the program's impact on students’ conceptions of self.

When and how did modern rankings emerge? This paper aims to answer that question by taking a closer look at the history of American baseball. In the 1870s, baseball was the first team sport to introduce a competitive system, the league, that determined the champion based on teams’ overall number of wins and losses. The in-depth analysis of the baseball discourse from the 1850s to the 1870s shows that leagues were introduced as a solution to a specific problem: how to identify deserving champions that had proved their ability again and again over the course of a season. The rising awareness of this problem was due to a shift in the baseball discourse of the 1860s, which established a new, statistical understanding of athletic achievement that demanded consistency of performance together with an acceptance that even champions lose a game once in a while. Rankings and other statistics, based on constant scoring of individual plays and increasingly sophisticated methods, helped institutionalize this new understanding of achievement and, in so doing, made the introduction of the league system possible. Moreover, the league system proved to be dependent on rankings – in the form of league tables – that made it possible to observe and experience the championship race, making rankings an essential element of modern competitive sports. Given that today’s rankings apply similar ideas of achievement to other fields (e.g., the “excellence” of universities), the story draws attention to the history of a specific imaginary of achievement that transcends the field of sports and should be studied more widely to understand the institutionalization of rankings in other fields.

In 1958 the Daily Express began publication of a comic strip adaptation of Casino Royale authorised by Ian Fleming, predating the original film version by four years. For the next 10 years adaptations of the novels and short stories appeared in the newspaper with Bond’s appearance fashioned firstly by John McLusky and then Yaroslav Horak. When the supply of Fleming’s stories was exhausted, new adventures were penned by Jim Lawrence with artwork by Horak, McLusky or Harry North. From 1977 publication switched to the Sunday Express and then the Daily Star. Eventually, the strips were reprinted for a whole new audience by Titan Books.

Subsequently, Bond appeared in a number of other comic book adaptations and reworkings, including key adaptations by the independent publishers Dark Horse and Dynamite, offering contemporary re-imaginings of this iconic, but always controversial, male icon. Taken together they provide a run of Bond adventures over more than 50 years. As such, they contain an alternative Bond universe, where his embodiment of male heroism mimics and varies Fleming’s original and the images constructed in the film franchise. This chapter will consider these mirror images and their responses to changing societal pressures as Bond adapts to new definitions of what constitutes the male hero.

In order to emphasize in-depth analyses of individual life stories, seven informants were selected. Since breadth of experience will contribute to a more detailed contextualization of the consumer's use of products in identity negotiation, diversity across informants was emphasized. Interviews generally followed the format as suggested by Thompson, Locander, and Pollio (1989). A comfortable setting was chosen and pseudonyms were used to ensure anonymity. Interviews were audio-taped and lasted anywhere from one to just over two hours. Grand tour questions (McCracken, 1988) focused on the meaning of the tattoo design, the experience of being tattooed, perceptions of the body, words the informants used to describe themselves, and other biographical information important for understanding the informant's personal myth. Every effort was made to present a natural front, keep the informant on track without being too directive, demonstrate active listening, and prompt the informant as a way of probing for details (Spradley, 1979). To ensure accuracy, an experienced and trained transcriptionist transcribed each of the seven interviews. The final text totaled 450 typed double-spaced pages.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of artwork produced in the context of social movements waged by Mexicans and Chicanos (U.S. inhabitants of Mexican descent) during the two decades between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. Despite the fact that activists in these movements shared many elements of Mexican culture and history, were part of the same generation of radical social movements born in the 1960s, and experienced some significant interchange among movement participants from each side of the U.S.-Mexico border, an examination of movement art reveals significant differences in key elements of the movements’ collective identity and expression of political citizenship. Analysis of the artwork also highlights different aesthetic choices made by movement artists, particularly with regard to the deployment of formal elements associated with the “Mexican School” of art made famous by artists associated with the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century. Variations in the representational strategies developed by movement artists reflect the distinct relationship of movement constituents in Mexico and the U.S. to each nation's prevailing regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation. The analysis is based on an examination of 374 pieces of art.