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The broad aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between terrain and conflict. Using the opportunity and willingness framework, it argues that there are some long established physical factors, which have been related to the terrain of conflict, but that there are also some equally long established factors that are nonphysical. This latter group includes the notion of a “mountain people,” which is described as being fierce, uncivilized, and resistant to authority. Such arguments may have some foundation, but they are also based on a strong history of determinism and indeed scientific racism. The paper also looks at the “what is a mountain?” debate and argues that this question is entirely misleading for conflict analysis. It is hoped that conflict researchers will be careful whenever they encounter the word “mountain.”

This book chapter reflectively explores the challenges of studying provocation, satire, bad taste and offence in stand-up comedy. The author’s sociological lens on the topic is situated within the broader field of humour studies, which is a relatively small yet creative and innovative field within the human, cultural and social sciences. This lost ethnographic project contains shelved and dormant interview data with a number of stand-up comedians, including the controversial and emotive late Bernard Manning and an early career Steve Coogan. The project also explores the author’s autoethnographic journey into rant poetry, as both a hobbyist and, on further reflection, a way of keeping the project informally but theoretically alive. The issues of censorship, political correctness and informed consent are key ones in the author’s confessional type analysis. Finally, the value and richness of loss, failure and resilience as marginalised yet significant and unacknowledged learning resources in our academic adventures are frankly discussed. The call here is for more lost ethnographic projects to be recognised and appreciated in academia.

Karasek's (1979) job demands-control model is one of the most widely studied models of occupational stress (de Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman, & Bongers, 2003). The key idea behind the job demands-control model is that control buffers the impact of job demands on strain and can help enhance employees’ job satisfaction with the opportunity to engage in challenging tasks and learn new skills (Karasek, 1979). Most research on the job demands-control has been inconsistent (de Lange et al., 2003; Van Der Deof & Maes, 1999), and the main reasons cited for this inconsistency are that different variables have been used to measure demands, control, and strain, not enough longitudinal research has been done, and the model does not take workers’ individual characteristics into account (Van Der Deof & Maes, 1999). To address these concerns, expansions have been made on the model such as integrating resources, self-efficacy, active coping, and social support into the model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001b; Johnson & Hall, 1988; Demerouti, Bakker, de Jonge, Janssen, & Schaufeli, 2001a; Landsbergis, Schnall, Deitz, Friedman, & Pickering, 1992). However, researchers have only been partially successful, and therefore, to continue reducing inconstencies, we recommend using longitudinal designs, both objective and subjective measures, a higher sample size, and a careful consideration of the types of demands and control that best match each other theoretically.

The social sciences and institutional theory have seen the proliferation of the term actor and the profusion of its meanings. Despite the importance and ubiquity of actor in institutional theory, the term is largely taken-for-granted, which has stunted the development of institutional theories of actors. The authors aspire to spur theorization of actor in institutional theory in the hope of carving out institutional theories of actor in the collective research agenda. The authors first contextualize their interest in actor in institutional theory and discuss the intellectual context within which the authors put this agenda forward. The authors briefly sketch out the main themes that would provide fruitful areas of inquiry in this new agenda and bring together a variety of strands in institutional theory with a clear focus on the relationship between institutions and actors. The authors conclude by discussing the contributions included in the volume.

This article explores aspects of separation from “post-traditional” religiosity characteristic of certain late/post-modern affiliations. To do so, I analyze in-depth interviews with 44 individuals who formerly identified with straightedge – a clean-living youth-oriented scene tightly bound with hardcore music that is centered on abstinence from intoxicants – about their experiences transitioning through associated music assembly rituals. While features of hardcore music assemblies – e.g. moshing, slamdancing, sing-a-longs – have long been treated as symbolic connections that potentially conjure the religious as conceptualized in Émile Durkheim's “effervescence” and the liminality of Victor Turner's “communitas,” data on transitions from these features of ritual remain scant. Ex-straightedgers generally believed the sorts of deep connections they professed to experience in hardcore rituals as youths were not necessarily currently accessible to them, nor were they replicable elsewhere. Findings then ultimately suggest some post-traditional religious experiences might now be profitably considered in terms of the life course, which has itself transformed alongside the proliferation of newer late/post-modern affiliations and communities.