Sociologie

Resocialisation is one of the main goals of shelters for the homeless, which often fails. Goffmans' asylums explains this failure in terms of “mortification” of the subject and “hospitalization”. We apply his analysis, especially inmates strategies of dealing with the rules of the institution, to a long-stay shelter for homeless men. Based on participant observation and open interviews we find support for Goffmans' analysis. But his analysis is too gloomy. We show that inmates partly reconstruct a positive identity, based on a perception of their own better past. For this process we introduce the concept of “animation” as the opposite of mortification. Furthermore, Goffman does not recognize “exit” as one of the main strategies of inmates, at least in our times. These positive aspects not withstanding, the homeless in this case primarily learn to live an inmate life. This makes them dependent on the institution and obstructs resocialisation.

The author offers an explanation for the different ways in which competitive sport is related to the high schools in the us and the Netherlands. In the us ompetitive sport is integrated in the extra-curricular program of the high schools. In the Netherlands competitive sport is practiced in private clubs which are completely independent of the high schools. If one studies the rigins of this difference at the end of the nineteenth century one sees that in the us, compared with the situation in the Netherlands, the balance of power between the schoolteachers and the pupils was more in the advantage of the pupils. In the Netherlands the teachers were able to push the sportive activities of their pupils outside the borders of the school; in the us this was impossible. The consolidation and continuity in this difference can be explained by the importance of the integrative function sport acquired in the us high schools, which are schools with a more heterogenic body of pupils in terms of talents and social class then most Dutch schools.

Visiting the settings of popular films and tv series has become a growing niche in the tourist market. Little is known about what makes these visits so appealing. This question is explored on the basis of the case of James Bond. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with James Bond fans who had visited one or more Bond film locations in recent years. These interviews indicate that the ‘media pilgrimage’ into the world of Bond contains playful as well as serious elements. By tracing the world of Bond and temporarily becoming part of this liminal landscape, fans create the opportunity to embody and perform an imagined masculinity. On a theoretical level, this paper contributes to existing literature on media pilgrimages, by showing how the symbolic boundary between ínside and óutside the media is tightly interwoven with other power configurations - in this case patriarchal notions of masculinity.