This study advances an original theoretical framework to understand the deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in political contention. It argues that we should not look only at the use of ICTs in contention, as technologies are not “born” to be used in and for political activism. Rather, people appropriate and manoeuvre technologies—some but not others—for such purposes, in specific contexts. This study proposes a relational understanding of ICT uses in contention, taking into account their technicalities and their sociality, as well as the transformation and actualisation that occurs between them. It suggests that an investigation necessitates the perception of communication technologies as a repertoire of contention on the basis of affordances that structure the possibilities of the use of technology. The study further presents an application of the framework in cases of protests in mainland China. Through fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this study indicates that the choice of (certain functions of) mobile phones as protest repertoire derives from a confluence of (a) a given social group’s habitus of media use that manifests particular affordances, and (b) the learned experience of the contested means of the past in official mass communication. It concludes that what people do and do not do with ICTs in political contention is significantly shaped by affordances and habitus, thereby revealing the dynamics behind repertoire selection and constraint.

What can a good’s durability tell us about its market organization? This paper argues that the socially expected durability of goods is one of their most important features. It illuminates temporal and material aspects of market organization and social change across different markets. While recent literature in the sociology of markets tends to emphasize financial goods, intangible assets, and the service economy, markets for material durable and nondurable consumer goods are still surprisingly pervasive in everyday life and in the household economy, as well as in modern economies’ basic infrastructure. Based on a comparison of the extreme cases of durable housing and fresh fish markets, we come to the general finding that the higher a good’s expected durability, the smaller the share of its new production will be and the larger its aftermarkets. Furthermore, it will be more tightly linked to credit and insurance markets, and its market will be more volatile in the short-term, but more inert in the long-term. Beyond this static distinction, we show how socio-technical mechanisms can “durabilize” or “dedurabilize” goods and hence change their market form. By comparing markets along the durability dimension, this paper contributes to a comparative sociology of market organization that goes beyond single-market studies, while at the same time opening up space for a more dynamic understanding of social change and market segmentation over time.

Research on authoritarian legitimation suggests that rulers seek support through ideological, personalistic, performance-based, and procedural strategies. Typically, however, this work only considers the dynamics of legitimation between rulers and civilians. In contrast, this paper suggests that meso-level actors play a critical role in shaping legitimation from both above and below. Through an historical analysis of the French episcopate’s support for the Vichy regime from 1940 to 1942, I identify four practices that bolstered Vichy’s attempts to accrue legitimacy and simultaneously identify the consequences of these practices for the Church’s relationship with Jews. Public endorsements by the religious authorities for Marshal Pétain, their cooperation with the Vichy administration, the expression of shared values, and common rhetoric all contributed to the regime’s legitimation process while leading to a concomitant decline in the hierarchy’s ties to the rabbinate. These results suggest that attention to meso-level actors brings into relief important dynamics about how legitimation processes unfold in authoritarian settings while simultaneously contributing to research on the Holocaust in France.

Total institutions are by definition totalitarian, but not necessarily authoritarian. Voluntary total institutions consist of members who have chosen to enter, but what opportunities do they have to leave? This article addresses opportunities for exit and voice in Catholic monasteries within the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance. Monasteries have institutionalized important democratic processes regarding membership and leadership. Members are involved in decision-making through community bodies and discussions, but in many practical concerns, superiors may wrest control by neglecting to ask the community for alternative opinions. The superior’s decision-making style therefore crucially affects the range of democratic decision-making in individual monastic communities. Complete exits are common during the initial entry process. The cost of leaving is higher for full members, and the internal exit option to other monastic communities in the Order is therefore of great importance. It means that monastic communities cease to operate as monopolies.

Materiality has been largely left out of the study of Muslim life in Europe, and limited to an etic rather than emic approach. In this paper, I analyse a conservative London mosque community (the East London Mosque) that depends on the material––what I term “ethical substance”––to reinforce its ascetic rejection of the world. Drawing from five months of ethnographic research in this mosque, I examine three aspects of materiality––clothing, the mosque building, and technology––in order to explore how the community negotiates its position in the city at hand, as well as more broadly vis-à-vis modernity. The mosque emerges as a site of discursive-material tension where ethics and locale intersect, and where intention (niyya) matters more than the constitution of objects. It elucidates European modernity as broader than liberal democratic ideals (i.e. in a community stressing a returns towards, rather than away from, tradition).