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This chapter explores how we have limited our own understanding and application of ethics at work through our everyday talk about it. The chapter begins by arguing that how we frame ethics is as important, and sometimes more important, than the specific ethical decisions we make. The chapter explains how a perspective on ethics that is grounded in communication and rhetoric can illuminate how we unnecessarily restrain the influence of ethics at work. The chapter makes the case for examining popular culture and everyday talk for clues to how ethics is treated in our professional lives. Turning the saying “talk is cheap” on its head, the chapter urges a serious consideration of what it means to say, for example, that one's work is “just a job” or that we should “let the market decide.” Thus, the reader is urged to find ethical implications in diverse messages and cases, ranging from codes and handbooks, to television shows and Internet advertising, to everyday conversation, including sayings that become part of who we are.

This chapter returns to questions of happiness, eudaimonia, virtue, and the reframing of ethics in work and life. Reviewing some of the key points of the previous chapters, it explains the value of looking beyond specific ethical decisions to the very ways ethics are typically approached and framed. Ethics, it asserts, is relevant even in instances that are not readily identified as requiring ethical decisions. The chapter argues that rather than thinking about ethics as work, as something over and above everyday work life, professionals would do well to embrace ethics as relevant to their entire array of everyday practices. Ironically, as ethics becomes “non‐special,” its application can lead to greater happiness. The chapter offers several contemporary cases to illustrate a new, non‐heroic framing of virtue at work. Through this reframing, a revived and revised theory of virtue ethics can enhance conversation about ethics, especially when we are profoundly questioning how we do business.

Moving beyond the language of comics to wider conventions, Chapter Five considered the approaches adopted by filmmakers to achieve the heightened realism of comics. Among the strategies employed to meet this genre expectation were dynamic framing and composition, expressionistic performances, exaggerated frozen moments, and concise, often stereotypical, character types. These conventions are so heavily influenced by comic books that they could have come from Stan Lee and John Buscema’s 1978 instructional art book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

This chapter provides an overview of social movements in the socio-cultural, economic, and political context of Hong Kong. It also draws on feminist and social movement scholarship to illustrate how the empirical focus on Hong Kong can advance theoretical deliberations on transnational feminism. Constructions of collective identity are fundamental to grievance interpretation in all forms of collective action. However, current debates within feminist scholarship reveal that this alignment between identity and mobilization has only been partially addressed. Identities, within these debates, are conceived as extant before movements, which subsequently make them salient by deploying them strategically for political and social change. On the contrary, social movement scholars argue that collective identity is not only necessary for successful collective action, it is often an end in itself. This chapter argues for feminism as a “collective action frame,” rather than a “collective identity,” so as to facilitate our understanding of how women activists build transnational feminist solidarity. The meanings of feminism that dominate at any particular moment are not given a priori, but rather formed out of negotiation and struggle within and across women's movements. This framing process facilitates the extension of personal identity in movement contexts and generates the collective action frame that inspires and legitimizes women's activism.

This chapter reiterates the argument that relations among women activists are constructed, not only on the basis of difference, but on shared understandings and aspirations. Women's movements in Hong Kong are embedded in a socio-political environment characterized by fluidity, heterogeneity, and partiality. On one hand, it allows social movements with diverse concerns, interests, and expertise to co-exist. On the other hand, alternative discourses cannot constitute a fully developed, singular ideology. As this environment shifts with the increasing influence of the Beijing government, women's activism may well become less effective, since it is not equipped, in its present form, to operate successfully in a more homogenous environment. Transnational feminist solidarity through transversal politics that is emerging in Hong Kong will prove to be increasingly complex and complicated in the long term. However, this book suggests feminism as a collective action frame through which we might try to sort out the interactions and negotiations among women activists in diverse historical periods and socio-cultural, economic, and political contexts. Transversal politics show us how activists with conflicting ideas and interests are talking across their differences and taking collective action and how understandings and interpretations of feminism are unfolding.

The attack on affirmative action has come from a select few individuals with resource. This fight was thought to have culminated with the end of affirmative action signaled by the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Supreme Court case. However, the policy received a surprising victory and continues to be an object of disdain by many conservatives today. With that being said, this chapter outlines the role of elite actors in framing prominent social issues, including affirmative action. This chapter also describes how certain frames may be used to not only minimize the discussion of race surrounding the policy but will also attempt to use threat and emotion to produce animosity in order to remove the policy from higher education.

The purpose of this chapter is to bring the discussion back to the broader ideas of the book: racism and framing by elite actors. This chapter discussed the insidious role of think tanks in enlisting Racialized Framing techniques (minimize race while also activating race through threat) to eliminate affirmative action from higher education and reproduce a system that benefits whites. This chapter returns to the idea that civil rights initiative in general are under attack by a few elite actors while support is found among diverse groups most affected by any changes to these policies. This chapter also highlights the broader problem with diversity initiatives within higher education and how they fail to eliminate the problems facing African Americans and other marginalized groups. In conclusion, the authors conclude that affirmative action is, in essence, dead because it has been stripped of its bite by past cases and because it now acts as a call-to-action for whites.

The examination of the American political climate continues in to a broader look at the myriad beliefs held by US voters. This chapter discusses the three biggest factors in what effects voter opinion: the types of issues in question, how the issues are framed, and what they hear about these issues and from whom. These three ways of framing an issue also illuminate how current models of public opinion do not fit how most Americans approach politics.

In Chapters 4 and 5, we used four organizational life cycle models to develop predictions for the trajectories of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s appropriations over the forty-year period from their births in 1970 through 2010. In this chapter, we review findings from our studies of the CEQ and EPA, and we offer a general assessment of the power of the theoretical agency life cycle models. We also employ a framework we developed for comparing the models and for classifying the key variables in those models. This framework provides a means to move beyond the constraints of the existing literature, in which life cycle models are placed in either the “internalist” or “externalist” camps. We framed our study of the CEQ and EPA with two general views of what happens to public organizations during the process of implementing public law. One view is that the life of the executive branch organization will be relatively stable and untroubled as its leaders and professional staff pursue the organization’s statutorily assigned mission. The underlying presumption here is that all of the important political questions related to the tasks assigned to the agency have been addressed in the public law itself. Consequently, the work of the agencies will be largely technical and uncontroversial. The alternative view is that the political struggle over the passage of the laws the agencies are supposed to implement continues during the implementation stage of the policymaking process. The supporters of the law, inside and outside government, support the agency and its efforts. The opponents of the law, however, not only oppose the agency but also attempt to derail, or at least delay implementation of, the law. Thus, an agency’s trajectory over time, in the form of its resources for and vigor in support of its assigned implementation tasks, will depend in large part on the balance of power, inside and outside government, between those who support and oppose the agency.

Chapter Three addresses how the structure of the murals created a performative ritual space. The murals presented paths of action for the viewer, ranging from scenes of homage to the installation of protective devices within the temple. The murals also represented and encoded models to encourage viewers to participate in particular religious activities, and specifically demonstrated the potential future benefits of giving to sustain the sāsana. Yet, they moved beyond representing religious ideas by commemorating the Buddha and exhorting specific forms of ritual action. The wall paintings and the buildings in which they were housed addressed the devotee’s body, not just his or her mind. Entering and being enclosed within the Buddha’s life stories and hence his community, as well as being surrounded by luxury goods and potential benefits, protective diagrams and chants, and normative religious activities was part of the process of devotion and reification of the concepts expressed by the structure as a whole. The envelopment was a performative action, ritually invoking and honoring the Buddha and pulling practitioners into these multiple potential experiences.

This chapter analyses the first two elections post-Mubarak, and argues that they were displays of deep sectarianism, rather than milestones in the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The sectarian nature of these elections exacerbated communalization and jeopardized the prospects of building an inclusive political order and social cohesion. This chapter examines the framing of messages around religion, rather than political or party agendas, and the use of religious symbols, spaces, and discourse.

This chapter re-establishes media roles in crisis by exploring the different responsibilities and coverage of national vs. local news during tragedies. Local television and newspapers often assume specific roles that help manage and guide a community through tragedy. While there was little positive to be found in Hurricane Katrina, the local media found a way to bring people together amidst a sea of negative national coverage. However, both national and local outlets framed coverage in an episodic manner (rather than thematic) – a manner that highlights individuals without context and often results in blame being placed on victims. And in the case of Katrina, a disproportionate number of the victims were African-American. Overall, this chapter couples established scholarly frames with media roles to present a rich, yet often conflicting picture of the information sent to the audience.

“Obama’s Katrina” was used by the media within the first week of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. Was the media’s comparison automatic and/or inevitable? This chapter will examine the narratives put forth during Hurricane Katrina and the oil disaster under the blame frame. The chapter includes a content analysis of frames of the oil spill coverage and a comparison of frames to Katrina. The attribution of responsibility takes on a different meaning between the two crises. This chapter addresses corporate responsibility vs. governmental responsibility and possible future political implications. Five years later, the Katrina recovery is on-going and the Oil Spill implications also have longevity. Therefore, responsibility and accountability remain a vital part of the media discourse. Also discussed in this chapter, the role of the media to ensure the spotlight remains on those institutions who must answer to the public when disaster strikes.

This chapter deals with possibilities for sociology in enacting emerging healthcare markets. Drawing on research on the development of situated standardization through process redesign in a national healthcare quality collaborative, it analyzes the possibilities for enacting healthcare markets as value- rather than cost-saving driven. Though this project was initially largely successful, sociological interventions in the construction of markets may prove more risky than some scholars in Social Studies of Markets suggest. These markets turned out to ‘work’ quite well despite the poor quality of the market devices that were to frame it as value-driven. Later on, when the quality of these devices improved, the market actually focused more on cost saving. Since many scholars who entered Social Studies of Markets from Actor-network theory, they have argued for the importance of market devices in framing values. This chapter shows the importance of sensitizing the sociological interventions to prevailing market regimes and market practices as ‘forms of the probable’ that are highly consequential for the acting space of social scientists in performing markets.

Chapter 5 investigates the opportunistic ways that mainstream reproductive health NGOs draw on the language of reproductive justice to frame population advocacy as socially progressive. At the same time, they obscure the intersectional politics that structure the reproductive justice movement’s history and current work. The chapter analyzes the experiences of population advocates of color as they navigate the thorniness and complexity of reproductive justice (RJ) language and frameworks in an advocacy movement that has historically threatened RJ goals. I chart the changing role of racial politics in population-environment advocacy over time, tracing the ways race has moved from being a zone of heated controversy to providing an opening for new representational strategies such as reproductive and “population justice”—despite deep ambivalence toward justice frameworks and activists.

Education is not a top priority for newspaper editors and stories on education are often squeezed out in order to give priority to areas such as health, social care or immigration. In terms of journalistic reporting, as one ex-education editor put it in May 2014: “[You] are more likely to find education reporters that are or have been school governors than have reported on it”–a fact borne out by this particular analysis. This chapter looks to contextualise reporting on school governors within the period 2008-2015 taking a granular approach to investigating the changes in the ways in which school governing was framed during this period.

This chapter introduces the main argument of the book: that the decision in RGGI to “reclaim the atmospheric commons” on behalf of the public by auctioning emissions allowances for the first time was possible due to a new normative frame promoted by environmental advocates. This new “public benefit” frame incorporated polluter pays and egalitarian norms to create a new policy design for auctions that paid greater attention to the distribution of the value of those allowances to the public at large. Taken together, this new frame and associated policy design constituted a new “public benefit model” for climate policy stressing the importance not only of making polluters pay, but also of dedicating those revenues to programs that benefit the public directly, such as subsidies for energy efficiency improvements or direct bill rebates. Using this new public benefit frame and policy design, change advocates were able to promote auctions successfully in RGGI in a surprising policy reversal from long-standing practice of giving such allowances away for free to powerful economic interests.