Discussion Questions:

1. What do the stories presented in these articles tell us about the larger sociological picture? 
2. What concepts from the chapter are presented in these readings?
3. Why might it be challenging to develop one’s sociological imagination?
4. How have these readings advanced your sociological imagination?

Thomas J. Cottle
Mind Shadows: A Suicide in the Family
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 2, 222-255 (2000)
Abstract:
Research on youth suicide is reviewed along with a brief recounting of family systems theory and the concepts underlying life study research. Together, these three orientations serve as a foundation for an account of a suicide of a teenage girl. The story of the young woman reveals the role of narrative thought in autoethnography as well as the nature of story-telling and the witnessing of personal accounts by the researcher. The actual account describes the life of a young woman growing up in a volatile home where there is constant fighting and tension. Her reaction to the anger surrounding her and the disapproval she feels culminates in an act of self-destruction. The account concludes with a discussion of the role of family systems, shame, and destructive relationships in the development of the self.

***

Patricia A. Adler & Peter Adler
The Demedicalization of Self-Injury: From Psychopathology to Sociological Deviance
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 5, 537-570 (2007)
Abstract:
This article offers a glimpse into the relatively hidden practice of self-injury: cutting, burning, branding, and bone breaking. Drawing on eighty in-depth interviews, Web site postings, e-mail communications, and Internet groups, we challenge the psychomedical depiction of this phenomenon and discuss ways that the contemporary sociological practice of self-injury challenges images of the population, etiology, practice, and social meanings associated with this behavior. We conclude by suggesting that self-injury, for some, is in the process of undergoing a moral passage from the realm of medicalized to voluntarily chosen deviant behavior in which participants' actions may be understood with a greater understanding of the sociological factors that contribute to the prevalence of these actions.

***

Charles E. Faupel
Drug Availability, Life Structure, and Situational Ethics of Heroin Addicts
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 15, No. 3-4, 395-419 (1987)
Abstract:
In contrast to the conventional wisdom that a process of "moral degeneracy" inevitably ensues with increased heroin addiction, recent research has identified a distinctive set of ethical standards held in common by many "junkies" This article examines the ethical dynamics associated with distinct situations of heroin use with data obtained from extensive life history interviews with 30 hard-core criminal addicts. Addicts tended to violate the ideal norms of their own subculture under circumstances directly related to two contingencies drug availability and life structure Although novice addicts may violate subcultural standards out of ignorance, the greatest potential for deviation from these normative ideals occurs when low levels of drug availability are combined with a lack of daily routine and life structure, a combination typical of the 'street junkie" situation

***

Joe Bailey
Some Meanings of `the Private' in Sociological Thought
Sociology, Vol. 34, 381 – 410 (2000)
Abstract:
The public/private distinction has been an important, generative but relatively unexplicated and unstable background assumption in sociological thinking. This paper describes some of the significances of this dualism in the context of a contemporary anxiety about the public sphere and a turn to the private, the subjective and the individual, not least for sociology. Popular and materialistic meanings of `the private' are distinguished from possible sociological analytical uses. The increasing sociological interest in various forms of subjectivity is taken to be one characteristic version of the private within the current public/private dualism. A range of well-known formative sociological theorizing is described, which provides implicit versions of the relation between the private and the public. These are a resource for rethinking what the private might now refer to in sociology. Three dimensions of the sociological private are proposed - intimate relationships, the self and the unconscious - as marking the sociological terrain of the private now and as directions for research. It is suggested that the hitherto secondary quality of the private within a sociology which has traditionally privileged the public realm may now be changing and that discourses of the private are affecting the public agenda. 

***

John D. Brewer
The Public and Private in C.Wright Mills’s Life and Work
Sociology, Vol. 39, 661 – 677 (2005)
Abstract:
Charles Wright Mills revitalized sociology’s focus on the public–private distinction and this article offers a biographical reading of these writings by locating them in the turmoil of his private life. The article thus looks at the public–private distinction as it manifested in the public writings and private life of one of the major theorists of this theme. Its central argument is that we need to reposition Mills’s intellectual biography by locating it spatially, for his sociological writings on this theme were heavily influenced by the ‘spaces of selfhood’ within which he lived and worked.  This connects intellectual biography with the spatial turn in sociology. The purpose of such intellectual biography, however, is not merely to fill in the background of a sociologist’s life, but to provide materials that take us to the centre of the sociological enterprise itself. It is argued that Mills’s ‘spaces of selfhood’ are a medium into understanding his whole vision of sociology.

***

Alem Kebede
Practicing Sociological Imagination Through Writing Sociological Autobiography.
Teaching Sociology. 2009 37:353.
Abstract:
Sociological imagination is a quality of mind that cannot be adopted by simply teaching students its discursive assumptions. Rather, it is a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced. Adhering to this important pedagogical assumption, students were assigned to write their sociological autobiography. While in the process of establishing a connection between their biography and social history, students were encouraged to narrate their life stories using sociological language. After completing the project, they were asked to comment on their work. Student responses show the positive dimensions involved (including unintended therapeutic consequences) and the major hurdles that they experienced in executing the assignment. In the latter case, the major problem was writing a sociological autobiography qualitatively distinct from what might be referred to as “plain autobiography.” Results reinforce the idea that sociological instruction is better handled when sociological imagination is viewed as a linguistic habitus which serves both as a medium of communication and an intellectual instrument of looking at the social world.

Discussion Questions:

1. Explain how the behaviors of individuals and small groups are influenced by others based upon what you have read in these articles.  Be specific and provide examples.
2.  What are the commonalities between street interaction, joking, fighting, suicide, and sports?
3. How does research lead to the development of theory? How has research on organizations changed the way we think about the sociology of organizations?
4. How do these articles contribute to our understanding of concepts such as culture and norms?

Nicholas H. Wolfinger
Passing Moments:  Some Social Dynamics of Pedestrian Interaction
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 24, No. 3, 323-340 (1995)
Abstract:
Pedestrian interaction is inherently complex yet observably ordered. For order to be possible, people must behave like competent pedestrians and must expect copresent others to act accordingly. Although many researchers have examined pedestrian behavior, few have considered exactly how pedestrians develop and sustain the expectation that others will indeed behave like competent pedestrians. Using ethnographic data, the author shows how these expectations emerge in the specific practices that comprise pedestrian behavior. Various researchers have attributed pedestrian order to the existence of a tacit contract between users of public space. The author's findings extend the implications of this work by explicating the social and collaborative processes by which users of public space come to trust each other to act like competent pedestrians.

***

Mark A. Seckman & Carl J. Couch
Jocularity, Sarcasm, and Relationships: An Empirical Study
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 18, No. 3, 327-344 (1989)
Abstract:
We analyze the intertwinings of jocular and sarcastic transactions with solidary and authority relationships to demonstrate both how those transactions are contextualized by extant relationships and how they modify and affirm relationships. Jocularity is most commonly contextualized by solidary relationships and in turn invites or affirms solidary relationships. Sarcasm may be contextualized by either a solidary or authority relationship. Sarcastic transactions are commonly produced to comment on actions regarded as violations of extant relationships. We conclude that jocularity and sarcasm are significant forms of social action that are routinely used by people with robust relationships to affirm and modify social relationships.

***

Lonnie Athens
Violent Encounters: Violent Engagements, Skirmishes, and Tiffs
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 34, No. 6, 631-678 (2005)
Abstract:
From the author’s study of violent and nonviolent offenders and nonoffenders’ accounts, he drew two main conclusions about the interaction that takes place between the perpetrator and victim when violent crimes are committed. First, these crimes are committed during violent encounters that encompass five stages: (1) role claiming, (2) role rejection, (3) role sparring, (4) role enforcement, and (5) role determination. Second, based on how many of these stages are completed, violent encounters can be divided into three subtypes: (1) engagements, (2) skirmishes, and (3) tiffs. Violent dominance encounters that go through all five stages constitute engagements, those that enter only four of the stages constitute skirmishes, and those that enter only three of the stages constitute tiffs. Thus, for any theory to provide a complete explanation of violent crimes, it must be able to account for not only violent engagements but also violent skirmishes and tiffs.

***

F. L. Jones
Micro-macro linkages in sociological analysis: theory, method and substance
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 31, 74 – 92 (1995)
Abstract:
Ever since Durkheim's classic study Suicide, sociologists have grappled with the problem of integrating analyses of individual behavior and the social contexts within which that behavior occurs. The author of this article reviews some of these issues to show how recent developments in multilevel models provide not only an example of convergence between theory and method but also a partial solution to this long-standing problem. In addition, the author uses Australian data on ethnic marriage patterns to illustrate how relevant features of the group context can be introduced into empirical analyses in order to understand variations in ethnic homogamy between groups and over time. 

***

Zibgniew Krawczyk
Theoretical Dilemmas in the Sociology of Sport
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 25, No. 1, 41 – 48 (1990)
Abstract:
The article presents an overview on the development of the sociology of sport and the importance of the ICSS, describes the relationship of the sociology of sport to kindred disciplines and presents three different models of the sociology of sport. Finally the theoretical orientation and the relationship of theoretical and applied dimensions of sport sociology are discussed. 

***

Calvin Morrill
Culture and Organization Theory
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2008; vol. 619, 1: pp.15-40.
Abstract
Culture has become a legitimate concern and part of the basic conceptual toolkit in much of contemporary organization theory. This article historically traces the contested place of culture in organization theory—from acultural rationalist theorizing at the turn of the twentieth century; to the accidental “discovery” of shop floor culture by human relations scholars in the 1920s; to mid-twentieth-century explorations of informal and institutionalized relations in organizations; to present-day approaches that blend concepts from organizational culture frameworks, neoinstitutional analysis, sociology of culture, and social movement theory. This historical backdrop provides a context for raising several research questions relevant to organizational change, boundaries, and deviance. In closing, the author suggests that an analytic nexus between culture, power, and agency is emerging in contemporary organization theory that ultimately may yield a theory of society.

Discussion Questions:

1. Can you observe any commonalities between the social construction of reality discussed in these articles?  If so what?
2. What type of research methods were used to conduct these studies?
3.  Are the data presented in these articles based on qualitative and/or quantitative research? 

Heith Copes & Andy Hochstetler
Situational Construction of Masculinity among Male Street Thieves
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 32, No. 3, 279-304 (2003)
Abstract:
Increasingly, theorists recognize that the influence of masculinity on decision making is situationally contingent and embedded in interactions. Using interviews with ninety-four male street thieves, the authors describe the situations that bring constructions of masculinity into the foreground of street crime. In certain situations, men are likely to engage in criminal behavior as a mechanism for constructing their masculinity. The authors find that hanging with criminally capable associates and partying are critically significant for understanding when masculine concerns bear on criminal decision making. In these situations, copresent others interpret inappropriate actions or responses as definitive signs of weakness, passivity, and failure in the struggle to be a man. They also examine how age and criminal experience shape conceptions of masculinity and the style of their enactment.

***

Barbara J. Risman
College Women and Sororities: The Social Construction and Reaffirmation of Gender Roles
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 11, No. 2, 231-252 (1982)
Abstract:
Gender socialization in urban societies is acknowledged to occur primarily in preadolescence Risman's analysis of one college sorority displays additional ways in which women adopt role-specific behaviors that are formally encouraged by both official regulations and informally shaped by cultural norms. Her data suggest that the socialization processes and the consequent roles may in fact be inappropriate for facilitating women's adaptation to a changing social environment.

***
Rebecca W. Tardy
"But I Am a Good Mom": The Social Construction of Motherhood through Health-Care Conversations
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 4, 433-473 (2000)
Abstract:
Examining the impact of health information seeking among informal, interpersonal networks, this article focuses specifically on the extent to which these conversations serve to identify role boundaries, specifically that of motherhood. Drawing on Goffman's work on region and regional behaviors, this ethnographic analysis of women in a moms and tots play group reveals boundaries between the public and private presentation of self. The regions of front stage, backstage, and "back"-backstage are used here to discuss how talk regarding health issues, and particularly inappropriate or taboo talk, defines and exemplifies the role of the "good" mother. The implications for the accessibility of information are discussed in light of the cultural contradictions women face in fulfilling this role.

***

Gary W. Peterson & David F. Peters
Adolescents’ Construction of Social Reality: The Impact of Television and Peers
Youth & Society, Vol. 15, 67 – 85 (1983)
Abstract:
An important aspect of socialization is the acquisition of social meaning and behavior from experiences with families, schools, peer groups, work settings, and the mass media.  The separate influences of these and other “socializing agents” have been the focus of most of the existing scholarship on socialization.  Recently, newer approaches have been developed emphasizing the importance of particular “interconnections” among social institutions for the social development of youth.  Emphasis has been placed on the idea that youth develop their conceptions of social reality from concurrent experiences in a variety of contexts.  Social reality, in this case, refers to the meanings, values, attitudes, norms, and roles that form the basis for social interactions. 

***

Peter Conrad and Kristin K. Barker
The Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications
Journal of Health and Social Behavior 2010 51: S67
Abstract:
The social construction of illness is a major research perspective in medical sociology. This article traces the roots of this perspective and presents three overarching constructionist findings. First, some illnesses are particularly embedded with cultural meaning—which is not directly derived from the nature of the condition—that shapes how society responds to those afflicted and influences the experience of that illness. Second, all illnesses are socially constructed at the experiential level, based on how individuals come to understand and live with their illness. Third, medical knowledge about illness and disease is not necessarily given by nature but is constructed and developed by claims-makers and interested parties. We address central policy implications of each of these findings and discuss fruitful directions for policy-relevant research in a social constructionist tradition. Social constructionism provides an important counterpoint to medicine’s largely deterministic approaches to disease and illness, and it can help us broaden policy deliberations and decisions.

***

Luc Pauwels
Visual Sociology Reframed: An Analytical Synthesis and Discussion of Visual Methods in Social and Cultural Research
Sociological Methods & Research, May 2010; vol. 38, 4: pp. 545-581.
Abstract
Visual research is still a rather dispersed and ill-defined domain within the social sciences. Despite a heightened interest in using visuals in research, efforts toward a more unified conceptual and methodological framework for dealing vigilantly with the specifics of this (relatively) new way of scholarly thinking and doing remain sparse and limited in scope. In this article, the author proposes a more encompassing and refined analytical framework for visual methods of research. The ‘‘Integrated Framework’’ tries to account for the great variety within each of the currently discerned types or methods. It does so by moving beyond the more or less arbitrary and often very hybridly defined modes and techniques, with a clear focus on what connects or transcends them. The second part of the article discusses a number of critical issues that have been raised while unfolding the framework. These issues continue to pose a challenge to a more visual social science, but can be turned into opportunities for advancement when dealt with appropriately.

Discussion Questions:

1. Identify and describe each of the cultures presented in these articles.
2. What elements of material and nonmaterial culture do you observe in the articles?
3. Can you find examples of sanctions in the articles? If so, what are they?
4. How do researchers understand culture and values in the final article?

Patrick T. Kinkade & Michael A. Katovich
The Driver: Adaptations and Identities in the Urban Worlds of Pizza Delivery Employees
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 25, 421 - 448 (1997)
Abstract:   
This article explores the solidarity relationships constructed between urban drivers as they take risks and experience dangers associated with pizza delivery. After one of the authors completed working as a driver and participating in drivers' backstage activities, we analyzed their arcane culture as composed of risk takers who receive minimal rewards. In this context, the world of drivers is "hypermasculine," with racist and sexist nuances, and composed of five identifiable types—the comedian, the adventurer, the denier, the fatalist, and the pro. In conclusion, we locate the driver in the context of urban associations where group membership is perceived as or more valuable than monetary rewards and control of time.

***

Ross Haenfler
Rethinking Subcultural Resistance: Core Values of the Straight Edge Movement
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 33, No. 4, 406-436 (2004)
Abstract:   
This article reconceptualizes subcultural resistance based on an ethnographic examination of the straight edge movement. Using the core values of straight edge, the author’s analysis builds on new subcultural theories and suggests a framework for how members construct and understand their subjective experiences of being a part of a subculture. He suggests that adherents hold both individual and collective meanings of resistance and express their resistance via personal and political methods. Furthermore, they consciously enact resistance at the micro, meso, and macro levels, not solely against an ambiguous "adult" culture. Resistance can no longer be conceptualized in neo-Marxist terms of changing the political or economic structure, as a rejection only of mainstream culture, or as symbolic stylistic expression. Resistance is contextual and many layered rather than static and uniform.

***

Jason Rodriquez
Color-Blind Ideology and the Cultural Appropriation of Hip-Hop
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 6, 645-668 (2006)
Abstract:   
This article examines how white youths culturally appropriate hip-hop by adhering to the demands of color-blind ideology. Using ethnographic methods and interviews of members in a local hip-hop scene, I argue that colorblind ideology provides whites with the discursive resources to justify their presence in the scene, and more important, to appropriate hip-hop by removing the racially coded meanings embedded in the music and replacing them with color-blind ones. This research contributes to the existing scholarship on racial ideology by analyzing how it is put into action by individuals in a specific local context in which race is salient. Furthermore, it extends our understanding of how color-blind ideology operates in practice, enabling whites with the discursive resources and racial power to culturally appropriate hip-hop, however unintentionally, for their own purposes.

***

Laura Grindstaff
Culture and Popular Culture: A Case for Sociology
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 619, 206 – 222 (2008)
Abstract:   
The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference between sociologists and other scholars studying popular culture, and argues for the continued relevance of cultural sociology for addressing key issues and concerns within the realm of "the popular," broadly conceived. These developments include the rise of new media/communication technologies and the increasing interdependence between popular culture and other arenas of social life.

Whence Differences in Value Priorities?: Individual, Cultural, or Artifactual Sources
Ronald Fischer and Shalom Schwartz
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, October 2011; vol. 42, 7: pp. 1127-1144., first published on September 9, 2010
Abstract
To what extent do value priorities vary across countries and to what extent do individuals within countries share values? We address these questions using three sets of data that each measure values differently: the Schwartz Value Survey for student and teacher samples in 67 countries (N = 41,968), the Portrait Values Questionnaire for representative samples from 19 European countries (N = 42,359), and the World Value Survey for representative samples from 62 countries (N = 84,887). Analyses reveal more consensus than disagreement on value priorities across countries, refuting strong claims that culture determines values. Values associated with autonomy, relatedness, and competence show a universal pattern of high importance and high consensus. Only conformity values show patterns suggesting they are good candidates for measuring culture as shared meaning systems. We rule out reference-group and response style effects as alternative explanations for the results and discuss their implications for value theory, cross-cultural research, and value-based intergroup conflict.

Discussion Questions:

1. Explain the processes of socialization documented in the articles.
2. How do the people and groups represented in these articles negotiate their selves and identities?
3. How do social class, race and ethnicity, and gender influence the socialization process in articles presented?

Paul B. Stretesky & Mark R. Pogrebin
Gang-Related Gun Violence: Socialization, Identity, and Self
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 1, 85-114 (2007)
Abstract:
Few studies have examined how violent norms are transmitted in street gangs. The purpose of this research is to add to the gang-related literature by examining socialization as the mechanism between street gang membership and violence. To explore this issue, we draw upon in-depth interviews with twenty-two inmates convicted of gang-related gun violence. We find that the gangs are important agents of socialization that help shape a gang member’s sense of self and identity. In addition, inmates reported to us that whereas guns offered them protection, they were also important tools of impression management that helped to project and protect a tough reputation. Our findings provide greater insight into the way gang socialization leads to gun-related violence and has implications for policies aimed at reducing that violence.

***

Nancy L. Malcom
"Shaking It Off" and "Toughing It Out": Socialization to Pain and Injury in Girls’ Softball
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 5, 495-525 (2006)
Abstract:
Ignoring injuries and playing through pain are expected in organized sports. But how do novice athletes learn these social norms? Using participant-observation research focusing on adolescent girls who participated in recreational softball, this study reveals how the clash of norms between traditional femininity and the sport ethic sheds light on the socialization process. In addition to shaking off their own injuries, coaches ignored the girls’ complaints, made jokes when the girls experienced some pain, and told them directly to shake off their minor injuries. Even though many of the girls entered the activity with traditionally feminine attitudes toward pain, most conformed to the norms of the sport ethic and learned to deal with pain and injuries by "shaking them off" and "toughing them out." Those girls who were more enthusiastic about playing softball and who displayed stronger commitments to the softball-player identity were more likely to display these norms.

***

Debora A. Paterniti 
The Micropolitics of Identity in Adverse Circumstance: A Study of Identity Making in a Total Institution
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 1, 93-119 (2000)
Abstract:
This article is about the micropolitics of identity construction by residents in a total institution. Data come from two hundred hours of participant observation during a four-month period of full-time employment as a nurse aide. Interactional analysis of observations suggests that residents' personal narratives, whether real or imagined, become who some residents conceive themselves to be and define residents' expectations for interactional others. Changes in institutional culture occur as staff begin to recognize in interaction the ways residents think of themselves. The narrative accounts and interactional struggles to define self that the author discovered in the institution are not unlike conceptions and processes of identity construction, maintenance, and change that confront all human actors. These accounts provide insight into the liberating possibilities of personal identity claims.

***

Carolyn A. Stroman
The Socialization Influence of Television on Black Children
Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 15, 79 – 100 (1984)
Abstract:
The family, schools, and churches have long been recognized as major agents of socialization.  Increasingly, television is being added to the list of institutions assuming key roles in the socialization process – the process by which one learns information, cognitive processes, values, attitudes, social roles, self-concepts, and behaviors that are generally accepted within American society.  Berry (1980) maintains that many youngsters use televised information, messages, and portrayals as a way of reinforcing and validating their beliefs and, in the process, grant television a role comparable to the traditional socializing agents.  Similarly, Comstock et al. (1978) describe television as a source of vicarious socialization that competes with other socializing agents in providing role models and information that affect children’s attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.  This article provides a comprehensive review of empirical studies that constitute the present state of knowledge about television’s socializing impact on Black children.  

***

John F. Peters
Socialization Among the Old Order Mennonites
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 28, 211 – 223 (1987)
Abstract:
The Old Order Mennonites continue with their separate and peculiar life ways amidst the modern Canadian society. Some very gradual change, primarily because of the inevitable association with the external social structure, is documented. However, effective socialization in ethnic maintenance is found because of: the strong adherence to the Swiss-German dialect, the religious-tradition base of their values, the self assurance they perpetuate amongst themselves as a people, and the peculiarity of their life style.  The study shows that the concepts of primary socialization, adult socialization, and resocialization as conventionally used need refining.

***

Randi Wærdahl
‘May be I’ll Need a Pair of Levi’s Before Junior High?’: Child to youth trajectories and anticipatory socialization
Childhood, May 2005; vol. 12, 2: pp. 201-219.
Abstract
Changing schools at the age of 12 also represents a change in social age identity. Children prepare for this change of age identity in different ways, and their strategies vary across sociocultural contexts as well as between individuals. In this article, some of these strategies are explored through ethnographic observation and interviews with Norwegian 12-year-olds preparing and anticipating a change of school, making use of Robert Merton’s concept of ‘anticipatory socialization’. Merton’s concept describes the building of personal abilities, alienation from one’s former group and adaptation to new norms as social processes identifying change of social reference group. These terms are employed here to identify social processes initiating children’s orientation to a youth identity. The functions that material possessions fulfil are related to the ability to symbolically communicate both categorically and self-expressively a growing normative awareness and a sense of value.

Discussion Questions:

1.   What type of impression management do you observe in these articles?
2.   How are performance teams utilized in these contexts?
3.   What steps do individuals take in order to fit into their social contexts in these articles?

Sharon Preves and Denise Stephenson
The Classroom as Stage: Impression Management in Collaborative Teaching
Teaching Sociology, July 2009; vol. 37, 3: pp. 245-256.
Abstract:
This article explores the social-psychological process of identity negotiation in collaborative teaching, using Erving Goffman's (1959) theoretical tradition of dramaturgy to analyze the classroom itself as a performance venue. A dramaturgical analysis of collaborative teaching is especially significant given this growing pedagogical trend because identity negotiation in team teaching has the potential to impact one's teaching, one's career, and students' learning. We demonstrate that despite the positive outcomes of collaborative teaching for both teachers and learners, building a successful team is a process that takes time, effective communication, risk taking, and trust. Most significantly, sustaining a clear definition of the situation in the classroom is a challenge when a teaching team is engaged in the ongoing negotiation of roles, power, and course structure—in front of students. We argue that making identity claims in a collaborative team teaching situation is both more challenging and rewarding than acting alone on the classroom stage.

***

Volunteering Versus Managerialism: Conflict Over Organizational Identity in Voluntary Associations
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, August 2011; vol. 40, 4: pp. 634-661., first published on May 21, 2010
Abstract:
This qualitative field study examines how volunteering and managerialism shape the organizational identity of six patient organizations from six different European countries. Volunteers represent a large part of the workforce in most voluntary associations. Even though the phenomenon of volunteering is becoming more and more important for organizations and society alike, so far it has only been studied at the individual level. The authors draw on the theoretical concept of dual organizational identities to describe the two differing collective self-descriptions that were present in the patient organizations. Drawing on 34 narrative interviews and focus groups, the authors document the differing perceptions of volunteers and paid staff about their organization’s identity and show how the conflicting dimensions—volunteer identity and managerial identity —result in intraorganizational conflict.

***

Angela Coco & Ian Woodward
Discourses of Authenticity Within a Pagan Community: The Emergence of the "Fluffy Bunny" Sanction
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 5, 479-504 (2007)
Abstract:
The commodification of the religious impulse finds its most overt expression in the New Age movement and its subculture neopaganism. This article examines discourses in the pagan community in an Australian state. Pagans, who have been characterized as individualist, eclectic, and diverse in their beliefs and practices, network through electronic mail discussion lists and chat forums as well as through local and national offline gatherings. We explore community building and boundary defining communications in these discourses. In particular, we examine interactions that reveal the mobilization of pagans' concern with authenticity in the context of late-capitalism, consumer lifestyles, and media representations of the "craft." Our analysis highlights a series of tensions in pagans' representations of and engagement with consumer culture which are evident in everyday pagan discourse. These notions of in/authenticity are captured by invoking the "fluffy bunny" sanction.

***

Kathleen J. Ferraro & Angela M. Moe
Mothering, Crime, and Incarceration
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 32, No. 1, 9-40 (2003)
Abstract:
This article examines the relationships between mothering, crime, and incarceration through the narratives of thirty women incarcerated in a southwestern county jail. The responsibilities of child care, combined with the burdens of economic marginality and domestic violence, led some women to choose economic crimes or drug dealing as an alternative to hunger and homelessness. Other women, arrested for drug- or alcohol-related crimes, related their offenses to the psychological pain and despair resulting from loss of custody of their children. Many women were incarcerated for minor probation violations that often related to the conflict between work, child care, and probation requirements. For all women with children, mothering represented both the burdens of an unequal sexual division of labor and opportunities for resistance to marginalization and hopelessness.

***
Robert Garot
"You’re Not a Stone": Emotional Sensitivity in a Bureaucratic Setting
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 33, No. 6, 735-766 (2004)
Abstract:
Although the emotion management perspective dominates the micro-sociological study of emotions, a phenomenological approach provides access to phenomena that are inaccessible through emotion management. While the former shows the strategic management of one’s emotions to conform to norms, the latter reveals the myriad ways in which emotions move us. Indeed, if not for the poignant resonance of emotions in social life, emotions would hardly be worth "managing." This article will employ a phenomenological perspective on emotions as they were expressed by applicants and workers in a Section 8 housing office throughout the course of eligibility interviews. I will show that despite giving off an impression of detachment and neutrality, workers are unavoidably sensitive to the emotional displays of applicants. Hence, a research agenda focusing on interpersonal emotional sensitivity is proposed as a complement to the conceptualization of emotions as managed.

***

Christy Halbert
Tough Enough and Women Enough: Stereotypes, Discrimination, and Impression Management Among Women Professional Boxers
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Vol. 21, 7 – 36 (1997)
Abstract:
Women have traditionally been credited only with marginal roles in the sport of boxing, even though they have competed as pugilists since the late 1880s. The author interviewed 12 women professional boxers in the United States in an effort to understand their position as athletes who compete in a sport considered deviant for women. This revealed that women pugilists face discrimination at gyms and in competitions, are aware of numerous stereotypes as a result of their participation in a deviant sport, and use several strategies to manage their identity in an effort to remain marketable in the industry. They are aware of the need for balance of a public identity that appears neither too masculine nor too feminine. This balance is done in an effort to avoid negative sanctions and thus improve chances of becoming a successful professional boxer.

***

Robert Futrell
Performative Governance
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 27, No. 4, 494-529 (1999)
Abstract:
This article discusses patterns of interaction among citizens and officials in city commission proceedings. Drawing on Goffman's dramaturgical metaphor, the author examines elements of discourse and action that create interactional inequities and unobtrusive limits to democratic participation in this setting. The proceedings are described as a series of interactional performances geared toward maintaining an atmosphere of public involvement in decisions made by the commission. Techniques of impression management, teamwork, and strategies of conflict containment are employed by commissioners to manage the flow of interaction and mitigate conflicts that emerge among participants during the proceedings. At the same time, an impression of concern for constituents and an atmosphere of constructive public involvement in the commission's decisions is displayed. This constitutes a situation of performative governance—an occasion in which impressions of committed governance are staged and maintained by officials, yet effective inclusion of citizenry in decision making is negligible.

Discussion Questions:

1.   How do religious background, race and ethnicity, as well as social class affect the intimate choices discussed in these articles?
2.   What do these articles reflect about family life? How do they relate to the contemporary definition of family?
3.  How is the influence of economics, religion, law and politics, presented in these articles?

Kristin Blakely
Busy Brides and the Business of Family Life: The Wedding-Planning Industry and the Commodity Frontier
Journal of Family Issues, May 2008; vol. 29, 5: pp. 639-662., first published on November 7, 2007
Abstract:
As work traditionally located in the private sphere, wedding planning, like other domestic functions, has become commodified. Building upon Hochschild's work on the commercialization of intimate life, this article explores the relationship of feminism to the commercial spirit of intimate life to understand wedding planning as a commodified domestic service designed to meet the competing demands of work and home for women. In its marketing, the industry makes use of feminism, harnessing liberal feminist ideals of “having it all”: The solution for busy, engaged career women is to outsource their wedding planning. Thus, both the problem and the answer are rooted in a capitalist version of liberal feminism. Based on interviews with six wedding planners, an analysis of the online advertising of 280 planning businesses, and an examination of the industry, this case study of wedding planning illuminates the connections between liberal feminism and the commodification of family life.

***

George Gmelch & Patricia Mary San Antonio 
Baseball Wives: Gender and the Work of Baseball
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 30, No. 3, 335-356 (2001)
Abstract:
This article focuses on how the structure and constraints of the occupation of professional baseball shapes the lives of the players' wives. The major constraints on the role of baseball wives include high geographical mobility, the husband's frequent absence, lack of a social support network, and the precariousness of baseball careers. Baseball wives are expected to fulfill a traditional role of support for their husbands and families. Baseball wives play a backstage supporting role but in so doing become far more independent and resourceful than many American women, managing families and households on their own.

***

Roberta L Coles
Black Single Fathers: Choosing to Parent Full-Time
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 31, No. 4, 411-439 (2002)
Abstract:
This ethnographic study uses the narratives of African American, single, full-time fathers to explore the motivations precipitating their choice to parent. While the fathers had in common a number of demographic characteristics, such as full employment, residence, and support systems, which factored into their timing of and ability to take full custody, none of these are salient in their own narratives expressing why they wanted to be full-time fathers. Instead, their main motives centered on fulfilling a sense of duty and responsibility, reworking the effects of having had weak or absent fathers themselves, wanting to provide a role model for their children, and fulfilling an already established parent-child bond.

***

Christine S. Davis & Kathleen A. Salkin 
Sisters and Friends: Dialogue and Multivocality in a Relational Model of Sibling Disability
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 34, No. 2, 206-234 (2005)
Abstract:
This article takes the reader into a journey of family dynamics, as sisters— one with a physical impairment and the other the sibling of a woman with a physical impairment—try to sort out their feelings and experiences through in-depth interviewing, interactive interviewing, co-constructed narrative, and dialogic conversation. There is little research that looks at the relationship between the sibling with a disability and his or her nondisabled sibling as it is experienced by the two of them. This article engages the siblings, and, perhaps, the readers, into a dialogic conversation that is multivocal, inclusive, and accepting of differences.

***

R.W. Connell et al.
A Bastard of a Life: Homosexual Desire and Practice among Men in Working-class Milieux
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29, 112 – 135 (1993)
Abstract:
HIV/AIDS prevention work has been mainly designed by professionals and has reached mainly educationally and economically advantaged groups. This study involved men who have sex with men in working-class milieux, using life- history and action-research methods in two cities. Material drawn from twenty-one case studies is presented. The economic, domestic and educational relationships of working-class life shape sexual identity and practice. A muted and undifferentiated erotic milieu in childhood is the common starting point for very different trajectories into adult homosexual relationships, though 'beats' are generally important in making connections. A stronger network and sense of community appears in the provincial city than in the metropolis. Economic vulnerability and cultural constraint shape homosexual experience. Sex in long-term relationships is the most valued (though not the most common) and is more likely to involve anal intercourse; significant risks arise here. A complex political and cultural process shapes sexual practice as reciprocal or one-way and as more or less skilled. 'Gay identity' is not sought by most of these men, whose personal style more often draws on conventional working-class masculinities. But contradictions about desire and femininity are simultaneously present and sometimes destabilise masculinity. Responses to the HIV epidemic first involved withdrawal from sexual activity, then growth of activism. A 'barefoot educator' community activism has already emerged and should be a focus of HIV/AIDS prevention strategy.

***

Nicole D Forry et al.
Marital Quality in Interracial Relationships
Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 28, 1538 – 1552 (2007)
Abstract:
African American/White interracial couples are a rapidly growing segment of the population. However, little is known about factors related to marital quality for these couples. The authors examine the relationships between sex role ideology, perception of relationship unfairness, and marital quality among a sample of 76 married African American/White interracial couples from the mid-Atlantic region. The results indicate that interracial couples are similar to same-race couples in some ways. In particular, women, regardless of race, report their marriages to be more unfair to them than do men. Unique experiences in interracial marriages based on one's race or race/gender combination are also identified. African Americans experience more ambivalence about their relationship than their White partners. Furthermore, sex role ideology has a moderating effect on perceived unfairness and marital quality for African American men. Similarities and differences among interracial and same-race marriages are discussed, with recommendations for future research.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do these articles seem to be written from absolutist or relativist perspectives on deviance?  Explain why?
2. Can you find support for either deterrence or labeling theory in these articles?  Explain?
3. Is the medicalization of deviance evident in any of these articles? 
4. How are different roles surrounding deviance socially constructed?

Heath C. Hoffmann
Criticism as Deviance and Social Control in Alcoholics Anonymous
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 6, 669-695 (2006)
Abstract:
Emile Durkheim recognized many years ago that all groups—even a "society of saints"—produce deviants. Group members must then come to terms with how to respond to and control those who violate the group's moral order. The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting offers an interesting context to explore this process. AA members, by their own admission, are far from being "saints," some admitting to adultery, theft, and assault during their active alcoholism. In this article, the author describes the moral order of AA that functions to prevent and create deviant behavior, focusing on AA members’ use of criticism as both a method of social control and a violation of AA's normative system. This seeming contradiction is explained by showing that criticism is a social control strategy available primarily to high-status members, used primarily against lower-status members.

***

Brian A. Monahan, Joseph A. Marolla, & David G. Bromley
Constructing Coercion: The Organization of Sexual Assault
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 34, No. 3, 284-316 (2005)
Abstract:
There is an abundance of research on how perpetrators organize and orchestrate their activity during the commission of burglary, robbery, and homicide. By contrast, there is very little research on how perpetrators organize sexual assaults. Based on interviews with 33 incarcerated rapists who acted alone and had little or no prior social connection to their victims, we describe rape events in terms of a sequential series of phases that are analogous to those employed to analyze homicides and robbery. The five phases of the kind of rape events we describe include (1) preexisting life tensions, (2) transformation of motivation into action, (3) perpetrator-victim confrontation, (4) situation management, and (5) disengagement. We also argue that within these five phases, perpetrators exhibit differential awareness of their own actions, apply divergent meanings to apparently similar actions, and engage in different degrees and types of organization

***

Jill A. McCorkel
Embodied Surveillance and The Gendering Of Punishment
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 32, No. 1, 41-76 (2003)
Abstract:
This ethnography explores the enactment of "get tough" politics in a state prison for women and considers whether the implementation of seemingly gender-neutral programs and policies implies that women’s prisons are no longer operating as "gendered organizations." The author will demonstrate that even when women’s prisons attempt to mimic the disciplinary policies associated with men’s facilities, they modify disciplinary practices in response to perceived differences in offending between men and women. A crucial modification is the use of an "embodied surveillance" that sharply differs from Foucault’s analysis of penal surveillance mechanisms. The article concludes with an analysis of how the practice of an embodied surveillance is embedded within a larger structure of gendered punishment.

***

Karen J Terry & Alissa Ackerman
Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church
Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 35, 643 – 657 (2008).
Abstract:
Research on child sexual abuse often focuses on offenders, particularly on explanations of the etiology and maintenance of their abusive behavior. A recent study by Smallbone and Wortley suggests, however, that research should also focus on the situation in which the sexual abuse occurs. This article employs the situational crime prevention (SCP) framework that they used to study child sexual abusers in Queensland to study patterns of abuse by Catholic priests. Results from the study on the nature and scope of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests support the assertions by Smallbone and Wortley that there is a situational component to sexually abusive behavior. The discussion outlines the steps taken by the Catholic Church as well as other SCP techniques that could be employed to create safe environments.

***

Glenn D Walters & Matthew D Geyer
Criminal Thinking and Identity in Male White-Collar Offenders
Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 31, 263 – 281 (2004).
Abstract:
Thirty-four male white-collar offenders without a prior history of non-white-collar crime, 23 male white-collar offenders with at least one prior arrest for a non-white-collar crime, and 66 male non-white-collar offenders housed in a minimum security federal prison camp completed the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles and Social Identity as a Criminal scale and were rated on the Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form-Revised. Significant group differences were noted on the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles Self-Assertion/Deception scale, Social Identity as a Criminal Centrality subscale, Social Identity as a Criminal In-Group Ties subscale, and Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form-Revised, which showed that white-collar offenders with no prior history of non-white-collar crime registered lower levels of criminal thinking, criminal identification, and deviance than white-collar offenders previously arrested for non-white-collar crimes.

***

Kids and Assault Weapons: Social Problem or Social Construction?
Rick Ruddell and Scott H. Decker
Criminal Justice Review, Spring 2005; vol. 30, 1: pp. 45-63.
Abstract:
The sunset of the federal assault weapons ban in September 2004 increased the political and scholarly debate about the criminal use of such firearms. Some of the debate is alarmist, suggesting that juveniles have easy access to these firearms and are likely to use them in violent offenses. These perspectives are reinforced on television and in films and contribute to perceptions about the sophistication of weapons that juveniles possess, as well as to the punishments that juveniles should face. This study examines firearms recovered from juvenile offenders in both national and city samples from 1992 to 2000 and finds that assault weapons are seldom used or possessed by juveniles. Our findings suggest that the disjuncture between popular perceptions and the reality of juvenile gun use has been socially constructed by four different groups: the police, news and entertainment organizations, interest groups, and juveniles themselves.

Discussion Questions:

1. How is the larger social structure affecting the lives of the people discussed in these articles?
2. Can you use your understanding of social dilemmas to explain what you have read in the articles? How?
3. How do the elements of bureaucracy play into what is presented in these articles?

Lee Papa & Luke Eric Lassiter
The Muncie Race Riots of 1967, Representing Community Memory Through Public Performance, And Collaborative Ethnography Between Faculty, Students, And The Local Community
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 32, No. 2, 147-166 (2003)
Abstract:
In October 1967, a footnote in the larger national struggle over civil rights for African Americans occurred at Southside High School in Muncie, Indiana. On the nineteenth, a fight broke out between about 100 black and white students in the halls of the school, where the football team was named the "Rebels," and a modified Confederate flag flew just in front of the building. In spring 2001, a group of Ball State University faculty and students along with a group of more than thirty consultants from the Muncie community engaged in a collaborative ethnographic project to present the community’s memory of the event as a theatrical performance. This essay details this process as well as its consequences for practicing reciprocal and collaborative representation.

***

Daniel D Martin 
From Appearance Tales to Oppression Tales: Frame Alignment and Organizational Identity
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 31, No. 2, 158-206 (2002)
Abstract:
Based on participant observation and taped interviews with participants and leaders in Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, and the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), this article considers how organizations accomplish frame alignment with their members. All three organizations construct frames of meanings concerning participation, appearance, and food that reflect their own objectives. However, these frames must be aligned with members' own meanings, which, at times, contradict the organizational frame. Frame alignment is accomplished in Weight Watchers by group leaders emphasizing rationality with regards to food, body, and social relationships. Within Overeaters Anonymous, a redemptive frame is constructed that transforms the dieting practices of its members into a spiritual activity. The injustice frame of NAAFA transforms mundane aspects of everyday life, such as eating, into a political activity. As all members adopt the meanings of their respective program, they come to embrace a new personal identity that serves the organization.

***

Raymond A Friedman 
Interaction Norms as Carriers of Organizational Culture: A Study of Labor Negotiations at International Harvester
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 18, No. 1, 3-29 (1989)
Abstract:
 Too often, practitioners and theorists alike have tended to locate organizational culture in the mottoes and symbolic acts of top managers and to attribute to those leaders the ability to change and manage meaning from visible, yet distant, perches on the organizational chart. By contrast, I propose that the study of organizational culture focus on the networks of social interaction that constitute organizational life, and the rituals that support those interactions. This perspective is derived from an analysis of International Harvester's six-month-long UAW strike in 1979. In this case, management tried to redefine the established labor-relations culture by eliminating those managers who carried and reproduced that culture, but in doing so they also eliminated the company's knowledge of the subtle interaction rituals that had guided and supported labor negotiations. This, I argue, was a major factor contributing to the breakdown of negotiations at IH in 1979.

***

Eric Walton
The Persistence of Bureaucracy: A Meta-analysis of Weber’s Model of Bureaucratic Control
Organization Studies, Vol. 26, 569 – 600 (2005)
Abstract:
The model of bureaucratic control is an enduring part of modern organizational theory. This study draws on almost four decades of empirical research in assessing the general validity of the model. Meta-analytical techniques are used for estimating the general relationships among key aspects of bureaucratic control, removing the effects of statistical artifacts and exploring the relative persistence of the model. The results provide substantial support for the model of bureaucratic control. The average correlation among the structural variables is .54. Overall, the paper concludes that there are reasons to see the bureaucratic model of control as generalizable and of continuing relevance to discussions of organizational structures.

***

Dominique Martin et al.
The Sociology of Globalization
International Sociology, Vol. 21, 499 – 521 (2006)
Abstract:
Although the word ‘globalization’ is widely used, its sociological meaning needs clarification. The aim of this article is to achieve that, while returning to the basic premise that sociology is the primary discipline that charts changes within the world-society. Two typical subjects for the sociology of globalization can be distinguished: defining what is ‘global’ at first sight and the identification of similar changes in (almost) all countries. However, can national-born concepts help to explain these subjects? This is debated by considering the sociology of social movements (Touraine) and the sociology of the elite (Aron and Rocher) to explain power in the study of alterglobalist movements. The authors conclude that in order to understand world metamorphosis, there is an urgency to make available accurate and reliable data and match universally recognized definitions. Both of these suggestions bring us to the broader yet fundamental issue of the specific principles required within the social sciences.

***

Kyle Irwin, Tucker Mcgrimmon, and Brent Simpson
Sympathy and Social Order
Social Psychology Quarterly, December 2008; vol. 71, 4: pp. 379-397.
Abstract:
Social order is possible only if individuals forgo the narrow pursuit of self-interest for the greater good. For over a century, social scientists have argued that sympathy mitigates self-interest and recent empirical work supports this claim. Much less is known about why actors experience sympathy in the first place, particularly in fleeting interactions with strangers, where cooperation is especially uncertain. We argue that perceived interdependence increases sympathy towards strangers. Results from our first study, a vignette experiment, support this claim and suggests a situational solution to social dilemmas. Meanwhile, previous work points to two strong individual-level predictors of cooperation: generalized trust and social values. In Study Two we address the intersection of situational and individual-level explanations to ask: does situational sympathy mediate these individual-level predictors of cooperation? Results from the second study, a laboratory experiment, support our hypotheses that sympathy mediates the generalized trust-cooperation link and the relationship between social values and cooperation. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the present work and directions for future research.

Discussion Questions:

1. How were the distinctions between classes negotiated by the people in these articles?
2. What elements of stratification are addressed in these articles? 
3. Is there anything to support the culture of poverty thesis in these articles?
4. How do race and class function together or separately to create inequality?

Margaret K. Nelson & Rebecca Schutz
Day Care Differences and the Reproduction of Social Class
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 3, 281-317 (2007)
Abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in two day care centers—the Green Mountain Child Care Center in College Town, Vermont, and the Rocky Mountain Christian Day Care in Coalville, Wyoming—the authors demonstrate differences between centers serving different segments of the population. The authors rely on Annette Lareau's (2003) concepts of "concerted cultivation" and the "accomplishment of natural growth" as a way to describe these differences. The authors then reflect on the potential consequences of different styles of child care for the skills, attitudes, and orientations developed by young children.

***

Carrie Yodanis
A Place in Town: Doing Class in a Coffee Shop
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 3, 341-366 (2006)
Abstract:
How do socioeconomic differences take on meaning in our daily interactions? Each morning for a summer I joined nine women in a coffee shop in a small rural town. In this public setting, I observed how women "do" class. During interaction, women use work, family, and leisure-related behaviors, values, and tastes associated with socioeconomic positions in the process of class categorization. No set hierarchy results from this process, however. Rather, what emerges from the Coffee Shop is that doing class involves an ongoing struggle to situate one’s own class category higher, not lower, than the others.

***

Margaret K Nelson
The Challenge of Self-sufficiency: Women on Welfare Redefining Independence
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 31, No. 5, 582-614 (2002)
Abstract:
Drawing on interviews conducted with fifty-one single mothers in a rural state, this article explores how women who rely on state assistance sustain a belief in their own self-worth. The article first shows that single mothers hold firmly to the value of self-sufficiency. It then shows that they can hold to that value because they believe that their welfare reliance is different from that of other women and because they redefine independence to allow for acts that might normally be understood to challenge that norm. The findings are compared to those in other studies that cover some of the same issues. The discussion draws on three levels of context for interpreting the findings: the current discourse concerning single mothers and, more specifically, welfare recipients; the client stance that develops among those who deal with bureaucracies; and, finally, the interview situation itself.

***

Miki Hasegawa
Economic Globalization and Homelessness in Japan
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48, 989 – 1012 (2005)
Abstract:
This article traces the origins of the recent growth of homelessness in Japan to the following three structural changes that occurred in the 1980s in association with economic globalization: (a) a shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, (b) urban redevelopment, and (c) government policy shifts toward deregulation and privatization. The study indicates that a growing segment of Japan’s low-income workforce has been subject to exclusion from employment, housing, and welfare.

***

Adeline Nyamathi & Rose Vasquez
Impact of Poverty, Homelessness, and Drugs on Hispanic Women at Risk for HIV Infection
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 11, 299 – 314 (1989)
Abstract:
The incidence of AIDS among Hispanic women has been increasing more rapidly than among non-Hispanic women. Yet little is known about the crises Hispanic women at risk may experience and the ways they deal with their most immediate concerns. The purpose of this study was to assess the concerns and stresses experienced by Hispanic women, the coping responses commonly used, perceived feelings of self-esteem, locus of control, and emotional distress experienced, Focus group interviews were conducted by Hispanic and black nurses with 43 Hispanic women who were homeless, intravenous drug users (JYDUs), sexual partners of IVDUs, women diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases, or prostitutes. Content analysis revealed that the overwhelming ocus that directed the lives of the women was overcoming threats to the provider role. The predominant situational factors were found to be potential loss of health, drug addiction, lack of social support, lack of information about the potential threat of AIDS, and a life of poverty. Personal factors such as low self-esteem, helplessness, and loss of control, and emotion focused coping responses such as drug use and daydreaming were additional threats. The adaptive outcome for these women was to achieve adequacy as a provider in optimizing the health and well-being of their children.

***

Dennis J. Condron
Social Class, School and Non-School Environments, and Black/White Inequalities in Children's Learning
American Sociological Review, October 2009; vol. 74, 5: pp. 685-708.
Abstract:
As social and economic stratification between black and white Americans persists at the dawn of the twenty-first century, disparities in educational outcomes remain an especially formidable barrier. Recent research on the black/white achievement gap points to a perplexing pattern in this regard. Schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities in learning while simultaneously slowing the growth of social class gaps. How might this occur? Using 1st grade data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), I test—and find support for—the proposition that school factors play an elevated role in generating the black/white achievement gap while non-school factors primarily drive social class inequalities. These findings help explain why black/white achievement disparities grow mostly during the school year (when schools are in session and have their greatest impact on students' learning) while class gaps widen mostly during the summer (when school is out of session and non-school influences dominate). I conclude by discussing the implications for future research, especially as they pertain to what appears to be the most important contributor to the black/white achievement gap: school racial segregation.

Discussion Questions:

1. What commonalities can you find in how race and ethnicity factor into the construction of identities in the articles?
2. Can you find examples of quiet racism in these articles?  What are they?
3. Does racial transparency play a part in any of the articles presented?  

Lelia Lomba DeAndrade 
Negotiating from the Inside: Constructing Racial and Ethnic Identity in Qualitative Research
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 3, 268-290 (2000)
Abstract:
This article provides a critical analysis of the role of the "insider" researcher in qualitative fieldwork in race and ethnicity. The analysis is based on research conducted on the construction of racial and ethnic identity in the Cape Verdean American community of southeastern New England. Reflections are presented on the various ways that the researcher's status as an "insider" was evaluated and negotiated during fieldwork. It is suggested that these negotiations reveal the manner in which group members define the boundaries of the group, the attributes they associate with it, and the meaning of the group itself. This interpretation of insider status, as involving complex and ongoing definitions and negotiations of group membership, highlights the way that researchers and participants are simultaneously engaged in the construction of race and ethnicity.

***

David S. Sizemore
Ethnic Inclusion and Exclusion: Managing the Language of Hispanic Integration in a Rural Community
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 33, No. 5, 534-570 (2004)
Abstract:
This article is part of a larger qualitative project on the processes of Hispanic social integration in a rural Southern Illinois community. Findings indicate that Anglo insiders and outsiders describe the changes associated with Hispanic settlement by using a dualistic language of ethnocentrism and paternalism. I suggest that the discourse of inclusion is double edged because (1) it treads lightly on the sensitive nature of interethnic relations so that no one is offended, yet (2) it allows for the sentiment, especially among Anglos, that this is "our country" and Hispanics should "fit-in." A complex language of quasi-ethnocentrism is in operation that allows for Hispanic incorporation but only to the extent that it is "fair" and not based on "special" ethnic considerations. Building on critical race theory and other linguistic frameworks, several theoretical approaches are employed to understand the relationship between normative exclusion, language, paternalism, and ethnicity.

***

Pamela Perry 
White Means Never Having to Say You're Ethnic: White Youth and the Construction of "Cultureless" Identities
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 30, No. 1, 56-91 (2001)
Abstract:
This article examines the processes by which white identities are constructed as "cultureless" among white youth in two high schools: one predominantly white, the other multiracial. The author proposes that whites assert racial superiority by claiming they have no culture because to be cultureless implies that one is either the "norm" (the standard by which others are judged) or "rational" (developmentally advanced). Drawing on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, the author argues that in the majority-white school, processes of naturalization—the embedding of historically constituted practices in what feels "normal" and natural—produced feelings of cultural lack among white students. Contrarily, at the multiracial school, tracking and add-on multiculturalism helped constitute cultureless identities through processes of rationalization—the embedding of whiteness within a Western rational paradigm that subordinates all things cultural. The implications of these findings for critical white studies, sociology of education, and racial identity formation are discussed.

***

Rainier Spencer
Assessing Multiracial Identity Theory and Politics
Ethnicities, Vol. 4, 357 – 379 (2004)
Abstract:
It is increasingly possible to detect a split in regard to current analyses of multiracial identity in the United States. On the one hand there remains a relatively naive brand of multiracial activism and identity politics that has deep roots in the recent movement to institute a US federal multiracial category; while on the other hand we find a steadily maturing body of scholarship on mixed-race identity that is several levels removed in terms of intellectual rigor and objectivity. As this latter movement continues to mature, it increasingly forces the former to acknowledge and to confront important issues of logical consistency in the multiracial identity debate. This article represents an effort to guide and shape that discussion in assessing the ideological foundation of multiracial identity politics in the United States.

***

Amy Steinbugler et al.
Gender, Race, and Affirmative Action
Gender & Society, Vol. 20, 805 – 825 (2006)
Abstract:
In this article, the authors operationalize the intersection of gender and race in survey research. Using quantitative data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, they investigate how gender/racial stereotypes about African Americans affect Whites’ attitudes about two types of affirmative action programs: (1) job training and education and (2) hiring and promotion. The authors find that gender/racial prejudice towards Black women and Black men influences Whites’ opposition to affirmative action at different levels than negative attitudes towards Blacks as a group. Prejudice toward Black women has a larger effect on Whites’ policy preferences than does prejudice toward Black men or Blacks in general. In future research, survey methodologists should develop better intersectional measures to further document these gender/racial attitudes.

***

Geoffrey Hunt, Molly Moloney, and Kristin Evans
“How Asian Am I?”: Asian American Youth Cultures, Drug Use, and Ethnic Identity Construction
Youth & Society, March 2011; vol. 43, 1: pp. 274-304., first published on March 17, 2010
Abstract:
This article analyzes the construction of ethnic identity in the narratives of 100 young Asian Americans in a dance club/rave scene. Authors examine how illicit drug use and other consuming practices shape their understanding of Asian American identities, finding three distinct patterns. The first presents a disjuncture between Asian American ethnicity and drug use, seeing their own consumption as exceptional.The second argues their drug consumption is a natural outgrowth of their Asian American identity, allowing them to navigate the liminal space they occupy in American society. The final group presents Asian American drug use as normalized and constructs identity through taste and lifestyle boundary markers within social contexts of the dance scenes. These three narratives share a sense of ethnicity as dynamic, provisional, and constructed, allowing one to go beyond the static, essentialist models of ethnic identity that underlie much previous research on ethnicity, immigration, and substance use.

Discussion Questions:

1. How are the people in these articles suffering from and/or resisting prejudice and discrimination such as sexism and homophobia?
2. Is a sentiment of comparable worth present among the subjects of these articles? Explain how?
3. What, if any, role does patriarchy play in these situations?
4. How do gender stereotypes become reinforced even when cultural patterns change?

Alexandra G. Murphy
The Dialectical Gaze: Exploring the Subject-Object Tension in the Performances of Women who Strip
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 32, No. 3, 305-335 (2003)
Abstract:
Much of past research on female exotic dance has characterized strippers as deviant workers who are either passive, objectified victims of a sexploitation system that trades on their bodies for financial gain or as active subjects who work the exchange for their own benefit. Drawing on theories of power, performance, and communication, this work complicates the subject-object tension, showing how power circulates through a system of competing discursive relationships forming a dialectic of agency and constraint in which strippers are simultaneously subjects and objects. The author presents ethnographic data of how strippers discursively negotiate the ambivalence and contradictions they experience during their interactions with customers, management, and their families. Finally, this work concludes that given the need for all women to perform their prescribed gender in the course of their everyday lives, the occupation of the exotic dancer may not be as deviant as previously defined.

***

Elizabeth A. Larsen
A Vicious Oval: Why Women Seldom Reach the Top in American Harness Racing
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 2, 119-147 (2006)
Abstract:
This article explores the gendered contradictions of visibility for self-employed women in male-dominated occupations. It provides a link between the extant literature on women’s workplace issues with visibility and the recent, dramatic increase in self-employed women, especially those who work in male-dominated fields. The author uses a harness-horse racetrack as the site for exploring the social mechanisms behind the invisibility and negative visibility experienced by these women in their work. Through an ethnographic study of their daily work experiences, an insidious pattern of events surfaced in which every path leads to the same endpoint: the underutilization of self-employed women in a male-dominated field. This article also explores the social processes and pressures that lead these women to contribute to their own oppression in male-dominated fields.

***

Chauntelle Anne Tibbals
Doing Gender as Resistance: Waitresses and Servers in Contemporary Table Service
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 6, 731-751 (2007)
Abstract:
This article examines the different ways in which "waitresses" in a traditional restaurant setting and "servers" in a routinized and standardized corporate restaurant setting "do gender" in the workplace. Whereas waitresses are permitted interpretative use of gender in the workplace, the goals and ideologies of the corporate restaurant limit servers' use of gender in the workplace. My findings suggest that normatively accepted versions of gender can be done as a method of resistance, rather than conformity, in standardized and routinized workplace settings. These conclusions are informed by ethnographic research conducted over twenty-two months in two different Los Angeles area restaurants.

***

Esther Ngan-Ling Chow
Gender Matters: Studying Globalization and Social Change in the 21st Century
International Sociology, Vol. 18, 443 – 460 (2003)
Abstract:
This introductory article is aimed at promoting transformative scholarship and research that emphasize the centrality of gender in studying social change associated with the process of globalization locally, nationally and regionally. Six major interrelated themes of this special issue are identified. These themes all emphasize globalization as a gendered phenomenon, studying how gender is embodied in the logic of globalization and embedded in its process and structure. The themes examine how globalization shapes gendered institutions; how it constructs gender differentially in women's and men's access to and control of resources, values, identities, choices, role behaviors, and gender power relations; and how it affects the societies and cultures in which women and men live. The themes also address the dialectics of globalization as results of conflicting interaction between global and local political economies and socio-cultural conditions, yielding mixed outcomes for women and men. Throughout, the emphasis is on the development of strategy for effective social change.

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Maria Charles
What Gender Is Science?
Contexts, May 2011; vol. 10, 2: pp. 22-28.
Abstract:
Looking at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields across countries challenges the assumption that women in more economically and culturally modern societies enjoy greater equality. Rather, freedom to choose a career may paradoxically cause women in affluent Western democracies to construct and replicate stereotypically gendered self-identities.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the affect of demographic transition on how people are constructing identities in the articles?
2. Can you find examples of cohort effect in these articles?
3. Do these articles provide insight into how migration is spurred on by larger social forces?  If so what are they and how do they function?
4. In what ways does migration contribute to social change or stability?

Brian A. Hoey
From Pi to Pie: Moral Narratives of Noneconomic Migration and Starting Over in the Postindustrial Midwest
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 34, No. 5, 586-624 (2005)
Abstract:
Research introduced here examines the impact of social and structural transitions during the past three decades on middle-class working families in the United States. Through the telling narrative of an especially iconic case of urban-to-rural migration and career change, this article explores the meaning of relocation away from metropolitan areas and corporate careers to growing ex-urban, small-town communities. The author interprets this life-style migration as a manner of personally negotiating tension between experience of material demands in pursuit of a livelihood within the flexible New Economy and prevailing cultural conventions for the good life that shape the moral narratives that define individual character. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research involving interview and observation of recent migrants to Northern Michigan, this article contributes to our understanding of noneconomic migration and its part in the changing moral meanings of work in postindustrial America.

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Howard Campbell & Josiah Heyman
Slantwise: Beyond Domination and Resistance on the Border
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 1, 3-30 (2007)
Abstract:
Drawing on extensive participant observation and interviews concerned with barriers to census enumeration in colonias (irregular migrant settlements along the United States-Mexico border) and Mexican migration to the United States, we argue that recent ethnography has overemphasized the role of domination and resistance. While power is fundamental to cultural analysis, we also need to examine behavior we call slantwise, that is, actions that are obliquely or only indirectly related to power relations. Ethnographic fieldwork from both sides of the United States-Mexico border uncovered a range of behaviors (including unorthodox building techniques in colonies, hybrid language practices, complex and fluid household structures, nonlinear mobility patterns, and unpredictable political loyalties of migrants) that do not fit neatly into the domination-resistance axis. We argue for the relevance of the slant-wise concept for understanding such behaviors, not as a replacement for studies of naturalized domination and resistance, but as a complement to them.

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Jennifer Parker Talwar 
Contradictory Assumptions in the Minimum-Wage Workplace: A Focus on Immigrants, the American-Born, and Employer Preferences in Brooklyn, New York
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 30, No. 1, 92-127 (2001)
Abstract:
A study of fast-food restaurants in Brooklyn, New York, examines factors contributing to inner-city racial minorities' under representation in low wage consumer-service jobs. Stressing the importance of "geocultural context" and workplace social relations, it helps broaden the framework around other qualitative studies attempting to understand race and ethnic patterns in the growing service-based economy. Findings demonstrate a hiring preference for the foreign-born, shaped by factors rooted in both the neighborhood context and the workplace. In-depth assessment of workplace interactions and conflicts reveals a set of contradictory assumptions between managers and employees, contributing to a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and reduced employment rates among American-born racial minorities.

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William H Walters
Later-life Migration in the United States: A Review of Recent Research
Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 17, 37 – 66 (2002)
Abstract:
This bibliography summarizes the most important recent literature on elderly migration and retirement migration in the U.S. and Canada, providing an interdisciplinary review of articles published between January 1990 and December 2000. It describes and evaluates 232 studies dealing with migration theory and methods, the determinants of later-life mobility, patterns of migration, destination choice, consequences of migration, local and regional development, seasonal migration, return migration, and related topics.

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Angel G Quintero Rivera
Migration, Ethnicity, and Interactions between the United States and Hispanic Caribbean Popular Culture
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 34, 83 – 93 (2007)
Abstract:
Some of the most important musical expressions of contemporary popular culture—jazz, salsa, and hip-hop, among others—developed from continuous and intense interaction between Hispanic Caribbean and U.S. Afro-American sociocultural processes, strengthened greatly by phenomena linked to urban migration. The history of these interactions calls into question the traditional bipolar interpretation of cultural relations between Latin America and the United States and demands a transnational revaluation of heterogeneity.

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Ian McDonald
Migration and Sorting in the American Electorate: Evidence From the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study
American Politics Research, May 2011; vol. 39, 3: pp. 512-533.
Abstract:
Migration is a significant factor in the composition of U.S. electoral constituencies, including U.S. House districts. Does migration contribute to geographic homogeneity, and does the result contribute to political polarization in a significant way? This article considers this question using the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. To determine individual-level migration patterns, residence information from individual survey respondents is matched to the U.S. Postal Service’s change of address database. This technique provides precise information about respondents’ migration history that follows the preferences expressed in each individual’s survey response. I find support for the claim that migrants are more likely to move into a congressional district that matches their ideological preferences even after controlling for the partisanship in the district of origin. This result emerges for both major parties in two sets of model specifications: multinomial logit models restricted to migrants and a selection model that includes all respondents.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the role of ideology in these articles?
2. How are roles within social movements linked with identity?
3. Explain the movements presented in each article as either reform, revolution or counter movement.

Amy Blackstone
Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, February 2009; vol. 38, 1: pp. 85-116.
Abstract:
Activists and volunteers in the United States face the dilemma of having to negotiate the ideals of American individualism with their own acts of compassion. In this article, I consider how activists and volunteers socially construct compassion. Data from ethnographic research in the breast cancer and antirape movements are analyzed. The processes through which compassion is constructed are revealed in participants' actions and in their identities. It is through their actions (or “doing good”) and their perceptions and presentations of themselves (“being good”) that participants construct compassion as a gendered phenomenon. Together, the processes of doing good and being good raise questions about the extent to which participants' acts of compassion are or can be transformative in a way that promotes the social change which activists and volunteers seek.

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Scott A Hunt & Robert D Benford 
Identity Talk in the Peace and Justice Movement
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 22, No. 4, 488-517 (1994)
Abstract:
This article examines identity talk in several peace movement organizations from 1982 to 1991. Identity talk directs attention to how identity discourse concretizes activists' perceptions of social movement dramas, demonstrates personal identity, reconstructs individuals' biographies, imputes group identities, and aligns personal and collective identities. Six types of identity talk are identified and illustrated: associational declarations, disillusionment anecdotes, atrocity tales, personal is political reports, guide narratives, and war stories. These stories revolve around the themes of becoming aware, active, committed, and weary. Suggestions are offered for possible future research.

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Rugh M Mann 
Emotionality and Social Activism: A Case Study of a Community Development Effort to Establish a Shelter for Women in Ontario
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 31, No. 3, 251-284 (2002)
Abstract:
This article addresses the dynamics and consequences of emotionality in social movement activity through a case study of a community development effort to establish a shelter for women in a small Ontario community in the early 1990s. From the perspective of involved actors, the shelter-building initiative took on "a life of its own," producing outcomes that contravened their goals and values, as community workers and as feminists. These included two eventualities that shelter activists were particularly anxious to avoid—an "us-against-them" vilification of a male "opposition" and the stigmatization of abused women as a "problem population." Theoretical work on the interplay of social structures, cultural repertoires, and the emotionality of the self provides insight into how and why such seemingly "irrational" processes evolve.

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Annette Linden & Bert Klandermans
Revolutionaries, Wanderers, Converts, and Compliants: Life Histories of Extreme Right Activists
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 36, No. 2, 184-201 (2007)
Abstract:
Life-history interviews were conducted with thirty-six extreme right activists in the Netherlands (1996-1998). Becoming an activist was a matter of continuity, of conversion, or of compliance. Continuity denotes life histories wherein movement membership and participation are a natural consequence of prior political socialization; conversion to trajectories wherein movement membership and participation are a break with the past; and compliance to when people enter activism, not owing to personal desires but because of circumstances they deemed were beyond their control. Stories of continuity in our interviews were either testimonies of lifetimes of commitment to extreme right politics (labeled revolutionaries) or lifelong journeys from one political shelter to the other by political wanderers (labeled converts). Activists who told us conversion stories, we labeled converts and those who told compliance stories, compliants. The article presents a prototypical example of each type of career and suggests each prototype to hold for different motivational dynamics.

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Jerry Harris & Carl Davidson
Obama: The New Contours of Power
Race & Class, Vol. 50, 1 – 19 (2009)
Abstract:
Barack Obama's election as US president marks a historic cultural shift in US political life, and is a major victory for progressive forces. But what is the nature of the broad-based alliance that placed him in the White House, how was it forged and from what did it derive its strength? The global economic crisis has shockingly exposed the bankruptcy of hitherto dominant and unfettered neoliberalism and opened the way for setting a genuinely progressive social and economic agenda. This article analyses the challenges that face the new administration and the balance of progressive forces that could make a profound and lasting difference to US society.

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Terry Leahy
Discussion of ‘Global Warming and Sociology’
Current Sociology, Vol. 56, 475 – 484 (2008)
Abstract:
Lever-Tracy has hit the nail on the head when she points to the reluctance of sociologists to consider the social implications of global warming. Meanwhile the discussion of these issues in other disciplines grows apace. Ecological modernizers see the environmental crisis as a stimulus to capitalist societies, providing new opportunities for growth from re-tooling. Yet, sections of the environmentalist movement envisage necessary social change as much more profound. A key to this debate is the likely costs of re-tooling. This technological and financial question is a prerequisite for understanding the social implications. If the costs of re-tooling are huge, as can be argued, some drastic social changes are quite likely.