‘The Worst Thing is the Screwing’ (2): Context and Career in Sex Work

This article, and an earlier linked one, focus on the labour process of the modern Western female prostitute. Drawing on available qualitative research from the United Kingdom and Australia, and research undertaken by one of the authors in New South Wales, we argue here that the ways in which individual prostitutes understand themselves, the work that they do and their relationships with clients are at least partly informed by the discursive context of their labour. We seek to highlight the variety of discourses which currently give shape to prostitution in the modern West, and in so doing discuss the ways in which individual workers may engage with these discourses to make sense of their life‐world — for example, whether they understand themselves as victims of patriarchy or as feminist activists. In this second article, then, our focus moves from the encounter between the client and the prostitute to the prostitute's career, and we provide a discussion of the various ways of understanding how and why prostitutes enter the profession, how and why they stay in it, how and why they exit this occupational field and how and why they understand themselves in particular ways following such an exit.     

Does injustice reduce cognitive performance? An experimental test / ¿Provoca la injusticia una disminución en el rendimiento cognitivo? Una prueba empírica

In this paper we report two experimental studies showing for the first time that injustice causes a reduction in cognitive performance in complex tasks. The two experiments (Study 1, n = 106, Study 2, n = 90) used two different paradigms. In Study 1 participants were exposed to injustice happening to other people. In Study 2 participants themselves were the targets of injustice. In both studies the dependent variable was cognitive performance in a complex task. Specifically, in Study 1, participants solved anagrams, and in Study 2, they solved several Raven matrices. The dependent measures were the number of anagrams and Raven matrices solved correctly. We found that cognitive performance was worse in the unjust condition compared to the just condition (i.e., fewer items solved correctly). These results imply that unfairness in everyday life may have a deleterious effect on individuals’ capacity to think in a complex way. Possible mediators for this effect are proposed.     

RIESMAN'S CHARACTER TYPOLOGY AND MUSICAL PREFERENCES

Researchers analyzed YUM(!) Brand/Kentucky Fried Chicken's (KFC's) response to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (PETA's) KFC cruelty campaign in order to add a new component to the current organizational deviance literature related to how corporations defend themselves against attacks. KFC's reaction to PETA's attempts to label it deviant is a unique pattern of response we dub strategic interaction, in which each tactic used by PETA is met with a new and adaptive response by KFC. After an extensive campaign, PETA was still unable to succeed at changing KFC's policies. We attempt to explain PETA's lack of success in terms of superficial appeasement and appropriation. Superficial appeasement is a newly identified stalling tactic, which may provide organizations with the time they need to create a history of corporate responsibility in response to accusations of deviance. Appropriation involved KFC's co-optation of a joint panel that was intended to facilitate dialogue between the two organizations, but instead became almost entirely filled with panelists sympathetic to KFC's existing corporate policies, a technique that may facilitate other corporations attempting to defend themselves.     

When Do Papers Matter? An Institutional Analysis of Undocumented Life in the United States

This article assesses how two key institutions differentially shape immigrants’ relationship to their rights in American society. We draw on over 200 in‐depth interviews to argue that there is a stark difference between how schools encourage undocumented youth to view themselves as equal members of US society and how undocumented workers are marginalized in the workplace. We find that even as schools track and stratify students, they also foster a culture of meritocracy between documented and undocumented youth. Schools ultimately render immigration status irrelevant as undocumented youth learn to navigate the primary institution of this stage of their lives. Conversely, immigration status is central to the experience of undocumented workers, who develop a particular set of survival skills that help them live and work successfully in the United States without being detected while also erecting a barrier between themselves and any additional rights they may be afforded.     

Positioning,strategizing, and charming: how students with autism construct identities in relation to disability

Contrary to views that young people with the label of autism are incapable of engaging in collective cultural practice, this article examines how they construct identities through social interactions to belong, compete, and participate. In a multi-sited ethnography of high school students with disabilities, we focused on two students as they move across contexts of school, debate team, and home. Over two years of interviews and participant observation, these students demonstrated nuanced efforts to distance themselves from the ‘autistic’ label. These acts of positioning illuminated how they negotiate identities with the knowledge their interactions shape how people perceive their participation in different contexts. By following them across informal and formal environments, we could see how they transition across multiple social worlds and appreciate the combined power these contexts have on youth identity.     

Learning Clinical Practice by Simulation in Law and Social Work

This paper discusses the development and evaluation of a package that was designed to simulate the Family Court of Australia. The origins of the simulation derive from the problems associated with access to the Family Court as it is a closed court, and the need to examine the relationship between two professions that work in the Family Court. The point of the simulation was to examine the unexpected effects which may not be obvious from simple discussion of the subject. The simulation provided a situation where the less rational aspects of court work could manifest themselves. Law students found many new interpersonal problems when they were confronted with the idiosyncrasies of clients, and trainee counsellors found the intricacies of the law daunting.     

With a little help from my trainers

We report on the training of graduate students as job application trainers within a train-the-trainer program. This program consists of two phases: in the first phase of the program, graduate students are trained to become job application trainers and in the second phase, the students give trainings to refugees whom they recruit themselves. Given the multiplier effect of this didactic approach, many refugees may be reached.To evaluate the effectiveness of the first phase of the program for the students, we conducted a questionnaire and interview study. Results of the evaluation show the following: based on their past experience, the participants of the program were more likely to be encouraged by their families to help others than the participants in a control group. In addition, they were more motivated to volunteer deliberately and actively. Furthermore, all necessary core competencies for training performance improved over time. We were also able to predict participants’ intentions to volunteer and their attitude towards labor market integration of refugees. We discuss challenges of the program’s implementation.     

Justice in Genderland: Through a Parole Looking Glass

Based on observations of parole hearings and interviews with participants, this article considers the role of gender in parole decisions. Analysis of these data suggests that male prisoners are expected to accept responsibility for their wrongdoing, while female prisoners may diminish their responsibility by presenting themselves as victims. Therefore, when male bikers present themselves as men who are both responsible for their crimes and for the well‐being of their families, they improve their chances of parole. When male sex offenders shirk their responsibility by portraying themselves as victims of female children, sex trade workers, and prosecutors, they reduce their chances of parole. However, when female drug traffickers present themselves as victims of male drug dealers, they increase their chances of parole. These findings build on and contribute to the scholarship on gendered expectations, gendered biographies, and responsibility as a gendered accomplishment.     

Dori: O Thou Seer,Go, Flee Thee

One way to view the relation between mind and politics is to see society as oppressive. But here the author also understands discourse, including interpellation, as facilitative: subjects of ourselves and subjects to social forces, we can have the social context we need only if we find ourselves through it. In relating his work with Dori, like him an Israeli immigrant, Eyal Rozmarin wants to connect the idea of discourse in critical theory to a notion of the collective unconscious. He reflects on the way, separately and together, he and Dori relate to the Third of discourse in the room: how to live out their shared cultural mission to realize their potential for the nation and to realize themselves, an enterprise in which they may lose themselves as well.     

Social work in Spain: a new social and economic reality to develop in practical academic training

This work focuses on understanding how the current Spanish economic crisis is generating changes in the social and economic reality in which social work degree students are developing their practical training and on knowing if this new reality has an impact on their training and on the vision, they can create of the profession. Using a mixed qualitative methodological approach, we aim to visualize and analyze the opinions and insights that both social work professionals and students provide. Online and face-to-face interviews were conducted with social workers working as practice tutors. Likewise, two focus groups were set up and social work degree students at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain) were also interviewed. The main results show that the new scenario creates a debate not only among professionals, but also among the students themselves. They value this stage as an opportunity to rethink their future professional practice. This article may be applicable to the European context, given that the economic crisis is affecting, to a greater or lesser extent, on the different welfare states in Europe.     

Keepers of the land: Ideology and identities in the Scottish rural elite

This article examines how members of the rural elite in Scotland defend their ownership of large tracts of land in the face of powerful class and nationalist critiques. Referring to unique interview material throughout, we outline the key elements of how owners attempt to legitimate their landed interests. Their response to these two critiques relates to estate economics and more generally the ideology and rhetoric of “responsible” stewardship. The latter allows owners to create a distinct status group identity for themselves as “keepers of land,” one that is cohesive and subordinates any expected differences between them in terms of their residence characteristics, how they acquired their land, and their national identity. This is explained with reference to a diminishing system of private estates in Scotland and the need for landowners to maintain a united ideological front as they defend themselves in the face of mounting political pressure and land reform.     

Coming Out,But Into What? Problematizing Discursive Variations of Revealing the Gay Self in the Workplace

There is a substantial mainstream literature on coming out in organizations, which investigates the positive effects for gay people of being out at work, but very few contributions that challenge the discourse of coming out. Taking as its starting point Butler's famous question ‘So we are out of the closet but into what?’, this paper problematizes coming out discourses in the workplace. We report on a study in which ten men were invited to talk about their coming out in the workplace. There were three main ways through which our participants constituted themselves as gay men when they talked about coming out: by defining themselves as, and admitting to, being gay; by introducing themselves as being in a gay relationship; and by adopting legitimate subject positions such as the Other, the different one, or the normal gay. Through our analysis, discussions and conclusions, we show how participants position themselves within different discursive variations, thus revealing the multiplicity of ‘the gay self’ and highlighting how coming out repeats and supports normative systems.     

Establishing shelters for battered women: Local manifestations of a social movement

This paper analyzes how decentralized social movements manifest themselves on the local level, by studying twenty-five social movement organizations within the battered women's movement. Data consist of in-depth interviews with group members, the study focuses on six issues faced by the groups: how they recognized the need in their communities for alternative services for battered women; how they enlisted community support; how they defined themselves in terms of feminism and the participation of men, how they developed a working relationship with the battered women whom they wanted to help; how they structured their organizations; and how they established goals and strategies. Since the groups were at different stages of development, a dynamic analysis is made of each issue. Groups dealt with the issues on the basis of local resources, values, and other conditions. The movement's structure allowed this independence, which strengthened each group's ability to mobilize resources and accomplish goals. However, it also resulted in local decisions that were often inconsistent with movement goals and weakened the ability of movement leaders to control strategy.The author is grateful to Barrie Thorne, Kathleen Ferraro, the editors and two anonymous reviewers of QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY for their extensive reviews of earlier drafts of this paper. Support for writing the paper was provided by a summer fellowship from the Faculty Research Committee of the University of Richmond.     

Complex Worker: Self-Concept and Boundary-Work Among the Solo Self-Employed

Abstract

This article proposes to examine the self-concept of members of an occupational category referred to as the “solo self-employed”—women and men who work alone and do not employ other workers. Our findings reveal that although the solo self-employed themselves do not make clear phenomenological use of the solo-self-employed category, they do speak similarly about their occupational independence, albeit without group awareness. The self-concept of the solo self-employed is mainly based on boundary work in relation to two well-known cultural-occupational categories: “employed workers” and “businesspeople.” Solo-employed workers prefer to distance themselves from these two categories and define themselves through negative comparisons between themselves and the two preceding categories. The Discussion section proposes perceiving solo self-employment as a social category that constructs an alternative self in relation to the selves associated with popular cultural-occupational scenarios.     

PERCEIVED IMPACT OF DEFAMATION: AN EXPERIMENT ON THIRD-PERSON EFFECTS

This paper explores the intersection of libel law and communicationtheory that occurs when libel juries assess the effect of adefamatory communication on others. The third-person hypothesissuggests that people often assume others will be more affectedby potentially persuasive communications than they are themselves.An experiment was conducted in which students were exposed toa variety of defamatory newspaper articles. The results confirmedseveral predictions. First, readers estimated that others wouldbe more affected by defamatory messages than the readers themselveswould be. Second, this effect was magnified as the "others"became progressively more distant from these readers. Third,when the defamation was attributed to a negatively biased sourcethe effect was also accentuated: readers themselves discountedthe message, while assuming others would be even more influenced.It is suggested that courtroom assessments of the effects ofdefamatory communications on others may be influenced by suchthird-person perceptions.     

Individual and Gender Differences in Sexual Self-Perceptions

Abstract

A study was conducted to explore the perceptions that individuals have about the sexual component of their self-concept while paying particular attention to gender differences. A list of sexual traits was created that described various components of an individual's sexuality. As predicted, we found that males rate themselves higher on explicitly sexual dimensions (e.g., sexually responsive, experienced) and females perceive themselves to be more romantic and sexually attractive. We also examined how some individual difference variables (masculinity-femininity, erotopho-bia-erotophilia, and sexual experience) may be associated with people's perceptions of their sexuality. For males, masculinity was associated with higher self-ratings on sexual traits related to sexual experience and responsiveness, whereas for females, femininity was associated with higher self-ratings of romanticism and attractiveness. Also, we found that erotophiles and sexually experienced individuals perceive themselves as more sexual than erotophobes and less experienced individuals. The results were discussed in terms of traditional theories about the self-concept and suggestions for further investigations of these issues were noted.     

Perceived personal immunity: Beliefs about susceptibility to AIDS

Subjects aged 18–25 were surveyed regarding their beliefs about susceptibility to getting AIDS. Males generally viewed their probability of contracting AIDS under conditions of risky sexual behavior to be significantly lower than did females. Subjects’ risk status was classified based on their recent self‐reported condom use and the number of different partners with whom they had sexual intercourse during the past year. High‐risk males perceived themselves to be at significantly lower risk than others who engaged in the same practices. High‐risk females perceived themselves to be at equal risk to others who engaged in unprotected sex with numerous partners. Condom use was significantly related to subjects’ socioeconomic status. These findings indicate that information about factors that augment risk for contracting HIV may, in and of itself, be insufficient to foster adequate preventive behaviors among many sexually active individuals.     

Informal shelter providers: Low income households sheltering the homeless

Despite the important role they play in preventing homelessness, those who shelter people who can not afford housing of their own have been neglected by researchers. This study examines the characteristics of these low income informal shelter providers. While informal shelter providers were similar to a comparison group of low income households that did not shelter others, there were also significant differences between the two groups. Informal shelter providers were more much more likely to live in single family dwellings, they were more likely to be long-term residents of the community, they were more likely to have experienced homelessness themselves, and they devoted a disproportionate share of their incomes to housing.