Repelling the “Rutter”: Social Differentiation Among Rural Teenagers

This paper examines low‐income white rural teenagers' management of race and class‐based inequality. It analyzes how these teenagers constructed boundaries to distinguish themselves from outsiders, but also to distinguish themselves from the local abject category of “rutter.” The findings reveal hidden interconnections between race and class in interactional practice, and highlight local processes of differentiation through which actors attempt to deflect stigma and attain credibility. The paper discusses how interactional mechanisms such as “internal othering” and “stigma‐theory” bolster race and class credibility, but reproduce inequality.     

“Troublemakers” in Tassels and C‐Strings: Striptease Dancers and the Union Question in Vancouver, 1965–1980*

En mettant l'accent sur la ville portuaire de Vancouver en Colombie‐Britannique, cet article examine les tentatives des effeuilleuses qui militaient pour la syndicalisation et la négotiation collective durant l'“age d'or” de l'industrie de 1965 à 1980. Des entrevues avec des danseuses retraitées, des propriétaires de clubs et des agents de placement révèlent cinq principales pierres d'achoppement à la création d'un syndicat: a) main‐d'ceuvre peu nombreuse et transitoire; b) compétition entre les danseuses en tant qu'entrepreneures indépendantes; c) conditions de travail dans une industrie quasi criminalisée et stigmatisée; d) efforts résolus des propriétaires de clubs et des agents pour contrecarrer l'agitation des travailleuses et pour punir les “meneuses” et e) obstacles a la syndicalisation intrinsèques a la loi provinciale du travail. Focussing on the port city of Vancouver, British Columbia, this paper examines attempts by striptease dancers to agitate for union membership and collective bargaining during the industry's “golden era” from 1965 to 1980. Interviews with retired dancers, club owners, and booking agents reveal five central stumbling blocks to dancers' union formation: a) the small and transient work force; b) competition among dancers as independent contractors; c) working conditions in a quasi‐criminalized, stigmatized business; d) the resolute efforts of club owners and agents to stymie agitation and punish “ringleaders”; and e) barriers to organizing intrinsic to provincial labour law.     

Collaborative Music‐Making with Digital Audio Workstations: The “nth Member” as a Heuristic Device for Understanding the Role of Technologies in Audio Composition

This article examines amateur music‐making using a digital audio workstation, showing how audio and software are used as resources for creating compositions. The article has two aims. Firstly, to depict how digital music‐making is formed from routine interactional techniques. Secondly, to probe how researchers might account for such multi‐modal activity through a heuristic device: the “nth member.” Whereas sociology has typically been concerned with the cultural facets of how music is made and consumed, we explore the material practices of collaborative song creation utilizing conversation analytic techniques—“turn‐taking” and “next‐selection”—to capture two key interactional moments.     

To reduce stigma,describing ACEs is better than “words matter”: Study

“Words matter” is the refrain of anti‐stigma proponents in the United States, who state that person‐first language will improve attitudes toward drug users. But a recent study conducted in the U.K. has found that portraying people as having adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) does far more to reduce stigma than changing language, which does nothing.     

“Phil's Calling Grandma… ”: The Role of External Support in Human–Companion Animal Identity Pairings

This exploratory paper deals with human–animal role identity pairings such as parent–child or sibling–sibling and the necessity of support from other actors both for the formation of these idiosyncratic identities, as well as for their situational placement in social environments not limited to the nonhuman animal. Taken from a qualitative study examining identity formation counter to the nonhuman animal, I use in‐depth interviews of both people with and without human children to demonstrate how human‐to‐human relationships are formed by categorizing the companion animal as a “child” of sorts within the family structure. These relationships prove integral to the continued development and enactment of identities such as the animal “parent” or the animal “sibling” via three different groups: their own parents, partners, and, in one case, adult siblings. This creates positive affect and commitment to the identity across other social situations. Implications of these findings for identity theory and family research are discussed.     

“Sometimes,I think I might say too much”: Dark Secrets and the Performance of Inflammatory Bowel Disease*

This study examines the dramaturgical embodiment of chronically ill bodies managing “fecal matters” (Weinberg and Williams 2005) in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) support groups. Data were derived from my reflections as a person with IBD, a year of participant observation, and semi‐structured interviews with support group members. I first uncover the boundaries of the private body (Cahill 2006). Secondly, I focus on the entrenchment of IBD within the stigma of fecal matters. Lastly, I explore the disparate ways that support group members harnessed language to protect their embodied selves from symbolic fecal contamination, from a “soiled self.”     

Decoding Worker “Reliability”: Modern Agrarian Values and Immigrant Labor on New York Dairy Farms

This article examines the reasons offered by New York dairy farmers for hiring undocumented immigrant workers in their milking parlors, and connects those discourses to broader economic and cultural change in U.S. agrarian society. Based on interviews with 25 dairy farmers on 22 farms, this article examines farmers’ assessments of the Amish, white non‐Amish, Puerto Rican, and undocumented Latino labor pool. The analysis shows that farmers consider undocumented immigrants the most “reliable” workforce, and that their reliability stems from their deportability and from their separation from their families, which drives them to work long hours. I argue that farmer discourses about immigrant “reliability” must be understood in the context of economic pressure to adopt a more commercial orientation to dairying, and of modern agrarian values that prize urban middle‐class lifestyles. Ultimately, worker “reliability” is a euphemism for the transnational separation of workers from their families, and one that is operationalized by farmers to justify the pursuit of economic success and more leisure time off the farm.     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.     

Collisions Between Institutional and Populist Risk Imaginaries: The “Dark Side” of Negative Asymmetric Thinking

Expert knowledge informs the construction of public problems from gun violence to disease epidemics to climate change, and institutional actors draw on this knowledge to implement public policy to mitigate or repair the related harms. The expanding role of experts and institutions in managing risks has come at a time of declining public trust in institutions and a legitimacy crisis around expert knowledge. What happens when these tendencies collide? Previous scholarship has examined how disaster arises through failures of foresight, and how cultural‐cognitive biases can prevent actors from seeing disasters coming. Less is known about the mobilization of resistance against risk management policies. This theoretical essay examines a particular category of that resistance: conspiracist discourse that frames risk as emanating primarily from perceived secret agendas of institutions and experts that explicitly claim to be acting in the public interest. This essay argues that conspiracy thinking can be best understood as rooted in a “populist risk imaginary,” which is rooted in negative asymmetry, a cultural‐cognitive bias that foregrounds the possibility of worst‐case outcomes. Conspiracy discourse can be understood as the “dark side” of negative asymmetry, which is otherwise used by service‐oriented professionals to sharpen their foresight in preempting future dangers.     

STRADDLING THE SACRED AND SECULAR: CREATING A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE THROUGH BELLY DANCE

Few studies examine spiritual experiences through seemingly secular activities. Who has spiritual experiences while belly dancing? How does belly dance become spiritual? Using surveys and interviews with 77 belly dancers in the United States, this study shows that belly dance is spiritual for people who consider spirituality important in their lives, have belly danced for many years, rarely attend worship services, and are not affiliated with Judeo-Christian religions. Belly dance becomes spiritual when dancers “let go” and experience various connections. The dance itself and the environment in which one dances facilitate spiritual experiences. Implications for spirituality are discussed.     

“Good Manner of Dying” as a Normative Concept: “Autocide,”“Granny Dumping” and Discussions on Euthanasia/Death with Dignity in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the two characteristics of the way the issue of euthanasia/death with dignity has been discussed in Japan, compared with the situation in Europe and the USA. The two characteristics are: (i) that the concept of “euthanasia” is sharply distinguished from that of “death with dignity” in Japan in that the former only refers to the killing of a patient by administration of a lethal drug while the latter refers to letting a patient die by withholding or withdrawing life‐prolonging medical treatments; and (ii) that the view that it is sinful to commit suicide is not as common in Japan as it is in the West. In order to clarify these characteristics, I examine the nature of suicide and murder in relation to the issue of euthanasia and death with dignity while briefly reviewing the history of the debates in Japan in order to see how the characteristic understanding of “death with dignity” has generated. I also clarify, by giving examples, the structure of those narratives with regards to the “good manner of dying,” which excludes from society the elderly and people with incurable diseases and ones with motor and intellectual disabilities. In the end, I describe how biopolitics functions in the current Japanese situation.     

Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign

Dove, a popular beauty brand, impressed some in the advertising world with its unique “Campaign for Real Beauty” and made others cringe. But little is known about how real women respond. “Real” beauty according to Dove means various shapes and sizes—flaws and all—and is the key to rebranding, rebuilding women's self‐esteem, and redefining beauty standards. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with sixteen Canadian women and guided by social semiotics and dramaturgy, I examine Dove's presentation of beauty and women's reactions to it from a “beauty as performance” frame. This study examines processes of interpretation and finds that expressing beauty, the self, and a public image inextricably requires elements of performance.     

Examining the Association between Hazardous Waste Facilities and Rural “Brain Drain”*

Abstract Rural communities are increasingly being faced with the prospect of accepting facilities characterized as “opportunity‐threat,” such as facilities that generate, treat, store, or otherwise dispose of hazardous wastes. Such facilities may offer economic gains through jobs and tax revenue, although they may also act as environmental “disamenities.” This analysis examines the possibility that the presence of such facilities equates with lower loss of rural human capital, a question as yet unexamined on a national scale within the academic literature. Making use of secondary data from several different sources, we examine the association between age‐ and education‐specific outmigration and 1) the number of hazardous waste facilities, 2) the number of large quantity hazardous waste generators, and 3) the number of hazardous waste landfills and incinerators across rural counties within the 48 contiguous states. Our findings suggest that the presence of hazardous waste facilities does not clearly equate with reductions in rural “brain drain.”     

“Those foreigners ruin everything here”: Interactional functions of ethnic labelling among pupils in the Netherlands

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of ethnic labelling practices by examining their interactional functions among secondary school pupils in Venlo, the Netherlands. Pupils with migration backgrounds often labelled themselves and others “Turk,” “Moroccan,” or “foreigner,” and labelled others “Dutch.” The paper highlights that ethnic labelling can be understood not only as identity construction, but also as interactional work. I build on membership categorization analysis (MCA), complemented by conversation analysis (CA), to analyse how pupils’ use of ethnic labels evoked an expert role which altered interactants’ power positions; and how, often, pupils engaged in jocular mockery with ethnic labels and in that way mitigated the effects of exclusionary and stigmatizing discourses about people with migration backgrounds. Finally, I argue that pupils’ labelling practices had locally occasioned meanings and functions, but that they ultimately reflect wider‐spread systems of categorization and marginalization of people with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands.     

Take Me “Home”: Return Migration among Germany's Older Immigrants

This paper examines the determinants of return migration as foreign‐born men approach old age in Germany. Return migration in later life engages a different set of conditions from return migration earlier on, including the framing of return as a possible retirement strategy. Using 23 years of longitudinal data from the German Socioeconomic Panel, this paper investigates how social and economic resources of immigrant men influence decisions to return “home.” Results suggest that immigrants from former guest worker recruitment countries within the European Union are more likely to return than non‐EU immigrants. In addition, return migrants are “negatively selected” so that those with the least education and weakest attachments to the labor force are more likely to emigrate. However, findings vary greatly depending on the immigrant's age and country of origin. Results from this paper highlight the heterogeneity of older immigrants and the factors that motivate their return “home”.     

“As Far as They Knew I Came from France”: Stigma,Passing, and Not Speaking about the Holocaust

Today we recognize that storytelling plays an important role in helping survivors of traumatic episodes such as sexual abuse, military combat, or genocide refashion a sense of self and “work through” their traumatic experiences. But before the Holocaust was named and widely acknowledged and the diagnosis of post‐traumatic stress had emerged, survivors of Hitler's genocidal policies struggled to tell their stories in a world that did not particularly wish to hear them. While most accounts of Holocaust survivors’ postwar experiences focus on themes of redemption, adjustment, and integration, my analysis of interviews with Holocaust survivors suggests during their first two decades living in the United States they were often silenced by individuals they encountered. I use Goffman's analysis of stigma to document how and why this silencing occurred, and with what consequences, providing an account of the interactions survivors had with family members, neighbors and acquaintances, and the strategies of identity management that survivors devised.     

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.