Political trials and the social construction of deviance

In the 1960s and early 1970s deviance research, especially in the labeling perspective, was concerned with the question of how individuals or groups become defined as deviant. Since then, the political analysis of deviance has come to ask the more fundamental question of how deviance becomes constructed through political processes. A political trial is one particularly transparent situation in which narrower political processes for imputing deviance elicit more fundamental interpretations of political modes of deviance construction. In order to explore the workings of the deviance construction process, the present study examines the two defense strategies employed on behalf of the defendants in the trial of the Chicago 15, a group of thirteen men and two women who destroyed selective service files on the south side of Chicago in May, 1969. The first strategy is the previously studied “motivation defense,” wherein the moral righteousness of the defendants' purpose is pleaded as cause for their exculpation. The second is the unique “cultural insanity defense,” which asserts that the defendants were so profoundly deluded in their moral indictment of the government that the jury should return a verdict of culturally insane rather than criminally guilty. The first section of the paper summarizes the circumstances of the trial. The second and third sections analyze each of the two defense strategies, focusing on their legal and political logic and on the prosecution counter-strategies they engendered. The final section indicates a number of theoretical implications for the further development of the political model of political trials and of deviance construction in society at large.     

The social facts of deviance in school: a study of mundane reason

This paper reports an ethnomethodological study of the use of mundane reason in relation to deviance in schools. Its central theme is that the social facts of deviance in schools are constituted through the assumptions, practices and procedures which comprise mundane reason. The data upon which the study is based consist of transcribed tape recordings of meetings between teachers, psychologists and social workers at which children referred from schools to the Child and Family Guidance Service are discussed. The talk in these meetings is shown to reveal the use of mundane reason with respect to a variety of practical actions. These include categorization, accounting for referral and other actions towards referrals, referral recipiency, reporting referrals, and the formulation of reactions to referrals. Each of these practical actions is considered in turn and its contribution to fact constitution identified. Taken together and viewed consecutively, they can be seen to have a cumulative impact on the social constitution of deviance in schools.     

The social construction of pain: an evaluation

Drawing upon the work of Hughes and Patterson, this paper addresses the issue of whether a socially constructed conception of pain is possible or desirable. Contrary to a number of postmodern inspired conceptions that pain exists exclusively at the level of discourse and linguistic construction, pain is viewed as a material barrier that exists beyond the politico-aesthetic level. The body is much more than a canvas upon which we can create appropriate discursive formation to incorporate within our preferred conception of 'self'. To recognize the existence of biologically based realities is not to accept biological dysfunction as the sole cause of disability or any other form of reactionary politics of disability.     

Identities under construction: professional journalism in a phase of destabilization

Is journalism going through ‘de-professionalization’ or is it just entering a new phase – taking a different shape? And what is the meaning of professional ideals such as scrutiny and autonomy in these processes? My article aims at analysing those matters, focusing on the case of Swedish journalists. Empirical support is drawn from a national survey conducted four times since 1989 on the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Gothenburg University. Questions about journalists’ perceptions of various ideals offer excellent opportunities to explore possible homogenization vs. fragmentation, as well as what the attitudinal dimensions actually say about the professional content of Swedish journalism. The results are analysed by the conceptualization of Bourdieu's field theory, along with current professional theory, and point at a possible separation of professional levels: where a few ideals constitute an all-embracing umbrella of professional ideology, while the flora of attitudes below is more diverse and dependent on factors of organization, gender and age. The professional ideals may furthermore be regarded as a form of cultural capital, used as legitimizing tools in journalism's struggle for maintaining status quo. The main conclusion is that journalism is not de-professionalizing on an ideological level, but going through a re-formation. Traditional journalistic ideals have attained increasing support over time and the efforts to fix professional boundaries are fierce. This does not mean that the democratic functions of journalism should not be guarded: as the ideals start taking discursive shapes, they are also increasingly bound to clash with praxis.     

Preparation for practice: embedding the development of professional identity within social work curriculum

Newly qualified social workers often enter challenging interdisciplinary settings where they need to be able to clearly articulate a distinctive professional identity. To prepare for these realities, this paper discusses how the development of professional identity has become increasingly central to qualifying social work curriculum at an Australian university. Preparation for social work practice has long been the focus of research in a number of countries, with a significant emphasis on knowledge and skill acquisition, rather than on the development of an overarching professional identity that is also underpinned by shared values and sense of professional purpose and expectations. Against this backdrop, the paper describes initial changes that have been made within core social work courses to progressively embed the development of professional identity more consciously across their studies, to be better prepared for contemporary challenges in the workplace. It is concluded that further changes are needed to fully transform the curriculum, and that the impacts of these changes be systematically evaluated in relation to preparedness for practice.     

Electric charges: The social construction of rate systems

Price is a central analytic concept in both neoclassical and old institutional economics. Combining the social network perspective with old and new institutionalist approaches to price formation, this article examines technological, economic, institutional, and political factors that shaped the earliest pricing systems for electricity used in the United States, between 1882 and 1910. We show that certain characteristics of electricity supply led to ambiguities in how the product should be priced, which created a politics of pricing among electricity producers. In particular, we investigate why the “Wright system,” arguably inferior in productive efficiency to other alternatives, was widely adopted by 1900. We argue that this outcome resulted in part from the political and organizational clout of its supporters, as well as from their particular conceptions of the boundaries and future of the industry itself. The Wright system best suited the “growth dynamic” strategy promoted by the managers of large central stations in their fierce competition with smaller and more decentralized installations. Thus, even in this apparently highly technical and mainly economic issue of how to price the product, there was ample room for social construction and political manipulation. The outcome reached was by no means inevitable and had a highly significant impact on the shape of the American industrial infrastructure.     

Disciplinary knowledge revisited: The social construction of sociology

In Making Science (1992) I make the distinction between two types of knowledge: research frontier knowledge and core knowledge. Core knowledge is the small body of knowledge for which the entire scientific community treats as indisputable facts. The research frontier is all new knowledge which makes claim to being facts but in practice there is no consensus on this knowledge. The two types of knowledge are linked together by the evaluation process. Most frontier knowledge turns out to be insignificant and is ignored. A small part of frontier knowledge is taken as candidates for the core and evaluated. Most of this knowledge turns out to be “wrong.” Thus the important data of Jacobs ( 1989) loses a good deal of its impact because he forces it into a theory which he calls “social control”: a theory for which there is no evidence. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science.     

The homosexual escort agency: deviance disavowal

This article examines the management of deviance disavowal techniques by a commercial organization. Ball's abortion clinic ethnography (1972:158-86) paved the way for an analysis of the neutralization of disreputable encounters. This study, based on research conducted in London, England during 1981, attempts to explore how stigmatizing sexual liaisons are routinely managed by an escort agency. The article is based on interviews conducted with one homosexual escort agency owner and twenty-eight male escorts and discusses the neutralization of moral approbrium through the organization of names, space and structure.     

Gender deviance and household work: the role of occupation

This article takes a new approach to gender and housework by identifying a new measure of gender deviance--work in gender-atypical occupations--and by arguing that men who do "women's work" and women who do "men's work" in the labor market may seek to neutralize their gender deviance by doing male- and female-typed work at home. Analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the 2003-7 waves of the American Time Use Survey shows that men who do "women's work" in the market spend more time on male-typed housework relative to men in gender-balanced occupations and their wives spend more time on female-typed housework. Women in gender-atypical occupations also do more female-typed housework than women in gender-balanced occupations. The article provides clearer evidence about the important ways in which cultural conceptions of gender shape and are shaped by economic processes.