“Am I My Brother's Keeper?” (Genesis IV:9): Violence and the Making of Society

The question behind this essay is whether an account of the making of social life—and it is as such that I read Genesis—also posits a thesis about the making of violence.     

Queers,Bullying and Schools: Am I Safe Here?

SUMMARY

This article reports on interviews conducted with students and educators in various Toronto-area high schools in an attempt to gauge how and to what extent so-called “formal” law (laws, policies, regulations) interacts with other, sometimes, competing normative orders, such as gender codes, sexuality, race, religion, in the educational setting. This approach is necessary to understand how anti-harassment and anti-homophobia policies are complicated by these other regulating influences.     

“How Do I View My Sister?”

Abstract

Little research to date has focused on what factors interfere with the process of African American women and men developing and maintaining healthy relationships. A better understanding of these factors can help to improve relationships between these individuals and create stronger families within the African American community. Research has documented that prevailing stereotypes of African American women impact the lives of African American women and that stereotypes have the potential to impact interpersonal relationships. The purpose of the current study was to assess whether African American men endorsed stereotypic views of African American women, and to discuss the potential of these views to negatively impact the quality of relationships between African American women and men. Results indicate that 71% of men surveyed endorsed stereotypic views of African American women. Implications of these findings and future directions for research are presented.     

“I Am Not A Victim. I Am A Survivor”: Resilience as a Journey for Female Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT

This study was designed to expand our understanding of the positive aspects of coping and resilience in female survivors of child sexual abuse. Research questions focused on women’s lived experiences of being survivors of child sexual abuse and how they have experienced resilience, developed healthy intimate relationships, and viewed themselves as sexual beings. Using a qualitative research lens of phenomenology, we captured the essence of survivors’ experiences of resilience. Although each woman’s experience was unique, similar patterns of processes and outcomes emerged as meaningful in their development of resilient and healthy sexuality and relationship functioning. However, participants emphasized resilience as a process or journey—recovery from trauma, reconceptualization of self, and development of healthy sexuality included deliberate efforts occurring over time. Implications for future research and practice using a positive lens of resilience are provided.     

“What Will My Friends Think?” Social Consequences for Danish Victims of Sexual Assaults in Peer Groups

Being exposed to sexual assaults has numerous psychological and social consequences, which may interfere with the adolescent’s still-ongoing development. This article focuses on social consequences for adolescents exposed to sexual assault by someone from their peer group.

Participants were 148 in number and 15–18 year olds (M = 16.34 years, 90.5% female) from Centre for Victims of Sexual Assault’s “Youth Programme.”

A mixed methods design combined extensive survey data collected from the 148 adolescents and five case stories. Almost half of the assaults (47.4%) were committed by someone from the victim’s social circle who was not a family member. Only 30.5% of these victims reported the assault to the police. Fear of social consequences was the main reason for not reporting. The majority of the participants described failure to thrive in school in the aftermath of the assault, for example, because the assailant attended the same school. Result furthermore showed how social relations can be complicated due to an assault and subsequent reactions, which can result in isolation for the victim and exclusion from their peer group.

Sexual assaults in peer groups have great impact on the victim’s well-being. Understanding and support from peers is of the utmost importance. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Who Do You Say That I Am? A History of How Religion Communicators Have Often Avoided “Public Relations”

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Religion Communicators Council members have historically avoided identification with public relations—especially practices associated with Edward Bernays. Council members appear to consider Bernays’ research-based approach evil and manipulative. Instead, religion communicators follow in Ivy Lee's footsteps. The one-time journalist promised to provide honest, accurate news about his clients, not advertising. Comments in council documents have shown that since 1929 members describe themselves more as technicians and in-house journalists who provide news about their organizations than as management-level public relations counsels. These comments reflect Lee's 1905 Declaration of Principles and a public-information approach to public relations.     

“Do They Think I Am a Pack Rat?”

This case study presents details of the life of one older man who lived in seclusion and squalor, surrounded by hoarded possessions. This man was one participant of a focused ethnography of eight older adults who received home care. All participants in the original ethnography were identified by their community care coordinators as exhibiting hoarding behaviors. The case study presented here provides rich narrative and photographic detail in order to add strength to what has already been presented in previous research articles about compulsive acquisition. The narratives reveal examples of debilitating dysfunction, distress associated with decision making, broad acquisition of free things, compulsive buying, and ritualistic discarding. Quotes included in the case study stem from the original ethnography.     

Who Am I? And What Makes Me Hot and Bothered? Notes on Identity,Sexuality, Enigma,and Desire

ABSTRACT

This article explores the links among identity, sexuality, enigma, and desire in my work with 22-year-old Andrew as he explores his homosexuality. Sexuality is discussed as a developmental and relational construction simultaneously biological and social, inventive and defensive. Elaborating these vertices of sexuality in the treatment opened space to discuss Andrew’s sexual experience and fantasy. In this vein, the article questions the tendency to put aside frank discussion of sex in analytic practice and proposes case vignettes useful for clinically elaborating intimate fantasies rooted in the shared narration of patient and analyst as between psychoanalyst/writer and reader. In doing so, we turn from concrete definitions and explanations of sexuality that risk getting bogged down in details and use narrative to facilitate the uncanny experience of “finding” sexuality in clinical work.     

“I Want to Be Who I Am”: Narratives of Transgender Persons

Research has documented the difficulties that face persons identifying as transgender, and that research has been steadily increasing. However, the bridge between research findings and practice is often elusive, particularly for those counselors, therapists, and other mental health professionals already in their respective professional lives. This retrospective phenomenological study documented the lives of 16 persons identifying as transgender (11 transwomen, five transmen) as they narrated the difficulties they encountered beginning in childhood through transition in adult life. Eight persons identifying as transgender were younger than age 40 years and eight were older than age 40 years and brought different narratives about their childhood, teen, and adult years.     

Go and Say, “We're Shutting”: Ju Jutsu as a Metaphor for Analyzing Resistance

While it is well known that employees inorganizations may successfully resist managerialimpositions, relatively little is understood about howresistance operates. The present study utilizes amartial arts metaphor known as ju jutsu to generateinsights for understanding how resistance is exercised.The ju jutsu metaphor was chosen because it is adefensive technique whereby a physically weaker person may resist a much stronger one. Ju jutsu asmetaphor suggests resistance can be exercised bysystematically employing bodily movements which disturban opponent's balance and/or strike at physiological weak points. By exploring a case study of asuccessful example of organizational resistance, the jujutsu metaphor is utilized to generate new perspectivesfor conceptualizing and analyzing the dynamics of resistance.     

The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made,What Does It Represent?

One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making of a global middle class. The term global middle class has 2 meanings: (1) all the middle classes that exist in the world or (2) the affluent and globally oriented segments of the middle classes in developing countries. These 2 different conceptions serve different purposes and address different aspects of globalization's effect on the affected economy and society. While the expansion of the middle classes around the world is an unquestionably welcome phenomenon, the rise of the affluent global middle classes in developing countries represents a more complex and problematic phenomenon. The Korean case demonstrates that the emergence of the global middle class is associated with growing internal division within the middle class and intense processes of class distinction and educational pursuits in the global education market.     

“Everything I Didn't Want to Know I Learned in Lit Class”: Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Student Identity

If discussing sexuality with college students is difficult, discussing sexual orientation often seems impossible. However, given the prejudice and societal violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons, students need to understand the harmful effects of homophobia and heterosexism. This article offers a review of the literature on teaching about sexual identity, nonthreatening strategies for effecting change, and suggestions about fiction and poetry that might be used in the classroom to raise awareness. Secondary sources provide additional techniques and resources.     

“The Sociologist as Voyeur”: Social Theory and Sexuality Research, 1910–1978

Sociology has a long history of social theory and ethnographic research in the area of sexuality. Although it has been largely overlooked, this body of work prefigures later advances by social constructionists and queer theorists. This article reviews some of the early theoretical and empirical contributions to the sociology of sexuality, organized into five broad themes: the denaturalization of sexuality and its origins; the historicization of sexuality; the analytic shift from deviants to deviance/margins to center; the destabilization of sexual categories and identities and emphasis on the fluid and diverse meanings of sexual acts; and the theorization of sexuality and gender as performance. This article suggests that sexual stigma may contribute to the marginalization of sexuality studies in sociology.     

“It’s a Lifestyle”: Social Class,Flexibility, and Young Adults’ Stories About Defining Adulthood

Abstract

In discussions of how social class matters during the transition to adulthood, the simultaneous importance of both class origins and future class trajectories is underexplored. In this paper, I use interviews with 60 emerging adults in the United States to investigate their stories about progress towards adulthood during the emerging adult years. I find that regardless of class backgrounds and trajectories, participants agree on three subjective criteria—identity exploration, learning responsibility, and gaining control—as most important to the project of becoming an adult. However, personal stories about living up to these subjective criteria diverge by future class plans. While those on class-advantaged (middle- and upper-middle-class) tracks draw heavily from traditional, concrete markers of adulthood to explain the accomplishment of subjective expectations, those on class-disadvantaged (working-class and poor) tracks stress the importance of “flexibility” as important in their stories about becoming an adult. While emerging adults use subjective criteria to explain reaching adulthood, this subjectivity also helps conceal the ongoing importance of access to material resources and opportunities for transitioning to adulthood along a normative path. Subjectivity also allows for individualization in emerging adults’ stories, which helps obscure broader patterns of inequality.     

Do as I Say,Don’t Do as I Do: Differences in moral judgments do not translate into differences in decisions in real-life trolley problems

Many people judge that it is permissible to harm one person in order to save many in some circumstances but not in others: it matters how the harm comes about. Researchers have used trolley problems to investigate this phenomenon, eliciting moral judgments or behavioral predictions about hypothetical scenarios where five people can be saved at the cost of harming one other person. We operationalized trolley problems in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, allowing us to observe not only judgments but actual decisions. We varied whether the five were saved by clicking a switch that diverted the harm to the one or by dragging the one in front of the harm. We found differences in moral judgments between the two tasks, but no differences in behavior. The judgments of actors and observers also differed, with observers judging it more right to act. Our results suggest that the difference between moral judgments and actions arises because participants think that doing the right action still involves doing something morally discreditable, and that the morality of taking action does not exhaust the normative reasons for acting.     

Region‐Urbanicity Differences in Locus of Control: Social Disadvantage,Structure, or Cultural Exceptionalism?

People with internal rather than external locus of control experience better outcomes in multiple domains. Previous studies on spatial differences in control within America only focused on the South, relied on aggregate level data or historical evidence, or did not account for other confounding regional distinctions (such as variation in urbanicity). Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, we find differences in adolescents' loci of control depending on their region and urbanicity are largely attributable to differences in their social background, and only minimally to structural differences (i.e., differences in the qualities of adolescents' schools). Differences that persist net of differences across adolescents and their schools suggest the less internal control of rural Southern adolescents, and the more internal control of rural and urban Northeastern adolescents, may be due to cultural distinctions in those areas. Results indicate region is more closely associated than urbanicity with differences in locus of control, with Western and Northeastern cultures seemingly fostering more internal control than Midwestern and Southern cultures. These findings contribute to research on spatial variation in a variety of psychological traits.     

“I Am Tired But If I Don't Try to Have Sex,My Wife Will Think I've Been Fooling around in the City”: Work,Migration, and Sex Among Vietnamese Migrant Laborers

Mostly operating from a risk and risk-reduction paradigm, existing research on migrants in Vietnam tends to conceptualize sex and risky sexual behaviors as isolated life domains. This study begins to develop a contextually rich understanding of migrants’ sex lives by examining the relationships among sex, work, and the constant pendulum-like migrating movements of 23 Vietnamese married migrants in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Using data from in-depth interviews, it was found that most participants had no sex in the city; this was followed by visits to the home village, where they had sex with their spouses as often as possible to make up for the “long drought” in the city. Within this sexual schema, sex came secondary, and even peripherally, to migrants’ working lives; thus, exhaustion from work was cited by migrants as the overwhelming factor leading to their sexual problems. This study suggests that migrants’ intimate lives are more strongly linked to their working lives than has previously been recognized, and that their sexual behaviors should be viewed in tandem with the hardships of their working lives.     

“If You Knew Who I Really Am …”

This paper describes the work of a White lesbian analyst with her White gay male patient who carries a secret feminine self of which he is mortifyingly ashamed. Together they discover this feminine self as the site of childhood gender trauma—for years the patient was violently and persistently bullied for not being a masculine-enough boy. To enable this patient to address his shame and find an internal space to develop an authentic gender identity, analyst and patient must take account of and process the field of the treatment room as it exists within the larger social/political field of Trump’s America, in which the forces of misogyny, homophobia, gender rigidity, and racism combine to collapse any breathable space for this dyad’s multiple “deviant” identities.     

What Do We Do Wednesday? On Beginning the Class as University‐Specific Work: A Preliminary Study*

Je pose la question: «Qu'en est‐il au juste des activités des universités qui en font précisément des universités?» Et je l'aborde ethnométhodologiquement d'une manière préliminaire, en examinant la réalisation interactionnelle de ce qu'est, pour les parties présentes, d'une manière observable et rapportable, le début d'un cours à l'université. Rechercher une réponse à la question, étant donné les renseignements sur cassette audio disponibles, provoque l'utilisation réfléchie par les membres des ressources contextuelles catégorielles, séquentielles et autres rendues disponibles par l'encadrement. Les questions de la signification analytique de la méthode documentaire d'interprétation et de l'abstraction des catégories d'adhésion sont brièvement reprises. I pose the question—just what is university‐specific about the activities of universities?—and address it ethnomethodologically in a preliminary way by examining the interactional accomplishment of what is, for the parties present, observably and reportably the beginning of a class at a university. Pursuing an answer to the question, given the audiotaped data to hand, turns on members' reflexive use of the categorical, sequential, and otherwise contextual resources made available by the setting. The questions of the analytic significance of the documentary method of interpretation and of the abstractness of membership categories are briefly taken up.