Straw men and fairy tales: Evaluating reactions to a natural history of rape

In this paper we respond to two frequent criticisms of our book, A Natural History of Rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). The first criticism portrays the book as little more than a “just‐so” story that human rape is an adaptation. We demonstrate that this portrayal is not accurate. The second criticism reflects a common response to the book's challenge of the popular assertion that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire but instead commit these crimes motivated by the urge to power, domination, and violence, and the urge to degrade and humiliate women. We demonstrate that such criticisms of our book are inherently contradictory and illogical. We believe it is important for sex researchers to understand that these sorts of criticisms are seriously flawed so that future research efforts toward understanding the causes of sexual coercion are not stalled.     

Pierre Bourdieu: Economic models against economism

The use of economic analogies by Bourdieu has often been the object of much criticism. For some scholars, it reveals an “economistic” vision of the social world too much inspired by neoclassical economics. For others, it is a kind of mechanical metaphor transposed to cultural phenomena in a determinist way, as in the holistic (Marxist) tradition. To understand this usage and to refute these contradictory criticisms, we return to and focus on the very first occurrences in the 1958–1966 period – the focus of our article – of what Bourdieu would call a “general economy of practices” in his book Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique. Two central aspects, often forgotten by critics, are presented here: first, the close but very particular link between his work and economics as a growing scientific discipline during these years; second, the criticisms Bourdieu makes of the economic model as a general scientific tool for the social sciences. If one insists only on one of the two sides of the coin, one risks misunderstanding Bourdieu’s original scientific habitusand intellectual project. By contrast, this “double” position opens the possibility of an “integrated” vision of social and economic factors of practices, thanks to the introduction of the “cultural” and above all the “symbolic” dimensions of social life.     

Sexual Harassment and the Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge

It is not uncommon for women researchers to experience sexualized interactions, sexual objectification, and harassment as they conduct fieldwork. Nevertheless, these experiences are often left out of ethnographers’ “tales from the field” and remain unaddressed within our discipline. In this article, we use women's experiences with harassment in the field to interrogate the epistemological foundations of ethnographic methodology within the discipline of sociology. Based on more than 50 qualitative interviews, we examine three “fixations” of contemporary ethnography that inform women ethnographers’ understandings of and reactions to harassment in the field. These fixations are solitude, danger, and intimacy. Our data show that these fixations not only put researchers in danger but also have implications for the construction of ethnographic knowledge. They contribute to silence surrounding sexual harassment, and are motivated by and reproduce androcentric norms that valorize certain types of fieldwork. We argue that acknowledging and analyzing experiences with harassment and other unwanted sexual attention in the field is part of a more fully developed understanding of ethnographic research itself.     

Coordinating psychosocial nursing care across treatment settings

A criticism sometimes made of nurse practitioners is that they want to be or think they are doctors. Who has not heard a nurse administrator accused of having lost her nursing identity, or of a faculty person who no longer knows nursing? Before BSN degrees were common, there were stories of 4-year nurses who believed they were above providing direct care and identified only with the administrative roles on the unit. These criticisms have been made by nurses. It is only recently that nurses are recognizing that fragmentation of the profession along these and other lines disempowers us and may result in non-nurses delineating what our practice will be. Perhaps stimulated by the nursing shortage and an increased awareness of our collective power, nurses are more vocal and we are owning our identity as nurses. Psychosocial nurses, perhaps because of conflicts related to professional territory with psychiatry, psychology, and social work, or because of the ramifications of third party payments, are less likely to assume the generic title of "therapist" than in the past. More often, there seems to be a coming together of psychosocial nurses with each other and with the nursing community as a whole. This coming together enhances the potential for nurse-to-nurse communication and sets the stage to allow nursing to become the bridge needed by consumers of mental health services. I am hopeful that psychosocial nursing will meet this challenge.     

Fertility Behavior and Interspousal Authority Relationships

Abstract

The most important issue which surrounds attitude theory today is the so called “consistency issue.” It is an issue which focuses on the failure of attitude theory and research to demonstrate the kind of causal relationship between attitudes and behavior which has been traditionally asserted in the logical underpinnings of that theory.

For some time, the critics of attitude theory and research have suggested that the inconsistency between attitudes and acts would not be reduced until attitudes were rooted in the social process within which human behavior occurs. This criticism has been responded to by contemporary attitude specialists who have made notable modifications in theory and research to take account of social variables which influence the assumed relationship between attitudes and behavior.

However, some of the criticisms of attitude theory have gone beyond pointing out the lack of a “socialized” conception of the problem to attack the logical underpinnings of the entire enterprise. While this paper is not a renewal of these criticisms of attitude theory, it is an attempt to identify and explicate a conception of attitudes which is a true sociological alternative to more traditional psychological conceptions.     

THE PRESIDENCY AND THE PRINT MEDIA: WHO CONTROLS THE NEWS?

Relations between the presidency and the press are often fractious. This is evident in the Nixon Administration's criticisms of the press during 1969, and the more recent charges that President Reagan has leveled at the media. In this article, we first examine three competing perspectives, termed media-subordinate, moderated-effects , and media-autonomous , that explain how the press responds to criticism from the presidency. Next, we use these perspectives to generate a set of predictions about connections between the press and the presidency. We then test the predictions with data from a random sample of 843 American daily newspapers, taken in 1970. The data demonstrate that the newspapers often did change their policies in ways desired by the Nixon Administration. Second, the data show that the more professional (and therefore presumably more autonomous) the editor of the newspaper, the more likely was the newspaper's editorial policy to change in ways desired by the Nixon Administration. These findings undercut the media-autonomous perspective. By contrast, the data provide some support for both the media-subordinate and moderated-effects perspectives. The former perspective predicted changes in newspaper policy and also a relationship between an editor's ideological leanings and changes in his newspaper's policy; the data confirmed these predictions. The latter perspective predicted that changes in newspaper policy would be intermediate in size; this prediction also was supported. In our discussion, we place our findings in the context of contemporary presidency-press relationships, and suggest ways in which the three perspectives need to be developed to account for recent changes in those relationships.     

The right to life

In this issue is a lengthy, thought-provoking essay on the issues raised by unwanted pregnancy. Written by Robert Wennberg in 1984 for the Christian Scholar's Review (13:4), the article has been edited and condensed for our purposes and is quite relevant, I believe, for the student health population. Any practitioner who cares for students wrestling with these issues should at least acknowledge the moral and philosophical dilemmas presented. As one who has walked both sides of the argument, I find Wennberg's fair-mindedness compelling. In closing his article, the author raises the question of what will happen when it becomes possible to accomplish an "abortion"--or removal of the fetus from the mother--without killing the fetus. Will this procedure be acceptable to the average single college student? The New York Times, in an article on "High Tech Babies" (February 21, 1986), raised ethical questions posed by the technology of frozen embryos. Who decides what is to be done with frozen embryos? To whom do they belong? Do they have rights? The theoretical issues raised by Wennberg are already forcing themselves upon us. Whether we like it or not, the future is now. Regardless of your beliefs on this controversial topic, I urge you to read this article. Dr. Wennberg has also just completed a book on this subject, Life In The Balance.     

Big sister is watching you! Gender interaction and the unwritten rules of the Amsterdam red-light district

It is generally accepted that in sexual interaction men are the hunters and women the gatherers. An expressly sexual environment such as a red-light district would be expected to only reinforce this image. Strikingly enough, however, it is precisely prostitutes who seem able to break with these established gender roles. This ethnographic study uses participant observation to demonstrate how assumptions about sexual interaction may be specious: female prostitutes are frequently not the passive victims and male clients not the active sex-hunters they are taken for. Both the communicative function and protection of privacy play an important role in these processes in a red-light district. In the red-light district, gender interaction is bound by social regulation and unwritten rules that greatly exceed the influence of formal institutions. In this paper, the case of the red-light district "De Wallen" in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is discussed in the context of several disciplines including urban anthropology, social psychology, geography, gender studies, and urban sociology.     

Changing Signs: The Political Pragmatism of Poststructuralism

In a recent issue of The New Republic, Martha Nussbaum singled out Judith Butler for a particularly venomous attack. Nussbaum's criticism was very simple: good theory leads to practical political action, and Butler's theories do not. Nussbaum's criticism of Butler echoes a general criticism leveled against the emerging field of queer theory. Many advocates of sexual rights have suggested that poststructuralist approaches do not have practical political application. In this essay, the authors argue that Butler's work points to a new political pragmatism. In the past, many advocates of sexual rights have focused on essentialized notions of sexual identity. A politically pragmatic approach, informed by Butler's theories, can shift the debate so that the issue of homophobic discrimination, rather than sexual identity, becomes a primary focus of the sexual rights movement.     

Motivations for Extradyadic Infidelity Revisited

Relationship infidelities are motivated by many distinct factors, with previous research indicating motivations of dissatisfaction, neglect, anger, and sexual desire (Barta & Kiene, 2005). We expand on this by demonstrating additional, empirically distinct motivations for infidelity. Using an Internet-based questionnaire, participants (N = 495), most of whom were young adults, self-reported their infidelities. In addition to evidence for previously studied motivations, our data demonstrate additional factors, including lack of love (“I had ‘fallen out of love with’ my primary partner”), low commitment (“I was not very committed to my primary partner”), esteem (“I wanted to enhance my popularity”), gaining sexual variety (“I wanted a greater variety of sexual partners”), and situational factors (“I was drunk and not thinking clearly”). Our results also show personality correlates with infidelity motivations. Consistent with predictions, attachment insecurity was associated with motivations of anger, lack of love, neglect, low commitment, and esteem, while unrestricted sociosexual orientation was associated with sexual variety. Implicit beliefs (e.g., growth, destiny, romanticism) were differentially associated with sexual desire, low commitment, lack of love, and neglect. These findings highlight multifaceted motivations underlying infidelity, moving beyond relationship deficit models of infidelity, with implications for research and psychotherapy involving people’s romantic and sexual relationships.     

Abstract and engaged critique in sociology: on football hooliganism

This note is a response to a critical review of some of my own work published recently in the British Journal of Sociology but it does not reply to the specific criticisms made in that article. Rather it addresses the question of what constitutes appropriate critique in sociology by developing a distinction between abstract and engaged criticism.     

Schools must include faculty and staff in sexual violence prevention efforts

Creating a normative campus environment intolerant to sexual violence is important for prevention. While prevention initiatives focusing on students are vital, faculty and staff have a central role in supporting and sustaining a comprehensive strategy for preventing campus sexual violence. Nationwide, colleges and universities recently implemented campus climate surveys. At Emory, we decided to survey faculty and staff as well as students, motivated by our use of an ecological framing of campus sexual violence. Faculty and staff are long-term members of the community, and can provide stability and continuity that reinforces prevention efforts prioritized for students. We recommend that schools use a trauma-informed approach to guide the involvement of faculty and staff in prevention. We encourage colleges and universities to consider the experiences and needs of their faculty and staff, as professionals who serve as leaders on campus and as those who guide students through their academic experiences.     

Cumulative jeopardy when children are at risk of significant harm: A response to Bywaters

This paper is a response to Bywaters' (2015) critique of our paper on ‘Cumulative Jeopardy’ (Brown & Ward, 2014), in which we presented data showing a mismatch between timeframes for early childhood development and responses to evidence of abuse and neglect from professionals with safeguarding responsibilities. Bywaters (2015) claims that the study on which it is based is flawed on methodological, empirical, conceptual and ethical grounds. This paper explores each of these grounds for criticism and refutes them. We point out that Bywaters' calculations are inaccurate and lead him to exaggerate the methodological weaknesses of our study. Bywaters argues that we should have collected additional empirical data on deprivation factors; but this would not have significantly improved our classification of risk of future harm or altered our key findings. These show that a high proportion of children in the sample were not adequately safeguarded from harm, an issue that Bywaters ignores. Instead, he asserts that we have an ideological bias towards separation, and this forms the basis for much of his conceptual and ethical criticism. We reject this argument, pointing out that the study focused on those infants who were at greatest risk of compromised development, injury and death from maltreatment, and that these are the babies for whom the fundamental question is whether or not they can safely remain at home. We do not interpret our data as necessarily indicating that more children should come into care, as Bywaters claims, but that more needs to be done to safeguard them from harm, whether they are living with birth parents or placed permanently away from home.     

MYTHIC FACTS AND PARK'S PRAGMATISM:

Robert Park's proposals for the study of human and urban ecology were grounded in pragmatism, but critics of his perspective from the late 1930s through the 1940s totally missed his use of pragmatism and thereby defined four lines of deficiency: dualism (between the biotic and cultural), neglect of the sociocultural, biological determinism, and problems of measurement. These criticisms became reified as fact, out of which came Hawley's 1950 pivotal text that redirected human ecological study. Developments since then have largely been reactions against the so-called neo-orthodox approach, but in the process, the criticisms of Park have become intertextually sedimented into what we call "mythic fact' and what rhetoricians refer to as constitutive rhetoric. We document the lines of criticism and their consequences in ecological study, and then show how they were inaccurately grounded by neglecting Park's pragmatist perspective. Our analysis contributes specifically to the further understanding of predecessor-selection processes and suggests a political sociology of knowledge that challenges the cumulative theory growth model.     

Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Qualitative Study and Issues for Clinical Consideration

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explored the effects of childhood sexual abuse with 10 adult male survivors. The men who participated in the research were largely motivated by their perception that North American society does not acknowledge the sexual abuse of boys. They described the abuse as having significantly affected their sexual identity, as well as their emotional and sexual relationships as adults. The implications of these issues for clinical intervention are described.     

A Disputed Truth. Defending Emmanuel Todd’s Approach of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Je suis Charlie</Emphasis>

In May 2015, Emmanuel Todd published Qui est Charlie? Sociologie d’une crise religieuse, a radical analysis of France’s current political state. The central claim of Todd’s book is the idea that the “Je suis Charlie” demonstrations of January 2015 showed how French politics are dominated by a hidden “religious crisis”. Todd posits that there are two France [not unlike the red states and blue states in the U.S.] and that the traditionally right-wing, catholic, inegalitarian France has gone through a crisis with its recent secularization. For Todd, the fall of Catholicism in the “inegalitarian” France has caused the rise of a pro-european “zombie Catholicism” obsessed with secularism to the point of being islamophobic. The book stirred an intense controversy in the mainstream press. In June, Anne Verjus published a series of research notes defending Emmanuel Todd (http://reflexivites.hypotheses.org/7240). This article is a compilation, edition and translation of her research notes. Anne Verjus defends the method used by Emmanuel Todd, addresses the main criticism received by the book and laments the state of current academia in the way it responded to “a disputed truth”.     

The 17-Year-Old Child

SUMMARY

Recently enacted EU-legislation will affect interferences with the sexual life of adolescents across Europe in an intensity so far not known in any of the European states. The “Framework-Directive on combating sexual exploitation of children and child-pornography” will oblige all member States of the European Union to create extensive offences of “child”-pornography and “child”-prostitution, defining as “child” every person up to 18 years of age, without differentiating between five-year-old children and 17-year-old juveniles. These offences go far beyond combating child pornography and child prostitution, thus making a wide variety of adolescent sexual behaviour, hitherto completely legal in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions in Europe, serious crimes; for instance: sex between 16-year-olds for “remuneration”, which includes invitations to cinema or to a dinner; “lascivious” drawings of a 17-year-old girl possessed by a 15-year-old boy; photographs of a 16 year-old girl in her bikini “lasciviously” exposing her pubic area, taken by her 17-year-old boyfriend on the beach; standard pornography involving younger looking 20-year-old adults or “webcam-sex” between 17-year-old-adolescents; even pictures of one's own adult spouse in “lascivious” poses, if this spouse looks younger than 18. No European jurisdiction so far has such a restrictive law. The massive criminalisation and the equation of adolescents with children caused heavy criticisms among experts but this criticism could not prevent the project from becoming law. This essay provides an analysis of the background, the legislative process and the content of the EU-Framework-Decision.     

A Mother's Value Lies in Her Sexuality: The Simpsons,Family Guy,and South Park and the Preservation of Traditional Sex Roles

This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the “Mommy Wars” which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women's sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces.     

Gender Differences in What Is Desired in the Sexual Relationship

It has been proposed that women possess a "person centered" orientation to sexuality- the goal of sex is to express affection to another person in a committed relations. Conversely, men possess a "body centered" orientation toward sex-the goal of sex is physical gratification. These different orientations toward sex in relatidnships should lead men and women to have different desires in the sexual relationship. We hypothesized that women will desire more activities in sex that demonstrate love and intimacy, while men will desire more activities that focus on arousal aspects of the sexual activity itself (more partner initiative; more variety). Two samples were used to test the hypotheses: 189 undergraduate students and 53 newly married couples. Men and women were asked how much they desired their partner to do less or more of a variety of activities during sex. The results indicated that there were gender differences found in what was desired from the sexual relationship that were consistent with our predictions. These differences may be explained by differential socialization and/or different evolutionary pressures.     

DURKHEIM'S EPISTEMOLOGY:

Although it is evident in his work from the beginning, Durkheim's epistemological argument did not appear in its completed form until the 1912 publication of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life . There Durkheim outlined a theory of enacted social practice as the foundation for an epistemology. Yet neither Durkheim's contribution to a theory of social practice nor his epistemological argument have been recognized as such. The early critics played a pivotal role in creating and perpetuating this misunderstanding. The first highly negative wave of criticism in English, which treated Durkheim's arguments as naive, inadequate philosophy, appeared between 1915 and 1924. Inadequate as these initial criticisms were, citations show that they have been heavily relied upon. On these critics' authority, scholars rejected Durkheim's epistemology altogether, focusing instead on his sociology of knowledge and sociology of religion.