Gender and the residential telephone, 1890–1940: Technologies of sociability

Recent work on gender and technology debunks the claim that household technologies have liberated women from domestic work. The history of telephone use in North America suggests, however, that global conclusions about gender and consumer technologies may be misleading. Although marketed primarily as a business instrument and secondarily as an instrument to facilitate housework, the telephone was, in a sense, appropriated by women for social and personal ends. This paper explores the affinity of women for the telephone, how women in the half-century before World War II used the telephone, and why. It suggests that there is a class of technologies that women have exploited for their own, gender-linked, social and personal ends.     

A token of loving: From melancholia to mourning

This paper explores the work of mourning for what was missing in childhood. Specifically, it addresses patients who did not have good enough parents and who present in treatment in a state of melancholy or despair. The paper delineates phases of the treatment process and highlights Winnicott's token of loving as the vehicle of healing in the therapeutic relationship. Through dreams and case material the paper illustrates the process of recovery.     

Queering Identities: The Roles of Integrity and Belonging in Becoming Ourselves

This article presents a picture of the complexities and contradictions in the daily lives of people in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire who identify as, or are identified as, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender queer, questioning, and allied people (LGBTQQA). In this study, the author uses a grounded theory approach to focus on the Create Our Destiny conference. Clear patterns emerged, such as the importance of coming out, labels, and gender identity. A common theme underlying these areas was the tension people experienced between seeking a sense of belonging and maintaining their personal sense of integrity. This study shows that people in the Seacoast want to be fully and wholly themselves, or as the author represents their interests, to strive toward singularity. The author argues that striving towards singularity requires people to grapple with their unexamined codes and principles, such as those pertaining to compulsory heterosexuality and gender duality, by increasing and valuing self-awareness and reflexivity.     

Courage in the Telling: The Critical Rise and Fall of David Leavitt

Openly gay American fiction writer David Leavitt, who had received positive reviews for his previous novels and short story collections, was sued in 1993 over his novel While England Sleeps by English poet Stephen Spender, who claimed that Leavitt plagiarized an episode from his own 1951 memoir World Within World, and grafted pornographic fantasies onto his biography. The accusations created a homophobic backlash against Leavitt, whose career has yet to recover fully. The result is that Leavitt, who had once been viewed as the one gay writer to find a footing in the mainstream literary community, is now firmly positioned in the gay literary subgenre and his work categorized as such. This essay examines book reviews in order to illustrate the difficulties that a writer who deals with gay life frankly and unapologetically finds in being accepted by the mainstream literary establishment, no matter how normal or assimilationist he or others might perceive his work to be.     

“Come, Join Our Family”: Discipline and Integration in Corporate Organizational Culture

This article critically examines primaryprocesses and effects of the so-called neworganizational culture that is organized on theprinciples and practices of Total Quality Management(and its variations) and increasingly practiced incorporate organizations in the 1990s. The paperspecifically analyzes the effects of the organizationalcultural practices of family and"team" on the employee and discusses their role incorporate discipline, integration, and control. Data aredrawn from field research conducted in a largemultinational corporation and the analyses andinterpretive propositions are informed by a critical socialpsychoanalytic perspective. The paper disputes theconventional view that the practices of the "newculture" and its purported reform of thehierarchical, specialized, conflict-ridden workplaces oftraditional industrial organizationsempower employees and providemeaningful relationships in the workplace.It is argued, on the contrary, that these new designer culturalpractices serve as processes of regulation, discipline,and control of employee subject selves.     

Adolescent Women's Recommendations for Enhanced Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sexual Behavior

Family communication about adolescent sexual health and behavior promotes adolescent health and family connectedness. However, few studies seek the perspective of adolescents regarding their recommended strategies for family communication. Findings of a survey of female adolescent family planning patients (n = 249) indicated adolescent recommendations for better family communication included treat teen as an equal, 63%; increase parental knowledge about lifestyle and peer pressures, 61%, and improve parental listening skills, 61%. There were no statistically significant differences according to age, pregnancy history, or school enrollment status for suggested strategies for improved communication with parents. Sexually active adolescent daughters expressed interest in maintaining family connectedness and support with increased time for family activities as well as increased quality and quantity of dialogue between the adolescent girl and her parents.     

Social Class,Cultural Repertoires,and Popular Culture: The Case of Film

This research examines two different conceptions of the relationship between social class and familiarity with popular culture in the United States. Specifically, it focuses on differences between members of the upper-middle class and members of the lower-middle class in terms of their film viewing practices. The data for this analysis was obtained from a survey of 364 individuals randomly selected from two neighborhoods in a medium-sized city, one predominantly upper-middle class and the other predominantly lower-middle class. Members of the upper-middle class view more art films, as well as more classic films and blockbuster films, than members of the lower-middle class. These differences are largely attributable to the fact that members of the upper-middle class view more films both in theaters and on videocassettes than members of the lower-middle class. Moreover, these differences are reduced, but not entirely eliminated, by the fact that members of the lower-middle class view more films on television than members of the upper-middle class. Finally, these differences in the film-viewing practices of the members of these two social classes, as identified by their neighborhood of residence, obtain even controlling for a series of demographic and socioeconomic background variables.     

Making Minorities: Cultural Space,Stigma Transformation Frames,and the Categorical Status Claims of Deaf,Gay, and White Supremacist Activists in Late Twentieth Century America

This article compares the efforts of movement activists in three dissimilar groups to replace a stigmatized status with a valued one by portraying their groups as resembling established minorities (claims of contiguity in cultural space) and as differing from groups stigmatized as deviant (claims of distance). The most common claims assert similarity to African Americans, and frequently incorporate civil rights themes (exemplifying frame diffusion). Tactically, these minority status claims exploit both the resonance of cultural pluralism and state recognition of minorities. Strategically, minority status framing enables stigmatized groups to claim legitimacy without changing — simultaneously asserting both normality and difference.     

The treatment of bulimia from a self psychological perspective

This paper examines concepts from self psychology which contribute to the understanding of bulimia. A case example from the author's work illustrates the significance of the sense of self both in the development of bulimic symptoms and also in the therapeutic process. Painful feelings of shame and humiliation over who and what one is are often part of the bulimic experience. The author suggests that therapist's role is not so much to change the bulimic person, but to accept and understand who the person is and how he or she came to be that way. Change often follows such understanding.     

The Chicago School,So-Called

Many sociologists believe in the myth of a Chicago School, a unified and coherent body of thought and research practice carried on at the University of Chicago from the 1920s through the 1960s. Chicago never constituted such a coherent system and is better understood as a school of activity, a group of people who cooperated in the day-to-day running of a major department.     

The elusiveness of identity in social work practice with women: A postmodern feminist perspective

During the 1980s, feminist literature proposed the existence of a silent, tongue-tied, different woman who craves to exercise her own voice. The more recent postmodern feminism raises questions about the existence of woman, self, and identity as categories, promoting instead the idea of multiple selves and multiple identities. This article visits the concept of identity and its partner self in psychological, feminist, and postmodern feminist literature and discusses why self/identity is problematic for women. An alternative narrative identity is proposed with narrative identity reconstruction integrated into clinical social work practice with women. A narrative excerpt from an interview illustrates the process.Based on a paper presented at a program jointly sponsored by Loyola University of Chicago School of Social Work and The Institute for Clinical Social Work, May 19, 1995, Chicago, Illinois.     

The Nomothetic-Idiographic Issue: Some Roots and Recent Trends

A review of the history of the nomothetic-idiographic issue suggests that the problem of the uniqueness of the individual is secondary in this context to that of the right approach to the study of the human person. Idiographic approaches emphasize the need for an unmutilated conceptualization of psychological processes. The requirements of this unmutilated kind of research need to be integrated with those of nomothetic science asking for the controlled gaining and analyzing of information regarding psychological processes. One form of such a kind of integration is represented by biographical studies based on semistructured interviews and a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of their contents. Findings from such research as especially related to developmental and personality psychology are reported here by summarizing a series of studies conducted at the University of Bonn.     

Muddying the Waters Does Not Have to Entail Erosion: Ecological Feminist Concerns with Purity

Ecofeminists call attention to the associations that have been made between woman and nature, which can operate as a source of both subjugation and resistance, exploitation, and inspiration. This paper expands upon feminist critiques of purity by phrasing these concerns in an ecological feminist perspective. This theoretical exercise of problematizing the ideal of purity sheds light upon the intersections of human and nonhuman oppression. Preservationist work has tended to employ the logic of purity by focusing on protection of the purity of the wild regions of the earth from the polluting forces of humanity. However, such approaches retain the troublesome nature/culture dualism. The author illustrates how attempts to fragment and radically separate people from the environment can prove to be highly dangerous. She connects the theoretical resistance to purity to the important activist work that is being done to expose environmental racism. Finally, she discusses how muddying the waters and resisting the logic of purity can offer a promising approach to pressing problems revolving around the intersections of human and nonhuman oppression.     

Pushing the Limits: An Interview with Shelley Tremain

Shelley Tremain, the 1997-1998 Ed Roberts Postdoctoral Fellow at the World Institute on Disability and the School of Public Health of the University of California at Berkeley and editor of Pushing the Limits: Disabled Dykes Produce Culture, is interviewed by Cathy Marston and Dawn Atkins. The interview covers Tremain's work with disabled dykes in Canada, raising awareness in queer communities about disability (and in disability communities about queer issues), research issues such as the social model of disability and problems with labels separating out learning and mental disabilities from physical disabilities, problems dealing with being an academic with a disability, and Tremain's suggested readings for those interested in doing more work on the intersection of queer and disability issues.     

The Use of Coercion in the Treatment of Incarcerated Juveniles Adjudicated on Sexual Offenses: Consequences and Implications

Since the inception of specialized treatment for juveniles accused of and adjudicated on sexual offenses (JASOs), denial has been an organizing principle. Most clinicians believe that breaking through denial is a necessary prerequisite for successful treatment. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. Further, when admitting to one's sexually offensive behavior in treatment becomes paramount, the risk that other therapeutic issues are missed or ignored increases. This article calls attention to the dangers of coercion, in its varied forms, when attempting to get youth to take responsibility for their sexually offensive behavior. Based on interviews with 40 incarcerated JASOs, the author suggests that using presumptive realities as an organizing principle rather than denial, helps to focus treatment providers on their role in the therapeutic process. In using presumptive realities the JASO's story or interpretation of the abuse event is considered therapeutically relevant and reflective of the context in which treatment occurs.     

Snarls,Quacks, and Quarrels: Culture and Structure in Political Process Theory

Political process theories of social movements have relied on a set of oppositions between culture and structure that has limited their capacity to capture the supraindividual, durable, and constraining dimensions of culture. The solution is not to abandon an emphasis on objective political structures in favor of potential insurgents' subjective perceptions of political opportunities, but rather to probe the (objective) resources and constraints generated by the cultural dimensions of political structures. Such a perspective would pay closer attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, and political taboos that create and limit political opportunities; and would link the master frames that animate protest to dominant political structures and processes.     

Social Defenses Against Organizational Learning

It is argued that for organizational learning to occur maladaptive social defenses within the organization have to be altered. The origins of the concept of social defenses are traced through the work of Jaques and Menzies. A new concept of system domain, and related concepts of system domain fabric, and system domain defenses, are proposed in order to account for the difficulties in sustaining organizational change in organizations that share a similar primary task. Organizational learning is defined as occurring when there is co-evolution of organizational container and contained. The article distills variables from three successful consultancy/action research projects which are characteristic of organizations that are learning, and it is hypothesized that the creation of organizational awareness is necessary for organizational learning to occur.     

Aesthetic Identity,Race, and American Folk Music

This article uses the concept of aesthetic identity to interrogate the relationship among musical genres, social movements and racial identity. American folk music has at some times subverted and other times reinforced the categorical boundaries between blacks and whites in twentieth-century United States. Aesthetic identity is the cultural alignment of artistic genres to social groups by which groups come to feel that genres represent our or their art, music, and literature. Genre boundaries then become social boundaries. Folk music inverts the usual relationship of genre and social boundaries. Folk music is always the culture of some other, either racial, regional, class, or national. Before it was called folk music, American vernacular music was much more racially integrated than the society around it, creolized across a spectrum from predominantly European to predominantly African- influenced, but with most exhibiting both. Before the era of commercial recording, black and white musicians sang the same music, learned techniques and songs from each other, and shared a social world of performance. The concept of folk music was created by academic elites, but remained unfamiliar to most people until the organized left took it on as a cultural project in the late 1930s and 1940s. Both academic elites and political activists constructed the genre as an alternative to the racialized genres that the commercial recording industry had dubbed race records and hillbilly music. American communists and their allies were especially self-conscious about using folk music as an instrument of racial solidarity in a particularly racially polarized era. Submerged by McCarthyism until the 1960s, folk music was revived as a racially unified genre, but quickly became whitened. My explanation for why the folk revival was so white revolves around three factors: the continuing legacy of commercial racial categories, the failure of the New Left to control music through a cultural infrastructure as effectively as had the old left, and the cultural momentum of an understanding of folk music as the music of the other at a time when blacks were trying to enter a system that white middle-class youth were rejecting.     

The partisanship of silence: Symbolic politics of school desegration in Boston

This article analyzes the symbolic aspects of the school desegration controversy using disputes in Boston as a case in point. The symbolic communication between actors in the public forum contains implicit views of the rights and obligations of different participants in the controversy, and the role of various individuals and collectives in the history of the controversy. These views also provide a framework for understanding the position of specific actors, which may constrain their ability to participate effectively in the controversy. This article analyzes these constraints with respect to those actors who attempted to establish a mediator role between pro-integration and anti-busing forces.Prepared under grants from the National Institute of Education (NIE-6-00-3-0187, NIE-6-76-0038), National Institute of Mental Health, (R01-MH-27618) and the Carnegie Corporation.     

Psychosemantics of “One-China” Conception: Fourth-Dimensional Resolution of Taiwan–Mainland Political Deadlock

The political conflicts between Taiwan and the Mainland have progressed, for over 50 years, from the historical hot civil war for the exclusive ownership of one China's territorial sovereignty to the contemporary cold rhetoric circularity around the geopolitical symbolism of the one-China principle. In the process, the United States has been intimately entangled in the disputes in terms of 3 alignment stages--from an unambiguous pro-Taiwan before the 1970s, the ambiguous neutrality in the early 1970s, to the contemporary pro-Mainland China. Despite the fact that during the past 3 decades the United States honored the arms sales and the Taiwan Relations Act commitments in Taiwan's favor, and simultaneously conferred the 3 Nos and 3 communiqués in Mainland China's favor, the cross-Strait tensions have persisted without the prospect of a definitive foreseeable resolution. Further, because of the lack of explicit conception of one China, the United States has to constantly resist the opposing persuasions of the 2 sides, and therefore must continue to rely on the ambiguous dual deterrence strategy for maintaining the dynamics balance over the Taiwan Strait. For such endeavors, the Clinton 4 frameworks and the Bush 5 Taiwan policies have proven to be very effective, but mostly to the extent of assuming a passive role in preventing military confrontations.