The Haunting of Shame: Autoethnography and the Multivalent Stigma of Being Queer,Muslim, and Single

Sociology has neglected the terrain of the gay Muslim single as a sociological phenomenon. Produced and managed via meaningful social conduct, the gay Muslim single often holds negative symbolic and cultural worth, one of lacking identification and presence. The stigma of the gay Muslim single is actively reproduced through social and power relations. I examine multiple stigmas and dichotomies by using autoethnography to illustrate the human lived experience of a gay Muslim single, who is silenced, invisibilized, and embodies a social life of “emptiness.” The gay Muslim single, bringing about a “moral panic,” confronts temporal regulations, norms, and values, notably those of heterosexual ones in everyday social life. He is cast as an “outsider,” which reinforces his stigma in everyday social life.     

More than a Façade: Somatic and Structural Determinants in Erving Goffman's Theory of the Perduring Self

This paper argues that Erving Goffman endorses the veracity of a perduring self. Culling the corpus of his work, recent findings in neurophysiology and cognitive science surrounding the autonomy and mutual determination of emotion, cognition, and social structure are drawn upon when unpacking his highly composite theory. Isolating Goffman's claims about the psychobiological underpinning of the emotionally sentient body and those pertaining to macro and micro‐structural determinants, the former, it is argued, champion the coherence of the self insofar as they link cathected feelings to individual desires and inclinations. The latter, conversely, complicate the picture by accentuating the social construction of emotions and the relationship between episodic cognitive operations and multifarious interpretive frames. In the end, however, it is shown that Goffman's macro‐structural account, far from being residual, discloses the consistency, and unity of the self occasioned by social proximity and general social norms.     

Goffman's Interaction Order at the Margins: Stigma,Role, and Normalization in the Outreach Encounter

This article considers Goffman's conceptualization of interaction order at the margins of society in encounters between urban welfare workers and their clients. Observations from these encounters demonstrate practices relating to the situated management of stigma and identity, and the accomplishment of role within these service encounters. A reading of Goffman's theoretical contribution lies in revealing how social actors and social structures are realized in situ within the constraints of the interaction order sui generis. The article discusses three aspects of the outreach encounter, namely, (1) the accomplishment of role and motive, (2) the sequential phases of the outreach encounter, and (3) “the normalization ritual,” and introduces the concept of willful disattention.     

Masculine domination and gender subtexts: The role of female professionals in the renewal of the Swedish video game industry

The video game industry is a showcase industry in the entrepreneurial, knowledge-intensive, and technology-based economy. Despite recent technological shifts rendering digital media portable in the form of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, attracting new categories of gamers, most notably women above the age of 35, the video game industry is struggling to handle its masculine domination, prescribing specific and gendered divisions of labor in terms of lowering thresholds for female video game developers. This article reports on empirical material based on interviews from the burgeoning Swedish video game industry and suggests that female professionals entering the industry encounter inherited gendered beliefs and ways of organizing work which locate women in specific, and not always desirable, roles within the industry. In this regime of masculine domination, the study concludes, female video game developers are understood as a particular group primarily knowledgeable about female gamers’ preferences and not as the possessors of general skills attractive to the video game companies. Ultimately, the masculine domination and the historical gendered divisions of labor are preventing the industry from creating more gender-equal workplaces and, as a consequence, fully exploiting market potentials.     

A Guide to Training Your Own Horses: The Flaneur Appproach and Erving Goffman's Uninhibited Research Practices in Sociology

While Erving Goffman's sociology has enjoyed great popularity and is cited often, the career of his work has been largely confined to other scholars reaping, adapting, and utilizing his concepts. Goffman was opposed to science that just reproduces and orders concepts, and opposed to his students using his concepts as easy tools. Instead, he recommended they train their own horses: While there is much to use in Goffman's work, there is little scholarship that continues the genius of his practical approach. As valuable as Goffman's categories are, his collection practice and his analytical scheme may be even more valuable. On the one hand, they offer an intricate framework for research that is as open as it is directed; on the other hand, they allow researchers to argue freedom from the ever more imposing bad imitations of natural scientific method that threaten to overgrow the social sciences. Together, they allow Goffmanesque work without merely parroting his concepts. This article attempts to outline Goffman's eclectic way of collecting material and his technique for fashioning this material into analyses, reordering this material around different metaphors that make Goffman's contribution distinct. I call Goffman's practical research a flaneur approach, and outline it. The paper then makes an argument for its continuation.     

Moral Reflexivity and Dramaturgical Action in Social Movement Activism: The Case of the Plowshares and Animal Rights Sweden

Drawing on Durkheim's sociology of morality, which identifies ideals and norms as the key components of morality, this article outlines a theoretical model for understanding how social movements can bring about legitimate social change. Social movement activists, we propose, can be conceptualized as followers and pursuers of sacred ideals. As such, they frequently come into conflict with existing norms in society. To manage this dilemma, activists must downplay their role as norm breakers while emphasizing their identity as followers of ideals. This in turn requires moral reflexivity in the staging of collective action. The article shows how dramaturgical control (Goffman) is exercised towards this end among activists engaged in two social movements in Sweden: the Plowshares peace movement and Animal Rights Sweden. The article further examines the internal stratification, or ‘moral hierarchies’, within the two activist groups in the light of the proposed model. The closer the activists were able to adhere to the sacred ideal, the higher the social status they enjoyed within the group.     

Giving Clients a Backstage Experience: A Case of Dramaturgical Trouble in the Professional Performance of Drug Treatment

Professionals who provide drug treatment to young people seek to approach clients as agents of change, i.e., highlight clients' agency and ownership of treatment plans. On the basis of ethnographic data from two treatment institutions in Denmark, this article investigates how everyday interaction organizes clients' experiences in ways that alternately support and contradict this professional ambition. Notably, findings indicate that talk and material arrangements “backstage” make professionals, not clients, appear as the real agents of change. Clients are increasingly encouraged to participate in meetings “backstage,” where treatment is organized, but, contrary to intentions, clients may experience participation as debasing rather than empowering.     

Race and Interactions on Public Transportation: Social Cohesion and the Production of Common Norms and a Collective Black Identity

In this article, I examine interactions on public transportation in order to assess social cohesion among members of the same race. Contrary to the prevailing view of social cohesion in urban places, I find that individuals in poor, black areas demonstrate more social cohesion than individuals in more affluent, white areas. This cohesion is meaningful as it plays a role in the production of common notions of a particular black reality and collective black identity, and that it serves a normative function in defining appropriate behaviors. I use Goffman's idea of civil inattention as a heuristic for studying social cohesion.     

The Well‐Being of Adolescents in Households With No Biological Parents

On the basis of a large, nationally representative sample of 19,071 American middle‐school students, the current study compares adolescents living with neither biological parent with their peers in five other family structures on a wide range of outcome measures. The results reveal some overall disadvantages of living with neither parent, although the disadvantages relative to nontraditional families are limited. Differences in family resources either partially or completely account for outcome differences between non‐biological‐parent and other family structures. Further, boys and girls in non‐biological‐parent families appear to fare similarly. Finally, measurement problems and their implications are discussed.     

Family Structure and Child Well‐Being: The Significance of Parental Cohabitation

Data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (N = 35,938) were used to examine the relationship between family structure and child well‐being. I extended prior research by including children in two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families, as well as cohabiting stepfamilies, in an investigation of the roles of economic and parental resources on behavioral and emotional problems and school engagement. Children living in two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families experience worse outcomes, on average, than those residing with two biological married parents, although among children ages 6–11, economic and parental resources attenuate these differences. Among adolescents ages 12–17, parental cohabitation is negatively associated with well‐being, regardless of the levels of these resources. Child well‐being does not significantly differ among those in cohabiting versus married stepfamilies, two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families versus cohabiting stepfamilies, or either type of cohabiting family versus single‐mother families.     

Smartphones and Face‐to‐Face Interaction: Digital Cross‐Talk During Encounters in Everyday Life

Using data collected from focus groups and nonparticipant observations, this article explores how and why cross‐talk by way of smartphone affects face‐to‐face encounters. The findings show there are three types of digital cross‐talk: exclusive, semi‐exclusive, and collaborative. Furthermore, it was found that digital cross‐talk can either facilitate or disrupt the expressive order of an encounter. Semi‐exclusive and collaborative digital cross‐talk were found to facilitate encounters. Exclusive digital cross‐talk was found to disrupt or have little influence on encounters, depending on whether or not interlocutors successfully engaged in a corrective process, an avoidance process, or aggressive face‐work.     

Being Judged,Being Assessed: Young People’s Perspective of Assessment in Youth Justice and Education

Research from the Economic and Social Research Council programme on Pathways Into and Out of Crime prioritised young people’s ‘voices’ in exploring experiences of crime and a range of intervention services. Drawing on data from interviews with 110 young people, this paper explores their perspectives of professional assessment. Embedded within neo‐liberal youth welfare policies are a number of contradictions. Policies encourage ‘individualisation’, ‘responsiblisation’ and ‘self‐realisation’ while also needing to maintain control and regulation of ‘risky’ populations. This paper explores the implication of these contradictions through examining the experiences of young people being assessed in youth justice and education. The impact on their identities as neo‐liberal citizens is discussed in the conclusion.     

Psychological Well‐Being and Career Indecision in Emerging Adulthood: The Moderating Role of Hardiness

This study investigated the moderating role of hardiness in the relationship between psychological well‐being (PWB) and career indecision in 131 never‐employed Italian emerging adults. Cluster analytic methods produced high and low hardiness profiles. A structural equation modeling analysis underscored the importance of hardiness for moderating the negative association between PWB and career indecision. Specifically, findings revealed that being hardy is a crucial relevant personal resource in the presence of lower levels of PWB. The authors discuss the importance of analyzing simultaneously the role of PWB and hardiness in promoting engagement in the career decision‐making process and provide implications for setting up appropriate career counseling interventions with emerging adults. Suggestions for future research are presented, such as the use of longitudinal designs and qualitative methods.     

The Doing and Undoing of Gender: The Importance of Being a Credible Female Victim

It is increasingly argued that gender is something we ‘do’ (or ‘undo’) rather than ‘are’. The doing of gender, or the accomplishment of gender, becomes credible when it conforms (in broad terms) to certain normative conceptions of gender. Resistance to, or subversions of these norms, or the failure to appear credible, deny the individual a gendered authenticity. Attempts to unshackle notions of gender — to ‘undo gender’ and to accept the outcome as authentic, open and fluid — have been matched with concerns that this theoretically empowering process may result in the loss of political power — the notion of woman (or man) in whose name we can act being lost as the binary is eliminated. These tensions are explored in the context of the UK Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (rev. 1986) . This article demonstrates how the doing and undoing of gender in an employment tribunal accomplishes or negates the ‘authenticity’ of gender.     

The Presentation of Avatars in Second Life: Self and Interaction in Social Virtual Spaces

What do interactions in virtual spaces suggest about everyday life in the digital age? How do interactions in virtual spaces shape everyday life in the digital age? Guided by hypermodern theory, I conduct participant observation in the social virtual world Second Life to provide tentative answers to those questions. I suggest that Second Life is both a social psychological playground where participants enjoy individualistic fantasies and a virtual community where they collaborate on collective projects. When people define the virtual as real, it is real in its consequences. Accordingly, social virtual spaces such as Second Life offer sociologists unique opportunities for research, education, intervention, and hence the development of a virtual imagination.