Cultural Sociology, Modes of Inquiry, and Political Analysis: A Rejoinder to Steensland

Closely bounded research programs are both common and effective in sociology. Describing such programs as operating with a "restricted code" is deeply problematic. These matters aside, the remarkable rise of cultural sociology in fact reflects adaptation to sociology's disciplinary norms and core thematic concerns. Steensland (2009) might better have reversed his argument: faced with the achievements of cultural analysis, the slumbering giant called "mainstream sociology" should wake up.     

Reading Sociology into Scholarship on School‐Based Sex Education: Interaction and Culture

School‐based sex education (SBSE), an institutional attempt to interrupt and correct the sexual socialization of young people, operates at the levels of structure, interaction, and culture. At the structural level SBSE has been found to endorse a particular set of cultural messages about sex and sexuality that reinforce patterns of inequality. This is often the case regardless of program type (e.g., abstinence versus comprehensive). However, there is little empirical focus on the actual classroom practices and other social interactions that constitute SBSE in the United States. In this paper, I will provide an overview of the field of SBSE research, reading the findings at the interactional level. In particular, I will review findings on curricula, stakeholder perspectives, and effects in a discussion of the importance of both interaction and culture in SBSE practices. Finally, I will use criticisms raised in existing SBSE scholarship to pose opportunities for sociological research into the topic.     

The Impact of Parental Occupation and Socioeconomic Status on Choice of College Major

This study examines the effects of socioeconomic status and parental occupation on choice of college major, with special attention directed toward female and male differences. The study uses multinomial logit analysis and data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 1990 Survey of Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS). Having a father in a professional or executive occupation has a larger effect on female students than does having a mother in a similar occupation. The opposite holds for males. Women from families with high socioeconomic status are less likely to major in business; the opposite holds for males. Students who believe that being very well off financially is very important are more likely to major in business than are other students.     

“That's so gay”: Language Use and Antigay Bias Among Heterosexual College Students

Using the word “gay” to refer to something that is “boring” is part of American slang, and heterosexual males commonly call one another a “fag.” The responses of 767 college students were analyzed to explore how this language relates to antigay bias. Results of multiple regression explained 14.8% of the variance for believing that “it's no big deal” to call someone a fag, and age, sex, major, and attitudes toward gay men were significant predictors. For the frequency of saying “that's so gay,” 17.5% of the variance was explained by age, sex, major, and friends’ attitudes toward sexual minorities. Implications for social work education and future research are discussed.     

Teaching Note—Teaching Intersectionality: Transforming Cultural Competence Content in Social Work Education

Intersectionality has been gaining momentum among social workers as a framework to allow a fuller understanding of the complexity of diverse social identities and the impact of social structures on power, privilege, and oppression. However, the application of intersectionality to teaching in social work education has been relatively absent in the literature. This article describes a 3-hour graduate-level classroom exercise designed to increase knowledge and proficiency of intersectionality. Critical self-reflections of the participants’ experiences are provided to illustrate the evolving growth and awareness that can result from the educational process using this framework. Examples and suggestions for reading assignments and classroom activities are offered. Implications for social work education and future directions are discussed.     

Voices from the Valleys: Researching lone mothers talk

This paper focuses upon an interdisciplinary research project the authors are currently engaged in, specifically designed to address the inattention paid so far to lone mothers voices in the Rhondda Valleys in Mid Glamorgan, South Wales. This is an area characterised by high unemployment, community restructuring and fragmenting kinship patterns and, according to analysis of the 1991 Census data, Mid Glamorgan ranks ninth highest in the UK in terms of the incidence of lone parents as a percentage of total households with dependent children. Given the political sensitivity of the issue of lone parenting, and the attempts of dominant discourses to pathologise lone mothers in particular, this paper explores some of the issues involved in responsibly accessing situated accounts of lone mothers subjectivities. The particular representations of self and status that these women offer in their own accounts, and how they articulate those representations in different contexts, is bound up with complex political, ethical and methodological concerns. In addressing these concerns, this paper seeks to interrogate some of the tensions at play in research on marginalise? groups living in communities which have been defined as spatially isolated and economically deprived. The paper thus centres for discussion the problems and possibilities that inevitably surface when undertaking research of this kind. We conclude that research which reveals talk which manages, disrupts and reworks contested representations of otherness needs to be carefully and self-reflexively accessed, collected and disseminated, even and perhaps especially when such research is supposedly informed by critical feminist awareness.