J. Jean Hecht

Bio: J. Jean Hecht is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Servant. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 76 citations.

Research on Gossip: Taxonomy, Methods, and Future Directions

Abstract: A half century of gossip research from multiple disciplines is reviewed. Discussed are definitions of the construct; social, evolutionary, and personal functions of the practice; and data collection methods. Though people engage in the practice frequently, there has been relatively little psychological research on gossip. The layperson’s understanding of the term is included in, but insufficient to encompass, definitions used by researchers. Most data are ethnographic and discursive, and few parametric data exist. The area could benefit from better experimental methods and instruments. Neurobiological and social network analysis methods are promising foundations for further study. There are real-world implications for understanding gossip. Strengthening gossip theory and research methods will beneficially inform the way we view the practice in context. Virtually all of us frequently find ourselves producing, hearing, or otherwise participating in evaluative comments about someone who is not present in the conversation. It is often valuable (and sometimes unavoidable) to be part of such communications. To function efficiently in a complex social environment, humans require information about those around them. But social interconnections are complex, and it is impossible to be present at many primary exchanges to absorb this kind of information directly. Thus, many people are eager to pick it up through an intermediary, whether or not they have the luxury and patience to confirm it later either directly or indirectly. This phenomenon, of course, is called gossip. It is an important social behavior that nearly everyone experiences, contributes to, and presumably intuitively understands. The purpose of this article is to review and summarize research on this phenomenon and point to some promising ways to study it going forward. A paradox of gossip is that it is ubiquitous, though there are numerous social sanctions against it. Anthropologists and others have documented its practice the world over (Besnier, 1989; Gluckman, 1963; Haviland, 1977; Levin

Centring Housing in Political Economy

Abstract: The issue of “housing” has generally not been granted an important role in post-war political economy. Housing-as-policy has been the preserve of social policy analysis and of a growing field of housing studies; housing-as-market has been confined to mainstream economics. This paper insists that political-economic analysis can no longer remain relatively indifferent to the housing question since housing is implicated in the contemporary capitalist political economy in numerous critical, connected and very often contradictory ways. The paper conceptualizes this implication by identifying the multiple roles of housing when “capital” – the essential “stuff” of political economy – is considered from the perspective of each of its three primary, mutually constitutive guises: as process of circulation, as social relation and as ideology. Mobilizing these three optics to provide a critical overall picture of housing-in-political-economy (more than a political economy of housing), we draw on and weave tog...

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN : Widows and spinsters in Britain and France in the eighteenth century

Abstract: In times of economic stress, the numbers of perpetually celibate and widows who would not remarry rose, and the women involved clearly had to fend for themselves in increasingly difficult circumstances. The traditional sectors of female work—domestic service, textile industry, and service trades—were poorly remunerated and women had to find some means of cutting costs by clustering together, living with relatives, or seeking work which provided accommodation. The various means of survival are explored together with suggestions for poten tial source material for examining further the daily lot of women alone. In addi tion, the particular contribution of single women, in terms of service and philan thropic effort, is pursued.

How to Secure Your Husband’s Esteem. Accounting and Private Patriarchy in the British Middle Class Household During the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: Accounting featured prominently in the everyday life and culture of the middle class family in Britain during the nineteenth century. The increasing implementation of accounting techniques in the bourgeois home is considered here in the context of the rationalisation of the household, the threat of insolvency, the prevailing ideology of domesticity, the employment of domestic labour and contemporary systems of household purchasing. It is shown that domestic accounting systems were founded on stewardship and hierarchical accountability and thereby contributed to the operation of masculine domination in the middle class family. Accounting was an instrument for restraining female consumption and containing women in domestic roles. Although women were prescribed accounting functions in the “invisible” private domain they were excluded from the “public” occupation of accountant in Victorian Britain.

Servants: The Obsolescence of an Occupational Role

Abstract: The servant role, it is argued, is obsolete in modern society. Even when formally based on contract, it is in essence rooted in ascribed status, particularistic standards, and diffuse obligations. The master's family "greedily" attempts to absorb the total personality of the servant, and ties him to the household in a totalistic manner. Such premodern relationships between superior and inferior can exist only as long as religious legitimations for it are accepted by the servant, and no alternative employment opportunities are available. When this is no longer the case, the role becomes obsolescent and only persons suffering from marked inferiorities and peculiar stigmas can be induced to enter it.