Showing papers in "Qualitative Sociology in 1998"

Contending Stories: Narrative in Social Movements

Abstract: Study of stories and storytelling in social movements can contribute to our understanding of recruitment that takes place outside formal movement organizations; social movement organizations' ability to withstand strategic setbacks; and movements' impacts on mainstream politics. This paper draws on several cases to illuminate the yields of such study and to provide alternatives to the overbroad, uncritical, and astructural understandings of narrative evident in some recent writings. It also urges attention to the role of literary devices in sociological analyses of collective action.

Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Abstract: Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.

Stigma management among gay/bisexual men with HIV/AIDS

Abstract: People with HIV infection are subjected to prejudice, discrimination and hostility related to the stigmatization of AIDS. To manage the stigma of their disease, they mount complex coping strategies. This paper reports results from a qualitative study that examined gay/bisexual men's experiences of living with HIV infection. Unstructured interviews from a diverse sample of 139 men were analyzed to examine how men coped with AIDS-related stigma. We discerned a variety of stigma management strategies that could be arranged along a continuum from reactive to proactive based on the extent to which they implicitly accepted or challenged the social norms and values that underlie the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS. Reactive strategies to cope with stigma involve defensive attempts to avoid or mitigate the impact of stigma, but imply acceptance of the underlying social norms and values that construct the stigma. Examples of reactive strategies include hiding one's HIV status, presenting one's illness as a less stigmatizing one (e.g., cancer), or distancing one's self from more damaging aspects of AIDS-stigma (e.g., attributing infection to blood transfusion). Proactive strategies challenge the validity of the stigma and imply disavowal and resistance of the social norms and values that underlie the stigma. Examples of proactive strategies include engaging in public educational efforts that address misperceptions about HIV transmission and social activism to change the social and political conditions that affect PWAIHIV

Feminist Methodology in Social Movements Research

Abstract: Feminist social scientists have developed distinctive principles of inquiry that depart from the positivist ideal of the detached, value-free scientist and are consistent with the feminist goal of rendering women's experiences visible and challenging gender inequality. In this article, I show how my research on the postpartum depression self-help movement illustrates five features of feminist methodology: a gender perspective, accentuation of women's experiences, reflexivity, participatory methods, and social action. My intent is to demonstrate how attention to the epistemological and methodological questions posed by feminist researchers produces new standards of evidence that allow us to recognize the gendering of social movement processes and theory.

The Interactional Organization of Computer Mediated Communication in the College Classroom

Abstract: This paper reports the results of a pilot study of computer-mediated classroom discussions using a “quasi-synchronous” program called Aspects. The data for this study are a discussion in a college classroom involving three students. Each students' computer monitor was videotaped, and the information on all three screens was collated onto a single transcript. This single case analysis uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis to discover how participants coordinate their actions in this new type of speech exchange system. In quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication participants do not have access to each other's messages until they are completed and sent to a group posting board. Thus, participants cannot rely on the ordinary means of coordinating turn exchange and other conversational activities (e.g., monitoring speakers' utterances-in-progress). We found that students' attempts to import conventional procedures from oral conversation resulted in misunderstandings and confusion. Specifically, we found that students experienced what we called phantom responsiveness, phantom adjacency pairs, virtual simultaneity, and the misinterpretation of silence.

Manufacturing Motherhood: The Shadow Work of Nannies and Au Pairs

Abstract: This paper explores how working mothers and paid child care providers interpret the division of mothering labor in the context of in-home care The nannies, au pairs, and working mothers interviewed for this study make sense of their shared “mother-work” in the context of a dominant belief system that values “intensive mothering” Consequently, in addition to negotiating the allocation of mothering tasks, they must also negotiate the meanings assigned to these tasks: specifically, they manufacture an image of shared mothering that contradicts their day-to-day practice

White-Knuckle Research: Emotional Dynamics in Fieldwork with Racist Activists

Abstract: Current understandings of emotions as relational expressions rather than individual states have made it possible to reconsider the role of emotion in the research process. This article proposes two ways that qualitative research on social movements can benefit from greater attention to the emotional dynamics of fieldwork. First, by examining the strategic use of various emotions by informants as well as by researchers, scholars are in a better position to explore how informants and researchers jointly shape knowledge and interpretation in qualitative research. Second, exploration of emotional dynamics in interviewing relationships can be used as data to deepen understanding of both the interpretative process and of the emotional content of social movements. I examine these issues in the context of a life history project with activists in contemporary U.S. racist movements.

What Do Movements Mean? The Value of Participant-Observation

Abstract: Participant-observation can teach us much about the everyday meanings of doing social activism. I conceptualize these “implicit meanings” in relation to work in the sociology of culture, and social movement studies, and give examples from activists' everyday interaction. A participant-observer's forays into implicit meanings illuminate three dimensions of activists' experiences: the ways activists practice democratic citizenship in their groups, the ways they build group ties, and the ways they define the meaning of activism itself. By probing these implicit meanings, we can address questions that concern many social movement scholars. We increase our understanding of how movements grow, accomodate conflict, and build alliances, and we can specify which insights are useful in theories of contemporary or “new” social movements.

Child care work : Intimacy in the shadows of family-life

Abstract: This study analyzes the relationships between child care workers and the families of the children they serve Because paid child care operates in the borderlands of family, many workers develop intimate relationships—both emotional and physical—with the children they care for and their families Based on three and a half years of participant-observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with child care workers, the researcher examines how worker's subjective meanings are shaped through daily interactions, through organizational processes found in child care centers, and by the gendering of child care as women's work The child care workers in this study saw themselves in “family-like” relationship with the families they served This designation as “like-moms” and “pseudo-parents” also meant that workers continually engaged in “emotional labor”—managing the intimacy they experienced as caregivers against the expectations placed on them as workers

Lived Experience and Interpretation in Narrative Theory: Experiences of Living with HIV/AIDS

Abstract: Narrative analysis builds on the strengths of qualitative research by examining the construction of meaning and symbolic systems in a framework that is explicitly temporal and that links research in the humanities with that in the social sciences. Qualitative methodologies often assume reported data accurately reflects the realities of lived experience. On the other hand some research drawing on cultural studies argues that the “facts” of a person's life are irrelevant. This paper argues for a middle way based on narrative theory that explores the interaction of “objective” events and their “subjective” interpretation. Further, narrative analysis enables exploration of the temporal structure of people's experiences focusing on both how a person's memories of the past and anticipations of the future influence their understanding and actions in the present. These points are developed drawing on the theory and methodology of both Symbolic Interactionism and Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics. The experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS are used to illustrate and explicate the usefulness of narrative analysis.

Fit and skill in employee selection : Insights from a study of headhunters

Abstract: We draw upon evidence from a qualitative study of headhunters to provide insights into the character and importance of candidate “fit” and skill for the selection of a broad range of white-collar employees. Headhunters suggest that the “fit” of a job candidate is assessed at two levels, one corresponding with a general compatibility with organization-level norms, culture, and strategy, the other corresponding more closely with traits and characteristics of the person or persons with whom the job candidate actually interviews. Skill—a factor which is largely neglected by those who tout the importance of fit—also plays an important and independent role in employee selection. Stalls that influence the selection of employees from a pool of candidates tend to be highly specific if not idiosyncratic, and take the form of what headhunters call “hot buttons.” We conclude by discussing the conceptualization, causes, and implications of fit; we also consider how the importance of fit and hot buttons challenges the explanatory logic of standard accounts of labor-market success.

The Impact of Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) Information Technology on Communication and Recordkeeping in Patrol Work

Abstract: The impact of mobile data terminal (MDT) information technology is examined through field research which focuses upon the in-situ uses of the MDT by patrol officers. The impact on patrol officers is reflected in increased proactive work (i.e., traffic) and investigative work not typically the province of patrol, changes in communication patterns between line officers and dispatch and authority relationships with supervisors. The ways in which officers alter and shape their uses of MDT technology to preserve their autonomy, maintain solidarity with their co-workers and “manage” accountability is analyzed as a form of resistance to the potential of this technology to fragment work assignments and control information.

Asian women, job training and the social organization of immigrant labor markets

Abstract: This paper examines the entry of Asian immigrant women into a gendered labor market via government-funded job training programs The focus is on the intake processing of clients into an employment training program operated by a community based organization The study reveals that women's family responsibilities and the cultural capital they bring function to screen them into or out of training programs and ultimately shape their location in the workforce The study thus draws attention to how race, class, and gender enter into the organization of Asian immigrant women into the labor market This investigation is based in institutional ethnography (Smith 1987), a research strategy which displays how activities in a particular setting are coordinated with more extended forms of social organization The study shows that the overriding concern with successful placement in a job as mandated by government regulations is a critical factor in selecting the women for these programs

Narrative Structures and the Catholic Church Closings in Detroit

Abstract: We distinguish narrative structures as master frames from stories as actual telling of events, and show how they operated in the case of the Catholic church closings in Detroit in the late 1980s. Narrative structures drawn from Detroit industrial history and from reform in the Catholic church were imposed on the actual events constituting the closing process, and powerfully defined the terms of public discussion and debate about the meaning of the closings.

Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening

Abstract: In an effort to investigate the consequences of the electronic media on the audience, the author examines the impact of the Walkman on the experiences of the listeners. To study the experience of Walkman listeners, the author analyzed the journals of 40 college students regarding their experiences in listening to their Walkmans. In the study, the technological features of the Walkman, the expressive bias and the privatization, are specified and their impact on the nature of the experiences of the listeners are analyzed. The author argues that narcissism best describes the experiences fostered by the expressive bias and the privatization of the Walkman. Narcissism is used here to refer to the visceral sensation and the social segregation one experiences as one listens to the Walkman. The author concludes that electronic narcissism, far from being a pathological act, is in fact a sign of mental health.

The Presentation of Occupational Self in Science

Abstract: I examine the ways in which scientists create and present self-identities. Previous work, in particular research on social stratification in science, has underplayed identity and its contextual variations. I draw upon interviews with scientists who work in two distinct types of American universities, which provides a comparative basis on which to study identities in different contexts of scientific practice. I focus on three aspects of careers, which ground my comparative analysis: commitment, mobility concerns, and the uses of work history.

Media Technologies, Images of Drugs, and an Evocative Telepresence

Abstract: I regard electronic media technologies as framing devices for how viewers perceive issues associated with illegal drugs. Controllers of electronic media technologies produce and disseminate images of illegal drugs and users of such drugs to which viewers respond. People who control the images of electronic media production create an evocative telepresence, or a visual context that relies on appeals to authority and emotion. However, viewers do not merely respond to images of illegal drugs; rather, they actively interpret such images and draw their own conclusions. To demonstrate the complex relationship between electronic stimuli and viewer responses, I report on a classroom experiment comparing those who saw and heard a heroin user with those who only heard this user. I also report findings from student perceptions of and reactions to four drug films. Results of the experiment and the readings of films indicate that viewers, especially those who can see and hear electronic displays, are sophisticated consumers who respond to immediate stimuli while making reference to distal stimuli. In the main, I contend that electronic images of illegal drugs and users in an evocative telepresence are powerful stimuli, but they do not cause viewer perceptions.

Personalization and the Determination of News

Abstract: This article addresses the relationship between the construction of news and personal experiences. Ethnography and narrative approaches are used to study a metropolitan newspaper where it is discovered that personalization contributes in large part to the decisions made by editors regarding whether or not an event is considered newsworthy. This discovery adds another dimension to the perspective that news is a social construction because it presents news as a decision-making process and highlights the human elements which contribute to the determination of news.