Police violence shapes the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, and while much has been written about strategic responses to police, missing is an examination of how black women navigate interactions with officers. Based on 32 interviews with black women, we find that they use witnessing, or the mobilization of others as observers to police encounters. Research demonstrates the rising role of videos and smartphones in documenting encounters with officers. We find that black women adapt witnessing techniques based on their surroundings, available resources, and network contacts. Three forms of witnessing are observed: physical witnessing, mobilizing others in close proximity to interactions with officers; virtual witnessing, using cellphone or social media technology to contact others or record interactions with officers; and institutional witnessing, leveraging police or other institutional contacts as interveners to interactions with officers. Black women mobilize witnessing to deescalate violence, gather evidence, and promote accountability. Attuned to both the interactional and structural dynamics of police encounters, black women conceptualize witnessing as a way to survive police encounters and navigate their legal estrangement within the carceral system. We theorize black women’s witnessing as a form of resistance as they work to reconfigure short- and long-term power relations between themselves, their communities, and police.
{"title":"“We Got Witnesses” Black Women’s Counter-Surveillance for Navigating Police Violence and Legal Estrangement","authors":"Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Faith M. Deckard","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac043","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Police violence shapes the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, and while much has been written about strategic responses to police, missing is an examination of how black women navigate interactions with officers. Based on 32 interviews with black women, we find that they use witnessing, or the mobilization of others as observers to police encounters. Research demonstrates the rising role of videos and smartphones in documenting encounters with officers. We find that black women adapt witnessing techniques based on their surroundings, available resources, and network contacts. Three forms of witnessing are observed: physical witnessing, mobilizing others in close proximity to interactions with officers; virtual witnessing, using cellphone or social media technology to contact others or record interactions with officers; and institutional witnessing, leveraging police or other institutional contacts as interveners to interactions with officers. Black women mobilize witnessing to deescalate violence, gather evidence, and promote accountability. Attuned to both the interactional and structural dynamics of police encounters, black women conceptualize witnessing as a way to survive police encounters and navigate their legal estrangement within the carceral system. We theorize black women’s witnessing as a form of resistance as they work to reconfigure short- and long-term power relations between themselves, their communities, and police.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47441038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jauhara Ferguson, Christopher P. Scheitle, E. Ecklund
Research examining how race and ethnic locations shape perceptions of the police is well-established. Yet there is little research examining how religion shapes individuals’ experiences with police. This study examines the influence of race and religion on U.S. adults’ reported experiences with police harassment due to their religion. We find that, independent of race and ethnicity, Muslim adults are significantly more likely to report police harassment due to their religion. Race and ethnicity moderate this effect, with Muslim adults identifying as Black or as Middle Eastern-Arab-North African (MENA) significantly more likely than White Muslim adults to report religion-based police harassment. We find that, independent of religion, adults identifying as Black or as MENA are significantly more likely to report religion-based police harassment when compared to White individuals, a finding that is explained by these individuals’ greater reports of race-based police harassment. That is, exposure to police harassment based on race is more likely to make an individual perceive harassment based on their religion as well. These findings highlight the intersectional nature of individuals’ social locations more broadly and the importance of addressing these multiple locations if we are to address the social problem of police harassment and victimization.
{"title":"Religion, Race, and Perceptions of Police Harassment","authors":"Jauhara Ferguson, Christopher P. Scheitle, E. Ecklund","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac040","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Research examining how race and ethnic locations shape perceptions of the police is well-established. Yet there is little research examining how religion shapes individuals’ experiences with police. This study examines the influence of race and religion on U.S. adults’ reported experiences with police harassment due to their religion. We find that, independent of race and ethnicity, Muslim adults are significantly more likely to report police harassment due to their religion. Race and ethnicity moderate this effect, with Muslim adults identifying as Black or as Middle Eastern-Arab-North African (MENA) significantly more likely than White Muslim adults to report religion-based police harassment. We find that, independent of religion, adults identifying as Black or as MENA are significantly more likely to report religion-based police harassment when compared to White individuals, a finding that is explained by these individuals’ greater reports of race-based police harassment. That is, exposure to police harassment based on race is more likely to make an individual perceive harassment based on their religion as well. These findings highlight the intersectional nature of individuals’ social locations more broadly and the importance of addressing these multiple locations if we are to address the social problem of police harassment and victimization.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46941068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Multiracial neighborhood integration has become more common in U.S. metropolitan areas over the past three decades. This article takes up the question: are residents satisfied living in multiracial neighborhoods? Traditional theories of racial change predict low levels of satisfaction in these neighborhoods, while newer studies question that prediction. The article uses data representing all residents of multiracial neighborhoods in the Washington, DC, area to study neighborhood satisfaction in multiracial neighborhoods. The analysis finds evidence of shared satisfaction among residents regardless of race: large and equal shares of each racial group were satisfied. White residents were less satisfied than white residents of neighborhoods elsewhere in the metropolitan region, but were unlikely to perceive neighborhood decline. The shared satisfaction among residents of all races and the lack of racial antipathy to change among white residents suggests that multiracial neighborhoods offer sites to promote racial equity.
{"title":"Shared Satisfaction among Residents Living in Multiracial Neighborhoods","authors":"M. Bader","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac038","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Multiracial neighborhood integration has become more common in U.S. metropolitan areas over the past three decades. This article takes up the question: are residents satisfied living in multiracial neighborhoods? Traditional theories of racial change predict low levels of satisfaction in these neighborhoods, while newer studies question that prediction. The article uses data representing all residents of multiracial neighborhoods in the Washington, DC, area to study neighborhood satisfaction in multiracial neighborhoods. The analysis finds evidence of shared satisfaction among residents regardless of race: large and equal shares of each racial group were satisfied. White residents were less satisfied than white residents of neighborhoods elsewhere in the metropolitan region, but were unlikely to perceive neighborhood decline. The shared satisfaction among residents of all races and the lack of racial antipathy to change among white residents suggests that multiracial neighborhoods offer sites to promote racial equity.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44755769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How do states achieve popular recognition and symbolic power as “The State,” a collectively recognized entity that serves the common good? While classic work has described the state idea as produced by the actions of state officials, it is ultimately ordinary citizens who must recognize the state as such and consent to its rule. This article, based on 20 months of ethnographic research in a village that, after decades of armed group control, is a key site for the implementation of Colombia’s landmark peace deal, describes how the formation of the state’s symbolic power occurs (or not) through local emotions. I focus on a coca substitution program that has both stoked pre-existing local desires for the promise of the state as carrier of peace and progress and that has, largely because of its outsourcing to different contractors, failed to live up to its commitments, causing economic collapse and generating feelings of betrayal, mistrust, confusion, and impotence. I show how local feelings respond to the regional transformation state formation has caused, popular representations of the state, and their direct interactions with substitution program officials, including non-state actors. I argue that more than simply byproducts of state formation, these emotions are constitutive of the local imaginations of “The State” that are key to the state’s development of symbolic power. It is in the realm of everyday life and emotions, the interplay between local desires for state presence and the frustrations generated by their actual encounters with state power, that state rule is achieved—or not.
{"title":"“The State is Coming”: The Emotional Content of State Formation through a Colombian Coca Substitution Program","authors":"A. Diamond","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac042","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 How do states achieve popular recognition and symbolic power as “The State,” a collectively recognized entity that serves the common good? While classic work has described the state idea as produced by the actions of state officials, it is ultimately ordinary citizens who must recognize the state as such and consent to its rule. This article, based on 20 months of ethnographic research in a village that, after decades of armed group control, is a key site for the implementation of Colombia’s landmark peace deal, describes how the formation of the state’s symbolic power occurs (or not) through local emotions. I focus on a coca substitution program that has both stoked pre-existing local desires for the promise of the state as carrier of peace and progress and that has, largely because of its outsourcing to different contractors, failed to live up to its commitments, causing economic collapse and generating feelings of betrayal, mistrust, confusion, and impotence. I show how local feelings respond to the regional transformation state formation has caused, popular representations of the state, and their direct interactions with substitution program officials, including non-state actors. I argue that more than simply byproducts of state formation, these emotions are constitutive of the local imaginations of “The State” that are key to the state’s development of symbolic power. It is in the realm of everyday life and emotions, the interplay between local desires for state presence and the frustrations generated by their actual encounters with state power, that state rule is achieved—or not.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48539266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper brings together scholarship on race, place, and legal status to examine how local context mediates the outcomes of federal refugee resettlement policy. Over the past several decades, local actors across the United States have developed initiatives to “welcome refugees” that interact with and extend beyond the formal federal program to shape refugee incorporation. Drawing on a comparative study of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia, I show that these initiatives construct different aspects of refugee identity as socially valuable. Refugees learn about these valuations as they seek access to resources and recognition, in turn amplifying desirable aspects of their identity to claim belonging and to distance themselves from racialized and stigmatized others. In Pittsburgh, refugees emphasize their ethnic identity and membership to ethnic groups, while refugees in Atlanta claim belonging by emphasizing their legal and humanitarian status as refugees. This paper contributes to scholarly understandings of refugee resettlement as a racialized process mediated by the institutional and socio-cultural dynamics of local context. Moreover, this paper extends calls to rethink the immigrant/refugee distinction by revealing the variable salience of the refugee status across subnational space.
{"title":"Rescaling Resettlement: Local Welcoming Policies and the Shaping of Refugee Belonging","authors":"Jake Watson","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac041","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper brings together scholarship on race, place, and legal status to examine how local context mediates the outcomes of federal refugee resettlement policy. Over the past several decades, local actors across the United States have developed initiatives to “welcome refugees” that interact with and extend beyond the formal federal program to shape refugee incorporation. Drawing on a comparative study of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia, I show that these initiatives construct different aspects of refugee identity as socially valuable. Refugees learn about these valuations as they seek access to resources and recognition, in turn amplifying desirable aspects of their identity to claim belonging and to distance themselves from racialized and stigmatized others. In Pittsburgh, refugees emphasize their ethnic identity and membership to ethnic groups, while refugees in Atlanta claim belonging by emphasizing their legal and humanitarian status as refugees. This paper contributes to scholarly understandings of refugee resettlement as a racialized process mediated by the institutional and socio-cultural dynamics of local context. Moreover, this paper extends calls to rethink the immigrant/refugee distinction by revealing the variable salience of the refugee status across subnational space.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41984584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article problematizes a particular category in immigration politics: refugee. Drawing on a content analysis of 356 television news segments that aired on five major news networks between 1980 and 2016, we examine how the category “refugee” has been used in public discourse, to whom it has been applied, and the factors that shape characterizations of those who receive the label. While existing research finds that the media disproportionately associate the term “immigrant” with economic, criminal, and national security threats, we find that U.S. television news coverage associates the term “refugee” with sympathy. We find that these sympathetic portrayals are contingent upon and most common in stories about migrants in distant locales. When the news media cover individuals likely to settle or who are already settled in the United States, coverage takes a more negative tone. We also find evidence that U.S. border politics and foreign political interests affect which migrants receive the refugee label and how they are portrayed. We conclude with implications for the sociological study of classification and for immigration politics more generally.
{"title":"Borders, Politics, and Bounded Sympathy: How U.S. Television News Constructs Refugees, 1980–2016","authors":"H. Brown, Michelle S. Dromgold-Sermen","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac036","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article problematizes a particular category in immigration politics: refugee. Drawing on a content analysis of 356 television news segments that aired on five major news networks between 1980 and 2016, we examine how the category “refugee” has been used in public discourse, to whom it has been applied, and the factors that shape characterizations of those who receive the label. While existing research finds that the media disproportionately associate the term “immigrant” with economic, criminal, and national security threats, we find that U.S. television news coverage associates the term “refugee” with sympathy. We find that these sympathetic portrayals are contingent upon and most common in stories about migrants in distant locales. When the news media cover individuals likely to settle or who are already settled in the United States, coverage takes a more negative tone. We also find evidence that U.S. border politics and foreign political interests affect which migrants receive the refugee label and how they are portrayed. We conclude with implications for the sociological study of classification and for immigration politics more generally.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47011197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a case study of commercial cannabis in the United States. Drawing on 56 interviews with cannabis stakeholders collected between 2018–2020, I examine how different governmentalities of surveillance became distorted by the contradiction between state and federal cannabis laws. As in other regulated markets, these governmentalities informed state-sponsored surveillance initiatives to stop, contain, or support certain forms of deviance by commercial cannabis businesses. Due to fragmented governance, the efficacy of these initiatives depended in part upon the actions of the regulated cannabis industry. Commercial cannabis businesses looked to how surveillance was configured to develop strategies that could help them overcome challenges stemming from their semi-legality. These strategies included incorporating practices that were not required by law, partnering with the state in surveillance efforts, and engaging in activities to combat the black market. I argue that the embedded relationship between governmentalities, surveillance initiatives, and commercial cannabis activities transformed these strategies into mechanisms through which structure emerged in this nascent market. This paper introduces a set of surveillance categories, proposes new directions for research on social control and markets, and offers a novel study of commercial cannabis that can help to explain the trajectory of this market.
{"title":"Surveillance, Social Control, and Managing Semi-Legality in U.S. Commercial Cannabis","authors":"Alexander B. Kinney","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac037","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents a case study of commercial cannabis in the United States. Drawing on 56 interviews with cannabis stakeholders collected between 2018–2020, I examine how different governmentalities of surveillance became distorted by the contradiction between state and federal cannabis laws. As in other regulated markets, these governmentalities informed state-sponsored surveillance initiatives to stop, contain, or support certain forms of deviance by commercial cannabis businesses. Due to fragmented governance, the efficacy of these initiatives depended in part upon the actions of the regulated cannabis industry. Commercial cannabis businesses looked to how surveillance was configured to develop strategies that could help them overcome challenges stemming from their semi-legality. These strategies included incorporating practices that were not required by law, partnering with the state in surveillance efforts, and engaging in activities to combat the black market. I argue that the embedded relationship between governmentalities, surveillance initiatives, and commercial cannabis activities transformed these strategies into mechanisms through which structure emerged in this nascent market. This paper introduces a set of surveillance categories, proposes new directions for research on social control and markets, and offers a novel study of commercial cannabis that can help to explain the trajectory of this market.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47428526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexander Testa, Dylan B. Jackson, Melissa S. Jones
Incarceration carries consequences for families, including negative impacts on female partners and children of incarcerated men. Whether incarceration that occurs around the time of pregnancy influences a father’s acknowledgement of paternity (AOP) of a newborn has been overlooked. The present study investigates the role of recent incarceration largely of male partners for AOP. Drawing on pooled-cross sectional data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for 2012–2018 (N = 178,131 in pooled analyses), multinomial logistic regression is used to assess significant differences in the association between incarceration exposure and three possible AOP statuses: married (tacit and automatic AOP), unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP, and unmarried without AOP. Findings demonstrated that incarceration-exposed women were approximately twice as likely to be unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP and over four times as likely to be unmarried without AOP. Results showed that among unmarried women, incarceration exposure still doubles the odds of unmarried without AOP compared to being unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP. Study findings highlight the novel ways that incarceration impacts family structure from the earliest stages of the life course by increasing the chances that recent mothers and their newborn children will be without legal recourse to paternal resources and support.
{"title":"Incarceration Exposure during Pregnancy and Father’s Acknowledgment of Paternity","authors":"Alexander Testa, Dylan B. Jackson, Melissa S. Jones","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac039","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Incarceration carries consequences for families, including negative impacts on female partners and children of incarcerated men. Whether incarceration that occurs around the time of pregnancy influences a father’s acknowledgement of paternity (AOP) of a newborn has been overlooked. The present study investigates the role of recent incarceration largely of male partners for AOP. Drawing on pooled-cross sectional data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for 2012–2018 (N = 178,131 in pooled analyses), multinomial logistic regression is used to assess significant differences in the association between incarceration exposure and three possible AOP statuses: married (tacit and automatic AOP), unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP, and unmarried without AOP. Findings demonstrated that incarceration-exposed women were approximately twice as likely to be unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP and over four times as likely to be unmarried without AOP. Results showed that among unmarried women, incarceration exposure still doubles the odds of unmarried without AOP compared to being unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP. Study findings highlight the novel ways that incarceration impacts family structure from the earliest stages of the life course by increasing the chances that recent mothers and their newborn children will be without legal recourse to paternal resources and support.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43722662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on interviews, some field research, and an analysis of online material, this paper focuses on the rights struggles of diasporic Indian caste groups formerly considered “Untouchable” whose self-chosen descriptor is “Dalit.” It examines Dalit activism in the United States around caste discrimination in both India and the U.S. The goal of this study is to demonstrate how Dalit American leaders use racial analogies in their international activism, and why race is a contested frame within the community. It makes clear that “universalistic” frames can obscure crucial particularities, making it harder to address the issue at hand. But it also reveals that dogmatic, particularistic frames can compromise the unity and mission of transnational movements. A 2020 lawsuit against Cisco Systems alleging caste discrimination toward a Dalit employee by Brahmin supervisors has opened the opportunity for anti-caste activists to develop a global norm specifically around how to address caste-based discrimination.
{"title":"The Racial Paradigm and Dalit Anti-Caste Activism in the United States","authors":"Prema A. Kurien","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on interviews, some field research, and an analysis of online material, this paper focuses on the rights struggles of diasporic Indian caste groups formerly considered “Untouchable” whose self-chosen descriptor is “Dalit.” It examines Dalit activism in the United States around caste discrimination in both India and the U.S. The goal of this study is to demonstrate how Dalit American leaders use racial analogies in their international activism, and why race is a contested frame within the community. It makes clear that “universalistic” frames can obscure crucial particularities, making it harder to address the issue at hand. But it also reveals that dogmatic, particularistic frames can compromise the unity and mission of transnational movements. A 2020 lawsuit against Cisco Systems alleging caste discrimination toward a Dalit employee by Brahmin supervisors has opened the opportunity for anti-caste activists to develop a global norm specifically around how to address caste-based discrimination.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42797457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joy is a crucial element of people’s everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. Their responses demonstrate the methodological and theoretical importance of asking about joy. Four main themes emerged from the interviews. First, interviewees easily answered the question about joy. Second, contrary to common assumptions, we found that transgender people expressed joy in being members of a marginalized group and said that they preferred being transgender. Third, embracing a marginalized identity caused the quality of their lives to improve, increasing self-confidence, body positivity, and sense of peace. Finally, being from a marginalized group facilitated meaningful connections with other people. Our findings demonstrate a vital need to address the joy deficit that exists in the sociological scholarship on transgender people specifically, and marginalized groups more generally. Bridging the sociology of knowledge and narratives, we show how accentuating joy offers nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of sociological scholarship.
{"title":"Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy","authors":"S. Shuster, Laurel Westbrook","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spac034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac034","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Joy is a crucial element of people’s everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. Their responses demonstrate the methodological and theoretical importance of asking about joy. Four main themes emerged from the interviews. First, interviewees easily answered the question about joy. Second, contrary to common assumptions, we found that transgender people expressed joy in being members of a marginalized group and said that they preferred being transgender. Third, embracing a marginalized identity caused the quality of their lives to improve, increasing self-confidence, body positivity, and sense of peace. Finally, being from a marginalized group facilitated meaningful connections with other people. Our findings demonstrate a vital need to address the joy deficit that exists in the sociological scholarship on transgender people specifically, and marginalized groups more generally. Bridging the sociology of knowledge and narratives, we show how accentuating joy offers nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of sociological scholarship.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48936038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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