Abstract Where one lives and works is increasingly important in shaping economic opportunities. Yet, women, particularly partnered women, are less likely than men to relocate for a job, potentially serving as a key force in the production of gender labor market stratification. We examine why women’s geographic job mobility is lower than men’s, building on theoretical insights about the structural features of the labor market as well as how households make decisions. Our contribution arises from examining job applications rather than completed job moves. This enables us to examine the behavior of job seekers independent of employers’ hiring decision-making that may shape the findings in scholarship that focuses on completed job moves. We draw on an original dataset that captures detailed, prospective information on the job applications submitted by a national, probability-based sample of job seekers. Our findings indicate that even at the application stage, partnered women – but not women who have never been married – are less likely than comparable men to apply for a job requiring a move. This pattern holds even after accounting for structural features of the labor market. Theories of gendered household dynamics appear to better explain our findings for partnered individuals than theories of household economic maximization.
{"title":"Gender Differences in the Geographic Breadth of Job Search: Examining Job Applications","authors":"Katariina Mueller-Gastell, David S Pedulla","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Where one lives and works is increasingly important in shaping economic opportunities. Yet, women, particularly partnered women, are less likely than men to relocate for a job, potentially serving as a key force in the production of gender labor market stratification. We examine why women’s geographic job mobility is lower than men’s, building on theoretical insights about the structural features of the labor market as well as how households make decisions. Our contribution arises from examining job applications rather than completed job moves. This enables us to examine the behavior of job seekers independent of employers’ hiring decision-making that may shape the findings in scholarship that focuses on completed job moves. We draw on an original dataset that captures detailed, prospective information on the job applications submitted by a national, probability-based sample of job seekers. Our findings indicate that even at the application stage, partnered women – but not women who have never been married – are less likely than comparable men to apply for a job requiring a move. This pattern holds even after accounting for structural features of the labor market. Theories of gendered household dynamics appear to better explain our findings for partnered individuals than theories of household economic maximization.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134973688","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}
Abstract Organizations are increasingly engaging in concerted efforts to mitigate bias in processes such as performance evaluations. However, little research examines what makes bias easier for organizations to address through formal initiatives and what makes bias more resistant to such change. When organizations shed light on the biases embedded in a particular organizational process, where are interventions successful, and where do they fall short? Using a longitudinal sample of performance evaluations from an elite professional services firm, we find that managers have an easier time reducing gender differences in the way they view employees’ behaviors, as compared to the way managers value those behaviors. Managers successfully decreased gendered descriptions of personality and communication style. However, when we examine the relationship between language patterns and rating, we find that the same behaviors correspond with a different payoff for women and men. Our findings add to the literature on organizational change by identifying the successes and challenges of bias mitigation efforts aimed at training managers, and we contribute to research on status and stereotypes by identifying new pathways through which cultural ideas about gender impact the evaluation of employees.
{"title":"High-Hanging Fruit: How Gender Bias Remains Entrenched in Performance Evaluations","authors":"Alison T Wynn, Emily K Carian","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Organizations are increasingly engaging in concerted efforts to mitigate bias in processes such as performance evaluations. However, little research examines what makes bias easier for organizations to address through formal initiatives and what makes bias more resistant to such change. When organizations shed light on the biases embedded in a particular organizational process, where are interventions successful, and where do they fall short? Using a longitudinal sample of performance evaluations from an elite professional services firm, we find that managers have an easier time reducing gender differences in the way they view employees’ behaviors, as compared to the way managers value those behaviors. Managers successfully decreased gendered descriptions of personality and communication style. However, when we examine the relationship between language patterns and rating, we find that the same behaviors correspond with a different payoff for women and men. Our findings add to the literature on organizational change by identifying the successes and challenges of bias mitigation efforts aimed at training managers, and we contribute to research on status and stereotypes by identifying new pathways through which cultural ideas about gender impact the evaluation of employees.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"144 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948337","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}
Abstract This study examined the gender gap, gendered opportunity, and the contextual influence of gender inequality and women’s absolute status with respect to online stalking victimization and online image-based victimization (IBV) among youths in 31 countries. Descriptive analysis allowed for comparison of prevalence of online stalking and IBV across gender. We estimated sex-specific hierarchical logistic regression models that examined the relationships between indicators of risky lifestyle, social attachments, physical/social vulnerability and online stalking victimization and IBV. We estimated multilevel models that focused on the linear and curvilinear effects of country-level gender inequality and women’s absolute status (WAS) on the average country-level odds of online stalking victimization and IBV. There were both cross-gender similarities and differences regarding the individual-level correlates of both types of adolescent cybervictimization examined. Countries that had relatively greater gender inequality tended to exhibit a higher prevalence of boys’ and girls’ victimization. Findings suggest that student-level programs should address risk, vulnerability, and protective factors across the three student life domains of risky lifestyle, social attachments, and physical and social vulnerability. Addressing risky lifestyle seems particularly important for reducing girls’ victimization. Moreover, reducing gender inequality or increasing women’s absolute status can play a role in reducing youth online victimization generally.
{"title":"Adolescent Cybervictimization in 31 Countries: The Gender Gap, Gendered Opportunity, and the Contextual Influence of Gender Stratification","authors":"Rustu Deryol, Rachel L McNealey, Pamela Wilcox","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examined the gender gap, gendered opportunity, and the contextual influence of gender inequality and women’s absolute status with respect to online stalking victimization and online image-based victimization (IBV) among youths in 31 countries. Descriptive analysis allowed for comparison of prevalence of online stalking and IBV across gender. We estimated sex-specific hierarchical logistic regression models that examined the relationships between indicators of risky lifestyle, social attachments, physical/social vulnerability and online stalking victimization and IBV. We estimated multilevel models that focused on the linear and curvilinear effects of country-level gender inequality and women’s absolute status (WAS) on the average country-level odds of online stalking victimization and IBV. There were both cross-gender similarities and differences regarding the individual-level correlates of both types of adolescent cybervictimization examined. Countries that had relatively greater gender inequality tended to exhibit a higher prevalence of boys’ and girls’ victimization. Findings suggest that student-level programs should address risk, vulnerability, and protective factors across the three student life domains of risky lifestyle, social attachments, and physical and social vulnerability. Addressing risky lifestyle seems particularly important for reducing girls’ victimization. Moreover, reducing gender inequality or increasing women’s absolute status can play a role in reducing youth online victimization generally.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135695450","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}
Abstract Race and racism play an integral role in shaping mothering practices. Specifically, motherwork examines how Black mothers use strategies and practices to shield children from, as well as help them navigate through, experiences of racism. The necessity of these mothering practices may be fundamental in how motherhood is experienced for Black women. This study used qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with 35 predominantly middle-class Black mothers of children in adolescence and young/emerging adulthood. A grounded theoretical and Black feminist approach was taken to analyze data. Black mothers take on numerous laborious and exhaustive strategies to shield their children from racism through what I theorize as the concept of intensive motherwork. I define intensive motherwork as the exhaustive efforts and effects of Black mothers protecting and empowering their children and themselves in the face of anti-Black racism. Intensive motherwork can be seen in three broad themes: (1) protective mothering, (2) resistance mothering, and (3) encumbered mothering. This work expands current discourse on Black families by highlighting the overlap between the intensive nature of Black women’s mothering, the laborious practices that are deployed, and the role of race and racism on Black women’s mothering experience.
{"title":"Can’t Just Send Our Children Out: Intensive Motherwork and Experiences of Black Motherhood","authors":"Mia Brantley","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad047","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Race and racism play an integral role in shaping mothering practices. Specifically, motherwork examines how Black mothers use strategies and practices to shield children from, as well as help them navigate through, experiences of racism. The necessity of these mothering practices may be fundamental in how motherhood is experienced for Black women. This study used qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with 35 predominantly middle-class Black mothers of children in adolescence and young/emerging adulthood. A grounded theoretical and Black feminist approach was taken to analyze data. Black mothers take on numerous laborious and exhaustive strategies to shield their children from racism through what I theorize as the concept of intensive motherwork. I define intensive motherwork as the exhaustive efforts and effects of Black mothers protecting and empowering their children and themselves in the face of anti-Black racism. Intensive motherwork can be seen in three broad themes: (1) protective mothering, (2) resistance mothering, and (3) encumbered mothering. This work expands current discourse on Black families by highlighting the overlap between the intensive nature of Black women’s mothering, the laborious practices that are deployed, and the role of race and racism on Black women’s mothering experience.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136376035","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}
Abstract A limited number of studies have examined how Black children, particularly daughters, perceive Black men who provide care—financial, material, or emotional support—to children who are not their biological or legal children (these men are here conceptualized as “otherfathers”). Using accounts from in-depth interviews with twenty-six young Black women from two-parent and single-mother households, this study explores how daughters identify and assign meaning to otherfathers. Findings reveal a heterogeneous category with no single definition or set of criteria; rather, the young women enact a process of parental ascription to determine who “counts” as an otherfather. Otherfathers’ contributions are understood in relation to biological fathers’ involvement but not always in expected ways. The study challenges assumptions about how daughters think about otherfathers and reveals the importance of examining the perspectives of Black girl youth and young women.
{"title":"Young Black Women’s Perceptions of Otherfather Involvement","authors":"Maria S Johnson","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A limited number of studies have examined how Black children, particularly daughters, perceive Black men who provide care—financial, material, or emotional support—to children who are not their biological or legal children (these men are here conceptualized as “otherfathers”). Using accounts from in-depth interviews with twenty-six young Black women from two-parent and single-mother households, this study explores how daughters identify and assign meaning to otherfathers. Findings reveal a heterogeneous category with no single definition or set of criteria; rather, the young women enact a process of parental ascription to determine who “counts” as an otherfather. Otherfathers’ contributions are understood in relation to biological fathers’ involvement but not always in expected ways. The study challenges assumptions about how daughters think about otherfathers and reveals the importance of examining the perspectives of Black girl youth and young women.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136375725","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}
Abstract While the literature has documented various factors influencing the geographic distribution of interracial homicide, little is known about the role of historical antecedents. This article deepens our understanding of interracial homicide by investigating the relationship between slavery and contemporary interracial killings in the American South. The study draws on historical accounts of race-making and Black dehumanization to argue that slavery provided a fertile backdrop for the emergence of a culture of White interracial violence. Slavery’s legacy in this regard is expected to influence contemporary rates of White interracial homicide but not impact other racial homicide outcomes. Findings from county-level negative binomial regression models support these predictions, revealing a significant association between the historical legacy of slavery and higher rates of White-on-Black Southern killings. Conversely, slavery does not influence other race-specific homicide patterns, including Black-on-White, White-on-White, and Black-on-Black homicide.
{"title":"A Culture of White Violence: The Enduring Impact of Slavery on Contemporary Interracial Killings","authors":"Jonathan C Reid","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While the literature has documented various factors influencing the geographic distribution of interracial homicide, little is known about the role of historical antecedents. This article deepens our understanding of interracial homicide by investigating the relationship between slavery and contemporary interracial killings in the American South. The study draws on historical accounts of race-making and Black dehumanization to argue that slavery provided a fertile backdrop for the emergence of a culture of White interracial violence. Slavery’s legacy in this regard is expected to influence contemporary rates of White interracial homicide but not impact other racial homicide outcomes. Findings from county-level negative binomial regression models support these predictions, revealing a significant association between the historical legacy of slavery and higher rates of White-on-Black Southern killings. Conversely, slavery does not influence other race-specific homicide patterns, including Black-on-White, White-on-White, and Black-on-Black homicide.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135690046","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}
Abstract This article explores the gendered labor of transmasculine sex workers as they navigate client requests for genderplay, an eroticized form of gender misrecognition. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender men and AFAB nonbinary sex workers, I conceptualize this specific form of gendered labor as reclaimed and reconfigured femininity, a skilled labor process that can produce unique pleasures and pains for this group of workers. Accomplishing reclaimed and reconfigured femininity requires negotiating the demands, anxieties, and erotic needs of clients, which can come into conflict with their identities as transmasculine people. Despite the potential costs of such investments of emotional labor, I find that this process can become a subversive practice of self-exploration and gender-making, as well as a source of pleasure for the workers themselves. The gendered consequences of paid genderplay are more complicated and even contradictory than they first appear. Although the process of reconfigured and reclaimed femininity described here is, in many ways, unique to sex work or to transmasculine experiences of work, it also offers fresh insight for sociological analysis of gender, labor, and pleasure.
{"title":"Genderplay: Reclaiming and Reconfiguring Femininity through the Gendered Labor Practices of Transmasculine Sex Workers","authors":"Elliot Chudyk","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores the gendered labor of transmasculine sex workers as they navigate client requests for genderplay, an eroticized form of gender misrecognition. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender men and AFAB nonbinary sex workers, I conceptualize this specific form of gendered labor as reclaimed and reconfigured femininity, a skilled labor process that can produce unique pleasures and pains for this group of workers. Accomplishing reclaimed and reconfigured femininity requires negotiating the demands, anxieties, and erotic needs of clients, which can come into conflict with their identities as transmasculine people. Despite the potential costs of such investments of emotional labor, I find that this process can become a subversive practice of self-exploration and gender-making, as well as a source of pleasure for the workers themselves. The gendered consequences of paid genderplay are more complicated and even contradictory than they first appear. Although the process of reconfigured and reclaimed femininity described here is, in many ways, unique to sex work or to transmasculine experiences of work, it also offers fresh insight for sociological analysis of gender, labor, and pleasure.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135830589","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}
Abstract Selecting a name for a child represents an important symbolic and cultural decision. As social labels, names serve as identity markers that influence how their bearers are perceived and treated. Sociologists are increasingly taking advantage of the study of names, with most adopting a quantitative approach and analyzing names as outcomes. Less is known about the social meanings surrounding names and motivations behind naming decisions, the examination of which can provide insight into parental aspirations, the reproduction of class, and strategies for ethnoracial integration. Drawing on 72 in-depth interviews with Mexican-origin respondents, I show how middle-class parents leverage first names to meet their goals of creating middle-class, multicultural children. I find respondents practice intensive naming, a strategic pre-birth form of parenting, where parents carefully assess naming options with the goal of maximizing their children’s opportunities vis-à-vis ethnoracial integration and class distinction. Specifically, I show how parents chose names that are ethnically flexible and signal middle-class status to facilitate their successful integration into various ethnoracial contexts. These findings illustrate the unique challenges parents of color face in their intensive parenting efforts and how names are used as cultural tools to position the next generation in desirable class and ethnoracial terms.
{"title":"Intensive Naming: Concerted Cultivation and Flexible Ethnicity among U.S. Middle-Class Mexican-Origin Parents","authors":"Christina A Sue","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad042","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Selecting a name for a child represents an important symbolic and cultural decision. As social labels, names serve as identity markers that influence how their bearers are perceived and treated. Sociologists are increasingly taking advantage of the study of names, with most adopting a quantitative approach and analyzing names as outcomes. Less is known about the social meanings surrounding names and motivations behind naming decisions, the examination of which can provide insight into parental aspirations, the reproduction of class, and strategies for ethnoracial integration. Drawing on 72 in-depth interviews with Mexican-origin respondents, I show how middle-class parents leverage first names to meet their goals of creating middle-class, multicultural children. I find respondents practice intensive naming, a strategic pre-birth form of parenting, where parents carefully assess naming options with the goal of maximizing their children’s opportunities vis-à-vis ethnoracial integration and class distinction. Specifically, I show how parents chose names that are ethnically flexible and signal middle-class status to facilitate their successful integration into various ethnoracial contexts. These findings illustrate the unique challenges parents of color face in their intensive parenting efforts and how names are used as cultural tools to position the next generation in desirable class and ethnoracial terms.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135285905","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}
Abstract How is urban poverty governed? Scholarship emphasizes the significance of social assistance programs and criminal legal systems, but considerably less attention has been given to medical institutions. Drawing on contemporary and historical evidence across journalistic, bureaucratic, and academic texts, we conceptualize and compare three arenas for medically governing the poor in Los Angeles, California: clinical medicine, welfare medicine, and penal medicine. In addition to detailing the differences between these formations of medicine, we illustrate how each is embedded in similar political and productive relations. Ending with a call to reframe medicine as a primary institution for governing the poor, this article helps advance a relational vision of governance.
{"title":"City of Gauze: Medicine and the Governance of Urban Poverty","authors":"Josh Seim, Anthony DiMario","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad041","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How is urban poverty governed? Scholarship emphasizes the significance of social assistance programs and criminal legal systems, but considerably less attention has been given to medical institutions. Drawing on contemporary and historical evidence across journalistic, bureaucratic, and academic texts, we conceptualize and compare three arenas for medically governing the poor in Los Angeles, California: clinical medicine, welfare medicine, and penal medicine. In addition to detailing the differences between these formations of medicine, we illustrate how each is embedded in similar political and productive relations. Ending with a call to reframe medicine as a primary institution for governing the poor, this article helps advance a relational vision of governance.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135285673","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 individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model remains largely under-documented. Through analysis of the narratives of men and women living in a large, medium-security correctional complex in Gauteng, South Africa, I argue that the grandiloquent official discourse of rehabilitation constitutes an important resource for those incarcerated. Highlighting the importance of local context in debates about carceral rehabilitation, I demonstrate that not only prisoners’ personal circumstances, but also the wider socio-economic context of enduring colonial legacies of structural inequalities shape their interactions with the penal regime. By foregrounding what those subjected to penal power make of their incarceration, I argue that the official rehabilitative discourse helps many to make sense of their predicament, actualise their lives, and sustain hope. I highlight how individual narrative strategies are channeled by and mapped on the official discourse of rehabilitation, free will, and personal responsibility, attesting to the success of the disciplinary project of the post-apartheid prison. I demonstrate how prisoners incorporate engagement with the rehabilitative model into a moral order of carceral cohabitation. I suggest that narrative work in the prison constitutes a nexus of individual needs and private aspirations and structural regimes of inequality, poverty, deprivation, and neglect.
{"title":"Narratives of Rehabilitation in a South African Prison","authors":"Anton Symkovych","doi":"10.1093/socpro/spad040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad040","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 How individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model remains largely under-documented. Through analysis of the narratives of men and women living in a large, medium-security correctional complex in Gauteng, South Africa, I argue that the grandiloquent official discourse of rehabilitation constitutes an important resource for those incarcerated. Highlighting the importance of local context in debates about carceral rehabilitation, I demonstrate that not only prisoners’ personal circumstances, but also the wider socio-economic context of enduring colonial legacies of structural inequalities shape their interactions with the penal regime. By foregrounding what those subjected to penal power make of their incarceration, I argue that the official rehabilitative discourse helps many to make sense of their predicament, actualise their lives, and sustain hope. I highlight how individual narrative strategies are channeled by and mapped on the official discourse of rehabilitation, free will, and personal responsibility, attesting to the success of the disciplinary project of the post-apartheid prison. I demonstrate how prisoners incorporate engagement with the rehabilitative model into a moral order of carceral cohabitation. I suggest that narrative work in the prison constitutes a nexus of individual needs and private aspirations and structural regimes of inequality, poverty, deprivation, and neglect.","PeriodicalId":48307,"journal":{"name":"Social Problems","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44157956","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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