Final Conference Program with Abstracts

This is the final program annotated with available paper abstracts.

Last updated February 8, 2005

5:00 - 7:00 pm

Conference Registration and Welcome Reception
At the Bugaboo Room, Marriott Hotel Downtown

7:15 – 8:15 am

Ongoing Conference Registration: UMC 382-386

1. Bodies and Symbolic Interactionism: UMC 382-386
Organized by Rebecca F. Plante, Ithaca College

Not a Pretty Site: Gendered Bodies, Endangered Selves, and Eating (Dis)Orders
Phillip Vannini, University of Victoria, Canada
Martha McMahon, University of Victoria, Canada
Aaron McRight, Michigan State University

In this paper we interpret the discourses and practices of the Internet-based community of pro-anorexics known as pro-Ana and pro-Mia.  We conduct a discourse analysis of information collected from pro-Ana and pro-Mia websites and analyze form and content of websites from an ethnomethodological, Foucauldian, and feminist perspective.  We argue that pro-Ana followers employ four strategies to achieve order in their life and de-problematize their condition: strategies we refer to as sacralization, scientization, enculturation, and routinization of Ana, Mia, and related discourses-in-practice and discursive practices.   We reflect on how these strategies constitute hegemonic technologies of the body, gender, and self.  

There are No Victims Here: Determination vs. Disorder in Pro-Anorexia
William Ryan Force, University of South Florida

"Eating disorders" such as anorexia and bulimia have been constructed as a major threat to the health of those who are stricken with them and responded to accordingly. An interesting product of this is the surfacing of groups that defend anorexia as a positive experience for themselves and others. Quite naturally, there has been a counter-movement of parents, physicians, and other concerned folks who oppose what is known as 'pro- anorexia,' or 'pro-ana.' Any social problem is constructed by and carries with it a set of vocabularies, discourses, and frames; in my analysis I compare the terms of the pro-ana and anti-pro-ana groups and the contrasts made between the two. Furthermore, I analyze the pro-ana discourse that creates, from one behavior, two separate identities.

The Makeup of 'Plain' Women: Beauty and the Body in the Amish
Andrea Wagganer, University of South Florida

In the plethora of Western research, both feminist and otherwise, on beauty, it is taken for granted that mass media is especially effective in impacting women's perceptions of beauty. If we agree with this, then a key question arises: how is beauty constructed for those who do not consume mass mediated representations of women? How is beauty perceived for people who do not engage in the consumption and capitalism of an appearance-obsessed society? To answer these questions, I did intensive interviews and informal observations in a community of Amish women in the Northeastern United States. My interviews reveal what lies beneath the composed, 'plain' faces of women in a subculture with ostensibly very different perspectives on appearance and beauty.

Created Bodies: Experiences of Selves and Sexualities for Trans People
Rebecca F. Plante, Ithaca College
Braeden Sullivan, Santa Clara University School of Law

Most research on trans(gendered) people suffers from several flaws: overreliance on clinical samples, small sample sizes, overreliance on quantitative data, dearth of questions on the sexual body, and a dearth of perspective on individuals' experiences of their bodies and sexualities, pre- and post- transition. Utilizing an Internet survey of 250 trans people, 18-69, from seven countries, we examine the role of sex hormones in interpretation of the body, the self, and sexuality. Via respondents' own words, we explore differences and similarities for people transitioning into manhood and womanhood.

2. Self and Other: UMC 415-417
Organized by Erica Owens, Marquette University

The Air We Breathe: Subject-Object versus Interpretant-Representant
Hans Bakker, University of Guelph, Canada

Democracy in the Workplace: The Lessons of Donald Trump and The Apprentice
Elizabeth Franko, University of Colorado at Boulder

Unstable Social Relationships and the Fragile Self
Dan E. Miller, University of Dayton

The Not-Self
Paul Colomy, University of Denver

3. Emotions and Symbolic Interactionism: UMC 382-386
Organized by Jason Rosow, Indiana University

Finding the Emotion of Fear: Fears of Minority Women in an Urban Neighborhood
Laura Hanson, University of South Florida

The present literature in field of the Sociology of Emotion has disregarded fear in the discourse of examining the importance of emotion in social life. Tudor (2003) describes fear as the sociology of emotions “black box.” While there are pieces on fear in regards to specific conditions such as fear of crime or psychological examinations of fear, little is understood about the social experience, creation, reactions, and consequences of individual and social fears. What is needed is a marrying of the literature available on social understandings of fear that comes primarily from the fear of crime literature with the literature in the sociology of emotion realm in attempt to construct a step towards the understanding of how fear plays a role in daily rituals, routines, and interactions.

In this paper, I will illustrate and discuss the fears of minority women in an urban neighborhood that is overwhelmed with social problems, show the relationship between what and how these fears compare to current available academic literature on fear, and argue that social and environmental contextual frameworks are the sources of emotional fear as well as the response felt from the fear. Not only will I report on the fears expressed by the women of my study, I also will also discuss how fear is defined and conceptualized amongst the women and how it differs from traditional definitions of fear rooted in psychology.

"I Get so Emotional Baby!": Emotions as Construct, Strategy, Motivation, and Labor in Social Movement Organizing
Mary C. Burk, University of Connecticut

Emotions have recently received renewed attention and interest in the study of social movements, due in large part to the so-called “cultural turn” in sociology. This body of literature has not only demonstrated the importance of emotions in social movements and collective action, but has shown that they are relevant for a variety of reasons. Building from this literature, this paper focuses on the multiple roles that emotions play in one social movement organization. Data was collected through participant observation in and in-depth interviews with members of LAFFA (Love and Family For All), a statewide gay rights organization focused on winning marriage equality for same-sex couples. Based on research conducted during four months in the field, this paper identifies four distinct but interrelated ways in which emotions operate in social movement organizations. Specifically, this paper addresses emotions as constructs, strategic tools, motivating factors, and labor. After outlining these four key roles, I then highlight the multiple ways in which emotions play out in each arena. Finally, I address the implications of this research for the study of emotions and social movements.

Anger and Anguish in Maternity Care: Experiences of Women in Prenatal Services for the Poor
Linda E. Francis, State University of New York at Stony Brook

4. Workshop: Interactionists on the Academic Job Market: UMC 382-386
Organized by Peter Adler, University of Denver

5. Roundtable on Cyber-methods: UMC 415-417
Organized by Patricia A. Adler, University of Colorado at Boulder

6. Language and Interaction: UMC 415-417
Organized by Phillip Vannini, University of Victoria, Canada

Establishing the Moral Stance for Blame and Blaming in Narrative
Erica Owens, Marquette University
Gale Miller, Marquette University

Memories of Everyday Life in Communist Bulgaria: Negotiating Identity in Immigrant Narratives
Nadia Kaneva, University of Colorado at Boulder

Pitting Language Against Silence and Death: Representing the Worlds of Late-Stage Dementia Sufferers
Pauline Savy, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia

This paper proceeds from my doctoral research on sufferers’ experiences of dementia in three long-term aged care settings in Victoria, Australia. My focus in this paper is on the methodological problems associated with including a silent, dementia sufferer as an informant in my research. At my final research site, a dementia day care and respite setting, I met Lyla who no longer spoke but paced about in an agitated way. Lyla took the problem of representing an other’s world of experience through qualitative, reflective methodologies to an extreme point where finding words for her silence and for my interpretive means became pressing, practical matters.

The paper describes my approach to capture and to find words for Lyla’s ambiguous existence and experience. My efforts reflect the requirement to produce an account to fit within an approved methodological ‘vocabulary’ and my use of writing as a prime methodological device. Significantly, my efforts work to include marginal, cognitively impaired, interactionally difficult individuals in sociological studies of illness experience. My paper contributes to a relatively small literature about the worlds of elderly individuals and is distinguished by its aim to grasp the subjective experience of sufferers.

Protecting an Image: How Political Candidates Strategically Respond to Degrading Questions Posed During a Televised Political Debate
Stephen Ostertag, University of Connecticut

We-feelings in the UniverCity: A Semiotic Study of How Media Constructs a Sense of Community
Gordon Gauchat, University of Connecticut

7. New Empirical Studies I: UMC 382-386
Organized by Angus Vail, Willamette University

Learning to Dance while Becoming a Dancer
Matt Caudill, University of South Florida

Hooking-up in 'Fun in Games'
Scott Renshaw, Arizona State University

Ethreal Members and Real Interaction: The Internet and Online Organizations
Matt Lust, Southern Utah University

Perps and Junkies: Normalizing Stigma in the Mass Media
David L. Altheide & Katie DeVries
Arizona State University

Friendly Force: Ambivalence in the K-9 Officer/Patrol Dog Relationship
Clinton R. Sanders, University of Connecticut

8. Panel on Innovations in Communication Ethnography: UMC 415-417
Organized by Bryan C. Taylor, Department of Communication University of Colorado at Boulder

The Exchange of Social Support among Graduate Students
Linda Horwitz, University of Colorado at Boulder

Social support is a concept within the field of communication that includes interactions leading an individual to perceive him/herself as “a) cared for and loved, b) esteemed and valued, and c) a member of a network of communication and obligation”. Social support is experienced by all members of society and has been found to contribute to improved physical and psychological health. This concept is of particular interest on a college campus where students are involved in new life experiences ranging from moving away from parents and friends to acquiring increased responsibilities. This study investigates social support within a group that experiences high levels of stress, specifically graduate students in the communication department. With responsibilities including coursework and teaching as well as maintenance of personal lives that may include spouses and children, graduate students are part of a high stress community. As a result of this stress, these students turn to one another for social support. Researching this phenomenon has provided insight into the ways in which these individuals provide support to one another and has revealed that this social support often serves as a form of resistance toward political and competitive aspects of the academic culture.

This project draws on previous research in the areas of social support, resistance, ethnography, and academic cultures. The question I pursue is, “In what ways do people in this culture communicate support to each other in their daily pursuits?” The second component of my question is, “What is the impact of this support on members of the group?” Data was be gathered through participant observation within a common office space used by graduate students both for working and socializing. Graduate students were additionally asked to volunteer for participation in interviews designed to explore their own perceptions of both received and given social support within the group.

The Stories We Tell: Investigating Firefighter Culture
John McClellan, University of Colorado at Boulder

The purpose of this project was to study how narrative reflects the development, maintenance, and transformation of organizational cultures. I researched this phenomenon by studying the stories firefighters tell each other about their work and lives. This study contributed to existing research regarding how organizations develop and maintain cultures by telling stories. Further, this research supported the theory that the telling of stories is a crucial part of individual sense-making within organizations. Specifically, this study explored the theory that organizational narrative expressed through everyday conversation and jokes serve as representations of cultural forms.

To conduct this study, I interacted with a group of firefighters at a fire station in the Denver/Boulder metro area and engaged them in conversation. I utilized the qualitative research methods of participant observation and narrative interviews for this project. I participated in informal dialogue with firefighters at the fire station, listened to the stories they told about their calls (emergency responses), observed their talk about life as firefighters, and examined the implications their stories had on their identities and organizational culture. As a part of these informal conversations, I asked the firefighters to tell me what happened during their calls and engaged in discussion about their lives as firefighters. I also conducted individual interviews with six firefighters to study individual firefighters’ sense of personal identity and relation to their organizational culture.

Narrative as Vernacular: Constituting Community among Transients, Tourists, and Locals
Erin Underwood, University of Colorado at Boulder

As the world becomes larger, more complex, and easily accessible, a sense of “community” emerges as a fragile place which requires an individual to seek out others with whom to negotiate belonging, meaning, and a collective identity. As individuals interact with others, they tell stories as a way of representing experiences, values, and a sense of self so that they may collectively negotiate their community. Social interaction requires the engagement of others, and an individual’s identity is linked to “others” in ways that allow communication to dynamically define and alter social constructs such as community. The collective identity of community is negotiated, and an individual takes on “insider” or “outsider” status in the process. Perceived community identity is narrated, interpreted, retold and reinterpreted until a community’s boundaries are momentarily (re)established through the identification process. This research investigates vernacular stories and the insights they reveal about the self, the other, and community. In the resort mountain area studied, community is flexible and diverse, allowing for a combination of ages, backgrounds, financial situations, and experiences to coexist. Participants openly discuss their community as a vernacular construct alive with meaning, purpose, and personal relevance. Analyzing the narratives told by these community members allows insight into the correlation among an individual’s sense of self, identification process, and the formation of community.

Analysis of data collected from narrative interviews with community members focused on the discrepancy between institutional definitions of community and participants’ rhetorical constructions of community. By producing vernacular narratives salient texts that display the ongoing negotiation of community, a collective of individuals functions in a way which is socially, politically, and personally productive.

Making Place of Cyberspace: The Use of Spatial Metaphors in an Introductory and Intermediate HTML Classroom
Jason Lesko, University of Colorado at Boulder

Few would disagree that the widespread use of the World Wide Web and related technologies has changed the way we conduct business, research, shop, communicate, and plan our activities. With its emergence, a wide variety of literatures have attended to its relevant features as “New Media.” Despite this novelty, we must still recognize the old frames that we use to conceptualize what a medium can do. Carolyn Marvin (1989) has argued that cadres of intellectuals and pundits typically herald a new medium as groundbreaking, utopian or dystopian. These speech communities vie for authority over the use and regulation of many of the aspects of these new technologies, training their experts, and serving as the new technology’s representative. In this way, this study engages the nature of certified Web ‘experts’ and specialists. One of the Web’s keystone technologies is HTML (Hypertext Mark-Up Language), which allows users to program text, pictures, and various graphic elements into the ‘Home’ pages that dot the Webscape. Hailed as a widely interoperable and open domain, HTML has become a core feature of the Web’s infrastructure. This study draws our attention to the neglected topic HTML training. Focusing on the qualities of interaction between HTML trainers and students, I explore how “place” becomes an important metaphor that helps participants to apprehend the Web. At the same time, this frame erases numerous other alternatives for conceptualizing and engaging the Web. The project combines more than 40 hours of participant observation with in-depth interviews and questionnaires.

Open Space: Free Time to Explore Boulder

Special Note: Donna Haraway to speak

Donna Haraway will be speaking on Friday February 11, 2005, 5-6:30 p.m. on the University of Colorado campus in Duane Physics G1B20. Dr. Haraway will be presenting a paper entitled "We Have Never Been Human: Companion Species in NatureCultures, based on topics from her recent book The Companion Species manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness.

Meet in Marriott Hotel lobby to go to Banquet

Banquet at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street, Boulder, CO 80302

7:15 – 8:00 am

Ongoing Conference Registration: UMC 425

9. Panel on Qualitative Studies in Media Research: UMC 382-386
Organized by Stewart Hoover, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder

Narratives of Self in Qualitative Media Audience Studies
Stewart Hoover, University of Colorado at Boulder

Quilting Identities: Threading the Researcher Self with the Informant Other in the Construction of Interpretations
Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Colorado at Boulder
Monica Emerich, University of Colorado at Boulder

Narratives of Family, Meaning, and Values: Field Research on Family Identity through Children’s Eyes
Lee Hood, University of Colorado at Boulder

Mothering, Commodities, and Symbols in the Social Practice of Scrapbooking
Kendra Gale, University of Colorado at Boulder

10. Understanding Violence: UMC 415-417
Organized by Eleanor Lyon, University of Connecticut

But This Interview Isn't "About" Violence: Navigating Unexpected Trauma Talk in Participant Narratives
Erica Owens, Marquette University

Rehab for Hookers: Normalizing, Establishing Control and Perceiving Family in a Total Institution
Katherine Neary, Willamette University

“What’s Wrong with Violence?”
John Johnson, Arizona State University

The Silence/Violence Pattern: A Theory of Male Emotions
Thomas Scheff, University of California, Santa Barbara

A particular emotional/relational configuration may lead to violence. Four emotions seem central: “the vulnerable emotions”(grief, fear, and shame), on the one hand, and anger, on the other. The relational component is the virtual absence of close bonds to others. It is possible that suppression of vulnerable emotions, acting out anger, and lack of bonds gives rise to the silence/violence pattern: meeting threats to self with either silence or violence. This pattern seems to occur much more frequently in men than in women. Two instances of massive violence illustrate these ideas: the massacre of civilians at My Lai, Vietnam, ordered and assisted by William Calley, and the monstrous violence orchestrated by the Germans under Hitler. Hitler’s biographies, plentiful and detailed, provide many examples linking his extreme violence to suppression of vulnerable emotions, anger tantrums, and absence of bonds. The silence/violence pattern may result in violence directly through leaders like Hitler and Calley, and also indirectly, when this pattern is the basis of public support for violent leaders.

11. Race and Ethnicity: UMC 382-386
Organized by Lori Peek, University of Colorado at Boulder

Environmental Justice and Social Power Rhetoric: A Case Study of the Makah Whaling Movement and Anti-Whaling Counter-Movement
Julia Miller-Cantzler, University of Colorado at Boulder

This study examines the ideological battle between the Makah Indian Tribe and various environmental groups over the Tribe’s quest to resume its 2000 year-old tradition of hunting gray whales for ceremonial and dietary purposes. Through qualitative content analysis of 268 newspaper articles, this study analyzes the opposing rhetoric used by the opponents and proponents of indigenous whaling and exposes fundamental differences in how these competing movements frame the issues that comprise the substance of their claims. The study finds that, as with other environmental justice movements, the Makah whaling movement employs rhetoric common to the Environmental Justice Paradigm (EJP), which incorporates notions of racial discrimination and injustice into preexisting ideas about the state of the environment. Unlike other environmental justice movements, however, the Makah whaling movement also employs rhetoric of tribalism, which emphasizes respect for the Tribe’s cultural identity, and stresses the importance of self-determination and resistance to assimilation. The rhetoric used by the anti-whaling campaign, on the other hand, reflects ideological foundations common to mainstream environmental movements. These foundations tend to reflect the environmental experiences of the mainstream movement’s white, middle-class membership and primarily stress the value of nature over man and demonstrate the members’ deep compassion for animal species. This study finds that the rhetorical frames which shape the claims of the anti-whaling movement not only reflect the members’ more privileged environmental experiences, but also reveal a sense of moral superiority that is not uncommon in counter-movements orchestrated by those in positions of greater social power than those they oppose.

Chicanos Structured by the Barrio and Whites Feeling Postmodern in the Suburbs
Robert Duran, University of Colorado at Boulder

This presentation explores how Chicano/a and White interactions are structured by their social position in the United States. This research draws on inner city Chicano and Suburban White experiences of thoughts, analysis, interviews, and interaction throughout my life. In the barrio, Chicanos concentrate on getting by each day with the pressures of unequal education, housing, jobs, police, and treatment by Whites. Barrio Chicanos play, joke, hang out, work, and raise their families. In the suburbs, Whites can concentrate on needs other than daily survival. Suburban Whites revel in talk, fitness, pets, travel, and consumption. They are neither here nor there. Whites arrogantly continue to describe everything, being all-knowledgeable, while “minorities just can’t articulate their thoughts, and without affirmative action they would not be here.” Both viewpoints are unacknowledged but continue to influence our daily interactions.

The ‘Interaction Order’ and Racial Segregation: Implications From the Civil Rights Movement
Jean Van Delinder, Oklahoma State University

This paper uses Goffman’s (1983:14) ‘domain of the interaction order’ to explore the tensions between structure and agency during social change. Specifically it uses as a case study of the demise of racial segregation and the associated rise of the civil rights movement during the pre-mass mobilization era – roughly the first half of the twentieth century. In this paper, I argue that focusing only on the dramatic “mass mobilization” aspects of the civil rights movement is an obstacle to recognizing the full range of civil rights tension between the established social order (racial segregation) and countercultural challenges to it.

The heterogeneity of these early civil rights actions has rendered them relatively invisible in studying civil rights protest. They are perceptible only as face-to-face interaction and rarely include large groups or masses of people; this places them outside the set of ‘established rules’ used to study the civil rights movement. Face-to-face interaction is often neglected in the two dominant and competing theoretical models in contemporary social movement theory. Political process theorists prioritize structures of power, economics, formal organizations and social networks in creating social change. This approach has dominated social movement theory for the past several decades (most notably McAdam 1982; McCarthy and Zald 1977; Staggenborg 1991; Tarrow 1994; and Tilly 1978). Recently, cultural constructionist theorists have emerged – partially drawing on symbolic interactionism – using frames, identities, meanings, and emotions in the building of social movements (Kurzman 1996; Morris 1984; Snow and Benford 1992).

Each of these perspectives have begun a collaborative discourse, claiming to bring in the relevance of agency, emotions and culture into the structure in the study of social movements without sacrificing the significance of either agency or structure (Goodwin and Jasper 2004). However, I argue that attempts to do this have resulted in retaining the primacy of structure over agency by concentrating on the structure of social action relationships as they coalesce in terms of institutions (organizations) and groups. In essence, this means treating face-to-face relationships as “effects…as indicators, expressions or symptoms of social structures such as relationships, age grades, gender, ethnic minorities, social classes” rather than as “data in their terms” (Goffman:2).

In suggesting an alternative way to treat face-to-face interaction as data, I begin by conceptualizing the effects of racial segregation as “situational” rather than “merely situated.” Blumer’s concept of “joint action” provides additional assistance in capturing how individual or separate lines of action coalesce, merging into “strips of action” (Goffman 1974). This works to sensitize us as to how “individuals may orient their action on different premises,” leaving open the possibility that even commonly defined joint actions can lead to a variety of courses or outcomes. The result is to conceptualizing groups as dynamic rather than static, thus arriving at an expanded definition of group action as being created and structured through the process of the building up joint actions or strips of action, creating a vast number of social actions occurring at any given moment. This approach will help us to better understand not only racial segregation as it was constructed during the civil rights movement, but also as it is now in contemporary society.

After conceptualizing the situational effects of racial segregation, I will draw from interview data on civil rights activists collected by the author and other civil rights interview repositories, thereby being sensitive to the historical dimension or career of the social movement. By incorporating Goffman’s interaction order, this paper attempts to avoid the limitations of the political process model, which synthesizes theory directed toward an abstract universality often overlooking the significance of unique or unusual events. It also hopes to avoid the constructionist path of prioritizing cultural context over structure. Instead it suggests a middle ground, prioritizing face-to-face interaction to better understand the processes and structures specific to the interaction order, and, ultimately in creating social change.

Beloved Strangers: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Experiences of White Mothers of Biracial Children
Serena Wadlington, University of Colorado at Boulder

12. House and Home: UMC 415-417
Organized by Melinda Milligan, Sonoma State University

Supporting Community by Breaking Rules
Susan Kremmel, University of South Florida

This study looks at the way rule systems affect the sense of residence hall community. Many people see strict rules as destructive to community, while others argue that disobedience to rules is the real problem. This paper argues that the rules themselves have less to do with a sense of community than the social interactions that occur in the context of these rule systems.

Residents and resident assistants (RAs) of campus residence halls, for the most part, do not have the liberty of governing themselves in their own homes by setting up their own standards and rule systems. College administrators have already set up a base level rule system to which individuals can add, but not subtract, rules, in their “community agreements”. Drawing on 10 interviews with residents and RAs, plus my own previous experience as a resident and RA on the USF campus, in this paper I show the ways students living on campus understand and negotiate rules. By examining these negotiations, we can gain a better understanding of how rules, when applied to lived experience, can both positively and negatively affect the feeling of community in the residents’ homes.

This paper first, looks at the common understandings of community among residents and RAs, which ties in to the rest of the findings. Second, it shows how belief in self-proclaimed conceptions of community can lead to the support of formal rules and understanding for why they exist. Support of rules is associated with a belief in safety and a belief in respect for others, which serves the good of the community. Additionally, support of rule systems can involve the opposition to individual rules themselves, but the support of the system to prevent “extreme” behavior.

Third, this paper examines the ways residents and RAs alike break rules and how they tie their actions to understandings of the inflexibility of formal rules, the intent behind the rules (metarules), and the effect of breaking the rules on others. Interviewees saw rules as oblivious to lived experience and pathologic at times, and instead looked to what they perceived to be the intent behind the rules as a guide/justification for their personal actions. Fourth, after looking at the ways interviewees justify their behavior, this paper examines the unique position of RAs who break rules and allow residents to break rules in the name of both metarules and a sense of community.

Obviously, use of rules is not the only ingredient in building community. In the residence halls, programs, hanging out, working towards a common goal, similarities between students, and other factors can combine with the phenomenon studied here to create a positively interdependent community. This paper focuses on showing how people in the residence halls make judgments when negotiating their use of rules, examining the effect those have on ideas and feelings of community. Breaking rules, while seemingly detrimental, can sometimes have the surprising effect of enhancing interactions and supporting the residents’ and RAs’ ideas of a campus community.

Stuff Stories
Eugene Halton, University of Notre Dame

Domestic life is more than a survival strategy, and should be more than a dumping ground of consumption practices: the art and craft of the home are what make a house and its belongings a home, and what make a home a way of living. What stories do possessions tell of their possessors? I will weave “thing-stories” of specific possessions and of the lives they have touched. Interviewing people about their possessions amply demonstrates how the typical home is an ongoing "show and tell" of the beliefs of its inhabitants, revealing the myriad influences which comprise the meanings of artifacts and the self.

Re-Enchantment of the Home: Homeschooling as Practice-Oriented Spirituality
Rebecca A. Allahyari, School of American Research

Family Narratives of Homeland Security
Joan Weston

For many African American families that have migrated to northern cities from the Jim Crow and post-Jim Crow south, the southern “home” churches are sites where family and friends gather to recreate the social identity of individuals who will be buried in the family cemetery. "Victory Celebrations," or funerals, bring family and friends from around the United States back "home" and take on a particular significance when they are held in honor of a young person whose death is related to drug trafficking and/or gang violence. A rival drug dealer murdered Earlie Levon Robinson, whose parents left Greene County, Alabama at the age of sixteen to find work “up North.” Robinson’s parents, both in their late 40s now, have spent their life savings to bring their first-born son “Von” “home.” Using Hirsch’s Family Frames as a theoretical tool for analyzing "A Celebration of Life," a slideshow documenting the night before and day of Robinson’s funeral, I argue that this photographic account blurs the distinction between life and death. Capturing this "blur" is intentional and serves a number of meaningful functions. In this paper I argue that the primary purpose of capturing the "blur" is to allow family and friends who will view the slideshow after the casket holding Robinson’s body goes below the surface to come to terms with the painful reality of gang violence and drug trafficking and addiction--social problems that many attending this gathering experience in and around their northern “homes” (in this case Detroit, Michigan) away from "HOME" (the real and fictional south as embodied in the photographs taken outside the family church).

In my book-in-progress, Utopian Devotions: Enchantment and Paradox in Homeschooling, I explore homeschooling as an on the ground, experimental practice interwoven with the urgency of visions of sacred childhoods and the constraints of mundane life. I offer here brief portraits of two Native American homeschooling families whose questing has entailed time work to more richly experience their domestic ideals. The insignificance of home as a built environment in the first portrait is common in many of the families I encounter; in contrast, the second family reveals an exceptional devotion to home as built environment. For most of the homeschooling families I’ve met, family life is home, and for most, it is a home where institutionalized schooling demands on children have been either pushed away or bracketed by parental control. Home is a metaphorical haven in a heartless world wherein homeschooling allows the family to control how they structure the flow of time in their lives. For parents living in a social world experienced as stiflingly bureaucratized and rationalized, children hold the potential for an encounter with awe and enchantment.

Family Narratives of Homeland Security
Joan Weston

For many African American families that have migrated to northern cities from the Jim Crow and post-Jim Crow south, the southern “home” churches are sites where family and friends gather to recreate the social identity of individuals who will be buried in the family cemetery. "Victory Celebrations," or funerals, bring family and friends from around the United States back "home" and take on a particular significance when they are held in honor of a young person whose death is related to drug trafficking and/or gang violence. A rival drug dealer murdered Earlie Levon Robinson, whose parents left Greene County, Alabama at the age of sixteen to find work “up North.” Robinson’s parents, both in their late 40s now, have spent their life savings to bring their first-born son “Von” “home.” Using Hirsch’s Family Frames as a theoretical tool for analyzing "A Celebration of Life," a slideshow documenting the night before and day of Robinson’s funeral, I argue that this photographic account blurs the distinction between life and death. Capturing this "blur" is intentional and serves a number of meaningful functions. In this paper I argue that the primary purpose of capturing the "blur" is to allow family and friends who will view the slideshow after the casket holding Robinson’s body goes below the surface to come to terms with the painful reality of gang violence and drug trafficking and addiction--social problems that many attending this gathering experience in and around their northern “homes” (in this case Detroit, Michigan) away from "HOME" (the real and fictional south as embodied in the photographs taken outside the family church).

13. Goffman's Model of Context: Deciphering Frame Analysis: UMC 382-386
A Special Feature Presentation by Thomas Scheff
Organized by GSRC, University of Colorado at Boulder

14. Cultural Studies: UMC 415-417
Organized by Simon Gottschalk, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The Accelerated Self: Rushing Through Cyberspace
Simon Gottschalk, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Having previously analyzed how TV commercial ads inscribe and celebrate speed, I continue this project here but choose cyberspace as medium. Following an hypertextual logic, I analyze these ads and show that they also celebrate speed as a necessity in a wide variety of life-spheres and throughout various life-stages. Focusing especially on the themes of (1) acceleration (2) the institutions these ads pertain to, (3) the signification of speed in theses ads and (4) the contradictions inherent in the acceleration of everyday life these ads portray, I conclude by suggesting a number of social psychological consequences of such an acceleration.

The Heroic Process and Pat Tillman
David L. Altheide, Arizona State University
John M. Johnson, Arizona State University

Sports and nationalism are joined in popular culture through narratives, metaphors, language, and emotions. This is particularly true with wars. Audiences recognize and identify with individual athletes, who are associated with familiar sports. Propagandists, such as government officials, seek to link athletes and others, who are well known, with values, causes, and justifications for a particular war. The positive link is forged through “heroism,” as the dead individual(s) are deemed “heroes”. Joining individuals to collective definitions of patriotism takes work. Like bridge construction, forging heroic identity for an audience takes creative work; unlike building bridges, social constructions rely on symbolic meanings of words and images. We offer an account of one such construction project, the death and significance of Pat Tillman, a 27 year old promising professional football player, who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals, to join the Army and serve as a Ranger in Afghanistan where he was killed by fellow Rangers on April 22, 2004. We suggest that hero status is an organizational account that has changed in accordance with popular culture ideals.

Signs of Control: Social Problems Billboards in Nebraska
Kurt Borchard, University of Nebraska, Kearney

Students in a Social Problems class in Nebraska were asked to take a photograph of a local billboard that explicitly discussed a social problem.  The project allowed students to critically analyze the social construction of social problems in their state through one form of media.  I conducted a thematic analysis of over 50 such billboards from across the state in 2004.  Many of the billboards reflect a discourse emphasizing 1) self-control, 2) the control of others, and/or 3) that one should take a particular action.  Popular themes included crime, health, abortion, and protecting vulnerable populations (such as animals, children, the elderly, and immigrants).  An analysis of such billboards is important as it reveals what issues “count” as social problems, and what issues are either not considered problems, are not considered worthy of public attention, or do not have a group advocating their discussion.

"My Shit Don't Stink": Moral Order/Moral Odor
Dennis Waskul, Minnestota State University, Mankato

In a rare and wonderful article in the American Journal of Sociology titled “The Sociology of Odors” Gale Largey and David Watson (1972: 1021) insightfully note that “Much of the moral symbolism relevant to interaction is expressed in terms of olfactory imagery.”  In this presentation I detail one analytical account of this moral symbolism of olfaction, which signifies intersections between the social and the somatic, the cultural and the physical, the normative and the sensory.  It is a structure of moral odor/moral odor:  what smells good is good (what is good smells good); what smells bad is bad (what is bad smells bad).  Indeed, as Anthony Synnott  (1993: 191) suggests “the physical and the moral are united in odour.”  This presentation focuses on four major illustrations of these dynamics.  I first examine olfaction and the stigmatized.  “Stinkers” and the foul stench of the unpleasant represent constructions of smell as a contamination of character.  A fetid smell is an embarrassment and dishonor to the self; enemies smell and evil stinks.  Second, I examine olfaction and the sanctified.  “Smelling like a rose” and the blessed aroma of the desirable are constructions of smell as social/cultural consecration.  Beauty and success smell sweet.  Third, these constructions of moral order/moral odor represent a system of olfaction and impression management.  They represent norms of “giving off” a creditable odor and rules for the concealing of the culturally defined grotesque body.  From fart taboos to “feminine hygiene,” from bad breath to the musky smell of sweaty bodies—a portion of impression management is produced and managed in the nose.  Finally, I examine olfaction and power.  The intersections of smell and stratification are legion: smell and the uglification of minorities, smell and the disciplining of the gendered body, smell and the characterization of social class, smell and the portrayal of both children and the elderly.  In conclusion, the presumably profound intimacy of smell clearly intersects with social, cultural, and moral order.

15. Sex Spaces: UMC 382-386
Organized by Matthew C. Brown, University of Colorado at Boulder

The New Bump n' Grind: Drag, Identity, and the Politics of Performance in the New Burlesque
Natalie M. Peluso, University of Connecticut.

While My Subjects Were Masturbating: Reflections on the Naivete of a Chaste Scholar
Dennis D. Waskul, Minnesota State University, Mankato

The Pink Flag of Sex: Sociology, Ethics, and Queer Sexualities
Jeffery Webre, University of Colorado at Boulder

In the Bush: Sexual Participation in the Field, Epistemology, and Methodology
Matthew C. Brown, University of Colorado at Boulder

Dragging Gender Politics onto Center Stage: The Alter Boys at Club 2101
Kirsten Spielman, University of Colorado at Boulder

16. Sports and Symbolic Interaction - UMC 415-417
Organized by Rob Benford, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Body Work: Personal Trainers, Interactional Strategies, and Respect
Molly George, University of California, Santa Barbara

Drawing on participant observation of six fitness facilities and twenty-two in-depth interviews, my research focuses on the experiences of personal trainers and fitness coaches. Approaching my project from a symbolic interactionist perspective, I am interested in understanding this particular occupational world from the point of view of those engaged in it. Rather than exploring the task-based aspects of these jobs, I concentrated on the relational exchanges that took place between clients and workers in the fitness industry. Specifically, I describe how personal trainers, as semi-professionals, must employ specific interactional strategies with their clients in order to cultivate occupational respect as well as personal and cultural authority.

Certain strategies trainers used included focusing on (or purposefully manipulating) one’s presentation of self, personality, experiences or credentials, and negotiating boundaries in one’s relationships with clients to either foster interpersonal commitment or maintain an authoritative distance. Personal training offers a unique opportunity to examine interactions that take place in an overlapping network of consumer culture, sport, service work, and preventative healthcare. With this research, I hope to add to existing literature in the sociology of sport, occupations, and emotion.

The Intercollegiate Sports Reform Movement: Framing Academic Corruption in College Sports
Rob Benford, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

The most recent cycle of sports reform movements focuses on academic corruption associated with intercollegiate athletics. Drawing on participant observation data, this paper analyzes the social construction of collective action frames by the Drake Group, the movement’s vanguard organization. After identifying the group’s diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framings, I attend to their strategic frame alignment processes and the prospects for affecting and sustaining frame resonance. I conclude with a discussion of implications for social movement theory and the sociology of sport.

The Foxes and the Hen House: College Coeds, Sexual Assaults, the Absence of Social Control and the Deliberate Use of Institutional Impression Management by College Officials
Howard Robboy, The College of New Jersey

Date and acquaintance rapes on college campuses have approached epidemic levels. Recent government studies indicate that in a five year period a college coed has a twenty to twenty-five percent chance of becoming a sexual assault victim. One explanation for this tragedy is that many college officials have been intentionally removing forms of social control previously employed to protect their female students from sexual assaults. At the same time, college officials have been employing institutionalized impression management to protect the public image of their institutions at the expense of the safety of their students.

The Rhetoric of the NCAA and Corporate Erosion of Higher Education
Linda Bensel-Meyers, University of Denver

With the erosion of federal funding for higher education and the economic instability of states required to pick up the slack, institutions of higher education have been forced to lobby directly with corporate interests, compromising not only research agendas but the entire academic mission of the university. Because higher education was established to preserve and perpetuate those humanistic values not encouraged within a capitalistic system, the corporate takeover of higher education has resulted in the erosion of a socially-responsible rhetoric and its attendant motives. I contend that the destructive effects of this evolution of corporate governance are nowhere more evident than in the rampant growth of intercollegiate athletics.

The history of intercollegiate athletic/academic reform movements reveals how prevalent and persistent the conflict between collegiate sports and the academic mission has been. However, it wasn’t until the NCAA co-opted oversight of each program’s academic mission via manipulative rhetoric such as “student athlete” and “athletic scholarship” that we completely lost control over the problem. Although the Knight Commission’s two reports have revealed the primary problems—rampant commercialism, the facility “arms race,” declining graduation rates, and lack of presidential control—none of these problems can really be addressed until we remove the NCAA from its rhetorical role as the public’s academic guardian. The only way for this to happen is to remove the NCAA from the business of athletic scholarships as a way to regulate trade by exposing the commercial motive behind their rhetoric.

I contend that the situation is worse today than that Robert Maynard Hutchins was addressing in the 1930s at the University of Chicago, because we have enabled the NCAA to take over the academic mission of Division I institutions, and the primary vehicle for doing so was the evolution of the “athletic scholarship.” Ultimately, its pretense to amateurism has not only instituted the NCAA as the academic authority over football schools such as the University of Tennessee, but, to interpret Bowen and Levin’s recent findings, has created an entertainment industry and cultural climate that places pressure on even those schools without scholarship programs. Since collegiate sports is most visibly represented by those programs that serve primarily as professional farm leagues for the lucrative entertainment sports, schools at all levels accept this pervasive image as what collegiate sports should be, particularly for school alumni with visions of excellence according to what Lester calls “athletic Darwinist” standards. The burgeoning entertainment industry and the commercialism that attends collegiate sports were essentially legitimized by a scholarship awarded primarily for athleticism than for intellectual development. It was introduced primarily as a capitulation to the capitalistic forces that had already been corrupting amateurism. Instead of defending the university’s mission, the athletic scholarship became the means by which that mission could be “legally”co-opted by business interests.

17. Feminism and SI: Doing Gendered Identities: UMC 415
Organized by Rebecca A. Allahyari, School of American Research

Performing Empowerment: State Expectations of Mothers Attempting to Regain Custody of their Children from the Child Welfare System
Jennifer Reich, University of Denver

The child welfare system seeks to reform parental behavior so children who have been removed from their parents’ custody because of maltreatment may return home. State efforts to rehabilitate mothers focus on their lack of power in their relationships with men. Using qualitative data collected through interviews and observations in the child welfare system, this paper demonstrates how reunification services designed to address women’s lack of power do not necessarily seek to empower women, but instead communicate expectations of maternal behavior, which include an “empowerment performance,” a demonstration of a mother’s recognition of the importance of avoiding relationships with men, her unyielding commitment to her children, and an exercise of independence in a way the court has defined as appropriately maternal.

Home Alone: Negotiating Gender on the Urban Frontier
Melinda Milligan, Sonoma State University

In this paper I discuss the experiences of single, white women engaged in the renovation of historic houses in crime-ridden urban neighborhoods. While such women might appear to be “typical gentrifiers” on the urban frontier, they are indeed choosing to live in situations that many others view as at the edge of acceptability relative to their gender. They see their situations as a means to accomplish a range of personal and social goals, such as home ownership, social justice activism, and identity transition, as well as to challenge cultural assumptions about gender, race, and class. I explore their conceptions of “home-making” through renovation and their strategies to negotiate gender in everyday neighborhood life. I also use their experiences to analyze the interwoven, if seemingly contradictory, notions of home and frontier. The paper is based on data from field work in New Orleans, LA.

18. Music and Symbolic Interaction: UMC 417
Organized by Robert Gardner, Linfield College

Every Club Will Have Its D.J.: Club D.J.'s and the Semiotics of Counter-Cultural Music Genres
Hans Bakker, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Social Identity and Its Effects on University Students' Musical Preferences
Patricia Perez, University of California, Santa Barbara

19. New Empirical Studies II: UMC 382-386
Organized by Dianne Kraft, University of Houston

Disrupting the (Social) Body: Acute Illness, Injury and the interruption of the Mundane
Dana Rosenfeld, Colorado College

I Must Have Said Yes: A Journey Into the Abyss
Colleen Hall-Patton, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The Ground I Walked on Then: Situating Myself in a Memory
Diane Ketelle, Mills College

20. Plenary Session – Special Location: Building HALE 270
Organized by the Graduate Student Research Collective, University of Colorado at Boulder

Big Profits, Big Risks, Big Action: Land 'Gamblers' and the Human Habitat
Lyn Lofland, University of California, Davis

The Globalization of Intimacies: From Intimate Citizens to Intimate Inequalities
Kenneth Plummer, University of Essex, UK and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara

New Visions of the Old Head in the American Inner-City: A Commentary on Self and Social Purpose
Alford Young Jr., University of Michigan

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