18 results
Search Results
2. Advancing the Sociology of Empathy: A Proposal.
- Author
-
Ruiz‐Junco, Natalia
- Subjects
EMPATHY ,SOCIOLOGY ,INTERACTIONISM (Philosophy) ,SOCIAL constructionism ,SOCIOLOGISTS - Abstract
Empathy is an increasingly popular term in the public sphere and in academia. Although the common belief is that empathy is a 'psychological' topic, sociologists have made important contributions to this conversation. The goal of this article is to provide a theoretical effort in advancing the sociology of empathy. In the first part of the paper, I review classical and contemporary statements on empathy. I identify Charles H. Cooley as an important precursor of the sociology of empathy, and discuss how contemporary interactionists have further developed this notion. Based on these previous insights, I next propose a preliminary framework for the study of the social construction of empathy. This framework is presented in two steps. First, I introduce a vocabulary based on interpretivist concepts: empathy frames, empathy rules, and empathy performances. Next, I coin the idea of empathy paths. I theorize three ideal-typical empathy paths: self-transcendent, therapeutic, and instrumental. Throughout this presentation, I use empirical cases to illustrate the applicability of this framework. In the conclusion, I show how sociologists can inform public understandings of the meaning of empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. An Interactionist Approach to the Social Construction of Deities.
- Author
-
Sumerau, J.E., Nowakowski, Alexandra C.H., and Cragun, Ryan T.
- Subjects
GODS ,ETHNOGRAPHIC analysis ,RELIGION ,SOCIAL interaction ,SOCIAL constructionism ,SOCIAL facts - Abstract
This paper examines the ways people construct and signify deities. Utilizing responses from an ethnographic study as well as analyses of existing studies of religion, we elaborate ways people construct the existence and characteristics of deities by engaging in 'deity work,' which we define as the work people do to give meaning to deities as well as to themselves, others, or social phenomena related to deities. In so doing, we demonstrate how people may accomplish this in many settings by engaging in strategies of identity work including (1) defining, (2) coding, and (3) affirming the meanings of a given deity in social interaction. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding (1) the importance of examining deity work, and (2) some ways a focus on deity work processes may expand existing religious and interactionist studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience.
- Author
-
Ellis, Carolyn
- Subjects
- *
EMOTIONS , *SOCIAL constructionism , *PSYCHOLOGY , *INTROSPECTION , *COGNITION - Abstract
Although social constructionists now study emotions, they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experienced. This paper argues that social constructionists can and should study how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as welt as socially shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a sociological process, this paper argues that introspection can generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions, Findings from four studies--one, self-introspective, and the other three, interactive introspective examinations with co-investigators--provide information about the subjective part of emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dewing with the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1991
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. Goffman on Mental Illness: Asylums and 'The Insanity of Place' Revisited.
- Author
-
Shalin, Dmitri N.
- Subjects
MENTAL illness ,MENTAL illness & society ,SOCIOLOGY ,SOCIAL constructionism ,CASE studies - Abstract
This case study is designed to demonstrate that sociological imagination can feed on personal experience, that research practice interpolates our biographical circumstances, and that a systematic inquiry into the interplay between our professional and everyday life offers a fruitful avenue for sociological analysis. The discussion focuses on Erving Goffman's treatment of mental illness. The argument is made that the evolution of Goffman's constructionist views on mental disorder had been influenced by his family situation and personal experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. Diagnosis as Topic and as Resource: Reflections on the Epistemology and Ontology of Disease in Medical Sociology.
- Author
-
Weinberg, Darin
- Subjects
SOCIAL medicine ,THEORY of knowledge ,ONTOLOGY ,SOCIOLOGICAL research ,MEDICAL research - Abstract
This article notes an enduring ambivalence in medical sociology concerning the epistemology and ontology of disease and shows this is precisely an ambivalence concerning whether biomedical disease categories are best understood as topics of, or as resources for, medical sociological research. The first section critically reviews the topic/resource debate in ethnomethodology. The second section elaborates upon the pertinence of this debate to sociological debates directly concerned with the epistemology and ontology of disease. The article concludes by demonstrating how framing the epistemology and ontology of disease in terms of the topics and resources of medical sociological analysis serves to clarify the work of thinking sociologically about disease and helps overcome protracted theoretical challenges that have persistently troubled medical sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
7. Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships.
- Author
-
Schrock, Douglas, McCabe, Janice, and Vaccaro, Christian
- Subjects
MASCULINE identity ,IDENTITY (Psychology) ,AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL fiction ,RACIALIZATION ,SOCIAL constructionism ,CONFERENCES & conventions - Abstract
We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
8. Middle‐Range Future Claims: Constructing the Near‐Future Consequences of COVID‐19
- Author
-
Joel Best
- Subjects
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak ,History ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Scope (project management) ,Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ,Communication ,General Social Sciences ,Social issues ,Social constructionism ,Education ,Late summer ,Political economy ,Economic impact analysis ,General Nursing ,Period (music) - Abstract
The extraordinary social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated many claims about the middle-range future-the period beginning in the late summer or early fall of 2020 and projected to last for some months or years This paper surveys those assertions and seeks to explain the factors that led to them Exploring questions about future claims can expand the scope of social problems theory
- Published
- 2020
9. A Mother's Value Lies in Her Sexuality: The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park and the Preservation of Traditional Sex Roles.
- Author
-
Feltmate, David and Brackett, Kimberly P.
- Subjects
HUMAN sexuality ,MOTHERHOOD ,WIT & humor ,INTERPERSONAL relations ,UNITED States social conditions - Abstract
This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the 'Mommy Wars' which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women's sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
10. Believing Not Seeing: A Blind Phenomenology of Sexed Bodies.
- Author
-
Friedman, Asia M.
- Subjects
PHENOMENOLOGICAL sociology ,SOCIAL interaction ,VISUAL perception ,HUMAN body ,SELF-evidence (Logic) ,SOCIAL constructionism - Abstract
Vision plays a privileged role in social interaction and the construction of intersubjective reality. Given that one of sociology's tasks is to problematize the taken for granted, research that examines rarely foregrounded non-visual modes of sensory perception is a powerful resource. This article draws on twenty-seven interviews that explore blind people's perceptions of male and female bodies. I highlight several distinctive features of non-visual sex attribution (salience, speed, and diachronicity), and argue that conceptions of sex as 'self-evident' primarily reflect visual perception. These findings suggest the need to explore the sociology of perception as a new approach to the sociology of the body, and more broadly highlight the role of sensory perception in the social construction of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
11. Reframing the Biotechnology Debate: The Deconstructive Efforts of the Council for Responsible Genetics.
- Author
-
Zschau, Tony, Adams, Alison E., and Shriver, Thomas E.
- Subjects
BIOTECHNOLOGY ,DECONSTRUCTION ,SOCIAL movements ,SOCIAL theory ,PUBLIC interest groups ,SOCIAL constructivism ,TECHNOLOGICAL innovations ,PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
We demonstrate the analytical utility of social movement theory for understanding the framing efforts of the anti-biotechnology movement. We content-analyzed electronic and printed documents from the anti-biotech watchdog group, the Council of Responsible Genetics to identify the movement's diagnostic and prognostic framing efforts. Our findings suggest that while the organization blends frame extension and frame translation strategies it aims for a more radical frame transformation project. Moving the public debate away from overly technical and scientized frames toward issues of social utility and democracy, it tries to recast biotechnologies as a violation of individual and collective rights. Drawing from our findings we offer a number of suggestions for how future research can help further illuminate the interactive and discursive realities of modern technological developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
12. Advancing the Sociology of Empathy: A Proposal
- Author
-
Natalia Ruiz-Junco
- Subjects
Vocabulary ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Communication ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,General Social Sciences ,Empathy ,Social constructionism ,0506 political science ,Education ,Epistemology ,Presentation ,050903 gender studies ,050602 political science & public administration ,Public sphere ,Conversation ,0509 other social sciences ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,General Nursing ,media_common ,Meaning (linguistics) - Abstract
Empathy is an increasingly popular term in the public sphere and in academia. Although the common belief is that empathy is a “psychological” topic, sociologists have made important contributions to this conversation. The goal of this article is to provide a theoretical effort in advancing the sociology of empathy. In the first part of the paper, I review classical and contemporary statements on empathy. I identify Charles H. Cooley as an important precursor of the sociology of empathy, and discuss how contemporary interactionists have further developed this notion. Based on these previous insights, I next propose a preliminary framework for the study of the social construction of empathy. This framework is presented in two steps. First, I introduce a vocabulary based on interpretivist concepts: empathy frames, empathy rules, and empathy performances. Next, I coin the idea of empathy paths. I theorize three ideal-typical empathy paths: self-transcendent, therapeutic, and instrumental. Throughout this presentation, I use empirical cases to illustrate the applicability of this framework. In the conclusion, I show how sociologists can inform public understandings of the meaning of empathy.
- Published
- 2017
13. 'The Way That I Look at Things [Is] Different Because It's Me': Constructing and Deconstructing Narratives About Racialized Sexual Selves
- Author
-
Beth Montemurro
- Subjects
060201 languages & linguistics ,African american ,White (horse) ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Communication ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,General Social Sciences ,Human sexuality ,Gender studies ,06 humanities and the arts ,Social constructionism ,Education ,Race (biology) ,Presentation ,050903 gender studies ,0602 languages and literature ,Sexual orientation ,Narrative ,0509 other social sciences ,Psychology ,General Nursing ,media_common - Abstract
Many gender scholars have abandoned the notion that we can explore women's experiences without attention to other identities such as race, class, and/or sexual orientation. Until now, the ways race influences the development of sexual selves has been underexplored. In this paper, I focus on heterosexual women's accounts of the interplay of race, gender, and sexualities. Based on in-depth interviews with sixty-two white and African American heterosexual women between the ages of twenty and sixty-eight, I examine the ways in which narrative work tells a story about the presentation of public sexual selves. I also explore how women's personal narratives are impacted by larger cultural narratives about race. Specifically, through a study of sexuality, I focus on the social construction of “postracialism.”
- Published
- 2017
14. An Interactionist Approach to the Social Construction of Deities
- Author
-
Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski, Ryan T. Cragun, and J. E. Sumerau
- Subjects
050402 sociology ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Communication ,05 social sciences ,General Social Sciences ,Identity (social science) ,Social constructionism ,Social relation ,Education ,Focus (linguistics) ,Epistemology ,0504 sociology ,Work (electrical) ,050903 gender studies ,Ethnography ,Sociology ,0509 other social sciences ,Construct (philosophy) ,Social psychology ,General Nursing ,Meaning (linguistics) - Abstract
This paper examines the ways people construct and signify deities. Utilizing responses from an ethnographic study as well as analyses of existing studies of religion, we elaborate ways people construct the existence and characteristics of deities by engaging in “deity work,” which we define as the work people do to give meaning to deities as well as to themselves, others, or social phenomena related to deities. In so doing, we demonstrate how people may accomplish this in many settings by engaging in strategies of identity work including (1) defining, (2) coding, and (3) affirming the meanings of a given deity in social interaction. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding (1) the importance of examining deity work, and (2) some ways a focus on deity work processes may expand existing religious and interactionist studies.
- Published
- 2016
15. From "Swinging Hard" to "Rocking Out": Classification of Style and the Creation of Identity in the World of Drumming.
- Author
-
Curran, Geoffrey M.
- Subjects
SOCIAL constructionism ,DRUM playing ,DRUMMERS (Musicians) ,IDENTITY (Psychology) ,SUBCULTURES ,ART & music - Abstract
This article takes a social constructionist approach to the study of a seldom considered subculture--the "world" of drumming. I describe this subculture from both the "etic" and "emic" perspectives, showing how drummers and drumming are perceived and experienced by the musicians themselves (insiders) as well as the "outside" public. The main focus is on the drummers" intersubjective "mental maps" of their world, specifically exploring how they create musical and personal identities by adhering to a rigid classification scheme surrounding "styles" of drumming. I demonstrate how drummers use drumming equipment, personal appearance, education, and "purist" attitudes to separate styles of drumming and to construct distinct social selves. Of special interest is how drummers are cognitively socialized into "thought communities" which teach and reinforce attitudinal and behavioral norms. I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of applying my analytical framework to other worlds of music and art, as well as some forms of occupational and avocational specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1996
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
16. Childbirth As Negotiated Reality1
- Author
-
Barbara Katz Rothman
- Subjects
Medical model ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,business.industry ,Communication ,General Social Sciences ,Context (language use) ,Natural childbirth ,Social constructionism ,Symbolic interactionism ,Education ,Nursing ,Health care ,Childbirth ,Sociology ,Social science ,business ,Home birth ,General Nursing - Abstract
This paper will describe birth as a social as well as a physiological event, a process which is socially constructed and socially defined. The ways in which the medical establishment controls the birth experience, creating it as a medical event, will be presented. The role of childbirth education is presented here as supporting the medical model and preparing the pregnant woman and her mate for their roles in the institutional birth. We will briefly consider an alternative, non-medical approach to birth. IF SITUATIONS DEFINED as real are real in their consequences, then those who define, control. Those who have the power to establish their definitions of a given situation as the working definition of reality control that situation. Obstetrics is the branch of medicine concerning the care of women during pregnancy, labor and the puerperium (Gould, 1972) and in contemporary American society has control over the definitions (or diagnoses) relevant to childbirth. Medical expansion into the area of childbirth began before the development of asepsis, surgical techniques, anesthesia. But by the beginning of the nineteenth century, medicine had begun the redefinition of childbirth from a family or religious event, to a medical event, needing medical presence for its safe conduct. (Bogdan, 1976). Until pregnancy and childbirth were defined as medical events, midwifery was in no sense an area, branch or interest of medicine as a profession. During the middle ages, midwifery and its concerns were outside of medicine. “One obvious group outside of the control of the university physician was the midwife, but during the period under study the university physician generally ignored this whole area of medicine. Midwives might or might not be qualified, but this was not a matter of public concern.” (Bullough, 1966: 102) Professions are political organizations, mandated by their relationship with the state, but within that mandate free to define the nature of their work and to work as they see fit. (Freidson and Lorber, 1972:3) When medicine expanded into obstetrics, it redefined childbirth in medical terms, removed from its socio-emotional context. Birth was redefined as “delivery,” not an activity which women engage in, but a procedure which doctors do, a service medicine can provide. When women as consumers of health care challenged that model, medicine reacted as challenged political organizations usually do, either discrediting or coopting its challengers. In the earlier period they saw midwives as “dirty,” unskilled. (c.f. Kobrin, 1966, Ehrenreich and English, 1973) Later on, segments of the reformists were brought out, given the role of “childbirth educators” and allowed to see themselves as “health professionals” and members of the “childbirth team.” Unlike the current home birth movement with a return to lay midwifery, the 1950’s “natural childbirth” movement’s simple desire that *An earlier version of this paper, “The Social Construction of Birth: A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of In-Hospital, ‘Prepared’ Childbirth” was presented at the American Sociological Association meetings, Chicago, 1977.
- Published
- 1978
17. More than a Façade: Somatic and Structural Determinants in Erving Goffman's Theory of the Perduring Self
- Author
-
Isher-Paul Sahni
- Subjects
Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Frame analysis ,Communication ,Self ,media_common.quotation_subject ,General Social Sciences ,Cognition ,Social constructionism ,Education ,Consistency (negotiation) ,Feeling ,Dramaturgy (sociology) ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,General Nursing ,Autonomy ,media_common - Abstract
This paper argues that Erving Goffman endorses the veracity of a perduring self. Culling the corpus of his work, recent findings in neurophysiology and cognitive science surrounding the autonomy and mutual determination of emotion, cognition, and social structure are drawn upon when unpacking his highly composite theory. Isolating Goffman's claims about the psychobiological underpinning of the emotionally sentient body and those pertaining to macro and micro-structural determinants, the former, it is argued, champion the coherence of the self insofar as they link cathected feelings to individual desires and inclinations. The latter, conversely, complicate the picture by accentuating the social construction of emotions and the relationship between episodic cognitive operations and multifarious interpretive frames. In the end, however, it is shown that Goffman's macro-structural account, far from being residual, discloses the consistency, and unity of the self occasioned by social proximity and general social norms.
- Published
- 2012
18. 'Our Own Little Language': Naming and the Social Construction of Alzheimer's Disease
- Author
-
Anne K. Vittoria
- Subjects
education.field_of_study ,Medical model ,Lifeworld ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Communication ,Population ,General Social Sciences ,Social constructionism ,Symbolic interactionism ,Social relation ,Education ,Unit (housing) ,education ,Psychology ,Social responsibility ,Social psychology ,General Nursing - Abstract
Social meanings and cultural definitions attached to illness, disability, and aging have a powerful influence on the development and operations of medical care as well as the social, behavioral, and therapeutic processes occurring within these settings. Specialized care environments designed to meet the needs of what some would argue is a dramatically increasing population worldwide, those with Alzheimer's disease, have been dominated by a medical model of care where treatment of disease has primacy over person. In contrast to the medical model, the Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) at Starrmount (pseudonym) Alzheimer's Unit have socially constructed an alternative to the medical model of care through what I argue is the use of language and a process of “naming and reframing.” In this “different world,” as the CNAs call the world of the Unit, the resident is depicted as a socially responsive actor with a surviving self that is to be treated with respect. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, this paper examines the CNAs' construction and use of a “language of openings”—that is, the language arising out of the lifeworld of the residents—as the counterpoint to the “language of limits” of the medical model. Spoken everywhere but nowhere inscribed as “official” knowledge, this “little language,” as the CNAs speak of it, is the fundamental medium for social interaction in the Alzheimer's Unit.
- Published
- 1999
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