I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. My current research focuses on violence against women, disaster and housing, and more broadly, inequalities that are produced or rearticulated due to disasters and climate change.
A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses t... more A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses the following theoretical question: what does the elision of race, class, and gender in the news media say about disasters in the neoliberal era? It draws on the author's analysis of two prominent newspapers-The New York Times and USA Today-and their coverage of the recovery process after devastating tornadoes in two towns in the United States (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri) in 2011. The study asserts that the narrative of the news media is one with which people are familiar and that it fits into larger 'formula stories'. It utilises theoretical treatments of narrative to demonstrate how differences are erased and how they lead to complicity in hegemonic representations. Critical theory is used to elucidate why this occurs, and the paper sources Goldberg (2002) in suggesting that the news media employs 'fantasies of homogenisation' when representing post-disaster communities.
This thesis employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine internal social control, ide... more This thesis employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine internal social control, ideological embeddedness, and resistance to mainstream culture and ideology in a utopian, counter-cultural group called The Rainbow Family of Living Light. Combining theoretical perspectives on emotions and re-integrative and dis-integrative shaming with symbolic interaction, I examine the experiences of Rainbow during a national Gathering in the summer of 2010. Through interviews and observations, I illustrate the rituals, organization of camp, stratification based on work, and solidarity building activities, that Rainbow Gatherers create to resist mainstream ideology and culture. Further, I show that they Rainbow Gatherers redefine deviance in significant ways and promote ideological solidarity to achieve integration and membership in their perceived utopian community. Finally, I demonstrate how this group uses elements of internal social control to manage behavior defined by the group as...
This qualitative study utilizes seventeen international students’ experiences in the U.S. Specifi... more This qualitative study utilizes seventeen international students’ experiences in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the aspects of immigration regulations and policies regarding international students and the students’ reactions to those policies—from becoming a legal alien, to maintaining lawful status, to job planning after graduation. This research suggests the current United States administration has created a moral panic over immigration, or the threat of immigration. As a result, these political rhetoric impact a negative feeling to F-1 international students as well as decision making after graduation.
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2019
it’s the pregnant woman’s fault—exploiting culturally pervasive frames of anticipated guilt and i... more it’s the pregnant woman’s fault—exploiting culturally pervasive frames of anticipated guilt and intensive motherhood to put women on guard with ‘‘strident moral undertones’’ (p. 9). Many pushing pre-pregnancy care had and still have the best of intentions. Some reproductive justice advocates saw it as a viable policy strategy to increase health care resources for poor women generally; ‘‘an avenue for expanding women’s reproductive autonomy, not limiting it’’ (p. 171). The new frame would compel funding for additional health care. Health care providers also recognized it as an opportunity to bridge silos that maintained pregnancy care and pregnancy-prevention care as financially and politically distinct. Experts Waggoner interviewed did not intend to be reductionist, defining women as always ‘‘baby-making machines,’’ but rather pre-pregnancy care was posited as ‘‘the best idea they had to address the entrenched reproductive care silos and the political firestorm of reproductive health in America’’ (p. 173). Nonetheless, critics of the new framing see it as regressive and sexist. Throughout the book, Waggoner displays the flaws of and misgivings about the idea of the ‘‘zero trimester.’’ In addition to exposing temporal confusion and scientific inaccuracy within arguments for pre-conception care, she also critiques proponents for advocating individual-level solutions to deep structural health problems. Clinicians and the women they serve have not and are unlikely to be able to adequately address glaring racial disparities in maternal and child health with additional clinic visits. Furthermore, women of privilege and relative good health absorb the new health care resources more effectively than those who really need them. The pre-pregnancy rhetoric includes a heavy dose of ‘‘planning’’ language (See Chapter 5: ‘‘Get a Reproductive Life Plan!’’); however, the life-course planning frame has worked better for women with more resources and control over reproductive events. Waggoner challenges, ‘‘At issue is whether we are willing to focus our public-health interventions more squarely on reducing povertyor race-based disparities for at-risk women rather than pursue policies that ask all women of reproductive age to change their behavior and plan their pregnancies without the supports they might need to do so’’ (p. 19). As someone who straddles the worlds of study in this book—including sociology, public health, family planning, and medicine—I can appreciate the difficulty of this topic. Experts in this arena strive to improve women’s health by improving access to care. They also strive to guard women’s autonomy from those who seek to limit access to care (i.e., right-wing legislators, paternalistic clinicians, or oppressive sexual partners). Waggoner’s book succeeds in examining the social costs of this particular public health framing during a time when the jury is still out on whether the pre-conception care model is improving outcomes at all. She makes the critique with empathy for the space we occupy between a rock and a hard place. While it’s attractive among academics to shed a light on the dark side of public health efforts such as pre-conception health (i.e., surveillance, inequity, and futility), it is so much harder to figure out as a matter of policy and resource allocation what to do that is truly in women’s best interests. Waggoner walks this line with sensitivity and insight, making this book an important contribution to the literatures of science studies, risk politics, and reproduction.
ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the social construction of the environment, ideas about the r... more ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the social construction of the environment, ideas about the risk society, place attachment and place detachment in the aftermath of two tornadoes that occurred in 2011 in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The specific research questions are: How does the physical world influence the social world in the face of radically changed surroundings due to disaster? How do disaster aftermaths shape the ways in which participants make sense of themselves? How does disaster undo or remake relationships people form with landmarks, locations and places, such as homes, when they are destroyed? I conducted 162 interviews in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, engaged in participant observation with nonprofit organizations, and collected archival work on the history of both cities. I have three related and overlapping findings. (1) Participants experienced a loss of reality that made it difficult for them to make sense of themselves and their places in the social and physical world. (2) Participants experienced a ‘negative sense of place’ after significant places were destroyed. (3) The participants were often unaware of their physical surroundings until a rupture like disaster caused them to understand how the environment is an important part of their everyday life.
There is a rich research literature linking interpersonal violence to mental health disorders amo... more There is a rich research literature linking interpersonal violence to mental health disorders among undergraduate students. However, scholars know less about the prevalence and consequences of victimization among students enrolled in postbaccalaureate programs. Graduate and law students are uniquely vulnerable in their dependence on programs for financial support and career advancement, and they are more isolated than undergraduates. We explore the experiences of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking in a sample of 1,149 male and female master’s, doctoral, and law students at a southeastern public university. First, the current study estimates prevalence rates of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking across participant characteristics such as gender, race, sexual orientation, and degree program. We find higher rates of sexual harassment among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQ+) women and multiracial students and higher rates ...
Paid work has become more precarious in the recent decades, prompting many conflicts between empl... more Paid work has become more precarious in the recent decades, prompting many conflicts between employers and employees, including struggles over work hours. To better understand these struggles, we provide the first examination of long-term experiences with work hour mismatches (i.e., gaps between the number of hours people prefer to work per week and the number of hours they actually work). Using sequence analysis and nearly two decades of data from the British Household Panel Study, we find heterogeneous but patterned experiences. Nearly everyone has an hour mismatch eventually (typically overemployment), and most people oscillate between having and not having hour mismatches. Existing theoretical accounts anticipate some hour mismatch sequences, but the data contradict several key predictions. Moreover, no account predicts the most dominant pattern: oscillating overemployment. We thus offer a new explanation, which proposes that hour mismatches usually come in waves but can be gene...
In this article, the author examines long-term recovery from disaster in Joplin, Missouri, and Tu... more In this article, the author examines long-term recovery from disaster in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Tornados devastated both cities in 2011. The author asks (1) how sociohistoric contexts influenced perceptions of recovery and (2) how perceptions of recovery vary within and across social groups and geographic contexts. This research is based on fieldwork that spans 2013 to 2016, archival data, and 162 interviews. There are three main findings. First, although most White residents in both cities narrate a lasting leveling effect, people of color in both locations repudiate that claim. Second, White residents in Joplin explain their recovery in colorblind racist ways, while Tuscaloosa residents do not. Third, the author shows the ways in which social class intersects with gender and race to produce particular perspectives.
Unwanted sexual experiences are seldom acknowledged as “rape.” These are identity-threatening eve... more Unwanted sexual experiences are seldom acknowledged as “rape.” These are identity-threatening events that cause negative affect and cognitive confusion. According to affect control theory, such events produce deflection that is resolved through restorative acts, redefinition of behavior, or modification or redefinition of identities. Since deflection reduction is an underspecified aspect of the theory, we employ theories of power dependence to better understand these processes. Using a mixed method approach, we qualitatively analyze 115 narratives about unwanted sexual experiences, finding respondents framed events in ways that protect the other person or their own self-meanings. We use closed-ended survey data to simulate women’s experiences in Interact, affect control theory’s predictive software, to demonstrate how event reframings reduce deflection. Finally, we estimate regressions to predict how power dependence and other relational contexts influence responses to unwanted sexu...
Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular... more Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular music festivals. “MusicFest” embraces a tradition of “Red Dirt” country music through performance (music festival), whereas the “Walnut Valley Festival” embraces a bluegrass/folk musical heritage through performance and participation (musicians' festival). The symbolic importance of musical interaction is explored to highlight the experienced emotionality that leads to the affective ties that bind these otherwise temporary communities. This collective narrative reveals the various functions of nostalgia wherein collective sentiment both reflects and creates the perceived authentic experiences of festival attendees.
ABSTRACT This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine social control and... more ABSTRACT This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine social control and redefined deviance in a utopian countercultural group, The Rainbow Family of Living Light, to answer the question of how socially marginalized groups create and maintain collective identity. Working within a symbolic interactionist paradigm, and drawing on theoretical perspectives on reintegrative shaming, the authors examine the experiences of Rainbow Gatherers during a national gathering in the summer of 2010. Through interviews and observations, we illustrate how Rainbow Gatherers redefine deviance, use covert informal social control, create new definitions of proscribed behavior, and construct an internal hierarchical structure. We note a key paradox, in that although the very existence of a hierarchy and rules runs counter to their stated ideology, participants nonetheless acknowledge, observe, and culturally transmit rules and social norms. To navigate this paradox, Gatherers frame control within a familial reintegrative shaming paradigm, exerting covert informal social control within a milieu of family, peace, and cooperation. By drawing on members’ sense of collective harmony, belonging, and family (including often using sibling references), Gatherers can both foster integrations and reaffirm power-symmetry, and thus foster “appropriate” behavior in non-authoritarian ways. This framework allows them to simultaneously control the behaviors of their participants while maintaining their collective anti-control ideology. Findings show that the use of covert informal social control fosters collective identity in the group.
This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better under... more This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data ...
The concept of intersectionality has fundamentally changed feminist theorizing and the study of w... more The concept of intersectionality has fundamentally changed feminist theorizing and the study of women and gender. However, intersectional research, theorizing, and practice also have been subject to important critiques. This article provides a brief genealogy of intersectionality and summarizes major critiques. We recognize value in these critiques as well as the ongoing power of an intersectional lens. We therefore advocate what we call "context-driven intersectionality," arguing that attention to the historical, political, economic, and social factors that shape power relationships and social structures is critical to conducting robust intersectional analyses that avoid reification of social categories and inequalities.
Journal of International Students in Education, 2020
This qualitative study utilizes seventeen F-1 international students' experiences in the U.S. Spe... more This qualitative study utilizes seventeen F-1 international students' experiences in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the aspects of immigration regulations and policies regarding F-1 international students and the students' reactions to those policies¾from becoming a legal alien, to maintaining lawful status, to job planning after graduation. This research suggests the current United States administration has created a moral panic over immigration, or the threat of immigration. As a result, this political rhetoric creates negative emotions for F-1 international students and impacts their decision-making after graduation.
This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better under... more This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data is a useful mechanism for helping students connect abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.
A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses t... more A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses the following theoretical question: what does the elision of race, class, and gender in the news media say about disasters in the neoliberal era? It draws on the author's analysis of two prominent newspapers-The New York Times and USA Today-and their coverage of the recovery process after devastating tornadoes in two towns in the United States (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri) in 2011. The study asserts that the narrative of the news media is one with which people are familiar and that it fits into larger 'formula stories'. It utilises theoretical treatments of narrative to demonstrate how differences are erased and how they lead to complicity in hegemonic representations. Critical theory is used to elucidate why this occurs, and the paper sources Goldberg (2002) in suggesting that the news media employs 'fantasies of homogenisation' when representing post-disaster communities.
This thesis employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine internal social control, ide... more This thesis employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine internal social control, ideological embeddedness, and resistance to mainstream culture and ideology in a utopian, counter-cultural group called The Rainbow Family of Living Light. Combining theoretical perspectives on emotions and re-integrative and dis-integrative shaming with symbolic interaction, I examine the experiences of Rainbow during a national Gathering in the summer of 2010. Through interviews and observations, I illustrate the rituals, organization of camp, stratification based on work, and solidarity building activities, that Rainbow Gatherers create to resist mainstream ideology and culture. Further, I show that they Rainbow Gatherers redefine deviance in significant ways and promote ideological solidarity to achieve integration and membership in their perceived utopian community. Finally, I demonstrate how this group uses elements of internal social control to manage behavior defined by the group as...
This qualitative study utilizes seventeen international students’ experiences in the U.S. Specifi... more This qualitative study utilizes seventeen international students’ experiences in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the aspects of immigration regulations and policies regarding international students and the students’ reactions to those policies—from becoming a legal alien, to maintaining lawful status, to job planning after graduation. This research suggests the current United States administration has created a moral panic over immigration, or the threat of immigration. As a result, these political rhetoric impact a negative feeling to F-1 international students as well as decision making after graduation.
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2019
it’s the pregnant woman’s fault—exploiting culturally pervasive frames of anticipated guilt and i... more it’s the pregnant woman’s fault—exploiting culturally pervasive frames of anticipated guilt and intensive motherhood to put women on guard with ‘‘strident moral undertones’’ (p. 9). Many pushing pre-pregnancy care had and still have the best of intentions. Some reproductive justice advocates saw it as a viable policy strategy to increase health care resources for poor women generally; ‘‘an avenue for expanding women’s reproductive autonomy, not limiting it’’ (p. 171). The new frame would compel funding for additional health care. Health care providers also recognized it as an opportunity to bridge silos that maintained pregnancy care and pregnancy-prevention care as financially and politically distinct. Experts Waggoner interviewed did not intend to be reductionist, defining women as always ‘‘baby-making machines,’’ but rather pre-pregnancy care was posited as ‘‘the best idea they had to address the entrenched reproductive care silos and the political firestorm of reproductive health in America’’ (p. 173). Nonetheless, critics of the new framing see it as regressive and sexist. Throughout the book, Waggoner displays the flaws of and misgivings about the idea of the ‘‘zero trimester.’’ In addition to exposing temporal confusion and scientific inaccuracy within arguments for pre-conception care, she also critiques proponents for advocating individual-level solutions to deep structural health problems. Clinicians and the women they serve have not and are unlikely to be able to adequately address glaring racial disparities in maternal and child health with additional clinic visits. Furthermore, women of privilege and relative good health absorb the new health care resources more effectively than those who really need them. The pre-pregnancy rhetoric includes a heavy dose of ‘‘planning’’ language (See Chapter 5: ‘‘Get a Reproductive Life Plan!’’); however, the life-course planning frame has worked better for women with more resources and control over reproductive events. Waggoner challenges, ‘‘At issue is whether we are willing to focus our public-health interventions more squarely on reducing povertyor race-based disparities for at-risk women rather than pursue policies that ask all women of reproductive age to change their behavior and plan their pregnancies without the supports they might need to do so’’ (p. 19). As someone who straddles the worlds of study in this book—including sociology, public health, family planning, and medicine—I can appreciate the difficulty of this topic. Experts in this arena strive to improve women’s health by improving access to care. They also strive to guard women’s autonomy from those who seek to limit access to care (i.e., right-wing legislators, paternalistic clinicians, or oppressive sexual partners). Waggoner’s book succeeds in examining the social costs of this particular public health framing during a time when the jury is still out on whether the pre-conception care model is improving outcomes at all. She makes the critique with empathy for the space we occupy between a rock and a hard place. While it’s attractive among academics to shed a light on the dark side of public health efforts such as pre-conception health (i.e., surveillance, inequity, and futility), it is so much harder to figure out as a matter of policy and resource allocation what to do that is truly in women’s best interests. Waggoner walks this line with sensitivity and insight, making this book an important contribution to the literatures of science studies, risk politics, and reproduction.
ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the social construction of the environment, ideas about the r... more ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the social construction of the environment, ideas about the risk society, place attachment and place detachment in the aftermath of two tornadoes that occurred in 2011 in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The specific research questions are: How does the physical world influence the social world in the face of radically changed surroundings due to disaster? How do disaster aftermaths shape the ways in which participants make sense of themselves? How does disaster undo or remake relationships people form with landmarks, locations and places, such as homes, when they are destroyed? I conducted 162 interviews in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, engaged in participant observation with nonprofit organizations, and collected archival work on the history of both cities. I have three related and overlapping findings. (1) Participants experienced a loss of reality that made it difficult for them to make sense of themselves and their places in the social and physical world. (2) Participants experienced a ‘negative sense of place’ after significant places were destroyed. (3) The participants were often unaware of their physical surroundings until a rupture like disaster caused them to understand how the environment is an important part of their everyday life.
There is a rich research literature linking interpersonal violence to mental health disorders amo... more There is a rich research literature linking interpersonal violence to mental health disorders among undergraduate students. However, scholars know less about the prevalence and consequences of victimization among students enrolled in postbaccalaureate programs. Graduate and law students are uniquely vulnerable in their dependence on programs for financial support and career advancement, and they are more isolated than undergraduates. We explore the experiences of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking in a sample of 1,149 male and female master’s, doctoral, and law students at a southeastern public university. First, the current study estimates prevalence rates of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking across participant characteristics such as gender, race, sexual orientation, and degree program. We find higher rates of sexual harassment among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQ+) women and multiracial students and higher rates ...
Paid work has become more precarious in the recent decades, prompting many conflicts between empl... more Paid work has become more precarious in the recent decades, prompting many conflicts between employers and employees, including struggles over work hours. To better understand these struggles, we provide the first examination of long-term experiences with work hour mismatches (i.e., gaps between the number of hours people prefer to work per week and the number of hours they actually work). Using sequence analysis and nearly two decades of data from the British Household Panel Study, we find heterogeneous but patterned experiences. Nearly everyone has an hour mismatch eventually (typically overemployment), and most people oscillate between having and not having hour mismatches. Existing theoretical accounts anticipate some hour mismatch sequences, but the data contradict several key predictions. Moreover, no account predicts the most dominant pattern: oscillating overemployment. We thus offer a new explanation, which proposes that hour mismatches usually come in waves but can be gene...
In this article, the author examines long-term recovery from disaster in Joplin, Missouri, and Tu... more In this article, the author examines long-term recovery from disaster in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Tornados devastated both cities in 2011. The author asks (1) how sociohistoric contexts influenced perceptions of recovery and (2) how perceptions of recovery vary within and across social groups and geographic contexts. This research is based on fieldwork that spans 2013 to 2016, archival data, and 162 interviews. There are three main findings. First, although most White residents in both cities narrate a lasting leveling effect, people of color in both locations repudiate that claim. Second, White residents in Joplin explain their recovery in colorblind racist ways, while Tuscaloosa residents do not. Third, the author shows the ways in which social class intersects with gender and race to produce particular perspectives.
Unwanted sexual experiences are seldom acknowledged as “rape.” These are identity-threatening eve... more Unwanted sexual experiences are seldom acknowledged as “rape.” These are identity-threatening events that cause negative affect and cognitive confusion. According to affect control theory, such events produce deflection that is resolved through restorative acts, redefinition of behavior, or modification or redefinition of identities. Since deflection reduction is an underspecified aspect of the theory, we employ theories of power dependence to better understand these processes. Using a mixed method approach, we qualitatively analyze 115 narratives about unwanted sexual experiences, finding respondents framed events in ways that protect the other person or their own self-meanings. We use closed-ended survey data to simulate women’s experiences in Interact, affect control theory’s predictive software, to demonstrate how event reframings reduce deflection. Finally, we estimate regressions to predict how power dependence and other relational contexts influence responses to unwanted sexu...
Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular... more Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular music festivals. “MusicFest” embraces a tradition of “Red Dirt” country music through performance (music festival), whereas the “Walnut Valley Festival” embraces a bluegrass/folk musical heritage through performance and participation (musicians' festival). The symbolic importance of musical interaction is explored to highlight the experienced emotionality that leads to the affective ties that bind these otherwise temporary communities. This collective narrative reveals the various functions of nostalgia wherein collective sentiment both reflects and creates the perceived authentic experiences of festival attendees.
ABSTRACT This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine social control and... more ABSTRACT This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine social control and redefined deviance in a utopian countercultural group, The Rainbow Family of Living Light, to answer the question of how socially marginalized groups create and maintain collective identity. Working within a symbolic interactionist paradigm, and drawing on theoretical perspectives on reintegrative shaming, the authors examine the experiences of Rainbow Gatherers during a national gathering in the summer of 2010. Through interviews and observations, we illustrate how Rainbow Gatherers redefine deviance, use covert informal social control, create new definitions of proscribed behavior, and construct an internal hierarchical structure. We note a key paradox, in that although the very existence of a hierarchy and rules runs counter to their stated ideology, participants nonetheless acknowledge, observe, and culturally transmit rules and social norms. To navigate this paradox, Gatherers frame control within a familial reintegrative shaming paradigm, exerting covert informal social control within a milieu of family, peace, and cooperation. By drawing on members’ sense of collective harmony, belonging, and family (including often using sibling references), Gatherers can both foster integrations and reaffirm power-symmetry, and thus foster “appropriate” behavior in non-authoritarian ways. This framework allows them to simultaneously control the behaviors of their participants while maintaining their collective anti-control ideology. Findings show that the use of covert informal social control fosters collective identity in the group.
This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better under... more This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data ...
The concept of intersectionality has fundamentally changed feminist theorizing and the study of w... more The concept of intersectionality has fundamentally changed feminist theorizing and the study of women and gender. However, intersectional research, theorizing, and practice also have been subject to important critiques. This article provides a brief genealogy of intersectionality and summarizes major critiques. We recognize value in these critiques as well as the ongoing power of an intersectional lens. We therefore advocate what we call "context-driven intersectionality," arguing that attention to the historical, political, economic, and social factors that shape power relationships and social structures is critical to conducting robust intersectional analyses that avoid reification of social categories and inequalities.
Journal of International Students in Education, 2020
This qualitative study utilizes seventeen F-1 international students' experiences in the U.S. Spe... more This qualitative study utilizes seventeen F-1 international students' experiences in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the aspects of immigration regulations and policies regarding F-1 international students and the students' reactions to those policies¾from becoming a legal alien, to maintaining lawful status, to job planning after graduation. This research suggests the current United States administration has created a moral panic over immigration, or the threat of immigration. As a result, this political rhetoric creates negative emotions for F-1 international students and impacts their decision-making after graduation.
This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better under... more This article analyzes the effectiveness of an activity we developed to help students better understand intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytic concept that signifies ways that inequalities may overlap to create unique forms of privilege and subjugation. In the activity, students use assigned vignettes from the perspective of research participants in our own ethnographic data (including excerpts from interviews and field notes) to interact with peers assigned both similar and dissimilar perspectives and experiences. The vignettes draw attention to intersectionality in a way that helps students embody participants’ experiences with privilege and subjugation. Our analysis of the activity’s effectiveness demonstrates that when learning is interactive, is dialogical, and draws from real narratives, students and instructors can effectively explore nuanced interpretations of relatively tough concepts, such as intersectionality. We argue that the embodiment of ethnographic data is a useful mechanism for helping students connect abstract sociological concepts to uniquely experienced realities.
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Papers by Ashleigh E McKinzie