Is stripping exploitation? This ideological question often plagues exotic dance research, with di... more Is stripping exploitation? This ideological question often plagues exotic dance research, with diverse and often contradictory findings across the literature. Existent research highlights both potentially positive and negative experiences among women involved in exotic dance. In this article, we focus on the social organization of strip clubs and how this organization contextualizes the experiences and commitments of dancers. We present ethnographic data collected by the first author, including extensive field observations of 49 strip clubs, formal interviews from 50 dancers and ex-dancers at various career stages, and informal interviews with dozens of other dancers. We present a typology of strip clubs—hustle clubs, social clubs, and show clubs—and describe the processual orders. We also explain how the processual orders of these different types of clubs relate to dancers’ workplace experiences. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for sociological and public understandings of sex work.
Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the re... more Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the relationship between religion and punishment has long been the subject of speculation. However, surprisingly little empirical research exists on the role of religion or religious context in criminal justice, and almost no research on the role of religious context on actual sentencing practices. We conceptualize the potential relationships between religious context and sentencing severity by drawing from the focal concerns and court community perspectives in the sentencing literature and from the moral communities theory developed by Rodney Stark. We suspect that Christian moral communities might shape notions of perceived blameworthiness for court community actors. Such moral communities might also affect notions of community protection—affecting perceptions of dangerousness, or perhaps rehabilitation, and might influence practical constraints/consequences (e.g., local political ramifications of harsh or lenient sentences). We examine these questions with a set of hierarchical models using sentencing data from Pennsylvania county courts and data on the religious composition of Pennsylvania counties from the Associated Religion Data Archives. We find that county Christian religious homogeneity increases the likelihood of incarceration. In addition, Christian homogeneity, as well as the prevalence of civically engaged denominations in a county condition the effects of important legally relevant determinants of incarceration. Furthermore, we find evidence that Christian homogeneity activates the effect of local Republican electoral dominance on incarceration. We argue that Christian homogeneity affects sentencing practices primarily through local political processes that shape the election of judges and prosecutors.
Sentencing policies are developed, enacted, and filtered through national and state-level politic... more Sentencing policies are developed, enacted, and filtered through national and state-level political processes, the local political and organizational contexts of communities and their courts, and the decisions and actions of individuals such as attorneys and judges. This article uses Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines as an example to illustrate the value of a symbolic interactionist framework known as the processual order approach for research on policy in general and sentencing guidelines policy in particular. I first discuss some general characteristics and dilemmas of courts and sentencing policy, and then review the processual order approach. Next, I discuss national and state-level processes that led to the development and enactment of Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines, and then summarize findings from research on local court contexts, case processing, and sentencing under guidelines. I conclude with five processual order propositions to guide research on the interrelationships between contexts, activities, and consequences surrounding the development and implementation of policy, and suggest some diverse and ambitious topics to which these propositions could be applied.
Is stripping exploitation? This ideological question often plagues exotic dance research, with di... more Is stripping exploitation? This ideological question often plagues exotic dance research, with diverse and often contradictory findings across the literature. Existent research highlights both potentially positive and negative experiences among women involved in exotic dance. In this article, we focus on the social organization of strip clubs and how this organization contextualizes the experiences and commitments of dancers. We present ethnographic data collected by the first author, including extensive field observations of 49 strip clubs, formal interviews from 50 dancers and ex-dancers at various career stages, and informal interviews with dozens of other dancers. We present a typology of strip clubs—hustle clubs, social clubs, and show clubs—and describe the processual orders. We also explain how the processual orders of these different types of clubs relate to dancers’ workplace experiences. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for sociological and public understandings of sex work.
Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the re... more Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the relationship between religion and punishment has long been the subject of speculation. However, surprisingly little empirical research exists on the role of religion or religious context in criminal justice, and almost no research on the role of religious context on actual sentencing practices. We conceptualize the potential relationships between religious context and sentencing severity by drawing from the focal concerns and court community perspectives in the sentencing literature and from the moral communities theory developed by Rodney Stark. We suspect that Christian moral communities might shape notions of perceived blameworthiness for court community actors. Such moral communities might also affect notions of community protection—affecting perceptions of dangerousness, or perhaps rehabilitation, and might influence practical constraints/consequences (e.g., local political ramifications of harsh or lenient sentences). We examine these questions with a set of hierarchical models using sentencing data from Pennsylvania county courts and data on the religious composition of Pennsylvania counties from the Associated Religion Data Archives. We find that county Christian religious homogeneity increases the likelihood of incarceration. In addition, Christian homogeneity, as well as the prevalence of civically engaged denominations in a county condition the effects of important legally relevant determinants of incarceration. Furthermore, we find evidence that Christian homogeneity activates the effect of local Republican electoral dominance on incarceration. We argue that Christian homogeneity affects sentencing practices primarily through local political processes that shape the election of judges and prosecutors.
Sentencing policies are developed, enacted, and filtered through national and state-level politic... more Sentencing policies are developed, enacted, and filtered through national and state-level political processes, the local political and organizational contexts of communities and their courts, and the decisions and actions of individuals such as attorneys and judges. This article uses Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines as an example to illustrate the value of a symbolic interactionist framework known as the processual order approach for research on policy in general and sentencing guidelines policy in particular. I first discuss some general characteristics and dilemmas of courts and sentencing policy, and then review the processual order approach. Next, I discuss national and state-level processes that led to the development and enactment of Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines, and then summarize findings from research on local court contexts, case processing, and sentencing under guidelines. I conclude with five processual order propositions to guide research on the interrelationships between contexts, activities, and consequences surrounding the development and implementation of policy, and suggest some diverse and ambitious topics to which these propositions could be applied.
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