An Interdisciplinary Consideration of Marginality

As the university increases its commitment to interdisciplinary studies, it is imperative that we find productive models of interdisciplinarity in scholarly and creative activities, teaching, and institutional structures. This coauthored essay, written in the spirit of sharing work across disciplines, seeks to participate in the conversation about interdisciplinary scholarship. Interdisciplinarity in scholarship can be discussed in two ways. First, interdisicplinarity can be enhanced by encouraging people to read across the disciplines. Second, it can be enhanced by encouraging scholarship that is interdisciplinary and multi-methodological. This essay speaks to both of these levels

Teaching Sociological Concepts and the Sociology of Gender

https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/1050/thumbnail.jp

Quilting: The Fabric of Everyday Life

Quilting, once regarded as a traditional craft, has broken through the barriers of history, art and commerce to become a global phenomenon, international multi-billion dollar industry and means of gendered cultural production. In Quilting, sociologist and quilter Marybeth C. Stalp explores how and why women quilt. This close ethnographic study illustrates that women\u27s lives can be transformed in often surprising ways by the activity and art of quilting. Some women who quilt as a leisure pastime are too afraid to admit to being a quilter for fear of ridicule; others boldly identify themselves as quilters and regard it as part of their everyday lives. The place of quilting in women\u27s lives affects core family and personal identity issues such as marriage, childcare, friendship and aging. The book\u27s accessible and intimate portrayal of real quilters\u27 lives provides a fabric for the sociology, anthropology and textile student to understand more about wider issues of cultural production and identity that stem from this very personal pastime. -- Provided by publisherhttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/1144/thumbnail.jp

Virtually Crafting Communities: An Exploration of Fiber and Textile Crafting Online Communities

Ravelry.com was founded in 2007 and as of March 2013 it had more than three million members for its social networking website. The Ravelry.com motto is: Ravelry is “a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, and pattern information, and communicate with others for ideas and inspiration” (Forbes, Ravelry.com/about, Aug 22, 2013). Members share images of their handcrafts and discuss their recent projects. The site serves as more than a social media platform for handcrafters; however, it also provides members with a means of commerce, such as selling yarns and patterns. This research draws on experiences of handcrafters, including knitters, crocheters, weavers, textile designers, and quilters. In 2004, we launched an ongoing qualitative ethnographic research study of handcrafters. For the last nine years, we collected interviews from fiber and textile handcrafters; observed and participated in various handcrafting groups; attended fiber and textile related events; visited fiber and textile shops and private design studios; and observed and participated in online handcraft communities. Our recent research recognizes the significant presence of crafters on the Internet, previous research suggests face-to-face interactions were essential to the phenomenogical experiences of the handcrafters. In this paper, we explore online communities, including blogs, social media sites, meet ups, and commerce domains, for fiber and textile designers and handcrafters. We share our qualitative research findings addressing the gap in the literature about the significant impact of online fiber and textile design communities. We conclude with a discussion about the benefits and drawbacks within these online communities influencing the current paradigm shifts that is both manipulating and empowering fiber and textile enthusiasts and practitioners. Reference Forbes, Jessica. Ravelry.com/about (Accessed: August 22, 2013)

Reorganizations of Gendered Labor During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Suggestions for Further Research

Across a range of countries, analysts have found that adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic often exacerbated previously existing labor inequalities between men and women in formal employment markets and households. This has been especially true for mothers with children in their households. Drawing on decades of sociological and feminist scholarship on labor, we suggest the following three strategies to strengthen ongoing research concerning pandemic-induced reorganizations of gendered labor. First, ongoing research should expand considerations of gendered labor to account for more types of work and workers. Second, initial findings should be extended through the continued utilization of diverse methodologies to better account for the ambivalent experiences and meanings associated with emergent reorganizations of gendered work during the pandemic. Finally, ongoing research should pursue intersectional analyses of gendered labor that are sensitive to the complex dynamics of place and time. By expanding and strengthening considerations of gendered labor in these manners, ongoing analyses could generate more comprehensive, precise findings that better guide policy interventions meant to address the gendered inequities being sharpened by the pandemic. Foundational theoretical understandings of gendered labor and its associated inequalities could also be extended

Raging Against the “Neoliberal Hellscape”: Anger, Pride, and Ambivalence in Civil Society Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the USA

Do volunteers and civil society groups entrench or subvert neoliberalisation? We contribute to this debate by utilising data from 662 self-administered questionnaires and 78 semi-structured interviews with adults who made and distributed personal protective equipment (PPE) in response to a failed federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. The state’s failure to protect Americans angered PPE makers, even as they worked to address PPE shortages. Many purposefully assisted populations marginalised by neoliberal policies, taking pride in their ability to help. Although makers generally did not seek to reform the institutions that had failed them, our results indicate that civil society groups may challenge neoliberalisation by rallying communities to mitigate its worst impacts. Instead of being a passive conduit for neoliberalisation, PPE makers’ efforts in the USA were more accurately characterised by ambivalent engagements with neoliberalisation that sometimes bolstered collective efforts to challenge neoliberal governance and its associated inequities

Choreographing social reproduction: Making personal protective equipment and gender during a neoliberal pandemic

Feminist scholars explore the gendered aspects of social reproduction within neoliberal contexts where the responsibility for reproducing daily and intergenerational life is shifted onto individuals and civil society groups. Using qualitative data from 665 self-administered online questionnaires and 78 interviews with individual makers living in the United States who fabricated and distributed personal protective equipment (PPE) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we consider the gendered contours of this socially reproductive labor that emerged at the household and community levels in response to a pandemic that has been transformed by decades of neoliberal governance strategies. As makers creatively utilized multiple kinds of labor to provide PPE for others, they both reproduced and subverted gendered inequalities in their households and communities. We draw on the “choreography of care work” literature to develop a conceptual framework for future considerations of social reproduction that highlights how its often ignored intricacies are centrally important to how gendered inequalities are reproduced and/or reworked amid disasters. Like a complex dance that is rewritten and enacted in emergent manners, makers creatively deployed multiple kinds of labor within shifting networks of people, technologies, and institutions to ensure social reproduction during the ongoing pandemic