The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond

We identify three trends in the recent sociology of sexuality. First, we examine how queer theory has influenced many sociologists whose empirical work observes sexuality in areas generally thought to be asexual. These sociologists also elaborate queer theory\u27s challenge to sexual dichotomizing and trace the workings of power through sexual categories. Second, we look at how sociologists bring sexuality into conversation with the black feminist notion of “intersectionality” by examining the nature and effects of sexuality among multiple and intersecting systems of identity and oppression. A third trend in the sociology of sexuality has been to explore the relationships between sexuality and political economy in light of recent market transformations. In examining these trends, we observe the influence of globalization studies and the contributions of sociologists to understanding the role of sexuality in global processes. We conclude with the contributions sociologists of sexuality make toward understanding other social processes and with the ongoing need to study sexuality itself

A Stranger Determined to Remain One

This interview with William Gamson, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, was recorded over the phone on January 8, 2009. Dmitri Shalin transcribed the interview, after which Dr. Gamson edited the transcript.Breaks in the conversation flow are indicated by ellipses. Supplementary information and additional materials inserted during the editing process appear in square brackets. Undecipherable words and unclear passages are identified in the text as “[?]”

Normal Sins: Sex Scandal Narratives as Institutional Morality Tales

Sex scandals are widely assumed to be tales of individual transgression, serving as reminders of the normative sexual order. This paper, a qualitative multiple-case comparison of three contemporary media-conveyed sex scandals narratives, suggests otherwise. Drawing on extensive news documents, the study considers three stories, each revolving around the same sexual behavior, but each playing out in a different institutional environment: televangelist Jimmy Swaggart\u27s encounter with prostitute Debra Murphree in 1988, actor Hugh Grant\u27s encounter with prostitute Divine Brown in 1995, and presidential advisor Dick Morris\u27 encounter with prostitute Sherry Rowlands in 1996. On the one hand, within the same overarching narrative, different themes become dominant. In one case, the relationship with a prostitute gives rise to a story primarily focused on hypocrisy; in another, to a story focused mainly on recklessness; in the last, to a story focused mainly on amorality and disloyalty. On the other hand, the stories share a common dynamic and common themes: the discussions of sexual misbehavior, which kick each story into gear, are rapidly edged out by themes of inauthenticity, and by suggestions that hypocrisy, risk, or disloyalty are facilitated by the man\u27s particular institutional environment. Sex scandal stories, rather than remaining stories of individual sexual transgression, are transformed into institutional morality tales. Such a pattern, the author argues, results from pronounced needs on the part of mainstream media organizations to both mimic and distinguish themselves from tabloid media, and from journalists\u27 interest in transforming soft into hard news stories. While they draw on and buttress familiar cultural givens about masculine sexuality, these scandal stories offer an even more theoretically challenging twist: an unexpected cultural reversal, in which sexual sins as narrated by American news media, reveal not individual, but institutional pathologies; not a normative order, but institutional decay

Silence, Death and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement Newness

Examining the dynamics and activities of the AIDS activist movement--here, through an analysis based on a participant-observation study of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in San Francisco--provides an opportunity to clarify issues on which social movements literature tends to be hazy. ACT UP mixes strategic action and material targets with expressive action and cultural targets; their cultural activity takes the form of boundary-crossing and the contesting of images. They often have difficulty distinguishing their targets, and are caught both denying and affirming that AIDS is a gay disease. I argue that these actions and dilemmas are best understood in the context of changed forms of domination, more and more an invisible and disembodied process of normalization, with the state gradually less directly involved. This argument not only explains the particulars of ACT UP\u27s activism, but also poses challenges to theorizing on contemporary ( new ) social movements

Notes on Higher Education in the 1990s

This article consists of a series of essays written for The Academic Workplace, the newsletter of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, since 1990. The backdrop for the essays is the increasing inequality in higher education caused by changes in the political economy of higher education, especially in New England. The first essay analyzes the roots of contemporary faculty dissatisfaction with their work lives by tracing the impacts of the expansion of higher education, changes in the student body, and greater government involvement in higher education. Subsequent essays discuss multicultural education, faculty shortages, political correctness, responses to cutbacks, the evaluation of quality, and the collective life of academia. Altogether, the essays present a rather grim look at higher education in the 1990s, leavened by a few suggestions for change