Annulla Linders

Abortion as a Social Problem: The Construction of “Opposite” Solutions in Sweden and the United States

Analyzing abortion as a social problem in two national contexts, this paper extends the social constructionist approach to a historical comparative problem. The two abortion problems analyzed, one in the United States, 1840–1880, and the other in Sweden, 1910–1940, shared many significant elements, including medical lobbying, pronatalist and class-specific eugenic concerns, and uncertainty around womens changing social and economic roles. And yet, the effort to curb the number of abortions led to “opposite” policy solutions in these two nations, with the United States criminalizing a previously unregulated practice, and Sweden liberalizing a previously harsh law against abortion. These different policy solutions were grounded in the different understandings of abortion that the respective claimsmaking processes produced, including different perceptions of the women having abortions, why they were having them, and what could feasibly be done about it. I argue here that the different historical legacies of abortion, the ability of the state to adopt and enforce policies, and the larger cultural arena of public problems influenced the abortion problems specific trajectory in each nation.

Gall, Gallantry, and the Gallows Capital Punishment and the Social Construction of Gender, 1840-1920

In this article, the authors examine how the debate over womens executions during the nineteenth and early twentieth century funneled and in various ways processed the contrary demands of gender and capital justice. They show how encounters with capital punishment both reflected and reinforced dominant interpretations of womanhood and as such contributed to the intricate web of normative strictures that affected all women at the time. At the same time, however, the often heated debates that accompanied such cases pried open some of the contradictions inherent in the dominant interpretations and, as a result, came to challenge the boundaries that separated not only women from men but also women from each other. Rather than viewing gender as a unidirectional influence on capital punishment, the authors argue that gender is best approached as an evolving social category that gets reconstructed, modified, and transformed whenever it is implicated in social practices and public debates.

Howard Becker in Hyperspace: Social Learning in an On-Line Drug Community

Analyzing on-line drug communities provides important insights into the connection between computer-mediated communication and drug use in contemporary society. Drawing on social learning theory, we analyze conversations within the on-line community DMT-Nexus. We find that the on-line context affects the social learning process concerning drug use in distinct ways and identify how users gain relevant knowledge and interpretive strategies and acquire credibility. Based on these findings, we propose an expansion of Becker’s social learning model of drug use reflecting the unique constraints and opportunities of on-line contexts including the importance of vivid textual descriptions and modes of communication.

A Precarious Balance of Interests: Unions and the Unemployed in Europe

This chapter addresses the unions’ responses to the European unemployment crisis in the 1990s, with a specific focus on the relationship between unions and the unemployed. In most nations the unions were actively involved in the efforts to weather the crisis; they lobbied policy makers and parties, they sought to influence public opinion, and they worked directly with the unemployed, both in terms of service provision and political action, and in some cases they provided organizational vehicles for the mobilization of the unemployed as independent actors. But the intensity and scope of such collaborative efforts varied considerably during the crisis years, both across and within the nations. Considering what we know about the relationship between unions and the unemployed, such variations are not altogether surprising. That is, empirical studies reveal a diverse set of relationships between unions and the unemployed, ranging from close collaborations to open hostility. However, the conditions under which such varied relationships take shape and develop are as of yet underspecified, as are the processes whereby unions and/or the unemployed negotiate interests and arrive at particular strategic positions vis-a-vis each other.

Teenage Pregnancy as a Social Problem: A Comparison of Sweden and the United States

In this chapter, adolescent pregnancy in the United States is examined as a socially constructed problem. Teenage pregnancy has been treated as an urgent social problem in the United States since the 1970s. Scholars, politicians, interest groups, and media actors have all contributed to a seemingly ceaseless debate about what can and should be done about teenage pregnancy. Fueling the debate is the persistent high pregnancy rate among teenagers in the United States in comparison with their peers in other developed nations. In sharp contrast, teenage pregnancy in Sweden is not a recognizable problem in its own right. No one studies only teenage pregnancy, and no one in the public debate focuses exclusively on teenage pregnancy. In combination with a very low teenage pregnancy rate, it is as if the problem does not exist. And yet, even if teenage pregnancy itself is not a distinct problem in Sweden, more comprehensive activities involving teenagers and sexuality are certainly subject to concern and debate. Therefore, it would be a mistake to conclude that the different statuses of teenage pregnancy as a social problem in the United States and Sweden are all about objective magnitude. A number of observers of teenage pregnancy in the United States have concluded that it is a socially constructed problem in the sense that claims about it are exaggerated and/or misguided and that the problem is fundamentally misrepresented in the public debate. Indeed, teenage pregnancy in the United States displays most of the spectacular features that typically accompany the problems selected for social constructionist analyses (crisis language, front-page stories, extensive debate, and high public visibility). In contrast, none of these features characterize the Swedish case. Comparing the two countries therefore provides an opportunity to examine aspects of social problem construction that are not readily available in the analyses of one country.

The 2018 NCSA presidential address: the audience of executions

ABSTRACT Capital punishment occupies a precarious position in the modern democratic state. Much scholarship has addressed the political and judicial dilemmas associated with the death penalty. I focus on the execution itself as a fraught state activity and place the analytical spotlight on the audience of executions. The audience of executions is a critical component of executions and has played an important role in the transformation of capital punishment over the past 200 years. I use three modal forms, or ideal types, of the execution audience—the crowd, professional witnesses, and family members of murder victims—to highlight the ways in which the audience provides the American death penalty with some of its key meanings, contradictions, and pressures to change. All three audience forms have coexisted since the early nineteenth century, but their respective roles in the execution drama have changed dramatically as have the meanings generated by their presence.

The Social Scientific Gaze: The Social Question and the Rise of Academic Social Science in SwedenThe Social Scientific Gaze: The Social Question and the Rise of Academic Social Science in Sweden, by WisselgrenPer. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2015. 277 pp.

Four. One needs a healthy combination of greed, salesmanship, and acting skills to be an effective con artist (and Williams and Milton see their work as an art). Interestingly, Alibi and his co-deceivers justify their own actions by saying that victims are also greedy and would try to con them if given the chance. ‘‘You see,’’ says Alibi, ‘‘an honest man could not be conned’’ (p. 8). He can pick a stranger out of a crowd and just know he is greedy enough to fall victim to misdirection. Just as fascinating is the case of Lorena, a notorious serial hustler of landlords. Lorena signs a lease, pays a couple of months’ rent, and then reports a variety of violations to the city, which means she does not have to pay her rent until they are resolved. She has lived mostly rent-free through this strategy for decades. An issue with the book is also one of its selling points. Williams and Milton consider a hustler to be a kind of con artist (p. 8), when really it is the other way around. Short for ‘‘confidence man,’’ a con man gains the trust of unsuspecting victims to procure their money or goods. Alibi Jones is the book’s example of a con artist. Lee, the water seller, is not a con artist. He is simply hustling to pay his rent and college tuition by re-selling water he bought wholesale. He is not taking advantage of his customers. Most shoppers on Canal Street, New York City’s premier tourist destination for knockoff and counterfeit goods, know they are not buying the real deal and enjoy haggling over prices, which is part of the experience. And Ramon, a former crack dealer, certainly hustled during the crack epidemic, but he was selling an illegal product that practically sold itself to addicts. If the mark knows the game is taking place and gets something in return, then there is no victim, and it is not a con. Likewise, a numbers operation is a hustle, but there is no deception going on since everyone involved knows it is basic gambling and willingly participates. (In a nod to Ned Polsky’s classic work, a more accurate title may have been ‘‘Hustlers, Con Artists, and Others: New York City’s Underground Economy.’’) But the conceptual concerns do not detract from the vivid presentation of people who must hustle in today’s city to survive and are also perfect subjects for classroom discussions and debates. Are the tactics of deception that police officers use to get suspects to confess the same as when Alibi Jones pretends to be someone he is not to fleece strangers out of their money? Bernie Madoff certainly engaged in a massive con game when he ran his Ponzi scheme—an excellent example of a white-collar criminal using tactics of deception and sales skills typically found in the street. But is it accurate to call Wall Street as a whole a legal con game and call bankers con artists? Can we apply a concept based on interpersonal interaction to the collective activities within an industry? Greed and salesmanship may be requirements for being a con artist, but is everyone who is greedy and a good salesman a con artist? What makes hustling such a great topic is its ubiquity in society. As the authors state, ‘‘the definition of hustling should be viewed along a continuum, legal to extralegal, nonviolent to violent’’ (p. 10). Practically everyone hustles to some degree. Questions about why some hustles are praised for their ingenuity while others are labeled deviant or criminalized, and why some people have to engage in certain types of hustles to survive, are excellent starting points for fundamental sociological conversations about inequality, social norms, and values. Williams and Milton successfully conjure these questions. With its colorful characters, spotlight on hidden social worlds, and highly accessible writing style, I can see instructors using this book in their social deviance and criminology courses to great effect.

121.20 cloth. ISBN: 9781472447593.

Adolescent pregnancy in Sweden is currently not a major concern, either socially or medically. Few adolescents in Sweden become parents and there is little debate or discussion about adolescent pregnancy as an urgent social problem. Adolescents become pregnant, of course, but they are unlikely to carry the pregnancies to term. The low number of teen births does not mean, however, that the issue is of no concern. On the contrary, the sexual practices of young people are subject to extensive discussion and scrutiny by an array of public actors, including schools, organizations, agencies, and professionals. However, do current approaches that are designed to instill in youths a foundation of healthy sexual practices and attitudes that they can carry with them into adulthood do what they are designed to do? It is still an unanswered question. Available evidence on outcome is mixed. On the one hand, a large portion of adolescents take advantage of available resources and act fairly responsibly when it comes their sexual lives (by using contraceptives, for example). Then, on the other hand, there is also persistent evidence of the failures to reach all young people, as well as, to counteract social practices that foster “risky” sexual behaviors. Public involvement in adolescent sexuality is almost exclusively devoted to making sure that adolescent sex is safe, healthy, and devoid of coercion. Due to the persistence of gender inequity, the safety of adolescent girls is of particular concern, but the official approach—in schools, information materials, adolescent centers, data gathering, etc.—encompasses boys’ sexuality as well. The efforts to eliminate gender inequalities in the area of sex and intimate relations, however, as part of a more general effort to reach gender parity have only been partially successful, thus signaling that more work needs to be done.