Candace West

Accounting for Cosmetic Surgery: The Accomplishment of Gender

In this paper, we examine how surgeons who do cosmetic operations account for their activities and how people who elect such operations make sense of their decisions to do so. Our interviews with surgeons and former patients show that accounts of cosmetic surgery extend the definition of reconstructive procedures to include cosmetic ones. This definition is achieved simultaneously with the “accomplishment of gender,” allowing surgeons and patients to see cosmetic surgery as “normal” and “natural” for a woman, but not for a man. Discussion of our findings leads us to consider how the creation of “good candidates” for surgery is related to genders accomplishment

ETHNOGRAPHY AND ORTHOGRAPHY A (Modest) Methodological Proposal

In this article, I make a methodological plea for the utility of transcribing in field research. I begin by noting that, despite much recent talk of the mutual relevance of ethnography and conversation analysis, transcribing has not been addressed as a topic in its own right. I consider the goals of transcribing from a conversation analytic perspective and compare these with the aims of producing field notes. Then, I explicate the process of transcribing, calling attention to problems that arise from conventional procedures for representing talk in texts. Consideration of the difficulties many ethnographers face in attempting to introduce audio and video tape recorders into their field sites leads me to examine the analytical advantages of transcribing with—and without—tape-recorded data.

Women's Competence in Conversation

In this paper, my aim is to review the logic involved in existing assessments of womens competence as conversationalists. My point of departure is the very definition of competence, which, as I demonstrate, has not been employed in many descriptions of womens deficits. Instead, conversational competence has been generally defined by default, in relation to how men speak and what men mean to say. By contrast, conversation analysis yields a systematic means of assessing the demands that conversation makes on conversationalists and the efforts needed to meet them. To advance this approach, I examine the results of existing research that show womens skills at listening, at effecting smooth transitions between speakers, and at maintaining accord in task-oriented, as well as casual, conversations. This examination leads me to consider how womens conversational competence has been misrepresented in many existing assessments—and to consider how such misrepresentation is involved in the subordination of women by men.

Goffman in Feminist Perspective

In this paper, my aim is to call attention to Erving Goffmans contributions to feminist theory. I begin by reviewing his sociological agenda and assessments of that agenda by his critics. Next, I consider various substantive contributions of his work to our understanding of womens experiences in public places, spoken interaction between women and men, and sex and gender. I conclude with a discussion of the significance of Goffmans work for analyzing the politics of and in the personal sphere.

Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man? An Interactional Note on Organizational Game-Playing for Managerial Women.

Recent literature suggests that womens success in “a mans world” is partially contingent on learning the rules of mens “games.” Here, it appears that game-playing in work organizations (like game-playing in everyday life) has its primary site in the arena of face-to-face interaction. Thus, aspiring women are advised to “dress for success,” attend to the subtleties of “power desking,” and, of special interest here, “speak up” in order to be heard. Research reviewed here suggests that the significance of actions changes according to the gender of the actors and that women conversing with men may have special difficulties being heard even when they do “speak up.”

Peeling an onion: a critical comment on `Competing discourses'

as a straightforward one: write a short assessment of Judith Baxter’s (2002) contribution, using ‘any perspective [I might] like’. I should have known better. Immersing myself in the assignment, I realized that it wasn’t straightforward at all, but rather, like peeling an onion. In order to get at what Baxter (2002: 827) puts forth, namely, ‘an alternative account of spoken interactions to those of CA [conversation analysis] and CDA [critical discourse analysis]’, I had to peel back her interpretations of what-it-was-said-to-be an alternative to. Baxter clearly states that the primary purpose of her article is advancing the discussion of how discourse analysis should be evaluated – not participating in ‘the CA/CDA debate’ between ‘Schegloff (1999[a]) in the blue corner’ and ‘Billing (1999[a]) in the red [one]’ (p. 828). Nonetheless, because she situates her contribution between the layers of this ongoing debate, she includes the incumbents of both corners in her ‘community of relevance.’1 I have therefore organized my comments within the layers that she presents, following the order in which she presents them.