Carol A. B. Warren

New Forms of Social Control: The Myth of Deinstitutionalization

This commodification-or, in historical perspective, recommodification (see Scull, this issue)-of &dquo;social junk&dquo; has been taking place relatively unnoticed because it is masked by a myth: the myth of deinstitutionalization and community care (see also Rothman, 1980). The myth is as follows. From the nineteenth century to the 1950s, society relied increasingly first on countyand then on state-funded institutions to house nonworking and deviant populations: state mental hospitals for the mentally ill and elderly, prisons and jails for criminals, juvenile halls and camps for delinquents, and state facilities for the retarded. Since the 1950s, there has been an ideological shift of emphasis from custodial care in these large facilities to community placement and nonresidential treatment and care: the so-called deinstitutionalization

Losing Weight: The Organizational Promotion of Behavior Change

This analysis explores the sociological dimensions of obesity as a type of deviance through a study of the strategies used by one voluntary weight loss organization to change the behavior of fat people so they will become thin. Goffmans concept of stigma and Lemerts theory of secondary deviation are applied to these strategies. The study concludes that under certain circumstances, stigma may be used to change behavior from deviant to normal and that a deviant identity, deviant behavior and a deviant way of life do not always vary together.

Toward a cooptive model of qualitative research

With the growing acceptance of qualitative (field observational and intensive interview) research in the social sciences, there has been increasing interest in the practical and philosophical issues related to these methods. Since the foundation of the methodology is social relations, scholars have made numerous attempts to construct an epistemology of research relations; among these are the research bargain, cooperative and conflict models of qualitative research. An alternative model is presented, the cooptive model, in which the basic assumptions are that 1. there is a highly situational element in the process of qualitative research, as there is in any other set of relations, which prevents its characterization as “fundamentally”; one of bargaining, cooperation or conflict; 2. the research respondent will attempt to coopt the researcher into her or his meaning world and 3. the uncautious researcher will, in a parallel manner, attempt to fit the respondents meanings into the researchers meaning world...

Caretakers: Treating Emotionaly Disturbed Children, David R. Buckholdt and Jaber F. Gubrium, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979. 267 pp.

inaccurate, or simply nonexistent explanations, many with arrows and lines that go nowhere and everywhere; b) conceptual ambiguity of basic terms (e.g., &dquo;control,&dquo; &dquo;crime,&dquo; &dquo;agents;&dquo; c) irrelevant discussions and confusing discursive organization that seem to have little to do with his primary thesis (e.g., a rather illconsidered critique of the &dquo;dark figure of crime,&dquo; and a distracting application of a &dquo;disaster model&dquo; to an occupational firing); and d)

8.95 (paper).

These studies are selected and annotated by the New Ethnographies Editor and by readers who discover ethnographies, write annotations of them, and send in these annotations. Readers are invited to report ethnographies they discover, especially those found in irregular sources, including M.A. and Ph.D. theses. They will be printed, with credit, within limits of space and multiple submission. Please limit the annotations to about 150-200 words. Direct all correspondence to John J. Johnson, New Ethnographies Editor, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85281.