Jeannine A. Gailey

Power and gender negotiations during interviews with men about sex and sexually degrading practices

The topic of female researchers interviewing male subjects has received previous attention, but few scholarly works focus specifically on sensitive topics such as sexual behaviors. The discrepancy suggests that even though women researchers interview men about sensitive issues, sexuality still seems out of bounds. Based on our research, we found it intellectually and emotionally challenging to interview men about sexually degrading behaviors. In the present article, we focus on the gender performances by both the interviewees and interviewers, including how the structure of the interview affects gendered interactions in interviews and the vulnerability we experienced as a result. We conclude by suggesting a few strategies that future women researchers can employ when conducting cross-gender, in-depth interviews with men about sex. We also raise questions for feminist researchers about how best to handle sexist, racist, and derogatory remarks made by interviewees.

An Integrated Model of Attribution of Responsibility for Wrongdoing in Organizations.

Sociologists and psychologists have spent several decades attempting to improve our understanding of the factors that influence how people attribute responsibility for outcomes of social action, particularly wrongdoing. Members of two disciplines continue to refine Heiders seminal work in distinct ways, but have not developed a definitive test of attribution of responsibility (AOR) because of the ad hoc nature of existing research. To move towards a definitive test of AOR, we propose an integrated AOR model that is especially well suited to a neglected substantive concern: wrongdoing within organizations. In constructing our integrated model, we synthesize insights from the sociological and psychological research on AOR, while also incorporating concepts from organizational studies. An integrated model has the potential to provide a more stringent test of AOR in cases of organizational wrongdoing, which would move the field beyond its current stagnation and would carry important legal implications.

“Knocking off a Fat Girl:” an Exploration of Hogging, Male Sexuality, and Neutralizations

ABSTRACT The mistreatment of women in the United States is part of a larger problem of cultural misogyny. Hogging is one of the many forms of mistreatment that is devalued and often overlooked. It is a practice where men seek women who are overweight or unattractive to satisfy their competitive or sexual urges. The purpose of this paper is to understand hogging through mens accounts and use of neutralization techniques. Results indicate that two-thirds of the men we interviewed and all of the accounts we analyzed used neutralization techniques to minimize negative self-conceptions and to manage stigma.

Achieving masculinity through sexual predation: the case of hogging

Hegemonic masculinity in the contemporary United States involves control, domination, competition, aggression, and the devaluing of women. Hogging, a practice whereby men seek out women they deem unattractive or fat for sexual purposes, has been largely overlooked by scholars. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore hogging from a sociology of masculinities perspective. Interviews and content analyses were conducted to learn about why men hog and what they are able to achieve from this behavior. These data indicate that most men who participate in this behavior are concerned with how hogging affects their relationships with their male peers. Men who hog achieve status in their peer groups by gaining sexual access to women they see as ‘easy’. Even men who do not engage in sexual activity gain from the sexual encounters of their peers, by either participating in ‘bets’ or being entertained by the stories their peers tell them about hogging. Hogging, then, is less about the encounters with women and more about homosociality.

Fat Shame to Fat Pride: Fat Women's Sexual and Dating Experiences

The fat female body is typically not considered attractive or sexual in Western culture. Not surprisingly, the scholarship about fat womens dating and sexual histories is deficient. To address this gap, 36 fat-identified women were interviewed about their body image, involvement in the size acceptance movement, and their dating and sexual histories. Results indicated that most participants felt intense body shame and had unsatisfying sex lives until they began to embody fat pride. Embodiment of fat pride has reportedly diminished feelings of body shame, helped most develop confidence and appreciation of their bodies, and has positively affected their sex lives.

ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY AS A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONCEPT

Attributions of responsibility (AR) are of interest to sociologists and psychologists. However, the measurement of AR has been inconsistent both within and across the disciplines. The present study tests whether AR is a multidimensional or unidimensional concept. Data for study 1 were collected from 201 undergraduate students at a large, midwestern university. Results indicate that there are four factors associated with AR, supporting the contention that AR is a multidimensional concept. Study 2 replicated the findings of the first with a sample of 441 undergraduates. Results indicate that there are four factors that respondents consider when attributing responsibility for wrongdoing.

Attribution of Responsibility for Organizational Wrongdoing: A Partial Test of an Integrated Model

The present study is an exploratory examination of the influence of social and organizational features on respondents’ attributions of responsibility for wrongdoing within an organization. Respondents read a vignette of organizational wrongdoing that included the manipulation of social features, such as whether the organizational actor was following orders or acting on his volition (social role) and if the actor tried to cover up his actions or not (deed), and organizational features, such as standard operating procedures (SOP) and institutionalized mental schemas. Following the vignette, respondents made attributional judgments to both the individual actor and organization based on a multidimensional measure of responsibility. Results indicated that the actor’s role within the organization, his actions or deeds, and organizational SOP significantly impacted how respondents attributed responsibility (on multiple dimensions) to either the individual or organization. Moreover, results indicated that women and men tended to attribute responsibility differently. Recommendations are made to improve future tests of the integrated model.

Commentary on Knottnerus et al. (2006) `Exposing Enron: Media Representations of Ritualized Deviance in Corporate Culture'

In their recent Crime Media Culture article, Knottnerus et al. (2006) argue that the corporate environment of Enron led to the normalization of deviance. The authors note that their study offers a unique contribution to the literature because they move beyond individuallevel explanations, which have dominated both media and scholarly accounts of the Enron case, and instead use multiple levels of analysis to understand the fall of Enron. Relying on organizational deviance theories, they argue that wrongdoings at Enron ‘were the product of organizational process’ (p. 178). I admire the authors for moving beyond the exclusively individual-oriented approach common in much of the corporate crime scholarship and incorporating the organizational literature to examine such a significant case of whitecollar crime. My criticism addresses the methodology they employed to arrive at their conclusions, to which I return shortly. First, I provide a brief summary of the theoretical perspective they used to analyze their data. Knottnerus et al. (2006) analyze the fall of Enron using structural ritualization theory. The theory states that ‘ritualized symbolic practices (RSPs) help structure group dynamics’ (p. 179, emphasis in original). Ritualized practices eventually shape cognitive or symbolic schemas, which in turn guide the behaviors of those in the organization. According to the theory, RSPs are reinforced and reproduced by four factors: repetitiveness, salience, homologousness, and resources. Repetitiveness involves the frequency of RSPs and varies based on the situation. Salience is the degree to which RSPs are perceived as centrally important to the act or actions. Homologousness is a degree of perceived similarity of various RSPs. Resources are the materials required to become involved in RSPs and are available to actors. The final component of the theory is rank, which involves the relative importance of RSPs; therefore rank is a function of the above four components (Knottnerus, 1997). The authors acknowledge that the theory is relatively new, but state that it is increasingly employed in the literature (Knottnerus et al., 2006). The methodology section of the article begins with a discussion of data identification and sample selection. Knottnerus et al. (2006) state that they began their study by

Theorizing fat oppression: Intersectional approaches and methodological innovations

ABSTRACT The oppression of fat people is built into institutions, pervades the cultural landscape, and affects the relationships and perceptions of people of size. In this introduction to the special issue on fat oppression, we examine the concept of oppression and its place in fat studies before reviewing the extant literature on fat oppression. We also discuss how the articles chosen for this issue contribute to the existing theoretical and empirical understanding of fat oppression. We conclude by encouraging scholarship that utilizes diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the oppression of fat people.

Attributing Responsibility for Organizational Wrongdoing

The economic, social, and human consequences of organizational wrongdoing are enormous and well-documented.1 The 21st century began with almost daily revelations about corporate and organizational misconduct, ranging from widespread economic abuses at Enron and other Fortune 500 corporations to human rights violations by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison. Most observers agree that the costs of “crime in the suites” far outweigh those of “crime in the streets.”2 But who, or what, is responsible for these harms? Should we blame greedy or morally negligent individuals, referred to as “amoral calculators”?3 Organizational cultures, structures, and processes?4 institutional logics and systemic environmental forces that transcend a “focal organization”?5 Broader social norms and institutions, such as capitalism or “technical rationality”?6 Or perhaps the very regulatory agencies charged with controlling organizational wrongdoing create criminogenic environments and deserve blame for placing organizations “beyond the law”?7 Because the state plays the inherently contradictory dual role of both promoting and regulating business corporations, some scholars have come to see corporate wrongdoing as arising from functional interdependencies between corporations and the state, giving rise to the term “state-corporate crime.”8 To what extent do different audiences (e.g., prosecutors, scholars, laypersons) believe that such systemic causes absolve individuals of legal or moral responsibility and under what conditions?