Karen E. Rosenblum

Bringing Disability into the Sociological Frame: A comparison of disability with race, sex, and sexual orientation statuses

Applying a social constructionist perspective, this paper explores the shared characteristics of American constructions of race, sex, sexual orientation, and disability. The discussion considers how each of these statuses is constructed through social processes in which categories of people are (1) named, (2) aggregated and disaggregated, (3) dichotomized and stigmatized, and (4) denied the attributes valued in the culture. The apparent utility of the social constructionist perspective - and its dominance in American sociology - is contrasted with its infrequent application to the study of disability.

Male and female created they them: The depiction of gender in the advertising of traditional women's and men's magazines

Abstract Images from advertisements in six traditional womens and mens magazines in the United States are analyzed for the ways they depict objects and figures, sex segregation, and sex differentiation in the posing of figures through size, stance, smile, touch, and gaze. Evaluation of the data considers the landscape of advertising, representation of self and other in mens and in womens magazines, and gender differences in total advertising from all magazines. Analysis reveals that advertising offers a world of material objects detached from people, of individuals disengaged from others in general, and disassociated from others of the opposite sex in particular. Ads from gender-typed magazines depict a sex-segregated world populated by figures of the same sex as potential viewers. While representatives of the “other” sex seek connection through touch or gaze, representatives of the “self” remain self-absorbed and unresponsive. In addition, certain differences in gender representation of female figures remain constant in both types of magazines: female figures are more likely than male to be stance-subordinated and to display connection through smile, touch, and gaze. A final section on content analysis augments the descriptive statistical findings.

Perfectly American: Constructing the Refugee Experience

Over the last 60 years, the United States has accepted some two million refugees for resettlement. Standard opinion polls suggest that the American response to these refugees has been mixed. Yet, despite much ambivalence about particular refugees and where they may belong in the grid of American social and cultural categories, the notion of refuge and the imperative toward support and welcome to refugees endure. As an extended example, this paper considers press treatment of refugees in Richmond, Virginia during the last quarter of the twentieth century—before security concerns and surging numbers of illegal immigrants irrevocably changed the nature of American immigration. Unlike the ambivalent response that emerges in national opinion polls and some other venues, in this case the construction of refugees is neither negative nor ambivalent, but is instead solidly positive. This positive construction extends across a broad range of racial and national-origin groups and is conditioned by a peculiarly American notion of how refugees relate to broader American categories, particularly that of ‘immigrant’. In this local story from the United States lies a broader tale of how refugees are woven into the existing social and cultural categories of the countries in which they resettle.

Leaving as a Wife, Leaving as a Mother Ways of Relinquishing Custody

This discussion begins with the conviction that we need to examine the meaning of the decision to relinquish child custody rather than its causes. Based on in-depth, semistructured interviews with 20 noncustodial mothers, it is shown that mothers relinquish custody either “as wives” or “as mothers,” and by that is meant the status that is made salient in their leaving. “Leaving as a wife” reflects a decision primarily responsive to husbands acts or wishes; “leaving as a mother” reflects a reaction to a particular child or to the role of child rearer. Whereas these two ways of leaving home are different in their meaning and consequence, social reaction appears to treat them as a unitary social category. This collapsing of the categories points to the preeminence of motherhood for women.

The in-depth interview: Between science and sociability

The social science interview is a temporally circumscribed, explicitly instrumental exchange conducted by relative strangers that demands (1) intimacy yet impersonality and (2) professionalism amidst sociability. This paradoxical structure is reflected in what is said, as well as in what isnot said. Requirements for intimacy and impersonality can be accomplished respectively through “fresh” and scripted utterances; the demands for professionalism and sociability through question-answer sequences and conversation. The types of discourse peculiar to this setting may shape utterances in ways antithetical to the social science goals that prompted the choice of this method.

Ambivalence: exploring the American university experience of the children of immigrants

Survey data from a large and diverse urban university in the US revealed a significant commitment among incoming students to the value of a multi‐ethnic student body; students who were the children of immigrants expressed this value most strongly. However, follow‐up interviews with these second‐generation Americans, now in their third year at the university, found them avoiding interaction with students who were unlike themselves, particularly those who were first‐generation American. These students complained about the self‐segregation and native‐language maintenance of foreign‐born students, but restricted themselves to English and constructed their own second‐generation university niches; they chose ethnic over pan‐ethnic or biracial identities and often favored the security of living at home. Thus, despite being themselves the primary source diversity in American higher education and its ostensive supporters, in their years at the university, these children of immigrants narrowed rather than broadened their identities and interactions.

Where Are We, When Are We, and Who Are We to Each Other? Connectedness and the Evolving Meanings of International Education

Focusing on a new branch campus in South Korea of an American university, this paper examines connectedness and social identity for students who are already international by virtue of their secondary education abroad, as they return “home” for higher education. Such already international students are part of a relatively invisible population, excluded from aggregate calculations of “international students.” Drawing on a decade’s work on student diversity at the main US campus, a year at the Korea campus, and a range of written accounts from students in both campuses, this research considers their identity and connectedness from the perspective of a basic set of coordinates: which “where” are we, which “who” are you (or me or us), and how will that matter for our interaction?