Kristen Barber

The Well-Coiffed Man Class, Race, and Heterosexual Masculinity in the Hair Salon

This study explores how men make sense of their participation in the feminized practice of salon hair care. By placing white, middle-class, heterosexual men at the center of analysis, I investigate the meaning of beauty work for a population that has been overlooked in research on gender and the beauty industry. Specifically, I demonstrate that men embed their purchase of salon hair care in the need to appropriate expectations of white professional-class masculinity. Ultimately, these men reproduce raced and classed gender differences in the hair salon by resisting feminization while at the same time transgressing gender boundaries.

Ethnographic Research in a Cyber Era

Ethnographers have long been concerned with how individuals and groups live out life in social spaces. As the Internet increasingly frames lived experiences, researchers need to consider how to integrate data from online spaces into “traditional” ethnographic research. Drawing from two ethnographic studies, we explain how online spaces were needed to more fully understand the physical environments and issues we studied. In addition to discussing how we were led online, we present ethnographic data to demonstrate the epistemological importance of considering online spaces. While traditional methods of ethnography (i.e., in-person observations and informal interviews) continue to be useful, researchers need to reconceptualize space as well as what counts as valuable interactions, and how existing (and new) tools can be used to collect data. We argue that studying a group of people in their “natural habitat” now includes their “online habitat.” We conclude with a call for ethnographers to consider how digital spaces inform the study of physical communities and social interactions.

The Dyadic Imaginary: Troubling the Perception of Love as Dyadic

SUMMARY In this paper, we offer a new theoretical framework for studying love and intimacy in the social sciences. We show that relationships which are not dyadic are often rendered invisible in scholarly accounts of love and intimacy. After reviewing the literature, we apply our new theoretical and methodological framework–the dyadic imaginary–to a case study: same-sex marriage and its relationship to bisexual and queer identities. In this section, we explore how the dyadic imaginary highlights the assumed dyadism of marriage, its relationship to sexual practices that do not rely on gender/sex binaries, and, finally, we discuss the social implications of our case study analysis.

Reconciling Academic Objectivity and Subjective Trauma:The Double Consciousness of Sociologists who Experienced Hurricane Katrina

This paper utilizes Du Bois’ double consciousness, as well as insights from feminist theory and critical pedagogy, to examine the tensions involved in being both a professional sociologist and a New Orleanian affected by Hurricane Katrina. We argue that sociologists from New Orleans face barriers that prevent us from writing and teaching about Katrina ‘objectively’, as many in our discipline demand, while simultaneously discouraging us from engaging in research and teaching that draw on personal experiences with Katrina. We are told by reviewers, editors, and colleagues that our experiences, construed as biases, are inappropriate for our writing and our classrooms. We contend that much important knowledge about Hurricane Katrina will never be created, and the knowledge that is created will be largely written and taught by those who did not experience the storm first-hand. This paper reconciles two conflicted consciousnesses by deconstructing the situation encountered by sociologists from New Orleans.

“Men Wanted” Heterosexual Aesthetic Labor in the Masculinization of the Hair Salon

This article builds heterosexuality into the concept of aesthetic labor to better understand corporate efforts to construct gendered brands and consumer identities. By theorizing heterosexual aesthetic labor, I show how two men’s salons, Adonis and The Executive, hire for, develop, and mobilize the sexual identities and gender habitus of straight and conventionally feminine women to masculinize the hair salon. Drawing from ethnographic observations of and interviews with employees and clients at these men’s salons, I move the discussion of aesthetic labor beyond recruitment to show how service workers become interactional resources for customers’ projections of privileged identities. Emphasizing workers’ agency, I show how the women deploy professionalizing rhetoric and protocols and essentializing frameworks to manage the dilemmas of heterosexual aesthetic labor. These management strategies allow women a sense of legitimacy and at the same time keep gender and sexual hierarchies intact and naturalize men’s entitlement to women’s bodies.

Men at the March: Feminist Movement Boundaries and Men's Participation in Take Back the Night and Slutwalk*

In this article, we examine newspaper coverage of Take Back the Night and SlutWalk sexual assault protests to assess how boundaries around mens participation in feminist events have changed over time, as well as how these changes shape movement messages in the press. Our analysis of Take Back the Night reveals that organizers are more likely to insist on boundaries excluding mens participation, and the coverage often focuses on the public controversy this choice generates. This controversy, however, often provides an unanticipated opportunity for activists to achieve standing and air demands in the press. In a postfeminist political era, there are fewer boundaries for mens participation in SlutWalk and Take Back the Night marches, and reporters and editors focus on a wider array of participants, including those men who are less committed to the feminist purpose of the marches. In these cases, feminist antiassault demands are more likely to get buried.

The experiential gap in disaster research: Feminist epistemology and the contribution of local affected researchers

ABSTRACT In this article, we make the case for a situated knowledge of disasters. By applying a feminist standpoint framework, we argue that an ethic of “objectivity” and a privileging of the unattached researcher creates an experiential gap in the disaster literature whereby researchers who themselves experience disaster are undervalued and underrepresented. We analyze reflexive accounts by disaster researchers to show what epi stemological barriers emerge from conventional processes of inquiry and the systematic disadvantaging of local, affected researchers. We also study patterns in articles by “outsider” and “insider” researchers, focusing on differences and similarities in research questions, reflexivity, relationships with and access to participants, and larger theoretical goals. This comparison reveals that the unique position of affected researchers can help to bridge formal knowledge and practical life knowledge, creating new and worthwhile paths to understanding the social effects of disaster.

Walking like a Man

SlutWalk marches have emerged to protest the blaming of women for their own sexual assault. Sociologists Kristen Barber and Kelsy Kretschmer consider the different ways men participate in SlutWalk, and how their participation at times both supports and undermines the feminist goals of the event.

Marketing Manhood in a “Post-Feminist” Age

In “manvertising,” satirical masculinity is used to sell men on products they presumably avoid for fear of what it might say about their gender and sexual identities. The satire obscures the consequences of hybrid masculinities though they’re on full display.