Malin Åkerström

Outcasts in prison: The cases of informers and sex offenders

The literature on prisoners is extensive but tends to neglect the “outcasts among outcasts.” This article discusses how two such groups of outcasts—informers and sex offenders—are viewed by other inmates. It is argued that there is a qualitative difference in the moral condemnation of the two. This is shown in their different victim status and in that responsibility and motives are attributed differently. Furthermore, excuses can be considered for sex offenders but not for informers. While the aim of harassment for sex offenders is a sealing of status boundary, it is a sealing of norm boundary for informers. These differences as well as different levels of intensity of indignation are explained by a Simmelean analysis of group‐context and conflict. Informers are seen as traitors, i.e. having belonged to the group, while sex offenders are seen as non‐members, never having belonged to the group and not wanted as presumtive members.

Negotiating a Victim Identity: Young Men as Victims of Violence

This article is based on an interview study of how 10 young male crime victims talk about violent events and actors involved. It focuses on how the young men present their identities as ‘young men’ who have been victims of violent crimes. In their narrations the men struggle with a cultural understanding that ‘masculinity’ is associated with strength and power, while ‘victim’ is associated with weakness and impotence. During the interviews the young men actualize several balancing acts in their presentation of themselves as men and victims in a delicate manner by use of specific word choice, manner of speaking, laughter, etc. The young men are negotiating a victim identity; they portray themselves by careful positioning as both victims and strong, active young men. By this discursive balancing of identities the young men present themselves as manly at the same time as they present themselves as victims. In collaboration with the interviewer the participants negotiate how they want to be known: as ‘victim-worthy’ young men, with associations to a ‘hegemonic manliness’.

Balancing Contradictory Identities—Performing Masculinity in Victim Narratives

Modern sociological identity analysis argues that people perform a preferred identity, rather than revealing an essential self. But what if a given situation necessitates performance of apparently incompatible identities? Earlier research seems to suggest that people will resist one identity and foreground another. Here, the authors present another strategy of delicately balancing the performance of conflicting identities. Their interviews of Swedish young men who were victims of violence reveal that this identity balance occurs through emphasizing and defending the threatened but seemingly preferred identity, with reference to the other identity in more subtle terms. As they elaborated on their experiences, these men did not reject a victim identity altogether but subtly or implicitly modified it. They discursively positioned themselves as both “masculine men” and “victims,” combining seemingly mismatched identities. They achieve the identity work by describing initiative and defense, accounting for non-resistance, and describing injuries, fear, and sympathy from others.

Interviewees with an agenda – Learning from a 'failed' interview

Social constructionists consider interviews as mutually co-constructing meaning. But what if the interlocutors do not seem to agree on what they construct? What if the interviewee has a particularly strong agenda, far from the intended research topic? Are these ‘failed’ interviews? We address this issue using a ‘deviant’ interview in a study of ‘being a neighbour’. First, we add to the discussion of interviewees’ category representativeness by acknowledging a situation when the interviewee insists on representing a category not intended by the researcher. Second, we address the notion of asymmetries of power, where it is often assumed that the interviewer has the upper hand. Through this case, we argue that the opposite may well be true. Finally, we argue that cases where the interviewee pursues a strong agenda may suggest new research areas. After all, strong efforts of resistance may indicate deeper cultural concerns.

Neglect of elderly women in feminist studies of violence—a case of ageism?

ABSTRACT Using Sweden as an example, this article describes and analyzes the late and reluctant appearance of a feminist perspective on elder abuse. The lack of interest in elderly women is related both to a youth and mid-life centrist tendency of feminism and to the need for clarity within the feminist perspective. We argue that the appearance of male victims and female offenders in cases of elder abuse threatens feminist models that relate violence to a general subordination of women in society. The feminist perspective that has recently emerged may therefore not only provide new and important understanding about elder abuse. Due to possible anomalies there is a risk that a feminist perspective on elder abuse creates a theoretical blindness, where male victims and female abusers are regarded as irrelevant exceptions to the problem.

Suspicious gifts : bribery, morality, and professional ethics

Gifts have been given and received in all eras and societies; gifts are part of a universal human exchange. The importance of creating and sustaining social bonds with the help of gifts is widely acknowledged by social scientists, not only from anthropological but also from economic, sociological, and political science perspectives. Contemporary anti-corruption campaigns, however, have gifts to be viewed with ever-increasing suspicion, with a “bribery gaze,” because it is feared that the social bonds created by gift giving may contaminate professional decision-making. Suspicious Gifts: Bribery, Morality, and Professional Ethics investigates the sensitive issue of gift exchanges and how they become an object of contention. Malin Akerstrom investigates the moral dilemmas presented by bribes and gift giving as experienced by Swedish aid workers and professionals working in the public sector businessmen, and adoption agencies. She also deals with professionals’ interaction with foreign officials or contractors. Often times, a gift is just that, although sometimes the gift giving may be seen by others as a bribe. Akerstrom highlights the tensions between strict regulations designed to prevent corruption with the human affection for the institution of gift giving. She argues that bribes and gifts are important social phenomena because they are windows into classic sociological and anthropological research issues concerning interaction, social control, exchange, and rituals. This unique analysis will be of keen interest to all sociologists, public officials, and professionals. (Less)

With a little help from my friends : relational work in leisure-related enterprising

The present article analyses the indistinct boundaries between formal and informal economic exchanges, with a focus on friendship and work relations. To illustrate these intersections, we present a study of Swedish lifestyle entrepreneurs who run small-scale horse-related enterprises. The specific characteristics of this form of business – in which the horse farm owners/operators, customers, employees and voluntary workers share a leisure interest in horses and participate in the everyday work on the farm – provide the foundation for an economic environment where personal favour exchanges and a gift economy are intertwined with a market economy. Drawing on Viviana Zelizers notion of ‘relational work’, applied in a context where the gift economy is based on individual leisure interests and leisure-based friendship, the present analysis focuses on how relationships, transactions and forms of repayments are constantly negotiated along a continuum between work-oriented friendship and friendly work relations. The empirical illustrations demonstrate the limitations of the notion of boundary work often employed in studies of relational work – which emphasizes boundary definition. In contrast, it seems that relational work may also involve practices that maintain indistinct boundaries between different types of relationships, thus sustaining tension between a formal and informal economy.

The social construction of snitches

The norm against snitching is emphasized in criminal groups. However, before punishing the culprits, they need to be identified. This article describes how Swedish inmates in a prison situation try to find out who the snitches are and whether they have informed outside or inside prison. This includes a process of searching for information, such as discerning which inmates receive otherwise unearned privileges or who talk to guards or have motives for informing. The information is often obtained in personal communication but since this source is not always seen as trustworthy, proof is searched for in the suspects police and court records and other “papers.” Furthermore, it is argued that when a definition is finally made it has to be viewed as a social construction since most inmates, while pointing to one or a few specific inmates as snitches, still believe that most inmates have informed at some point. In agreement with Shibutanis theory of rumors, this construction is made through a process of accept...

Between Worlds: Deaf Women, Work and the Intersection of Gender and Ability

Najarian has written a book of college-educated deaf mothers’ life histories. Deafness is seen as a language problem and not a handicap; the title Between Worlds is thus mainly a description of living “between words”— written, spoken, and signed. We follow the ten interviewed women’s life histories focused on upbringing, schools, work, and their own family. The book is ordered chronologically, the first stories focus on language and education choices done in the family. We get a nuanced picture of how such messages and “truths” were received differently and interpreted against a background of different biographies. There are hearing parents who struggle against the prevalent methods of the time: efforts to lip read and talktraining (“oralism”) and are advocates for signing and Deaf culture, but there are also the examples of the women who had deaf parents who wanted their daughter to be able to communicate orally. These preferences were important as they influenced choices of schools. When the women grew older, some of them chose deaf colleges, but some chose hearing colleges because these were considered better academically. Many of those who had attended Deaf schools (several had gone to both types of schools, colleges, and/or universities) told about a liberating “coming out” experience, recognizing their deaf identity, and the joy of being able to and daring to communicate with their teachers and classmates. In the family, the women talk about a gendered privatized education and a gendered communication. It is the mothers who learn sign language themselves and then try to teach the rest of the family. Fathers may account for a poor signing language by not having the time: they were the breadwinners. Mothers, however, may both work in paid employment and take responsibility for sign communication. When fathers get involved in deaf issues it may be as board members in deaf classes, etc. Many parents end up making a career involving various positions associated with the deaf issues. The interviewed women describe themselves in terms of “lifetime educators”: they seem to view themselves as bridges “between worlds.” Even if most women end up working in the deaf world and marrying a deaf man, some worked for a while in hearing contexts, many dated and some married a hearing man. One of the women, who has hearing parents and hearing children of her own, and has worked in the hearing as well as in the Deaf world says: “All my life I’m a teacher. To my children, to my parents, to hearing people.” Najarian can be compared to what Katz (2004) calls a “worker ethnographer,” even if this is not an ethnography, but an interview study. Such an ethnographer has ambitions to portray the studied lives in a rich and detailed way. Najarian’s text does not present such data even though she invites the reader to view this study as such. She explains early that the interviews were done in the home or in the office of the interviewees “so that I might observe them in their paid or unpaid work environment” (p. 19), and that she aims to describe their everyday life and interactions. This is not done: Nowhere is there a comment on how they interact with family members, colleagues at work, or with things, machines, office equipment, food stuff in the kitchen etc. There is not only lack of observational data, but also little “blood, sweat, or tears” in the details of the interviews. There is also a lack of follow-up questions. When a deaf woman in this study tells about her strategy for becoming integrated in hearing school, to be social and outgoing, one wonders: How is this done? Or rather, how does she explain how it was done? REVIEWS

The Merry-Go-Round of Meetings : Embracing Meetings in a Swedish Youth Care Project

ABSTRACT Modern society has been called “a society of organizations,” and meetings are considered indispensable. However, a recurring cultural theme in contemporary working life is complaints about excessive and time-consuming meetings. The present article analyzes a contrasting case concerning a Swedish youth care project that employed a set of “coordinators” to maintain close contact with young people and their parents. Over time, these coordinators adopted an exceedingly administrative approach in which meetings with other professionals became more and more central. This article explores how an expanding meeting culture with strong social commitments can be generated from within interorganizational contexts, such as “projects,” and successfully competes with other concerns. Thus, the administrative orientation represents an example of the type of social interaction process that Simmel discerned as Eigendynamik or autonomous processes of social interaction.