Phillip W. Davis

Pilgrim apparition work: Symbolization and crowd interaction when the Virgin Mary appeared in Georgia

Research on religious apparitions tends to focus on characteristics of the participants, needs of the believers, functions of the events, and biographies of the leaders. In contrast, this article focuses on group interaction and participant interpretations. The authors analyze what took place, and what pilgrims thought and felt, during a recurring apparition of the Virgin Mary during the 1990s on a farm near the U.S. town of Conyers, Georgia. Analysis draws on sixty hours of observation, nineteen semistructured interviews with pilgrims visiting the site, conversational interviews, and local and national press coverage. They examine the nature and significance of pilgrim apparition work, identifying three forms: sojourn work, seer work, and sign work. They conclude that by engaging in these “guided doings,” pilgrims apply and adapt wider apparition meanings to particular miracles and, in the process, sustain both the validity and normalcy of the miracle taking place.

False pretense and deviant exploitation: Fortunetelling as a con

This paper presents a dramaturgical analysis of the backstage manipulations carried out by practitioners of the deviant occupation known as fortunetelling. It is generally believed that con games require a dishonest victim, although many practitioners manipulate their impressions with clients who are seeking a service rather than a profit. The group of fortunetellers included in this study are nonbelievers and hence fundamentally misrepresent themselves to their clients. Drawing upon depth interviews with 21 non‐Gypsy fortunetellers, including two key informants, six backstage routines are analyzed. Each routine in the fortunetellers performance presents the client with a frontstage definition of the activity designed to sell more and more “psychic services.” The implications of the dramaturgical analysis of con games are discussed.

HIV Testing Among Lesbian Women: Social Contexts and Subjective Meanings

ABSTRACT This study provides descriptive statistics on prevalence of testing, testing sites, and reasons for testing among lesbian women in the United States. It also provides qualitative data about the social meanings and specific circumstances of their HIV testing experiences. Analysis draws on a sample of lesbian women living in a single large southeastern city. An especially diverse snowball and chain-referral sample of 162 lesbian women was given a questionnaire, and qualitative data were gathered from 24 women participating in three focus groups and from 67 women participating in depth-interviews. A large majority of women in the survey sample (80%) reported at least one test, and more than one in four women were tested five or more times. More than one in ten were tested during drug treatment or while incarcerated. The most common testing sites were clinics and hospitals, and the most common reason women gave was because they “thought they were at risk.” Most tests were voluntary rather than mandatory occupational or institutional requirements. The subjective meanings associated with HIV testing, as well as the womens counseling needs before, during, and after testing are analyzed. The implications for a better understanding of lesbian womens sexual health are discussed.

An Incipient “Wonder Drug” Movement: DMSO and the Food and Drug Administration

In 1962 a cheap industrial solvent was accidentally found to have several medical uses, including pain relief. As researchers rushed to investigate its potential, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was given a “wonder drug” image by the press. Guided by the evolving constructs of drug “safety,” “effectiveness,” and “approval,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration temporarily banned all human testing of DMSO. A movement of lay and scientific groups emerged; however, they found it difficult to unite as relations with the agency grew complicated, and as definitional differences developed between the two groups. The history of DMSO in the United States illustrates how differences among advocacy groups and the restrictions of a research and regulatory bureaucracy can undermine a movements continuity. It also underlines the importance of historical, political, and media influences on the drug approval process.

Practicing Ethnography in LawPracticing Ethnography in Law: New Dialogues, Enduring Methods, edited by StarrJuneGoodaleMark. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 209 pp.

book, and they are almost certainly not intended to mislead, but they should have been edited. Despite its shortcomings, the book is a usable guide to the theoretical terrain underlying drugs and alcohol research. Each chapter provides a clear overview of the intellectual traditions of each perspective and offers concrete suggestions for incorporating theoretical concepts in applied research methods. In particular, the book has potential as a reference source to help sociologists doing applied drug research submit more theoretically grounded papers to academic journals.