Robin E. Jensen

Low-income women describe fertility-related expectations: descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and behavior.

Social norms surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, and childbearing may help guide womens health-related behaviors. In this study, we explore low-income womens perceptions of fertility-related norms by allowing women to describe their experiences with normative expectations. Semistructured interviews (n = 30) suggested that women in low-income subject positions articulate descriptive norms that generally correspond with mainstream descriptive norms, identify two major sources of injunctive norms concerning fertility and sexuality— authoritative and peer-oriented—and often align their behaviors according to subgroup expectations communicated in the form of peer-oriented injunctive norms. We discuss these results in light of the extant literature on social norms.

Narrative Sensemaking and Time Lapse: Interviews with Low-income Women about Sex Education

Secondary-school students in the United States score notoriously low on tests of their reproductive and sexual knowledge despite attempts by educators and legislators to provide them with informative sex-education courses. In this paper, we build from narrative theory to explore how low-income women perceived their formal sex-education experiences and how they connected those experiences to their sexual-health knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Drawing from interviews with 30 low-income women, we identify and develop a typology of sex-education narratives: narratives of regret, narratives of satisfaction, and narratives of uncertainty. We also investigate existing theoretical claims that lapses in time between lived events and the narration of those events connect to sensemaking efforts. We find that younger women in the sample were more likely to tell narratives of uncertainty than were older women. These results have implications for the study of narrative theory, sexual-health communication, and the discourse of public sex education.

Fertility-Related Perceptions and Behaviors Among Low-Income Women: Injunctive Norms, Sanctions, and the Assumption of Choice

In this article we explore elements of the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB) through interviews with low-income women (N = 30) in a Midwestern U.S. state about their experiences with and perceptions of fertility-related norms. Using grounded theory and matrix analysis as analytical lenses, we found that individuals sometimes learn of injunctive norms and social sanctions separately, might be more likely to comply with a norm if they learn about norms and sanctions in concert, and might be more likely to engage in norm compliance if they learn about two different types of sanctions, short- and long-term, along with the injunctive norm. We also found that a number of important barriers can limit one’s ability to choose to comply with a norm. In conclusion, we discuss implications for continued theorizing of the TNSB in light of the experiences of traditionally marginalized populations.

Sex Educators and Self-Efficacy: Toward a Taxonomy of Enactive Mastery Experiences

Enactive mastery experiences have been identified as the most influential source of self-efficacy beliefs. Yet little is known about enactive mastery experiences, including how such experiences manifest in naturally occurring situations (as opposed to simulated situations). This study draws from semistructured interviews (N = 50) with sex educators working in public secondary schools throughout Indiana to explicate distinct categories of enactive mastery experiences. Three types of enactive mastery experiences—growth, interactive, and endorsed—emerged from the data and are delineated. This formative taxonomy provides detailed targets for those working to foster individuals’ perceived self-efficacy in a variety of contexts, including the health education classroom.

Improving Upon Nature: The Rhetorical Ecology of Chemical Language, Reproductive Endocrinology, and the Medicalization of Infertility

Chemical theories of human fertility and reproduction first became prevalent in both technical and mainstream media outlets beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, and they have remained prevalent to this day. In this essay, I analyze a selection of primary sources from this era that defined human fertility as a chemically induced process, rather than, for instance, a characteristic related to the conservation of nervous energy or to moral physiology. The resulting rhetorical history demonstrates the ways in which this chemical rhetoric was appropriated to re-envision sex, gender, and reproductive health in light of appeals to biochemical variability, artificiality, and technical expertise. Tracing these appeals sheds light on the rhetorical ecology that supported the widespread medicalization of (in)fertility and demonstrates how public vocabularies of science and medicine are constituted as they move across and interact with broader social discourses.

Metaphorical Invention in Early Photojournalism: New York Times Coverage of the 1876 Brooklyn Theater Fire and the 1911 Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Rorty (1989) argued that integrating unique metaphors into public discourse during moments of social instability functions to catalyze new moral norms and community identities. By analyzing New York Times coverage of two historical incidents of tragedy (i.e., the 1876 Brooklyn Theater fire and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), we assess Rortys position in light of this coverage and the legal aftermath of each tragedy (e.g., the Brooklyn fire was associated with few changes in policy while the Shirtwaist Factory fire has been celebrated for catalyzing important changes in fire safety code and state labor laws). That these two events transpired before and after the emergence of photojournalism in daily newspapers also allows us to consider the role that “phototexts” may play in creating opportunities for metaphorical invention. Overall, we argue that two phototext-driven metaphors—equating factory workers with products and industry with a deathtrap—illuminated a powerful vocabulary of justice in the coverage of the Shirtwaist Factory fire that was not evident in the Brooklyn fire. We conclude the essay by laying out broader methodological implications for scholars of rhetorical and metaphorical criticism and considering the power of the phototext to further reform discourse.

Balancing Mystery and Identification: Dolores Huerta's Shifting Transcendent Persona

The present analysis explores Dolores Huertas use of a shifting transcendent persona to balance the sense of mystery surrounding her accomplishments with a performance of normalcy and audience identification. We find, first, that Huerta leveraged her borderland experiences and ideology as rhetorical resources that functioned to facilitate the amalgamation of personae exemplifying her advocacy, and, second, that her shifting transcendent personas balance of mystery and identification hinged as much upon the manner in which she positioned audience members to perceive themselves as it did upon the manner in which she positioned them to perceive her own exceptional normalcy.

HIV/AIDS in Botswana: President Festus G. Mogae's Narrative of Secular Conversion

Over the last decade, Botswana has been identified as a model for countries fighting against annihilation from HIV/AIDS. The country had the highest rate of HIV infections in the world in 2000, but by the end of Festus G. Mogaes presidential term in 2008 Botswanas situation had improved significantly, as residents were increasingly likely to get tested, obtain treatment, and discontinue practices of discrimination against the infected. This study seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature focusing on the communicative elements that played a role in Botswanas successes. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to explore Mogaes national speeches about HIV/AIDS to consider how his rhetoric may have encouraged Botswanas residents to alter their health-related beliefs and behaviors. We find that Mogae used a narrative of secular conversion (i.e., discourse with a pseudoreligious structure that positions problems as rooted in existing values and offers a new guiding principle as an antidote), and we identify such narratives as persuasive health communication tools. The analysis offers public health advocates, scholars, and opinion leaders a framework for persuasively communicating about diseases such as HIV/AIDS without drawing exclusively from a biomedical framework.