Sherryl Kleinman

Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis

Subculture, despite the terms wide usage in sociology, has not proved to be a very satisfactory explanatory concept. Several problems in previous subculture research are discussed: (1) the confusion between subculture and subsociety, (2) the lack of a meaningful referent for subculture, (3) the homogeneity and stasis associated with the concept, and (4) the emphasis on defining subcultures in terms of values and central themes. It is argued that for the subculture construct to be of maximal usefulness it needs to be linked to process of interaction. Subculture is reconceptualized in terms of cultural spread occurring through an interlocking group network charactarized by multiple group membership, weak ties, structural roles conducive to information spread between groups, and media diffusion. Indentification with the referent group serves to motivate the potential member to adopt the artifacts, behaviors, norms, and values characteristic of the subculture. Youth subculture are presented as illustrations of how these processes operate.

Essay: Why Sexist Language Matters

For eleven years I’ve been teaching a sociology course at the University of North Carolina on gender inequality. I cover such topics as the wage gap, the “second shift” (the disproportionate amount of housework and child care that heterosexual women do at home), the equation of women’s worth with physical attractiveness, the sexualizing of women in the media, lack of reproductive rights for women (especially poor women), sexual harassment, and men’s violence against women. But the issue that both female and male students have the most trouble understanding—or, as I see it, share a strong unwillingness to understand—is sexist language. I’m not referring to such words as “bitch,” “whore,” and “slut.” What I focus on instead are words that most people consider just fine: male (so-called) generics. Some of these words refer to persons occupying a position: postman, chairman, freshman, congressman, fireman. Other words refer to the entire universe of human beings: “mankind” or “he.” Then we’ve got manpower, man-made lakes, and “Oh, man, where did I leave my keys?” There’s “manning” the tables in a country where we learn that “all men are created equal.” The most insidious, from my observations, is the popular expression “you guys.” People like to tell me it’s a regional term. But I’ve heard it in Chapel Hill, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Montreal. I’ve seen it in print in national magazines, newsletters, and books. I’ve heard it on television and in films. And even if it were regional, that doesn’t make it right. I bet we can all think of a lot of practices in our home regions we’d like to get rid of. Try making up a female-based generic, such as “freshwoman,” and using it with a group of male students, or calling your male boss “chairwoman.” Then again, don’t. There could be serious consequences for referring to a man as a woman—a term that still means “lesser” in our society. If not, why do men get so upset at the idea of being called women?

Making work matter: Satisfied detectives and dissatisfied campus police

Dirty work is part of all occupations. A comparison of two low-status occupations — detectives and campus police — revealed that workers in some occupations can surmount the tarnished image that goes along with dirty work, while others cannot. The detectives, but not the campus police, found ways to make their work matter. The former created a valued core identity, found an appreciative audience, and built collegiality. The constraints of campus police work kept the campus police from using the same strategies, and left them feeling that all their work was dirty. Under certain conditions, workers can redefine the core of a “bad job” into meaningful work.

Making Professionals into 'Persons': Discrepancies in Traditional and Humanistic Expectations of Professional Identity.

What happens to people who are assuming a master status for which audiences have discrepant expectations, when socializers also emphasize that recruits take the desires of all audiences into account? A participant observation and in-depth interview study of ministry students in a humanistically oriented seminary revealed that these students received discrepant expectations for the professional identity from organizational personnel (the humanistic role) and members of the wider community (the traditional role). By advocating personal and egalitarian involvement with clients, socializers taught recruits to care about outsiders expectations. As a result, recruits called into question the meaning of the professional identity, effected double role distance, and took on an ambivalent identity. Students in humanistic schools of the personal service professions may experience a similar dilemma.

Essaying the Personal: Making Sociological Stories Stick

I like to think I was always a sociologist. As a child I asked my mother why I had to hide my pale skin under a deep tan in the summer while white people hated black peoples dark skin. In my early teens I didnt understand why sex was good for boys and bad for girls, why my 19-year-old sister felt embarrassed about not having a fiance, or why my brother never did the dishes while my sister and I were supposed to help my mother clean the whole house. Maybe Simmel (1993) was right—people on the margins have the distance required to stand back and analyze the mainstream world. Although I lived a conventional life as a girl in a lower-middle-class intact family, got good grades and never ran away from home, I was also a Jew living in English (Protestant) and French (Catholic) Quebec. I had good questions and observations back then, but no analysis. I hadnt yet learned, as C. Wright Mills (1959) put it, to turn private troubles into public issues. That came later. When I started college in 1970 I thought Id become a psychologist. I was, after all, interested in how people thought and felt about things. In the first part of the two-semester Introduction to Psychology we never got to humans. I vaguely remember reading about the stickleback (though I no longer know why). And I can still see Barlows tortured monkeys, clinging to terry cloth surrogates of their mothers. The second semester didnt get much better, as my behaviorist professors tried to convince me that I could understand people through operant conditioning. I took a sociology course the next fall and discovered Blumer (1969), Goffman (1959), and Mead (1934). Then Berger and Luckmann (1966). I

Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization.

Renewal is a holistic health center run by baby boomers whose political ideals were shaped by the counterculture movements of the 1960s. Through interviews and observation, Sherryl Kleinman takes us inside Renewal and shows us how its members struggled to maintain a view of themselves as progressive and alternative even as they sought conventional legitimacy. In this volume we meet the members of Renewal as individuals; learn about the differences in power, prestige, and respect they are accorded; why they talked endlessly about money; and how they related to each other. Kleinman shows how members attempts to see themselves as unconventional, but also as serious operators of a legitimate health care organization, led them to act in ways that undermined their egalitarian goals. She draws out the lessons Renewal offers for understanding the problems women face in organizations, the failure of social movements to live up to their ideals, and how it is possible for progressives to avoid reproducing the inequalities they claim to oppose.

Speaking of Friendship: Middle-Class Women and Their Friends.

Acknowledgments Introduction Beginnings: Prefriendship and Getting Acquainted Friendship: Its Substance The Extraordinary Relationship Breakdowns, Repairs, and Endings Postscript Bibliography Index