Stacey Hannem

Experiences in Reconciling Risk Management and Restorative Justice How Circles of Support and Accountability Work Restoratively in the Risk Society

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) is a restorative justice–based model that originated in Canada in the mid-1990s for the postincarceration reintegration of those who have offended sexually. Although the roots of COSA are in restorative justice philosophy, the program has also found favour, to some degree, with organisations such as police services and corrections that are traditionally concerned more with protecting community safety than with the ideals of restorative justice. Informed by the author’s research and personal experience as a COSA volunteer, and analysis of recent and historical representations of COSA, this article explores theoretically how the development of the COSA initiative has been influenced by the seemingly disparate concerns of both the restorative justice and community protection movements, and examines the importance of balancing these paradigms in the everyday practices of circles.

“Every Couple Has Their Fights … ”: Stigma and Subjective Narratives of Verbal Violence

Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with individuals who have experienced verbal violence in intimate and family relationships, this article utilizes constructivist grounded theory to examine the tensions inherent in representations of verbal violence in the interview context. The authors find that participants discursively construct verbal violence as a normalized experience, discuss it as an escalating problem, and retrospectively define it as an intolerable form of abuse. These discursive constructions are related to social understandings of verbal violence as both a normal experience (fighting) and a stigmatized behavior (abuse). Normalization and defensive othering are discussed as techniques of identity management in light of the stigma attached to being a victim of abuse.

Victim Experiences and Perspectives on Police Responses to Verbal Violence in Domestic Settings

This interdisciplinary, qualitative study explores why individuals called the police in noncriminal, verbally aggressive situations and how they perceived police responses. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 individuals, mostly women. While some reported positive perceptions of the police response, the participants’ accounts underscored the seriousness of verbal violence and revealed that when women seek help from police they often perceive the resulting response as inadequate and/or unfair. This study highlights the importance of recognizing that verbal violence is often part of a “fabric of abuse” that may include criminal behavior and considers implications for police practice.

Surrogate Ethnography Fieldwork, the Academy, and Resisting the IRB

Nearly every ethnographer has observed the growing reach and increasingly uncomfortable power of the IRB. As IRB restrictions have grown tighter, the consequences have become more dire. The failure of most IRBs to understand ethnography at all, along with increasing concerns about litigation that trump the welfare of both researchers and “subjects,” and the usurping of faculty power by the administration in universities, has left us with a difficult challenge: how can ethnographers and participant observers continue to do their research, without losing their jobs? This paper introduces a new methodology (“surrogate ethnography”). We posit that surrogate ethnography provides three distinct benefits: (1) it represents a methodological and ethical resistance to excessive IRB control, (2) it can help us rescue ethnography and participant observation—at least in a certain form—from IRBs, and (3) it addresses some of the longstanding concerns with autoethnography by proposing an alternative reflective analytic approach to one’s experiences in the field. We share the results of our initial foray into surrogate ethnography, offering our analyses of each other’s stories (one from volunteer work in a prison, and one from participation in sadomasochism/BDSM) in the context of constraints and challenges facing ethnographers in the current academic climate.

“I’m Not a Pimp, but I Play One on TV”: The Moral Career and Identity Negotiations of Third Parties in the Sex Industry

ABSTRACT Goffman described the moral career of stigmatized persons as a process by which an individual acquires a stigmatized identity. His analysis, which assumes that individuals recognize and adopt the normative framing of their behavior, glosses over individual identity negotiations. Drawing on 50 interviews with sex industry third parties, this article examines stereotype consciousness—defined as the interactional processes that lead individuals to recognize that they have a discreditable identity. We explore how participants negotiate their identities in response to the social and legal constructions of pimps, procurers, and traffickers, and examine their resistance to the stigmatizing stereotypes that characterize their work.