Arlie Hochschild’s work shifted sociological attention to how emotions are not just felt but mana... more Arlie Hochschild’s work shifted sociological attention to how emotions are not just felt but managed. She argued we cultivate emotional experiences in ourselves and others, what she termed “emotion work,” in gendered and classed ways. Critical to emotion work are the “feeling rules” or the social scripts for what we should feel, how we should express our feelings, how much feeling to express, and for how long in a given social context. This chapter examines how we gender emotions through the socialization of gendered feeling rules and performing and policing gendered emotion work. It also examines the institutionalization of feeling rules and emotion work within families, schools, and workplaces. In each case, emotions are not just a byproduct and constituent of the gender social structure but also race, class, and sexuality. The chapter ends with a call for more research on the intersection of gendered emotions with disabilities and a thorough accounting of the role of the beneficiaries of emotion work in policing feeling rules.
Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety o... more Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety of topics, with a focus on the "how" of inequality. Rather than structuring the book topically, editors Carissa M. Froyum, Katrina Bloch, and Tiffany Taylor have organized the readings around social processes that reproduce and maintain inequality. This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners. ** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.
Abstract There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core foc... more Abstract There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core focus is inequality: (1) minimizing the power imbalance between adults/researchers and kids/participants, (2) attending to the active and imaginative communication styles of young people, and (3) getting beneath the superficial rhetoric of meritocracy, colorblindness, and post-feminism. In this chapter, we draw from our own qualitative insights when studying middle school kids (grades 6–8, ages 11–14) in providing a systematic analysis of the effectiveness of distinct visual strategies and their respective strengths and limitations for producing rich, useful, and specific data. The insights gleaned are applicable to analyses of kids, understandings of inequality, and even methodological training.
This study demonstrates the centrality of emotion work, especially sympathizing with beneficiarie... more This study demonstrates the centrality of emotion work, especially sympathizing with beneficiaries of help, to sustaining volunteerism. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 42 volunteers and paid volunteer coordinators, it explains how volunteers cultivate sympathy, and thus commitment to helping, by framing beneficiaries as deserving. Volunteers constructed recipients as "deserving" along three dimensions: neediness, blamelessness, and impressionability. However, challenges to deservingness disrupted sympathizing, thereby undercutting volunteers' commitment. But rather than quit, volunteers were able to salvage beneficiaries' deservingness by pointing to authority, elaborating on victimhood, relating beneficiaries to their family and friends, and universalizing risks. Engaging in emotion work reinvested volunteers in volunteering.
Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America, 2013
Classrooms are racialized social settings where status and power play out through emotions. Study... more Classrooms are racialized social settings where status and power play out through emotions. Studying racism evokes unique emotions to manage. Students of color may feel overwhelmed, depressed, and angry while studying stereotypes or racism across social institutions, or they may feel “under the microscope.” Other times, students may feel excitement at the opportunity to have a voice or validation for their feelings regarding accomplishment or discrimination. White-identified students, on the other hand, may feel confused if they have never studied whiteness as cultural or oppressive (Perry 2007), or neglected when they are not the focus of attention. Research suggests white-identified individuals often struggle with shame or guilt when trying to make sense of their own racist actions or those of their family members or ancestors (Bonilla-Silva et al. 2004). Other times, they may feel relief for being given an opportunity for self-reflection or hopeful for forging new relationships (Welp 2002). Teachers occupy positions of authority that allow us to shape the emotional content of classes. We not only create feeling rules for students but enforce their observance of them in interactions with each other. We also structure the emotional arc of the semester when we organize our readings, in-class activities, and assignments. How we do so not only directly affects the emotional experiences of students but can reproduce and challenge racism as a social structure. Given these complex emotional dynamics, this chapter highlights some of the biggest challenges in trying to meet students’ emotional needs for validation, while pushing them outside of their comfort zones. It covers ways to create safe spaces within the classroom and to allow every student to succeed.
Critics argue that abstinence-only programmes reinforce gender inequality when they contain disco... more Critics argue that abstinence-only programmes reinforce gender inequality when they contain discourses that equate being a 'good girl' with sexual restraint. Yet they too often overlook how racial and class inequalities shape discourses about girls' sexual agency. This ethnography extends gender scholarship by analysing the racialised, classed and gendered dynamics of an abstinence-only programme for low-income black girls. It finds that black adults viewed the girls as sexually vulnerable because of racism and class inequality. They tried to mediate this vulnerability by transforming girls into sexual agents. They did so, though, by exaggerating the gendered discourses of the official sexuality education curricula that framed girls as victims and their sexual restraint as a matter of morality. Thus, the programme reinforced gender inequality while trying to disrupt race and class inequalities.
Emotional labour results from and contributes to systems of inequality. But research too often ig... more Emotional labour results from and contributes to systems of inequality. But research too often ignores the racial form, content, and implications of emotion work. This study uses racial formation theory's concept of 'racial project' to analyse the racial consequences of emotional labour in a workplace where whites prescribed deferential emotional labour and black youth workers internalized it. White administrators tasked black workers with conjuring feelings of 'belonging' among black children and emotional release among elite white volunteers and donors by appropriating professionalism and instituting it as a regulating discourse. When emotional labour created conflicts for black workers, whites policed them into meeting others' needs. This study illustrates how professional emotional labour contributed to racial structuring by aligning workers' interests with the administrators' goals, diffusing their negative emotions, muting their racial critiques and fostering colourblindness.
This study examines the gender project at an after-school program for low-income black boys in wh... more This study examines the gender project at an after-school program for low-income black boys in which officials and workers contested street manhood as a legitimate form of masculinity. Acting street involves establishing respect and status through physical intimidation, usually when race- or class-disadvantaged boys lack other resources. For programmers and direct-care workers concerned about boys' well-being, changing the definition of
The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to child... more The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to children in ways that are consequential for the social reproduction of inequalities. Using ethnographic data from a popular after-school program, this study analyzes the emotional capital transmitted to low-income black girls by staff. They passed on four aspects of emotional capital: stifling attitude, being emotionally accountable for peers, sympathizing with adult authority figures, and emotional distancing from cultural “dysfunction.” Staff intended to teach girls to manage their emotions as a way to counteract racism, but the socialization largely promoted emotional deference, thereby reinforcing racialized, classed, and gendered ideologies.
... 1998). At UYN, however, boys and girls stig-matized tomboys as sexual deviants. Shantell, Shi... more ... 1998). At UYN, however, boys and girls stig-matized tomboys as sexual deviants. Shantell, Shirlisa, Elisa, Calandra, and Angelica all acknowledged growing up as tomboys. As they aged, the costs of being a tomboy grew higher. ...
Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety o... more Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety of topics, with a focus on the "how" of inequality. Rather than structuring the book topically, editors Carissa M. Froyum, Katrina Bloch, and Tiffany Taylor have organized the readings around social processes that reproduce and maintain inequality.
This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners.
** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.
Arlie Hochschild’s work shifted sociological attention to how emotions are not just felt but mana... more Arlie Hochschild’s work shifted sociological attention to how emotions are not just felt but managed. She argued we cultivate emotional experiences in ourselves and others, what she termed “emotion work,” in gendered and classed ways. Critical to emotion work are the “feeling rules” or the social scripts for what we should feel, how we should express our feelings, how much feeling to express, and for how long in a given social context. This chapter examines how we gender emotions through the socialization of gendered feeling rules and performing and policing gendered emotion work. It also examines the institutionalization of feeling rules and emotion work within families, schools, and workplaces. In each case, emotions are not just a byproduct and constituent of the gender social structure but also race, class, and sexuality. The chapter ends with a call for more research on the intersection of gendered emotions with disabilities and a thorough accounting of the role of the beneficiaries of emotion work in policing feeling rules.
Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety o... more Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety of topics, with a focus on the "how" of inequality. Rather than structuring the book topically, editors Carissa M. Froyum, Katrina Bloch, and Tiffany Taylor have organized the readings around social processes that reproduce and maintain inequality. This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners. ** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.
Abstract There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core foc... more Abstract There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core focus is inequality: (1) minimizing the power imbalance between adults/researchers and kids/participants, (2) attending to the active and imaginative communication styles of young people, and (3) getting beneath the superficial rhetoric of meritocracy, colorblindness, and post-feminism. In this chapter, we draw from our own qualitative insights when studying middle school kids (grades 6–8, ages 11–14) in providing a systematic analysis of the effectiveness of distinct visual strategies and their respective strengths and limitations for producing rich, useful, and specific data. The insights gleaned are applicable to analyses of kids, understandings of inequality, and even methodological training.
This study demonstrates the centrality of emotion work, especially sympathizing with beneficiarie... more This study demonstrates the centrality of emotion work, especially sympathizing with beneficiaries of help, to sustaining volunteerism. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 42 volunteers and paid volunteer coordinators, it explains how volunteers cultivate sympathy, and thus commitment to helping, by framing beneficiaries as deserving. Volunteers constructed recipients as "deserving" along three dimensions: neediness, blamelessness, and impressionability. However, challenges to deservingness disrupted sympathizing, thereby undercutting volunteers' commitment. But rather than quit, volunteers were able to salvage beneficiaries' deservingness by pointing to authority, elaborating on victimhood, relating beneficiaries to their family and friends, and universalizing risks. Engaging in emotion work reinvested volunteers in volunteering.
Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America, 2013
Classrooms are racialized social settings where status and power play out through emotions. Study... more Classrooms are racialized social settings where status and power play out through emotions. Studying racism evokes unique emotions to manage. Students of color may feel overwhelmed, depressed, and angry while studying stereotypes or racism across social institutions, or they may feel “under the microscope.” Other times, students may feel excitement at the opportunity to have a voice or validation for their feelings regarding accomplishment or discrimination. White-identified students, on the other hand, may feel confused if they have never studied whiteness as cultural or oppressive (Perry 2007), or neglected when they are not the focus of attention. Research suggests white-identified individuals often struggle with shame or guilt when trying to make sense of their own racist actions or those of their family members or ancestors (Bonilla-Silva et al. 2004). Other times, they may feel relief for being given an opportunity for self-reflection or hopeful for forging new relationships (Welp 2002). Teachers occupy positions of authority that allow us to shape the emotional content of classes. We not only create feeling rules for students but enforce their observance of them in interactions with each other. We also structure the emotional arc of the semester when we organize our readings, in-class activities, and assignments. How we do so not only directly affects the emotional experiences of students but can reproduce and challenge racism as a social structure. Given these complex emotional dynamics, this chapter highlights some of the biggest challenges in trying to meet students’ emotional needs for validation, while pushing them outside of their comfort zones. It covers ways to create safe spaces within the classroom and to allow every student to succeed.
Critics argue that abstinence-only programmes reinforce gender inequality when they contain disco... more Critics argue that abstinence-only programmes reinforce gender inequality when they contain discourses that equate being a 'good girl' with sexual restraint. Yet they too often overlook how racial and class inequalities shape discourses about girls' sexual agency. This ethnography extends gender scholarship by analysing the racialised, classed and gendered dynamics of an abstinence-only programme for low-income black girls. It finds that black adults viewed the girls as sexually vulnerable because of racism and class inequality. They tried to mediate this vulnerability by transforming girls into sexual agents. They did so, though, by exaggerating the gendered discourses of the official sexuality education curricula that framed girls as victims and their sexual restraint as a matter of morality. Thus, the programme reinforced gender inequality while trying to disrupt race and class inequalities.
Emotional labour results from and contributes to systems of inequality. But research too often ig... more Emotional labour results from and contributes to systems of inequality. But research too often ignores the racial form, content, and implications of emotion work. This study uses racial formation theory's concept of 'racial project' to analyse the racial consequences of emotional labour in a workplace where whites prescribed deferential emotional labour and black youth workers internalized it. White administrators tasked black workers with conjuring feelings of 'belonging' among black children and emotional release among elite white volunteers and donors by appropriating professionalism and instituting it as a regulating discourse. When emotional labour created conflicts for black workers, whites policed them into meeting others' needs. This study illustrates how professional emotional labour contributed to racial structuring by aligning workers' interests with the administrators' goals, diffusing their negative emotions, muting their racial critiques and fostering colourblindness.
This study examines the gender project at an after-school program for low-income black boys in wh... more This study examines the gender project at an after-school program for low-income black boys in which officials and workers contested street manhood as a legitimate form of masculinity. Acting street involves establishing respect and status through physical intimidation, usually when race- or class-disadvantaged boys lack other resources. For programmers and direct-care workers concerned about boys' well-being, changing the definition of
The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to child... more The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to children in ways that are consequential for the social reproduction of inequalities. Using ethnographic data from a popular after-school program, this study analyzes the emotional capital transmitted to low-income black girls by staff. They passed on four aspects of emotional capital: stifling attitude, being emotionally accountable for peers, sympathizing with adult authority figures, and emotional distancing from cultural “dysfunction.” Staff intended to teach girls to manage their emotions as a way to counteract racism, but the socialization largely promoted emotional deference, thereby reinforcing racialized, classed, and gendered ideologies.
... 1998). At UYN, however, boys and girls stig-matized tomboys as sexual deviants. Shantell, Shi... more ... 1998). At UYN, however, boys and girls stig-matized tomboys as sexual deviants. Shantell, Shirlisa, Elisa, Calandra, and Angelica all acknowledged growing up as tomboys. As they aged, the costs of being a tomboy grew higher. ...
Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety o... more Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities: Contemporary Readings offers readings on a variety of topics, with a focus on the "how" of inequality. Rather than structuring the book topically, editors Carissa M. Froyum, Katrina Bloch, and Tiffany Taylor have organized the readings around social processes that reproduce and maintain inequality.
This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners.
** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.
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This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners.
** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.
This unique anthology includes social change readings throughout its entirety, rather than segmenting them at the end of the reader. It also features innovative data analysis exercises, reading questions, and social change projects. With its combination of generic processes, intersectionality, full incorporation of disabilities, global perspective, and data analysis exercises, Creating and Contesting Social Inequalities will challenge students to see themselves as agents in a system of inequality rather than passive learners.
** Please contact Oxford University Press if you are interested in a copy of this book.