Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles 3030936074, 9783030936075

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Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles Edited by James Hardie-Bick Susie Scott

Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles

James Hardie-Bick  •  Susie Scott Editors

Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles

Editors James Hardie-Bick School of Law, Politics & Sociology University of Sussex Brighton, UK

Susie Scott School of Law, Politics & Sociology University of Sussex Brighton, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-93607-5    ISBN 978-3-030-93608-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover Credit: Cristina Conti / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Susie Scott and James Hardie-Bick 2 The Reinventive Self: War Veterans’ Accounts of Trauma, Disillusionment and Reparation 19 Susie Scott and James Hardie-Bick 3 Exiting an Offender Role: White-Collar Offenders’ Sense of Self and the Demonstration of Change 37 Ben Hunter 4 When Certainty Cracks: Early Identity-­Change Work among Women Exiting High-­Cost Religion 59 Bethany Gull 5 Women Leaving and Losing in Politics: Eulogy Work on a Public Stage 81 Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott and Emma L. Martin 6 Identity in Reverse: Exploring ‘Broken Typifications’ and Calibrating ‘Depth’ in Interpretive Inquiry with Ex-Straightedgers103 Jason Torkelson

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Contents

7 From Free to Exoneree: A Narrative Analysis of Ex-treme Identity Processes as Expressed through Autobiographical Accounts of Exonerees131 Kristen Discola 8 Caring for and Containing the Hateful Other: Schools’ Strategies to Deal with Students with Neo-Nazi Convictions163 Christer Mattsson Index185

Notes on Contributors

Kristen Discola  (formerly Hourigan) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research is social psychological, with a focus on identity, emotion, language, and trauma. Bethany Gull  is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Utah, USA. Her research interests include: identity, religion, social movements, gender, and health. James Hardie-Bick  is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sussex, UK. His research interests include: social theory, self-identity, violence and transgression. Ben Hunter  is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Greenwich. His research interests include existential sociology, white-­ collar and corporate crime and desistance from crime. Emma L. Martin  is a graduate student of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Her research interests include: eulogy work, gender, symbolic interactionism, and qualitative methods. Christer  Mattsson is the director of the Segerstedt Institute at the University of Gothenburg. His research focus upon life trajectories into and out of violent extremist groups and in particular neo-Nazi groups. Lisa-Jo  K.  van den Scott is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  Her research interests include: symbolic interaction, space and time, qualitative methods, science and technology studies, and culture. vii

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Notes on Contributors

Susie Scott  is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex, UK. Her research interests include: micro-sociological theory, Goffman, symbolic interactionism, self-identity, emotions and mental health. Jason Torkelson  is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota Duluth, USA. His research interests include: youth, culture, identity, the life course, sociological theory, and race & ethnicity.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Susie Scott and James Hardie-Bick

This book explores processes of ‘unbecoming’: how people become disillusioned with and disengaged from the social worlds and groups in which they used to find a sense of identity and belonging. Building on Erving Goffman’s (1961) concept of the moral career, particularly the often neglected ‘ex’ phase, and developing Helen Ebaugh’s (1988) concept of role exit, this collection focuses on the experience of leaving unusual or extreme situations. Here we aim to move beyond symbolic interactionist understandings of role exit as an interpersonal accomplishment, emphasising instead the intrapersonal processes that occur in such transitions. These include existential questions of self-identity, biography and the search for personal meaning. How people recover from a disillusioned sense of self, reconstruct their worldview and continue to live a meaningful life is rightly viewed as a remarkable achievement. It is surprising, therefore, that relatively little attention has been paid to the internal process of role exit and the conflicted, ambivalent feelings that may arise. Research on Goffman’s moral career trajectory has tended to focus on the first two stages, ‘pre’ and ‘in’,

S. Scott (*) • J. Hardie-Bick School of Law, Politics & Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_1

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but little has been said about the final, ‘ex’ phase. Studies of stigma management consider the phase after labelling, once an actor is recognised as an ex-, but it is unclear how they reach that point. Similarly, theories of role exit transition (Ebaugh, 1988) have only been considered in relation to relatively ordinary, everyday roles relating to family or occupational life. The chapters in this book examine whether and to what extent the same process unfolds when people leave more dramatic, unfamiliar and challenging social situations. This introduction provides an overview of previous research on the sociology of becoming and identity formation, focusing on Goffman’s concept of moral career as well as Ebaugh’s work on role exit. We then proceed to identify some important limitations and criticisms of this research before providing an outline of the chapters. Our aim is to present an overview of important theoretical research on the sociology of becoming, unbecoming, and role exit, to demonstrate to readers how each of the chapters in this collection builds on the existing research literature.

The Moral Career Symbolic Interactionism provides many important ideas to theorise the micro-social processes of identity formation. The earlier Chicago School work on ‘status passage’ (Glaser & Strauss, 1971) originated in the anthropological work of van Gennep (1960) and was used to explore important life transitions. This concept was expanded (see Glaser, 1968) to describe the movement from one role position to another and is used to examine how this unfolds through smaller, finely detailed dynamics of change. Concepts of ‘status passage’ and ‘career’ came to be associated with sociological research investigating the “patterned sequence of adjustments” made by individuals in response to their placement and positioning by others (Becker, 1952, p. 470). As Becker noted, the ‘concept of career has proved of great use in understanding and analysing the dynamics of work organizations and the movement and fate of individuals within them’ (1952, p. 470). Nevertheless, the term has not been solely restricted to examining an individual’s occupation. The term career has proved valuable for describing any type of social progression. As Cohen and Taylor recognised: We are caught up in the career of our marriage, how well is it going at the moment, its prospect for survival…‘Did John really mean what he said last

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night about a divorce?’ We are involved with the educational career of our children, our leisure career, and the state of excellence that we have attained at golf or amateur dramatics. At times we will allow our mind to wander over the state of our sexual career—are we still as active as we were, is our interest declining or increasing? (1993, p. 38)

As this quotation suggests, the concept of career can be applied to the most ordinary everyday activities. Instead of restricting the concept of career to investigating an individuals’ occupational career, the concept can ‘refer to any social strand of any person’s course through life’ (Goffman, 1961, p. 119). The concept of the career trajectory (Becker, 1952; Goffman, 1961; Strauss, 1959) describes a series of sequential stages through which an individual feels progressively committed to role, identity or status, and so incrementally ‘becomes’ it (Becker, 1963). Each of the steps along this journey is mediated by social interaction, relationships and encounters with significant others (Blumer, 1969), who shape the meanings that the prospective identity holds. For example, in Becker’s (1953) famous study of marijuana users, the reactions and definitions of the peer group influenced whether or not new members joined the subculture, and how long they stayed. Supportive, encouraging responses reinforced the positive meanings associated with the activity, making it easier to continue. Career trajectories unfold as pathways to identity: like a line of stepping stones stretching across a river, they carry people gradually closer towards becoming someone new. Movement is linear, forward-directed and positively formative, gathering momentum and velocity. This symbolic interactionist model emphasises the interactional contingency of personal change. Although the overall direction of movement is forwards, how far along the path an individual travels depends on the social experiences they have. In the labelling theory of deviance, for example, reaching the endpoint fate of role incumbency requires that the individual has first passed through some prior stages: getting caught, being publicly labelled, internalising the attribution and so on (Erikson, 1964; Lemert, 1967; Schur, 1971). Should they ‘fail’ to accumulate each incremental step, they slip off the stone pathway and fall into the river. For example, someone who experiences shyness in one situation may not have sufficient subsequent experiences to consolidate a ‘shy person’ identity (Scott, 2007). However, symbolic interactionists have tended to neglect this potential course of negative contingency, and focused instead on those

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who do make incremental progress towards a positive identity. Thus we find a plethora of empirical studies of how people ‘become’ homosexual (McIntosh, 1968), runners (Altheide & Pfuhl, 1980), wheelchair runners (Patrick & Bignall, 1987) or skydivers (Hardie-Bick, 2005). Goffman introduced the concept of the moral career in his book Asylums (1961), which was based on an ethnographic study carried out at St Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. By identifying the moral career as a subtype of the general category, Goffman wanted to classify those career trajectories in which a person’s identity was judged and evaluated according to normative standards of (dis)taste, (dis)approval and (in)tolerance. Goffman sought to outline the process by which this occurred: the ‘regular sequence of changes’ that typically occur in the ‘person’s self and in his framework of imagery for judging himself and others’ (1961, p. 119). He thus defined the concept in the following way: The moral career of a person of a given social category involves a standard sequence of changes in his way of conceiving of selves, including, importantly, his own. These half-buried lines of development can be followed by studying his moral experiences—that is, happenings which mark a turning point in the way in which the person views the world (1961, p. 154).

Individuals who breach the conventional rules and norms of social behaviour threaten to disrupt the interaction order (Goffman, 1983) and are subjected to controls and sanctions. In the case of the psychiatric hospital, such individuals were physically and symbolically removed from the mainstream civilian world and held in a total institution (Goffman, 1961), wherein their conduct was resocialised with regimes of improvement. Here, the career is ‘moral’ in the sense that individuals view themselves as a failure rather than a success. The psychiatric patients no longer had autonomous control over their lives and this transition was accompanied by humiliating ‘status degradation ceremonies’, such as having their personal possessions taken away. As Goffman states, ‘the new inpatient finds himself cleanly stripped of many of his accustomed affirmations, satisfactions and defences, and is subjected to a rather full set of mortifying experiences’ (1961, p.  137). The entire social organisation of the hospital serves to create an image of being an incompetent human being. Moral careers can have long-term effects on the self, as ‘fateful’ labels and attributions define the person’s moral character and social status. They serve as an indicator of inner value and worth, and the right to belong in

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mainstream civil society. Consequently, they can also be used to justify excluding an individual who does not conform. Occasionally, the problematic former identity becomes a ‘master status’ (Hughes, 1945), which dominates all other aspects of the self and becomes the lens through which that individual is viewed. In his later book Stigma, Goffman (1963) explored the fate of those living with ‘blemishes of character’. A stigmatising attribute is one that ‘spoils’ an actor’s claim to a desirable social identity by revealing discrediting facts about their private, backstage self. The individual transitions from being a ‘whole and usual person’ to one who is ‘tainted, discounted’ (1963, p. 12) amongst a society of ‘normals’. Goffman (1961) identified three stages in the career of the ‘mental patient’. These were the pre-patient (living at home under the supervision of their general practitioner), the in-patient (this involves being either voluntarily or forcibly hospitalised) and the ex-patient phase (where the person lives with a stigmatising master status). He provides a detailed account of both the pre-patient and in-patient stage but did not explore the ex-­ phase of the moral career. Goffman decided to focus his research on ‘the first two phases’ (1961, p. 122) and consequently the important ex-phase was neglected in his original research. The ex-phase has since been revisited by contemporary studies of living with stigma after leaving a role (Link & Phelan, 2014; Tyler & Slater, 2018), but this research is limited. It has not examined the processes by which members get to that point, i.e. the journeys and transitions involved in developing an ‘ex-‘ identity. As discussed in the next section, we call this the process of ‘unbecoming’.

Half a Story: Becoming Ourselves The process of becoming can take many forms, and symbolic interactionists have modelled various patterns for this pathway. Athens (1995) describes a sudden and dramatic change that causes a radical reorganisation of the self: for example, a spinal injury cuts short a rugby player’s sporting career and redefines them as a paraplegic (Smith & Sparkes, 2008). This is likely to cause severe biographical disruption (Bury, 1982), as the individual has to rethink and reconstruct the future story of their life. Alternatively, there may be a more gradual process of realisation that a prior role no longer fits (Ebaugh, 1988), together with a move towards becoming someone else. People join reinventive institutions, such as therapeutic clinics and religious communities, in order to transform themselves into desired or better selves (Scott, 2011). Becoming may occur in

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response to others’ changing attitudes towards the person’s self: temporary disruptions, such as sickness, lead to the suspension of normal duties, while coming out with private secrets changes the audience’s view (Plummer, 1995). Finally, turning points are life-changing events that create moments of epiphany (Strauss, 1959). Surprising discoveries, for example, of a partner’s betrayal, lead to feelings of enlightenment and revelatory awakening (DeGloma, 2014). The life-course divides into two phases, before and after the epiphany, so that one becomes an irreversibly new person. However, this approach tells only half of the story. So much for positive becoming, but what about the reverse, negative processes of non- or un-­ becoming? As we have seen, this possibility is implied but not pursued in previous symbolic interactionist research. Identities are not only formed, gained and developed, but also lost, left incomplete or avoided altogether. We can then imagine an inverted mirror image of the career trajectory, whereby people drift away from, not towards, a role they might have had. Rather than a neatly trodden pathway marching forwards, this trajectory moves backwards, unravelling a thread. The process may be less smooth and linear, with erratic inconsistencies. The stepping-stones are haphazardly arranged, leading journeyers around in confusing circles. Yet this negative process is equally interactionally contingent. As Mullaney (2006) argues, just as ‘learning to do’ involves social teaching, so does learning not to do. Significant others feature as guardian or gatekeeper figures who influence retroactive movement, for example, by discouraging progression or blocking entry to the next stage. Using Scott’s (2019) sociology of nothing as a theoretical framework, we can map out some paths of negative trajectory. Scott argues that nothing is a form of Weberian social action, which is both subjectively meaningful and oriented towards other people’s perspectives (Weber, 1922). It can be performatively accomplished in two main ways: through acts of omission or commission. In the first case, in the absence of intentional motivation, by default, actors neglect to do anything and end up being without. For example, someone does not have children because they lack the strong desire, or someone is agnostic because they are not drawn to a religious faith. Omissive non-identities are irrelevant, not appearing as meaningful options on the horizon of possibility (Husserl, 1913). No-body emerges because they are not called into being, leaving an empty space (cf. Levinas, 1961). This trajectory can be understood as one of ‘non-­ becoming’ (Scott, 2019).

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By contrast, through acts of commission, identities are recognised as tangible before being dismissed. There is a some-body figure who is apprehended but then negated, either by oneself or by others. Through a process of dis-identification, people may reject, refuse, deny or surrender part of themselves that might otherwise have been significant. For example, someone chooses not to have children, or actively believes in atheism. When commissive dis-identification concerns a prospective role-identity, the trajectory can be called ‘becoming a non-’ (Scott, 2019). For example, Mullaney (2006) studied the meanings of abstinence (from sex, alcohol and so on) as a determined refusal to become a certain social type: this creates a consciously proclaimed ‘never-identity’. When commissive dis-­ identification concerns a former identity, the trajectory can be called ‘unbecoming’. Previous roles are given up, shaken off, removed or forcibly destroyed, leading to an unravelling of selfhood. How is this career process subjectively experienced?

Role Exit: The Other Side So far, we have identified two neglectful tendencies in symbolic interactionist research: a lack of attention to Goffman’s ‘ex-‘ phase of the moral career, and a failure to consider career trajectories of unbecoming. However, there is an important exception to this. Ebaugh’s (1988) work on ‘role exit’ provides a fascinating insight into the social process of leaving a status position, focusing on the interaction dynamics through which personal decisions unfold. Ebaugh introduces the concept of the ‘ex-’ identity, based on no longer being whom one once was. She emphasises that this is the end point of a long, protracted journey of reverse status passage: becoming an ‘ex’. Furthermore, Ebaugh argues that once one arrives at the ‘ex-‘ station, another process begins, by which individuals take up an alternative role and learn how to perform this instead. Becoming an ‘ex-‘, therefore involves extricating oneself from one position before entering another, and the two phases influence each other. Role exit is defined as, “the process of disengagement from a role that is central to one’s self-identity and the reestablishment of an identity in the new role that takes into account one’s ex-role” (Ebaugh, 1988, p. 1). Role exit had previously been understood as a problem of social systems. Merton (1957) introduced the term to describe the passage of individuals through the hierarchical levels of an institution, such as a business organisation. The system must be built to withstand the potentially

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disruptive effects of members’ movement, and to accommodate their changing positions. Thus like any status passage, role exit operates through institutional mechanisms that help to make the process run smoothly. For example, anticipatory socialisation involves members preparing for their next position, by internalising, adopting and aligning oneself with the values of the group they are going to join. Merton also emphasised the interdependency of members’ positions within a system: roles tend to be clustered in sets, and so one person’s exit will affect the status of others, for example by opening up promotion opportunities. Goffman also examined role exit in relation to the micro-level structure of interaction order. In his essay on ‘cooling the mark out’, Goffman (1952) described the delicate interpersonal processes through which actors manage the public shame of involuntary status loss. Through defensive pride, dignity and face-saving gestures, they provide reasonable excuses and justificatory accounts to indicate that the loss does not matter and the new substitute role is preferred. Ebaugh (1988) sought to explore the preliminary stages of this process: the preparatory work that led up to and prompted these institutional mechanisms. Her book reports on her own study of nuns leaving the convent, as well as other projects about ex-doctors, ex-teachers, ex-athletes, divorcees, transgender people and mothers without child custody. As a symbolic interactionist, she wanted to understand the subjective experience of making decisions to leave, and how the meanings of this act were negotiated with others. This is not simply the reverse mirror image of the positive ‘becoming’ process, she argued, but rather a unique and different social trajectory. Indeed, she argues that role exit constitutes a ‘general social process’ that occurs across various settings and institutional contexts. Ebaugh suggests that the process of extricating oneself from a previously central role involves two distinct aspects. These can be compared to Goffman’s (1961) distinction between the subjective and objective strands of a moral career. Dis-identification is the more personal journey of unbecoming: the awareness of no longer being whom one once was. Understood within the sociology of nothing framework, dis-identification is a commissive act of negating one’s former self, which is intentionally directed by motives of rejection, refusal or repudiation. Disengagement is the more social process of withdrawing from the role and managing the effects of this upon others. Actors must systematically retreat from various aspects of the role—its normal duties, expectations, rights and responsibilities—and deal with others’ responses, attitudes and reactions. They must also

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disengage from the social milieu in which the role is established, which may mean losing a group or community membership. The dis-identification phase involves four subsidiary processes. ‘First doubts’ occur when the individual reflects on their current situation as no longer meeting their needs. An employee feels unfulfilled at work, a partner falls out of love, or a nun begins to question her religious faith. Next, the person engages in ‘seeking and weighing alternatives’, for example by considering other jobs or relationships they could pursue. Scott (2019) calls these alternatives ‘substitute’, ‘replacement’ or ‘instead’ options, highlighting that they are only created because of negation. Hence, nothing has the power to produce something new. There is an existential dimension to this stage, as the individual realises that they do not have to remain stuck in their role, and have the freedom to choose something else. However, this is a difficult decision. Ebaugh uses Becker’s (1960) concept of ‘side bets’ to describe how there may be concerns about giving up secondary objects associated with the role, in which the individual has invested time and emotional energy. For example, freedom from a stressful job may come at the expense of losing a friendship group from amongst one’s colleagues. Some people take precautionary steps at this stage by building bridges towards the next role, for example by researching the practicalities of moving to a new residential area. Ebaugh suggests that the longer this second stage lasts, the more estranged the individual feels from their previous role and the more likely it is that they will go through with leaving. ‘Turning points’ (Strauss, 1959) form the third stage: there may be a single, dramatic event that brings everything to a head and cements the person’s decision to leave. This may be an epiphanous moment of discovery or a milestone they reach, for example, major birthdays can serve as self-imposed deadlines for making changes to one’s life (Yalom, 2008). The turning point often comes just before the first action step of exit. Ebaugh describes this as a liminal stage of vacuum or suspension, when the individual pauses on the precipice before making their jump. To reassure themselves that they are making the right decision, they “take one nostalgic look backwards to the things that were positive, pleasant and familiar about the past role” (Ebaugh, 1988, p. 143). Finally, ‘establishing an ex-identity’ involves entering the new social position but having to deal with the ‘hangover’ effects of what one left behind. This corresponds to the ex- phase of Goffman’s (1961) moral career trajectory, where those

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who are released from total institutions may encounter shame and stigmatisation. The disengagement stage involves the individual actor negotiating their status passage with significant others. Just as with the becoming trajectory, this pathway involves career contingencies (Becker, 1963)—aspects of social interaction and relationships that influence whether and how far the progression advances. Prior to leaving, the individual weighs up factors including the centrality and salience of the role to their current social identity (how radically will losing this feature alter the way others see them?), its duration (the longer one has inhabited a role, the more practically and emotionally difficult it is to extricate oneself), its social desirability and institutionalisation (a role that is very culturally normative, such as motherhood with child custody, carries a greater risk of stigma if given up). Other contingency factors include whether the exit is single or multiple (will surrendering one role mean also losing others?) and whether it must be faced alone or with others (is there a group who can all leave together?). Afterwards, in the ex-identity phase, the person has to manage their ongoing relations with others in various social groups. While forming new connections with their target group, they may wish or need to retain contact with remaining members whom they have left behind. A third group comprises fellow ex-members from whom the individual can draw comfort, practical help and support to ease the process of adjustment. This corresponds to Goffman’s (1961) ‘own’ group, who share the direct personal experience of stigma and so provide reassurance, solidarity and a new sense of belonging.

Problems, Criticisms and Limitations Ebaugh’s work has been extremely valuable in providing insights into the process of becoming an ‘ex’. She is one of the few sociologists who have paid attention to this stage of Goffman’s moral career, going beyond ideas of stigma to consider deeper questions of self-identity. Her ideas have been influential, both within symbolic interactionism and beyond. However, there is one important limitation, which we hope to address in this collection. Ebaugh’s model focuses on the experience of leaving roles that are relatively ‘ordinary’, quotidian and embedded in the routines of everyday life. For example, she writes about the difficulties mothers face when running a domestic household without their children, or the struggles of recovering alcoholics trying to resume a normal working

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pattern. Of course, this level of mundanity is precisely the point: Ebaugh seeks to emphasise just how pervasive and reverberating the effects of ‘hangover’ identities are, as they permeate and ripple through the tiniest minutiae of social lived experience. Yet still, it seems there is something missing from this picture. What if the role that one has given up were rather less ordinary? Leaving a place of danger, threat, insecurity and fear might have very different conditions and consequences than leaving the entrapment of ‘normal human misery’ (Craib, 1994). The process of transition out would likely involve more heightened dramas of negotiation, while the long-term effects on self-identity could be more deeply profound. This is something that Frances Moulder (2016) explores in her research on exiting ‘extra-ordinary’ roles. Based on memoirs and interviews with people who had lived in military combat, political war zones, concentration camps and resistance movements, Moulder considers the experience of becoming a ‘returnee’. Like Ebaugh, she sees this as a distinctive role-­ identity that constitutes a Weberian ideal type: a prototypical model that manifests in similar ways, with common features, across many different settings (Weber, 1904). Although Moulder discusses emotional experiences, such as trauma, that occur during the time of extreme living, she focuses on how these feelings travel back with the returnee and shape their future life. For example, ex-soldiers may suffer ‘perma-trauma’ (Salzer, 2011) by constantly re-experiencing distress, in what psychiatrists call Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Herman, 1992). Moulder argues that extraordinary experiences have a transformative effect upon the self, by radically disrupting the person’s sense of normality, habit, routine and taken-for-granted reality. Entering a war zone, for example, evokes a sense of culture shock, because this place is like nothing else that one has known before. As an urban sociologist, Moulder focuses her analysis on the process of reintegration into the ‘ordinary world’. Soldiers returning home, prisoners released from death camps, or revolutionaries abandoning their utopian dreams, all face the same dilemma of how to resume quotidian routines that now seem quite absurd. Unable to forget all they have seen and felt, the mundane world now appears strange and other people curiously preoccupied with trivia. For example, a Vietnam veteran returning to his small New Jersey home town went out drinking with his buddies. “No one seemed to care. Life just went on as always, and no one seemed to know a war was on.” (Polner, 1971, p. 7, cited in Moulder, 2016, p. 90). Moulder suggests that returnees might thus experience a second episode

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of (reverse) culture shock as they confront this bewildering landscape. The once familiar looms strange and alien, almost threatening in its magnitude, which leaves no room for memory. In phenomenological-existential terms, the home world becomes ‘unhomely’ and disturbingly defamiliarized (Heidegger, 1927). In the space between Ebaugh’s and Moulder’s work, there is another puzzling question that has remained unexplored. Both of these studies emphasise the idea of an individual responding to external circumstances, for which, by and large, they are not responsible. Given the left-wing bias of mainstream ‘underdog sociology’ (Becker, 1967), it is perhaps not surprising to find expressions of sympathy for the victims of structural oppression, disadvantage and misfortune. And of course, in the vast majority of cases, this view is entirely justified. However, one criticism often levelled at labelling theories of deviance is that they depict the ‘victim’ as passive, almost helpless at the hands of others and lacking individual agency. There is a risk of serving an injustice to the strength and courage of survivors, and unwittingly affronting their dignity. We therefore seek to build upon Moulder’s work by considering another side of extreme role exit, namely the ways in which returnees deal with feelings of direct involvement and personal responsibility. Extreme role exit creates breaks, junctures and discontinuity in the temporal arc of the self. Narrative sociologists have shown how, in ‘ordinary’ cases, self-identity unfolds as a thread, stretching throughout the life-course (Polkinghorne, 1988; Bruner, 1991; McAdams, 1993). Despite episodic points of knottiness, we understand ourselves as being relatively consistent and having a stable way of being. Exiting a previously central role-identity, however, presents a challenge to this narrative and evokes a ‘plea for continuity’ (Davis, 1979). Ebaugh suggests that, in order to move on with one’s life, ‘role residue’ from the left-behind self must be incorporated into the new or future self. For example, an ex-addict learns to forgive their past behaviour and make peace with those they harmed (Weinberg, 2005). However, this reconstructive work is harder when the fracture between past and present selves is sharper and the two halves do not fit. This is particularly likely when the individual feels emotionally wedded to the actions they performed and culpable for damage. They cannot reconcile the person whom they thought they were with whom they turned out to have been. Such revelatory awakenings (DeGloma, 2014) about one’s own true, authentic, deeper self may be fundamentally disturbing, as they

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challenge the whole basis on which ontological selfhood is based. They also evoke existential reflections upon human nature, personal morality and relational responsibility.

Outline of the Book This collection brings together the work of nine international scholars who have explored these questions in relation to a range of different research areas. They draw on the micro-level theoretical perspectives of symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology and existential sociology. In Chap. 2, we raise some existential questions about what happens when a person’s self-identity is undermined and destabilised. This process can be sudden and traumatic. When an individual’s values and belief systems are fundamentally challenged, the familiar can become strange and their sense of personal continuity is disrupted. This may call forth a re-­ evaluation of one’s self-identity, relations with others and opinions of the groups to which they belong. Taking examples from military contexts, we explore the unique dramaturgical, moral and existential dilemmas confronting those who become disenfranchised, how they manage their role exit process, and how they make sense of the experience. We compare war veterans’ accounts of dis-identification, disillusionment, guilt and shame, emphasising the agency with which they performed reparative biographical work on their ex-identities. We observe two contrasting strategies of narrative realignment and therapeutic animation, showing how both serve to reintegrate disturbingly negative parts into an otherwise ‘good’ moral self. In Chap. 3, Ben Hunter examines how white-collar offenders can struggle in their transition to their ex-offender status. Building on the work of Goffman and Ebaugh, Hunter explores the difficulties of role exit experienced by white-collar offenders in relation to their sense of self-­ identity. His research documents the difficulties of having to accept their ex-offender status and captures the frustration that can accompany their efforts to demonstrate they have changed. For white-collar offenders, there is a vast difference between their experience of imprisonment with the life that they previously led. Whilst many offenders can typically signal a successful transition to their new ex-offender status by finding employment or by having a stable romantic relationship, managing a new ex-­ offender status is more complicated for white-collar offenders. Hunter’s

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chapter explores the emotional aspects of this transition and highlights how white-collar ex-offenders attempt to show they are no longer the offender they once were. In Chap. 4, Bethany Gull explores the experiences of women from Utah, USA, who decided to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­ Day Saints (LDS). This is a ‘high-cost’ religious group, because of its distinctive doctrines, strong in/outgroup boundaries, intense socialisation and demands on commitment. Exiting this role has a dramatic, disruptive effect upon members’ identities, particularly in Utah, where the LDS church is deeply embedded in the local community and culture. Focusing on the ‘first doubts’ stage that Ebaugh observed in the moral career, Gull explores what it means to break with religious certainty and leave a tightly cohesive social world. Members consider affective, social horizon and belief factors when starting to feel these doubts. She then identifies three processes of identity transformation: the ‘cracking’ of religious identity, disengagement from role salience, and de-fellowshipping by withdrawing from the community. Gull’s chapter shows how these shattering and disturbing experiences of ‘falling away’ can lead former members towards new identities that repair the cracks. In Chap. 5, Lisa-Jo van den Scott and Emma Martin examine the rhetorical and performative techniques of impression management used by women leaving positions of political leadership. They explain that transitioning out of such roles involves high visibility within the public sphere and tends to be framed as a symbolic death. Analysing the concession speeches of women who have lost elections or are leaving political life, van den Scott and Martin argue that these actors perform dramatugical ‘eulogy work’ to account for their changing identities. This involves locating their individual contributions upon a timeline of women in history, both to deflect attention from their immediate loss of face and to establish a symbolically immortal place to remain for posterity. In contrast to male ex-­ politicians, these women leaders downplay the significance of their families and private lives, seeking to construct an ex-identity based upon continued public service. In Chap. 6, Jason Torkelson discusses the meanings of relinquishing a subcultural identity that holds high salience in consumer society. Straightedge is a clean-living, youth-oriented subculture based on strict abstinence from intoxicants. Torkelson interviewed former members in later adulthood, as they looked back upon their experiences of disaffiliation. Drawing on theoretical ideas from social phenomenology and the

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sociology of nothing, Torkelson examines how the ex-straightedgers composed retrospective narratives to account for what they understood to be a process of identity reversal. Role surrender leads to what he calls ‘broken typifications’, whereby a core aspect of self becomes incongruent with the person’s interpretative schemas and has to be removed from their subjective meaning system. Ex-straightedgers performed further narrative work by locating this particular role exit within their broader life history, making sense of biographical identity change from a retrospective standpoint. In Chap. 7, Kristen Discola uses a symbolic interactionist perspective to study individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated. Discola investigates the experience of identity loss and assesses the social processes involved when people find their lives disrupted in this way. Developing Goffman’s ex-phase of the moral career, her research highlights how entering and exiting this ‘extreme’ situation affects individuals. Addressing the link between identity and narrative reconstruction, this chapter examines autobiographies written by those who were falsely convicted and served long prison sentences before being exonerated. Discola shows how narrative constructions can incorporate significant life events and provide a powerful sense of meaning. The first person narratives are considered phenomenologically and the autobiographical writings are seen as an important part of the process of transition between the ‘in’ to the ‘ex-’ phase. Her research specifically focuses on the social processes of adopting, transitioning between and shedding roles that accompany the experience of being falsely imprisoned. In the final chapter, Christer Mattsson examines the strategies used with students who expressed racist views during their high school years. Mattsson provides a retrospective case study of Swedish students who were active in the neo-Nazi movement. The students attended the same school and belonged to the same skinhead gang. His study specifically focuses on one school where a special unit was used to separate these students from others at the school. As Mattsson notes, this was very much against the educational goals of having an inclusive education system. Drawing on interview data with teachers and former neo-Nazi students, his research examines the mechanisms used in the separate unit and discusses the consequences of adopting this approach. The results show that radicalisation among the segregated students increased and their rates of educational failure for those educated in the special unit also increased. As Mattsson argues, interventionist strategies based on excluding students only serves to reinforce a deep and lasting suspicion of democratic society.

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References Altheide, D. L., & Pfuhl, E. H. (1980). Self-accomplishment through Running. Symbolic Interaction, 3(2), 127–142. Athens, L. (1995). Dramatic Self-change. Sociological Quarterly, 36(3), 571–586. Becker, H. (1952). The Career of the Chicago Public School Teacher. American Journal of Sociology, 57(5), 470–477. Becker, H. S. (1953). Becoming a Marihuana User. American Journal of Sociology, 59, 235–242. Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the Concept of Commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66, 32–40. Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press. Becker, H. S. (1967). Whose Side are We On? Social Problems, 14(3), 239–247. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Prentice-Hall. Bruner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21. Bury, M. (1982). Chronic Illness as Biographical Disruption. Sociology of Health and Illness, 4(2), 167–182. Cohen, S., & Taylor, L. (1993). Escape Attempts: the Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life. Routledge. Craib, I. (1994). The Importance of Disappointment. Routledge. Davis, F. (1979). Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. Free Press. DeGloma, T. (2014). Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery. University of Chicago Press. Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. University of Chicago Press. Erikson, K. T. (1964). Notes on the Sociology of Deviance. In H. S. Becker (Ed.), The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance (pp.  9–21). Free Press, Collier-Macmillan. Glaser, B. G. (1968). Towards a Theory of Organizational Careers. In B. G. Glaser (Ed.), Organizational Careers (pp. 13–16). Aldine. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1971). Status Passage. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goffman, E. (1952). On Cooling the Mark Out. Psychiatry, 15, 451–463. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Penguin. Goffman, E. (1983). The Interaction Order. American Sociological Review, 48, 1–17. Hardie-Bick, J. (2005). Dropping Out and Diving in: An Ethnography of Skydiving. PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Durham. Heidegger, M. (1927). Being and Time. SUNY Press. Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books. Hughes, E. C. (1945). Dilemmas and Contradictions of Status. American Journal of Sociology, 50, 353–359. Husserl, E. (2012 [1913]). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Routledge.

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Lemert, E. (1967). Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control. Prentice-Hall. Levinas, E. (1961). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Martinus Nijhoff. Link, B.  G., & Phelan, J. (2014). Stigma Power. Social Science & Medicine, 103, 24–32. McAdams, D.  P. (1997 [1993]). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self. Guilford Press. McIntosh, M. (1968). The Homosexual Role. Social Problems, 16, 182–192. Merton, R. K. (1957). Social Theory and Social Structure. Free Press. Moulder, F.  V. (2016). Exiting the Extraordinary: Returning to the Ordinary World after War, Prison and Other Extraordinary Experiences. Lexington. Mullaney, M. (2006). Everyone is NOT Doing It: Abstinence and Personal Identity. University of Chicago Press. Patrick, D. R., & Bignall, J. E. (1987). Creating the Competent Self: The Case of the Wheelchair Runner. In J. A. Kotarba & A. Fontana (Eds.), The Existential Self in Society (pp. 207–221). The University of Chicago Press. Plummer, K. (1995). Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds. Routledge. Polkinghorne, D.  E. (1988). Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. SUNY Press. Polner, M. (1971). No Victory Parades: the Return of Vietnam Veterans. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Salzer, A. (2011). Back to Life. Harper Collins. Schur, E. (1971). Labeling Deviant Behavior. Harper & Row. Scott, S. (2007). Shyness and Society: The Illusion of Competence. Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, S. (2011). Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities. Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, S. (2019). The Social Life of Nothing: Silence, Invisibility and Emptiness in Tales of Lost Experience. Routledge. Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. C. (2008). Changing Bodies, Changing Narratives and the Consequences of Tellability: A Case Study of Becoming Disabled Through Sport. Sociology of Health and Illness, 30(2), 217–236. Strauss, A. L. (1959). Mirrors and Masks. Martin Robertson. Tyler, I., & Slater, T. (2018). Rethinking the Sociology of Stigma. Sociology, 66(4), 721–743. Van Gennep, A. (1960). The Rites of Passage. University of Chicago Press. Weber, M. (1949 [1904]). ‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy. In The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Free Press. Weber, M. (1947 [1922]). The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. Oxford University Press. Weinberg, D. (2005). Of Others Inside: Insanity, Addiction and Belonging in America. Temple University Press. Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Dread of Death. Piatkus.

CHAPTER 2

The Reinventive Self: War Veterans’ Accounts of Trauma, Disillusionment and Reparation Susie Scott and James Hardie-Bick

Introduction The process of rejecting a belief system that once provided a sense of security and meaning can be a difficult and challenging experience. When personal beliefs about our self-identity are undermined, and when our values are called into question, our entire worldview can become precarious and brittle. This chapter looks at the processes and transitions involved in adopting an ‘ex-identity’. Building on interactionist research that has explored the process of becoming an ‘ex’, our intention is to specifically examine the experience of leaving roles that are dangerous and often traumatic. Drawing on two important studies on military veterans, we explore the management of pervasive ‘hangover’ identities and explain how veterans manage their sense of dis-identification, disillusionment, guilt and shame. Our analysis is critical of previous social psychological research on extreme situations that emphasise agentic passivity and

S. Scott (*) • J. Hardie-Bick School of Law, Politics & Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_2

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situational determinism. Adopting an existential sociological approach, drawing on Goffman’s (1961) original concept of the moral career and Scott’s (2018, 2019, 2020) more recent work on the sociology of nothing (see our Introduction to this collection), our intention is to highlight how individuals are active in the way they repair and manage their ex-identity. Even those who committed the most grotesque acts of violence and are plagued by feelings of guilt and remorse have the potential to confront these emotions and recover a sense of personal autonomy. In such extreme circumstances ex-members can still work hard to rewrite their biographical narrative and live a more authentic, integrated and meaningful life. We show how veterans in both empirical studies perform ‘reverse biographical identity work’ on their moral careers to reconstruct and repair a sense of interactional and intrapsychic order to their lives.

Reclaiming a Moral Identity In this chapter, we combine theoretical ideas from symbolic interactionism, existential sociology and the sociology of nothing to revisit the ‘ex-‘ phase of Goffman’s moral career. Taking examples from military contexts, we explore the unique dramaturgical, moral and existential dilemmas confronting those who become disenfranchised, how they manage their role exit process, and how they make sense of the experience. We compare two war veterans’ accounts of dis-identification, disillusionment, guilt and shame, emphasising the agency with which they performed reparative biographical work on their ex-identities. We observe two contrasting strategies of narrative realignment and therapeutic animation, showing how both serve to reintegrate disturbingly negative parts into an otherwise ‘good’ moral self. The ‘dynamics of disengagement’ (Ebaugh, 1988) occur at the intrapersonal as well as the interpersonal level, as individuals wrestle with their moral conscience and seek to reconcile conflicting parts of their selves. The known, orderly, good ego confronts its unknown, chaotic, shadow alter, causing a sense of internal disintegration (Peterson, 1999). This involves two processes of dis-identification (surrendering a previously central source of moral selfhood through trajectories of unbecoming) and disillusionment (abandoning an ideology that had normalised and justified extreme forms of behaviour). When ex-members feel personally involved and morally responsible for acts they now regret, it is more difficult for them to discard the past and prevent it from affecting the present. The

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temporal arc of selfhood is thrown from order into chaos, prompting critically reflexive questioning and defamiliarising doubt. The result is ontologically disturbing, as it challenges the person’s sense of who they are: it evokes feelings of self-betrayal, existential guilt and psychosocial disappointment. A key aim of the ex-phase is to repair this damage by accepting and integrating these parts into a future self that feels whole and more authentic. We criticise the situational determinism implicit in some psychological models of roles powerfully engulfing personality. Individuals are active, not passive, in the way that they respond to the challenge of leaving extreme situations and returning to the ordinary. Becoming a non-­ extremist is an act of commission, not only in the moment of deciding to leave but also in the aftermath of repairing and managing a troubled ex-identity. Below, we demonstrate this with two empirical examples, illustrating alternative techniques through which this latter task of ‘reverse biographical identity work’ can be accomplished. Flores’ (2016) study of Iraq War veterans shows the power of narrative to glue past and present selves together with notions of continuity or conversion. Lifton’s (2005) study of Vietnam veterans shows how group psychotherapy can help to mobilise animating guilt, which catalyses more adaptive modes of negative responsibility assumption. We follow this with a discussion, grounded in existential sociology, of how the process of ex-treme unbecoming involves individual agency.

Narrative Rupture and Temporal Repair The temporal arc of selfhood is based on our ability to contemplate and assess our memories of the past with our present circumstances and imagined future possibilities. As Becker (1971, 1973) recognised, we are ‘time binding’ beings who are able to constantly assess our past, present and future selves. This ‘time stream’ provides a sense of continuity and meaning to our lives. Nevertheless, when serious disruptions occur, one’s sense of continuity is questioned and disturbed (Hardie-Bick, 2018). What we previously assumed to be known can reveal itself to be unknown. The familiar routines of everyday life can become unfamiliar and strange. Even our understanding of the person we unquestionably believe ourselves to be can become uncertain. When our understanding of selfhood is undermined, our sense of purpose, belonging, and meaning is also jeopardised. DeGloma (2014) writes about this in his work on awakenings.

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Discovering a terrible truth can jolt you out of your taken for granted reality, and provide a new perspective on your past self as having been deceived/mistaken. How could I have been so naïve? What sort of person does this make me? Am I to blame? In this situation, one’s whole lifeworld can be turned upside down. Everything is now chaotic and uncertain. Flores’ (2016) study shows how veterans managed their experiences of disillusionment and dis-identification, and examines how the veterans actively repair the damage through biographical identity work. Disillusionment is not just about rejecting an external belief system. Disillusionment also involves recognising that a potential future/ideal self is no longer reachable. The individual then dis-identifies with that foreclosed, impossible self, consciously ‘unbecoming’ it through an act of commission (Scott, 2019). Flores demonstrates how the veterans used two kinds of narrative: continuity and conversion. We suggest that both of these succeeded in restoring a sense of logical orderliness, meaning and continuity to the temporal arc of the self. This narrative identity work allowed the veterans to make meaningful connections between their past, present and future selves, therefore reducing the emerging sense of chaotic disturbance and disruption. Flores’ study captures how high expectations of military life can be replaced by a sense of disillusionment and can lead to a dis-identification with past and future selves. Brad, one of his interviewees, worked in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison (see Eisenman, 2007). Brad believed he was there to support the civilians, end a brutal dictatorship and ensure the country could be governed by democratic institutions. His personal experiences fundamentally challenged and undermined his previous beliefs. He witnessed the brutal violence used against the prisoners as well as the poor living conditions prisoners had to endure. After returning home Brad decided to join the anti-war organisation Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Together with other disillusioned soldiers, Brad started to share his stories, which allowed him to ‘reclaim his moral identity as a patriot who fights for virtuous causes’ (2016, p.  197). He should have been in Iraq to fight for a virtuous cause, not to abuse and neglect the rights of Iraqi prisoners. Flores examines the narratives of military veterans from the 2003 Iraq war to understand how veterans made sense of their disillusionment. Like Brad, many interviewees believed they had been posted to Iraq to help civilians topple a brutal dictatorship. This belief was rapidly undermined. The soldiers were being attacked by the very people they believed they

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were there to help. The conversion narratives used by his interviewees accounted for their ‘conscious shift from one state of being or personal view to another’ (2016, pp. 198–199). The experience of disillusionment affected the veterans’ sense of self. The torture and abuse of prisoners that Brad witnessed directly undermined his beliefs about why he was serving in Iraq. What he previously believed to be true was now doubted and questioned. But this was more than a critical and cynical dismissal of his belief system. Working in such an abusive environment deeply disturbed his moral sense of self and he was forced to confront feelings of regret, guilt, remorse and naivety. Like the other veterans, Brad was personally involved in this abuse, he was culpable and responsible for his actions. For his moral authentic self to remain intact it was necessary for Brad to shift to a different perspective on reality by realigning himself with different communities of meaning. Flores’ insightful analysis highlights the importance of both ‘conversion’ and ‘continuity’ narratives. Conversion narratives refer to how storytellers describe a gradual incremental process or a sudden realization that served to undermine their previous beliefs. They now know the truth and recognize their previous beliefs and worldview to be false. This is different to narratives that emphasize continuity. Rather than following a pattern of dramatic self-change, narratives of continuity describe a sense of ‘rediscovery’—for example, the storyteller may now feel that a personal experience allowed them to learn something about themselves. As Johnston states, the emphasis is ‘on self-continuity rather than self-­ transformation’ (2013, p.  569). Flores convincingly argues that both approaches are not as opposed as they initially appear. His research shows how the IVAW veterans often employed both forms of narrative to reclaim their identity as American patriots. His analysis identifies how veterans account for their experiences and highlights how accounts change before, during and after they served in Iraq. The veterans had high-expectations about military life. Many were motivated to join the military as they wanted to do their duty and to serve and protect their country. One of his interviewees, Henry, had a desire to join after the September 11th attacks in the USA. Freedom needed to be defended and fighting for freedom was viewed as an honorable pursuit. Henry was excited about his deployment to Iraq: It was exciting and scary all at the same time. I knew I was going to war, I signed up to go to war, it took us a little bit because we didn’t go to

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Afghanistan, you know everybody was going to Afghanistan, and I felt that maybe I came in too late and missed the war, and then Iraq came up …. Then when I finally got orders I had to really get into a mode of “I’m gonna kill somebody.” (participant cited in Flores, 2016, p. 202)

In a similar way to others in his unit, Henry viewed his deployment as a way of retaliating against the attacks in 2001. Other veterans also had high expectations concerning the importance of military intervention and shared Henry’s pro-war attitudes and beliefs. Many interviewees were excited about the prospect of fighting a war and firmly believed in the cause they were fighting for. They were fighting to free the Iraqi citizens from a brutal political regime. The dominant discourses were undermined by their direct experiences. The soldiers soon become bitter, frustrated and angry as they were being attacked by the very people they were there to help. Jason revealed how the soldiers’ anger was then expressed: [T]hey took their anger out on the Iraqis. They hated the Iraqis. They kind of bought into the propaganda of it, that the Bush administration was saying that we came to give them democracy. We came to free them. And they were really angry that we left our homes to come out to this God awful hell. And then, you attack us? We are here to help you, and you try to kill us? And so, there was a lot of anger, and they despised the Iraqis. (participant cited in Flores, 2016, p. 203)

In this unfamiliar, stressful, dangerous and confusing environment, the Iraqi civilians were subjected to serious forms of abuse and violence. Soldiers were also questioning the dominant narratives concerning why they were fighting in Iraq. It was not uncommon to see graffiti in the bathrooms that was critical of President Bush, or see the words ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation’, the first letter of each word being emphasized to suggest that the war was about controlling the oil reserves rather freeing the Iraqi people. The dominant narrative used to justify the invasion struggled to remain the dominant narrative. The idealistic views about why they were risking their lives in Iraq were being challenged and replaced by a sense of disillusionment. Many soldiers were no longer motivated by a desire to bring democracy, security and freedom to the people. Their previous idealistic beliefs had been shattered.

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Returning to the Ordinary Returning home was a difficult time for the veterans. Flores’ notes how they were frustrated by the uncritical media coverage of the war. The media were not interested in representing their experiences or criticisms of the Iraqi invasion. Paige no longer believed the dominant narratives being reinforced in the media. She was both frustrated and angry: It was like, you’re so happy just to be home and see grass and shit. And then reality settles in. I used to be in a lot of fights with my parents about politics and stuff. ’Cause … my mom voted for Bush the second time. I was like, “How did … how can you do that?” And she said, “He’s gonna protect us from terrorists.” I mean, “What the fuck?,” where did I just spend a year? I would call them always and tell them what’s happening, so how can they really say that they didn’t know? It was so weird. And I used to scream at the TV … I was angry. Like, mood swings were insane. I’d be like, happy, crying, screaming every time, you know. It was really, really hard. (participant cited in Flores, 2016, pp. 206–207)

Like other veterans in this study, Paige managed to channel her anger by joining the IVAW. She could now share war stories, speak at rallies and take part in anti-war activities alongside other like-minded veterans. Her experiences of war shattered her ideals of military life. This form of narrative, a narrative of conversion, was a common biographical repair strategy used by the veterans. For example, Brad argued that his personal experiences in Iraq taught him ‘the pragmatic reality of what happens when we go to war’ and provided him with a ‘deeper understanding of the costs of war’ (2016, p. 196). His high expectations of military life were directly challenged by what he witnessed and the abuse he participated in. Eric provides another example. Like many of the veterans, Eric believed he was fighting in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. His experiences in Iraq contradicted his beliefs and he soon learned that the military ‘didn’t care’ about the Iraqi people. He participated in house raids and destroyed peoples’ homes. Eric claimed that the Iraqis were treated worse than animals and were dehumanized. As Flores notes, these and other similar experiences in Iraq turned the veterans against both the military and the war. Nevertheless, the veterans did not view themselves as being unpatriotic. The IVAW believed they were fighting against an unlawful war. The veterans saw no disjuncture between service through the military and

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service through activism. This continuity narrative was used in addition to the conversion narrative to assist their biographical repair. The war itself may now be seen as ‘immoral’ and ‘illegal’, but this does not mean that the soldiers became unpatriotic Americans. As Flores argues, ‘they were doing precisely what the military trained them to do: fighting for a moral and just cause’ (2016, p. 207). Their anti-war activism was believed to be just, noble, honorable and patriotic. Flores’ research highlights how pre, during and post-war narratives all work to reclaim their moral identity as patriotic Americans. These narratives provided a sense of resistance, continuity and change without having to abandon their deeply held commitments. One home, the IVAW allowed soldiers to co-construct meaningful narratives to restore order to their lives and make sense of their personal transformation. As Flores’ argues, the veteran’s negotiated their transformation ‘by identifying with an antiwar social movement’ that provided ‘socially-­ sanctioned narratives’ and reframed their ‘opposition to the war as a patriotic act’ (2016, p. 209).

Animating Guilt and Negative Responsibility In contrast to Flores’ participants in the Iraqi war, Lifton’s (2005) Vietnam veterans were under no illusions of military idealism. Lifton argues that there is something very different about Vietnam veterans. In Vietnam, many soldiers felt that they were fighting a war with no sense of purpose. As one of the veterans explained, whilst in Vietnam he remembered thinking: ‘What am I doing here? We don’t take any land. We don’t give it back. We just mutilate bodies. What the fuck are we doing here? (2005, p. 37). Right from the very start of the war many veterans felt the war to be unjust, illegitimate, meaningless and absurd. Unlike the Iraqi war veterans, the Vietnam veterans did not tend to undergo an initial shift from hope to disappointment. Not many of the soldiers were convinced by the American government’s narrative about the necessity of the war. Not ‘many actually fighting the war’ took the ‘quasi-religious impulse to “fight the communists”’ seriously (2005, p. 40). As a former GI explained, ‘I don’t know why I’m here. You don’t know why you’re here. But since we’re both here, we might as well try to do a good job and do our best to stay alive’ (2005, p.  40). Lifton’s veterans did not have to undergo a process of disillusionment with an external belief system. This was a war without a convincing ‘script’, a war that offered ‘no honorable encounter, no warrior grandeur’ (2005, p. 38). The men were adrift in a hostile and

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alien environment with no sense of purpose. They were determined to stay alive and often their determination had severe consequences. What the men witnessed in Vietnam, and the atrocities they took part in and were responsible for, continued to haunt the veterans years after the war. The acts the men committed involved the most unimaginably grotesque forms of human cruelty. Innocent civilians were tortured and killed, women were raped and murdered and the bodies of those murdered were often mutilated. The men had to rapidly adjust to this frightening and confusing environment, where behaviour that should have been sanctioned was encouraged and rewarded by their commanding officers. Even the most extreme forms of brutality became normalised. The My Lai massacre provides a well known example of the kind of atrocities American soldiers committed. Glover (2001) provides a harrowing account of what happened in the village of My Lai on 16th March 1968: Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as the spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired at Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped woman and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disembowelled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant women had their stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machine gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed. (Glover, 2001, p. 59)

In Vietnam, the shift from initial horror to banal normalization occurred extremely quickly. The men soon adjusted to witnessing random killings, and even began to participate with the same attitudes themselves. This was an extreme version of what occurred during Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney et al., 1973). This psychological study demonstrated how quickly the prison guards de-humanised and humiliated the prisoners. The surprising transformation of research participants into cruel and abusive prison guards was so rapid the experiment had to be shut down. Similarly, Lifton notes how quickly the American soldiers adapted to their new life in Vietnam. For example, in Vietnam there were troop carriers driving around with the ears of the perceived enemy tied to the antennas. Whilst the new soldiers were shocked by this at first, it was not long before

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the new recruits ‘came back with an ear of their own, to the approval of their commanding officer’ (2005, p. 44). As Lifton states, ‘the predominant emotional tone here is all-encompassing absurdity and moral inversion’ (2005, p. 37). Lifton’s (2005) Home from the War documents the veteran’s complex struggles with guilt, betrayal, rage and violence. As Van der Kolk (2015) has recognized, confronting shame and guilt is a difficult process: It’s hard enough to face the suffering that has been inflicted by others, but deep down many traumatized people are even more haunted by the shame they feel about what they themselves did or did not do under the circumstances. They despise themselves for how terrified, dependent, excited, or enraged they felt. (Van der Kolk, 2015, p. 13)

There is a sense of disillusionment, focused on the self, and feelings of intense guilt following the realization of the harm and suffering they inflicted on others. Lifton’s ‘rap’ groups with Vietnam veterans and psychiatrists revealed how soldiers were haunted by disturbing memories and flashbacks of brutally violent deaths they both witnessed and personally committed. The groups were called ‘rap’ groups as Lifton believed the term ‘group therapy’ would have deterred the veterans from participating. The groups met for at least two hours a week and lasted for nearly three years. The main aim of these groups was to help with the psychological problems caused by their experiences in Vietnam. What Lifton describes as the ‘counterfeit universe of Vietnam’ (2011, p.  187) had severe psychological consequences. This was an absurd war without meaning, a war that inverted the usual moral criteria that governed behaviour and where the ‘price of survival’ relied on the soldiers internalising ‘the all-­ pervasive corruption of the environment’ (2011, p.  187). During the group sessions the men frequently referred to how they were often seen as monsters or murderers. Although they resented these labels, the men also used these labels to describe themselves. Their actions in Vietnam ‘actively violated the human order beyond anything resembling acceptable limits’ (2005, p. 104). Their actions transgressed ‘boundaries that should not be crossed’ and moved ‘beyond limits that should not be exceeded’ (2005, p. 100). The veterans were haunted by images of brutality and grotesque violence. They were caught up in a ‘vicious circle of death and guilt’ (2005, p. 101).

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The veterans experienced a sense of betrayal and guilt in relation to surviving battles where their fellow soldiers were killed. They also struggled with feelings of guilt in relation to the random and pointless deaths they were responsible for. Lifton provides an example of a veteran in one of the rap groups who was struggling with feelings of guilt: You know, I’m shuddering … I’m shaking all over … Before … we talked about guilt … but I didn’t feel too much. But now I really feel remorse. I feel very badly about what I did in Vietnam—and it’s a terrible feeling. (participant cited in Lifton, 2005, p. 113)

Some of the men felt terrible guilt for the death, misery and suffering they caused in Vietnam In Scott’s (2019) terms, these represent destructive ‘acts of commission’. They experienced deep feelings of guilt for what they did, including the torture and killing of innocent civilians. However, they also felt guilty for what they did not do—in Scott’s (2019) terms, acts of omission. For example, the failure to intervene in situations that could have prevented abuse and murder weighed deeply on the Veterans’ consciences. As Lifton recognized, guilt can be experienced for transgressions they failed to intervene in, for atrocities they failed to stop. A veteran who witnessed part of the My Lai massacre provides a good example of this form of guilt: There’s just no way I can actually … feel that I was separate from this whole thing, especially when I didn’t do anything to stop it myself … You feel sort of responsible … A part of it … Especially with the war being the way it is, if you’re not against it you’re for it. (participant cited in Lifton, 2005, p. 115)

The veterans continued to be plagued by severe guilt and remorse, which could not be repaired by self-narratives alone. It took the social dynamics of the therapeutic rap group (a supportive Goffmanian (1963) ‘own’ group who shared the stigmatizing blemish of character and could help to shoulder the burden of guilt collectively) to heal the wounds of damaged selfhood. Lifton makes an important distinction between static and animating guilt. Static guilt enclosed the veterans in ‘a closed universe of transgression and expected punishment, in which one is unable to extricate oneself from a death like individual condition’ (2005, p.  126). He describes two different kinds of static guilt. Numbed guilt refers to a ‘deadened state’

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some veterans experienced. This deadened state is an unconscious retribution for the pain and suffering they had inflicted on the Vietnamese. They are desensitised from having to confront their responsibility for the atrocities they committed. They are anesthetized from having to directly confront their crimes, but in such a deadened or frozen state of being, they are also ‘anesthetized from much of life itself’ (2005, p. 127). The other form of static guilt is referred to as self-lacerating guilt. Rather than having a numbed ‘deadened’ state of being, these veterans were involved in an active and repetitive  symbolic ‘killing’ of their self. The veterans repeatedly condemned their behaviour, and their continuous reenactments confirmed their ‘unmitigated evil’. Both self-lacerating and numbed forms of guilt held the veterans ‘in a state of separation and inner disintegration as well as stasis—that is, in a death dominated condition’ (2005, p. 127). Animating guilt is a very different kind of response. Instead of a deadened, numbed or self-lacerating form of guilt, animating guilt can lead to a transformation and rediscovery of the self. If the veterans could confront their feelings of guilt, they could learn from their experiences and move beyond images of death and destruction. Lifton defines animating guilt as the anxiety of responsibility. Animating guilt encourages honest self-evaluation and provides the self-knowledge required for imagining future possibilities: To be sure, these three kinds of guilt do not separate out as precisely as this schema might suggest; they, infact, overlap and probably never exist in pure form. But I have observed in a considerable number of veterans a relationship to guilt so animating as to be a form of personal liberation. The discovery of one’s animating guilt can, for such men, be nothing less than rediscovery of oneself as a human being. (Lifton, 2005, p. 128)

Lifton’s research shows how both numbed and self-lacerating forms of guilt can be transformed into more animating forms. A process of critical self-evaluation encouraged and recovered a sense of personal autonomy. The static and unresolved forms of death guilt often resulted in destructive, aggressive and violent feelings and behaviour. As Lifton states, it is precisely ‘these inner zones of rage and violence’ (2005, p.  138) that served to confirm that they are the evil monsters they believed themselves to be. Nevertheless, the anxiety of responsibility interrupts, questions and undermines the numbed and self-lacerating responses, altering and reordering the veterans relationship to their feelings of guilt and shame.

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The overlapping stages of confrontation, reordering and renewal provides ‘a symbolic form of death and rebirth’ (2005, p. 388). If destructive forms of static guilt are broken down the veterans were less inclined to violence and aggression. When the numbed and self-lacerating psychological defence mechanisms are interrupted, appropriate feelings can be experienced. By confronting their own guilt the veterans could recover their own capacity to feel and start to live a life with purpose and meaning. This reordering initiated the animating process that could result in a powerful sense of personal change and renewal. Lifton observed these changes occurring during the rap groups. In these intense group discussions, the veterans changed their feelings not only ‘toward the war and toward their government and society, but also in their relationships with parents, wives, partners, family members, and friends, and in their overall sense of what it is to be a man’ (2011, p. 190). Lifton’s research on Vietnam veterans shows how difficult it is to escape static responses to death guilt, but his work also demonstrates how a thorough exploration of guilt and personal responsibility can be both transformative and liberating. The social support of the rap group gave members the strength to ‘animate’ their guilt into a more constructive, reparative practice. Scott (2019) calls this negative responsibility assumption: confronting one’s own acts of commission and omission that have resulted in harmfully doing nothing/ not doing anything good. This involves taking responsibility for one’s active, chosen participation in disturbing acts, rather than hiding behind ‘bad faith’ narratives (Sartre, 1943) by blaming external situational pressures or claiming passive victimhood. Negative responsibility assumption in this case meant using guilt in an active, constructive, adaptive, positive way as a motivating force to critically reflect upon one’s moral self. Lifton’s veterans began to rethink their personal life-stories, critically questioning their own justificatory accounts. They asked themselves how they could more constructively allow their pasts to inform their presents and futures. They sought to reimagine their discarded former self as a formative foundational component, instead of a haunting and incongruent blemish. In this way, the ex-members worked hard to rewrite their biographical identities in more authentic, integrated ways.

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Discussion The examples above pose a challenge to existing theories of situational determinism. Previous studies in social psychology have suggested that extreme situations can have an overpowering effect upon personal morality. When faced with an unusual and shocking environment, in which one has to play an unfamiliar role, participants succumb to these external pressures and respond with conformity to what they believe is expected. As mentioned earlier, this was famously demonstrated by the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney et al., 1973), in which students role-playing as prison guards took on that persona and behaved in an exaggeratedly aggressive manner. Zimbardo (2007) describes a process of deindividuation, whereby actors ‘lose themselves’ behind their mask or persona, and this sense of anonymity has a disinhibiting effect on their behavior. This explains how and why ‘ordinary men’ (Browning, 2017) can find themselves capable of deeds that they would otherwise have found reprehensible, but which are normalized within that context. Thus Lifton (2005) refers to ‘atrocity-­ producing situations’ rather than cruel individuals, and Zimbardo (2007) reassures us that the ‘Lucifer Effect’ is a normal human tendency. It is disturbing to confront the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1978; also see Hardie-­ Bick, 2020) as embedded in everyday routines, but also somewhat comforting to think that this response is outside of our conscious control. Flores and Lifton do emphasise situational pressures, but they also reveal the individual’s capacity for agency. The soldiers in these two wars were horrified by their extreme situations, either immediately or afterwards, and they retained a strong, conscious awareness of themselves as individuals. Indeed, it was this very realisation of their direct, personal involvement in and contribution to the acts that were committed that evoked such strong feelings of guilt, remorse and terror. In Lifton’s study particularly, we see how the men struggled to disentangle their present selves from past, relinquished ways of being, and felt haunted by the hangover effects of their ex-role. They could not simply detach themselves and blame a dreadful situation, but instead had to attempt to reconcile the different aspects of themselves. Disillusionment and dis-identification therefore occur as individual, intrapsychic processes, which must be privately, emotionally managed. Existential sociology offers a satisfying means of understanding what is going on here. This theoretical approach explores the relationship between self, objects and society: that is, how people subjectively experience their

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place within the social world and connect with other beings (Douglas & Johnson, 1977, Kotarba & Fontana, 1984). This can involve confronting the four ‘givens’ of human existence that Yalom (1980) defines: death, isolation, freedom and meaninglessness. In Flores’ and Lifton’s studies, participants were disturbed by their ability to kill (and vulnerability to being killed); the decisions they had made about whether or not to take action, and if so, what kind; their total freedom to make any of these choices; and the individual responsibility they bore for any consequences. Returning from the extreme to the ordinary evoked a state of reverse culture shock at the mundane absurdity of social routines, in which they struggled to find meaning. These men were faced not only with the private chaos of their individual depravity, but also with a wider sense of having painfully inflicted a ‘wound in the order of being’ (Buber, 1958). Collectively, they bore a responsibility for committing the ‘ultimate transgression’ (Lifton, 2005) against human existence itself (also see Lifton, 2000). Staring into the ‘abyss of infinite evil’ (ibid., cf. Nietzsche, 1886) forces us to recognize our own guilty place within it. Nevertheless, the existentialist approach also emphasizes individual agency. We see this in the active ways in which the veterans responded to their situations, by skillfully performing techniques of ‘reverse biographical identity work’ (Scott, 2019). Flores’ participants used narrative techniques to rewrite their self-stories, finding new and meaningful connections between past, present and future selves. Lifton’s men found that the healing power of therapeutic groups helped them to transform their guilt into a more adaptive form and assume negative responsibility. In both cases, ex-members sought consciously to integrate the different parts of whom they were, could be or once had been, and thus smooth out chaotic disruptions to the temporal arc of selfhood. Instead of finding themselves in- or outside extreme situations, they learned to find a place for extremity within themselves.

Conclusion This chapter has developed the ‘ex-’ phase of Goffman’s moral career by drawing on ideas from existential sociology and the sociology of nothing. We have theorised the role exit process as a negative, reverse identity trajectory of unbecoming, highlighting the intrapersonal rather than interpersonal ‘dynamics of disengagement’. Using the example of military war veterans, we have explored the moral and existential dilemmas

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confronting those who become disenfranchised, comparing two distinct strategies these actors used to manage their role exits, and how they made sense of the experience. Disengagement and disidentification occur not only interactionally between self and others, but also intrapsychically within the self. That is, members grow increasingly disillusioned with an ideology that had previously inspired them, and dis-identify with the versions of themselves that had been bound up in these roles. This creates an unsettling sense of dissonance between the alternate positions of past, present and future selves, threatening biographical disruption. The catalyst for unbecoming can take different forms—distancing and horror may initially give way to acceptance and normalization, or cynical doubts may be present all along—but ultimately, ex-members reach the same turning point or moment of awakening. We have discussed how leavers actively manage their own process of extrication, thus demonstrating individual agency. This challenges some psychological theories of situational conformity: although members may feel unable to resist social pressure during the extreme situation, this helpless passivity does not endure afterwards. The two studies we examined, from Flores and Lifton, demonstrate how war veterans consciously reflected upon their personal involvement in and moral culpability for horrific events, and felt motivated to resolve the guilt they felt for this social responsibility. Compared to the relatively ordinary roles that Ebaugh’s subjects discarded, ex-treme leavers found it harder to remove the residue of their ‘hangover’ identity. Unwanted past and future selves continued to hold resonance within present selves through a dynamic of emotional haunting. Taking an existential sociological approach, we suggested that actors respond to this dilemma by performing ‘reverse biographical identity work’ (Scott, 2019), to repair and reconstruct a sense of internal order and coherence. Flores and Lifton illustrate two techniques that can be used to this end—narrative realignment and therapeutic animation—but there may be many others. What the strategies hold in common is that they function to reintegrate ‘bad’ (negative, disturbing and unwanted) parts of the self into the erstwhile ‘good’ account of personal identity that has been threatened and damaged. This allows for a more realistic stance of psychosocial ‘disappointment’ (Craib, 1994), or ambivalence, about the mixed blessings of human nature. Reverse biographical identity work

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is therefore an agentic act, whereby ex-treme role incumbents confront themselves completely and reach towards a satisfying ending to their moral career.

References Arendt, H. (1978). The Life of the Mind: Vol. 1 (Thinking) and Vol. 2 (Willing). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Becker, E. (1971). The Birth and Death of Meaning. The Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. The Free Press. Browning, C.  R. (2017). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Revised Ed.). HarperCollins. Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou (2nd Ed. R. G. Smith, Trans.). T & T Clark Ltd. Craib, I. (1994). The Importance of Disappointment. Routledge. DeGloma, T. (2014). Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery. University of Chicago Press. Douglas, J.  D., & Johnson, J.  M. (1977). Existential Sociology. Cambridge University Press. Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. University of Chicago Press. Eisenman, S. F. (2007). The Abu Ghraib Effect. Reaktion Books. Flores, D. (2016). From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist: Change and Continuity in the Narratives of Political Conversion among Iraq Veterans. Symbolic Interaction, 39, 196–212. Glover, J. (2001). Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press. Goffman. (1961). Asylums. Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Penguin. Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97. Hardie-Bick, J. (2018). Identity, Imprisonment and Narrative Configuration. New Criminal Law Review, 21(4), 567–591. Hardie-Bick, J. (2020). Mass Violence and the Continuum of Destruction: A Study of C. P. Taylor’s Good. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 33(2), 477–495. Johnston, E. F. (2013). “I Was Always This Way...”: Rhetorics of Continuity in Narratives of Conversion. Sociological Forum, 28(3), 549–573. Kotarba, J., & Fontana, A. (Eds.). (1984). The Existential Self in Society. University of Chicago Press. Lifton, R.  J. (2000). The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Basic Books.

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Lifton, R. J. (2005). Home from the War. Other Press. Lifton, R. J. (2011). Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir. Free Press. Nietzsche, F. (2014 [1886]). Beyond Good and Evil. Penguin. Peterson, J. B. (1999). Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (1943). Being and Nothingness. Routledge. Scott, S. (2018). A Sociology of Nothing: Understanding the Unmarked. Sociology, 52(1), 3–19. Scott, S. (2019). The Social Life of Nothing: Silence, Invisibility and Emptiness in Tales of Lost Experience. Routledge. Scott, S. (2020a). The Unlived Life is Worth Examining: Nothings and Nobodies Behind the Scenes. Symbolic Interaction, 43(1), 156–180. Scott, S. (2020b). Social Nothingness: A Phenomenological Investigation. European Journal of Social Theory. Van der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books. Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. Rider.

CHAPTER 3

Exiting an Offender Role: White-Collar Offenders’ Sense of Self and the Demonstration of Change Ben Hunter

“A chapter of my life has closed, punctuated with the exclamation that I’m free! But exclamation points pass quickly, and mine is followed by questions I cannot answer easily or hurriedly. What about the future? What do I do now? I must answer soon.” —Dean (1982, p. 13) “I was released from federal custody on September 8, 1988, pondering this question. After skyrocketing to the top of the world and crashing down even faster, what do you do next?” —Levine and Hoffer (1991, p. 380)

The above quotations are from the autobiographies of Denis Levine, convicted of insider trading, and John Dean, who served four months in prison for his role in the Watergate conspiracy. Both men had forged B. Hunter (*) University of Greenwich, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_3

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successful careers—in finance and government respectively—and both had rather public falls from grace when their offending came to light, including serving custodial sentences. As the extracts show, both men expressed concern upon leaving prison over what action they would take as they attempted to re-establish their lives. Many other ex-offenders have the same concerns. Encounters with the criminal justice system are often bruising and certainly disruptive to one’s life but, for most, their encounter eventually comes to an end and there must necessarily be consideration of what life will now be like. But preceding the question “what do I do?” must necessarily be “who am I?”. Who one is, is a necessary precursor to identifying what actions one can take and which options are available. What is certain (although perhaps not always immediately apparent) is that those who have been convicted of a crime will do so as an ex-offender and, because of this, face unique and stigmatising challenges. Dean and Levine’s concerns illustrate the theme of this chapter, which examines exit from an offender role for those convicted of white-collar offences. The chapter begins with a discussion of white-collar crime and the characteristics of those who commit it. It notes that white-collar offenders frequently deny the ascribing of the offender label to themselves or their activities, probably in part due to their differences compared to offenders more generally. The chapter then moves to a more detailed consideration of the ex-offender role, drawing upon Ebaugh’s (1988) formulation of role exit but also noting the ways in which ex-offender roles may differ from the majority of those Ebaugh considered. This difference is not least in part due to the role of offender being socially undesirable and therefore resisted, particularly by white-collar offenders. This notwithstanding, it is difficult for white-collar offenders to deny the fact of their conviction, and so it is appropriate to discuss their experiences in terms of exiting. These experiences are framed with reference to the development of and challenge to their sense of self, drawing from existential sociological work (Douglas, 1984) and also with reference to moral careers (Goffman, 1961). Identifying who one is, is achieved via interaction with the world and understanding how one is viewed. This was an unflattering experience for these ex-offenders, who discovered challenges to their sense of self, partly from interactions with others but also through an understanding that some opportunities they may desire were no longer available to them. The chapter ends by considering how ex-­ white-­collar offenders may attempt to demonstrate who they feel they are, identifying the importance of signalling change as a way of being who one

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feels one is. It will be noted however that white-collar offenders may have further to go to demonstrate change than others, their difficulty grounded in demonstrating that the lives they lead as they exit the offender role are substantively different to those led prior to offending.

White-Collar Offenders and Identity White-collar crime exists as a conceptually distinct (if at times difficult to pin down) subset of offending more generally. Criminology has struggled with whether to define white-collar crime in terms of the offence, where that offence requires concealment, guile and resulting in financial gain (e.g. Edelhertz, 1970), or the offender, where white-collar crime is any crime committed by those of certain privileged status, perhaps in the course of their employment (Sutherland, 1983). These definitional issues matter because they can dramatically alter the type of behaviour and offender under study. This chapter draws upon an offence-based definition of white-collar crime, which views it as: “An illegal act or series of illegal acts committed by non-physical means and by concealment or guile, to obtain money or property, to avoid the loss of money or property, or to obtain business or personal advantage. (Edelhertz, 1970, p. 3)

Under this definition, anyone who commits a white-collar offence is a white-collar offender. The definition of white-collar crime has a long and tumultuous history. An all-encompassing definition is probably impossible and almost certainly undesirable, and perhaps the best use of the term is signalling that we are not discussing ‘street’ crime (Friedrichs, 2020). Examples of such offences as considered in criminological work include mail and wire fraud and anti-trust offences (Weisburd et al., 2001), perjury and insider trading (Hunter, 2015) and bribery and misconduct in public office (Button et al., 2020). Noteworthy here is that many of the offences associated with white-collar crime require opportunities not available to the average offender, needing specialist knowledge or a position of seniority to commit. This may explain why white-collar offenders are distinguishable from others in terms of their demographic characteristics; They are on average older, more likely to be employed and in stable relationships compared to other offenders (Benson & Kerley, 2001). They

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are also far more likely to be white.1 There is some variability in these observations. For example, Weisburd et al. (2001) show that differences— both demographic and as regards offending—between white-collar offenders and offenders more generally are far more pronounced for some white-collar offences than others. Nevertheless, taken in the aggregate, white-collar offenders are different to their offending peers. From such, it is easy to identify a class dimension to the commission of white-collar crime (Benson & Kerley, 2001). As Benson and Kerley note, even if white-­ collar offenders are not of ‘elite’ social standing, they are still distinguishable from most street offenders by being “… rather ordinary people leading middle class lives.” (2001, p. 129). An understanding of class, even if not made explicit, helps to frame white-collar offenders’ experiences of criminal justice and its aftermath, which in the main is different to those of other offenders. Quantitative work suggests that those convicted of white-collar offences are less likely to identify as an offender compared to those convicted of non-white-collar offences (Stadler & Benson, 2012). They are also more likely to deny any complicity in offending compared to offenders more generally (Benson, 1985a; Jesilow et al., 1993; Stadler & Benson, 2012; Dellaportas, 2014; Klenowski, 2012). Qualitative work helps us understand the substance of these differences, and in the main this is what this chapter draws upon. This work helps to demonstrate the particular concerns white-collar offenders have in the aftermath of conviction and punishment and the peculiarity of an experience that many appear to feel is not designed for them. To the qualitative research that has considered white-collar offenders (e.g. Benson, 1985a, 1985b; Dhami, 2007; Button et al., 2017) I add a further source of useful data: published autobiographical accounts written by ex-­ offenders, occasionally with the help of a ghost writer (for their use in studying offenders see Morgan, 1999, Oleson, 2003 and Hunter, 2015). Although not as ubiquitous as accounts about (arguably) more salacious offences, autobiographies by the more (in)famous white-collar offenders are very much in evidence in any cursory glance of the ‘true crime’ genre, allowing access to an otherwise hard to recruit research population (Shover & Hunter, 2010). Some accounts describe the author’s crimes in great detail (Minkow, 2005), while others focus predominantly on their 1  In addition, they offend less frequently and have fewer offences as part of their criminal careers (Weisburd et al., 2001).

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experience of criminal justice treatment and punishment (Christensen, 2005). Indeed, the ‘prison journal’ could almost be a subgenre here, and many will devote at least some attention to what happens when the ex-­ offender tries to pick life up where they left off. Frequently selling themselves on the ability to show what happens when ‘ordinary’ citizens fall, these memoirs offer to lift the lid on lives of power and prestige, contrasting high lives with the descent into prison, illustrated with detailed portraits of the ‘cast of characters’ the author encountered, simultaneously serving to enliven the narrative and emphasise that the offender is now in a different world. So we are treated to descriptions such as that from Jonathan Aikten, a former British Member of Parliament, convicted of perjury, of his first night in prison and the chanting from other prisoners: … they would then ask a question: ‘What shall we do to effing Aitken [or effing Aitken’s private parts] tomorrow? From the other three sides of the exercise yard came a thunder of obscene responses detailing in explicit terms what type of (expletive deleted) activity they would inflict on this or that (expletive deleted) organ of my body in order to demonstrate what they thought of (expletive deleted) Tory Cabinet ministers … I was terrified. (Aitken, 2000, p. 30)

Beyond the accounts given by authors, autobiographies are useful for those wishing to understand the presentation of self. Rather than being immediate reactions to interview questions, the material presented in an autobiography is the result of a process of sustained reflection, as the author looks back on the events of their life and places them within the context of where they ‘are’ now. In this, an autobiography represents what the author wants the audience to know, rather than conforming to the agenda of the researcher. We might also remember Gusdorf’s (1980) claim that memoirs are a “… revenge on history …”, and useful for settling scores or giving a ‘true account’ of events. Certainly, more than one white-collar offender’s autobiography claims to “set the record straight” (Jett & Chartrand, 1999: author’s note) or otherwise put ‘their side’ of the story across (Bond, 2003). Such declarations indicate the depth of feeling amongst those struggling to define who they are, not necessarily for themselves, but for others. We shall return to this qualitative work below. For now, it is sufficient to say that work on white-collar offenders suggests that they reject the

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imputation of the offender identity. This does, however, present them with something of a dilemma, because they are likely to feel that society writ large will disagree with their assessment and that the identity is therefore thrust upon them. They may therefore find themselves trying to demonstrate ex-offender status while denying they were ever an offender in the first place.

Ex-Offender Identities Before examining white-collar offenders’ efforts and experiences managing an ex-offender identity, it is useful to consider ex-offender identities more generally. As with all ex-identities, transition to and beyond being an ex-offender is likely to be a profoundly personal experience. Mediating that experience is likely to be such considerations as how many people know about the offending, the nature of the punishment received (and particularly whether it involved a custodial sentence) and whether the offender accepts their guilt. Regardless, being labelled an offender represents an assault on the self, challenging and breaking down positive conceptions of who one is. It necessitates engagement with an entire apparatus of criminal justice, including the pipeline of arrest, court appearance/s (possible trial) and sentencing. Part of this, as will be shown below, means making sense of who one has become and the implications of this. It is in this sense that we can liken the journey that ex-offenders undertake to a moral career (Goffman, 1961), replete with attempts and opportunities to manage information about themselves and have this challenged. An understanding of ex-offenders’ experiences is also informed by Ebaugh, who considered ex-offenders in her work (although she termed them “ex-convicts”, 1988) and suggested they approached role exit through a similar process to other exes. However—and without wishing to suggest a uniformity of experience—there are a number of ways in which an ex-offender identity differs from most of the other ex-roles Ebaugh considered. Ebaugh assumed that exes accepted their previous role and that it was central to their identity (1988, p. 1). However, and in perhaps the most obvious departure from Ebaugh’s description of role exit, ‘ex-offender’ is not generally a socially desirable role to hold. It indicates a particular past, predicated on having broken the law, and therefore risks rendering those in possession of it as untrustworthy. However, individuals can resist the imputation of role labels, particularly when such labels clash with their prevailing self-concept. Being identified as ‘an

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offender’ is one such situation. The awarding of the offender role is therefore likely to come externally, perhaps following formal sanction, for example, serving to form as a degradation ceremony (Garfinkel, 1956). There are different responses to this degradation. Offending might be admitted, or it might be denied, or accepted but qualified as being ‘necessary’, or because the offender was tricked. Alternatively, offenders may feel they are only ‘technically’ guilty (on neutralisations generally see Stadler & Benson, 2012; Klenowski, 2012). Offenders may also resist the imputation of the offender role by pointing to other, more pro-social, roles they hold as evidence that this is the ‘real me’. This is a reasonable assumption perhaps. After all, even the most prolific offender spends the vast majority of their time engaged in activities other than offending. As was shown above, rejection of offender status is particularly prevalent among white-collar offenders. In short then, it is difficult to argue that the offender role that has been exited was central to the ex-offender’s identity. Nor, on the basis of this, does it seem likely that white-collar offenders possess a “… strong primary group association with their fellow deviants …” (Ebaugh, 1988: 158).2 Similarly, the timing of the exit from the role is not something that can be neatly chosen. and means they may also have limited opportunity for the “… anticipatory socialization.” (Ebaugh, 1988, p. 107) that other exes might attempt prior to exit.3 For those who deny ever offending then it is difficult to even properly talk about the transition to being an ex-offender because they resist the offender label in the first place. Further to this, the role of ‘ex-offender’ is a complicated one. In principle, being identified as an ex-offender is desirable. In practice however, the experiences of those trying to leave offending behind suggest that term ‘ex-offender’ is used to indicate ‘someone who was an offender and might still be.’ The experiences of ex-offenders generally, suggest this is the case, and the pessimism, frustration and challenges encountered in the aftermath of a conviction tend to refer to ‘being’ an ex-offender (or ‘ex-­ con’) (Burnett & Maruna, 2004; Maruna, 2001). Overcoming this means convincing the world that one is in fact a non-offender and it might, 2  It is the case that white-collar offenders in prison do form friendships and report positive associations with other prisoners (Hunter, 2015, chapter 4; Button et al., 2020). However, this is separate from acceptance of their offender role. 3  Again, prisoners are something of an exception here, as their release back into society gives an opportunity for some anticipation as to what is to come (Hunter, 2015, chapter 5)

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therefore, be more accurate to identify exiting the ex-offender role (becoming an ex-ex-offender!). Therefore, although the discussion below focuses on how white-collar offenders came to realise and deal with the imputation of the ex-offender role, much of the effort they undertook came from trying to convey that they were in fact no longer offenders. Finally, part of the power of roles is their ability to convey the essence of who someone ‘is’. Where a role is accepted and much time is spent ‘performing’ the role (again, as Ebaugh emphasised), there is some justification for this. However, an offence is a moment in time i.e. it is something you have done. The power of the offender label is that it transmutes this moment, making an ‘offender’ something one is. As Maruna puts it: … you get a name when you have the [criminal] credential. You become an “offender.” Wonderfully, that name is ambiguous in regard to whether it refers to something you did in the past or something you are likely to do in the future; the implication is that it is about who you are. (2012, p. 78)

There are exceptions to the above of course. Doubtless, some who offend invest at least in part in the role of offender, perhaps in conjunction with others, and might form associations with others based on mutual offender roles. We might also observe that when an offence is preceded by planning and preparation or proceeded by concerns about avoiding detection, then ‘offender’ is a role that is more actively engaged with and transcends the offending event.4 Regardless of whether the offender role is accepted or not, however, there is considerable evidence to suggest that part of attempting to desist from crime involves demonstrating that ‘an offender’ is no longer who you are (Maruna, 2012; Farrall et al., 2014). This notwithstanding, the fact of conviction—even if the circumstances are disputed—is hard to deny. Understanding this, it is possible to identify individuals holding ex-offender roles, even where they did not hold any affection for or association with the role of offender. That is why, above differences aside, Ebaugh’s description of ex-roles usefully informs an understanding of ex-offenders’ experiences in attempting to forge a new, non-offending life and, in particular, the “… dilemma involved [of the] incongruity and tension that exists between self-definition and social expectations.” (Ebaugh, 1988, p. 150). The focus of the discussion here is on coming to terms with what having committed an offence means in 4

 And where offending is not a one-off occurrence this may be even more likely.

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terms of one’s identity and, importantly, the ontological friction that occurs when ex-offenders are forced, through their existence to confront what such a status means. Whether they deny their offence or not, offenders cannot help but recognise the impact of criminal justice sanction upon them and their wider setting, and they must account for this as they continue to live their lives.

Existential Sociology and the Sense of Self White-collar offenders’ understanding of their role exit is framed here as an expression of the development of their sense of self, as characterised in existential sociology, a field concerned with the nuances of human existence, experience and interaction with the world. This holds that we each possess a sense of self to help us negotiate our way through life (Douglas, 1984), which provides the drive for and understanding of a meaningful self-identity and therefore an antidote to the meaninglessness inherent to existence (Manning, 1973). The primary way in which our sense of self evolves is via social encounters (Douglas, 1977; Ebaugh, 1984). The emotions such encounters elicit provide information to us about our place in the world (Johnson & Kotarba, 2002), not least as we enact roles and receive feedback regarding who others think we are. Individuals are not passive recipients of such information, however. They act in ways that reflect who they feel they are, shaping encounters according to their own self-conception (Fontana, 1984). In this way, social situations can reflect a push and pull of competing information regarding who one is (Kotarba, 1984), serving simultaneously as an outlet for expression of the self and information about who others think we are. Where situations challenge our sense of self, then at the very least this can prompt reflection on what this means. More seriously, it can stir feelings of ontological insecurity; The dread that one’s being is threatened (Yalom, 1980; Douglas, 1984). Important too is the temporality of the self. Lives are lived into the future, and so the self is always a striving to become. Meaningful existence is best achieved when past, present and future are in alignment, such that the future self that one is striving for is consistent with who one is and has been. Ideally, this narrative aspect to the self makes who I am now and who I wish to be a logical outcome of my past. This makes the future I  strive for an important determinate of who I am now and, therefore, who I was (Kotarba, 1979). The past cannot be changed. However, the

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meaning it is given within the context of a life led can be adjusted in keeping with the prevailing conception of self. It is with these considerations in mind that we turn to a consideration of white-collar offenders and their ex-roles.

White-Collar Ex-Offenders A number of concerns occupy ex-offenders in the aftermath of their conviction. Practical concerns are likely to be focused on securing work or (more rarely) accommodation. Ex-offenders frequently face the desire and the need to re-establish themselves financially, identifying how they will support themselves and their family. There are existential concerns tied up with this, however. Development of the sense of self, and its direction into the future (and who one can be) is an existential imperative. Finding work is just one way that ex-offenders begin to re-establish who they feel they are and, by extension, who they can be. It is at this point that the ex-­ offender’s sense of self is challenged. As they attempt to make their way in the world, social encounters and thwarted plans serve to signal a change in who they are and—frequently—a challenge to their sense of self (Hunter, 2009, 2010).

Identifying Who One Is Above all, the question that must be answered is, “Who am I?” or, perhaps more specifically, “Who am I in this post-punishment world?” Ex-offenders answer this in part through their interactions with others. Social encounters underscore who others see them as, and potentially impact upon their sense of self by emphasising how they have changed. John Dean perhaps puts it best, with his understanding that “… the mirror of my identity is partly in the eyes of others.” (1982, p. 19). Ex-offenders rarely find such encounters positive, at least at first. They may discover former friends no longer wish to associate with them (Berger, 2003, p. 195; Button et al., 2020) or may even be confronted in public by strangers who take them to task for their offences (Button et al., 2017). Media reports on their offending can also be a cause of distress and resentment, particularly where ex-­ offenders feel events have been portrayed inaccurately (Benson, 1990; Dhami, 2007). These experiences send powerful signals about who one is in their new, post-conviction world and are felt as stigmatising. Recall that many white-collar offenders dispute their offending role and,

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even if they do not, may believe that once they have been punished the slate is ‘wiped clean’ (Hunter, 2015, chapter 5). Negative social encounters swiftly disabuse them of this notion, clashing with the ex-offender’s sense of self and challenging who they feel they are. Further challenge to the self comes from being monitored by criminal justice agents. Much like the patients Goffman considered, white-collar offenders’ processing by the criminal justice system frequently serves to remind them that they have ‘failed’, thus serving to be efficiently “… destructive of self-stories …” (1961, p.  153). Ex-white-collar-offenders discover that they are subject to a level of scrutiny they have not previously encountered in their lives (Benson, 1985b; Mason, 2007). There is resentment at having to explain themselves to criminal justice agents e.g. through post-conviction monitoring of their whereabouts (Mason, 2007) amid protests that they did little or nothing wrong in the first place (Klenowski, 2012). Treatment by the criminal justice system tends to be a disempowering experience (Payne, 2016), and having to submit to this further emphasises to white-collar offenders that their place in the world has changed. In addition to these social experiences, white-collar offenders also encounter structural impediments to living their life. The specifics of this are likely to depend on particular jurisdictions, but they discover that, due to their conviction, certain opportunities are denied to them. They may also find that travel to certain countries is prohibited (Hunter, 2009) or that they may have denuded voting rights. Further, they may find that now they have a criminal record, taken for granted services such as insurance or obtaining a mortgage are no longer accessible or cost far more than when they were of ‘good standing’ (Button et al., 2017). Most seriously from an existential point of view, some will come to understand that previously valued roles cannot be returned to (e.g. Aitken, 2000, p. 186; Dean, 1982, p. 24). This is most obviously the case when return to a former career is prevented by a criminal conviction. Some professions bar entry to those with a criminal record—or at the very least require entry to be reobtained—meaning that some white-collar offenders are attempting to start afresh, and cannot make use of the skills and knowledge they may have developed over decades of work. Forced role exit is therefore painful, representing as it does further evidence of how they can never again have the life they had (Drahota & Eitzen, 1998 and Shaffir & Kleinknecht, 2005, identify the pain of forced role exit for professional athletes and politicians respectively). Some ex-offenders, then, are placed

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in the position of having an undesirable role awarded to them, while simultaneously being forced to leave a valued former role behind. Thus, while it is the case that white-collar offenders can typically find employment following conviction (Kerley & Copes, 2004), it is not necessarily commensurate with the work they engaged with prior to their offence (Button et al., 2017). Knowing that certain actions are unavailable denies the self the freedom to choose a potential possibility and realise one particular self over others (Douglas, 1984). It is perhaps here that the unique experience of being an ex comes to the fore in the sense that—as Ebaugh reminds us—ex status is different to never having been (Ebaugh, 1988). These experiences are sometimes painful as ex-offenders are forced to contend with their new role. The impact on their sense of self is not just in realising that they have changed. It is in recognition that they can never again be what they were. In this way, possible future selves have been closed off. One response to this is think about how white-collar offenders may try to demonstrate their change.

Demonstrating Who One Wants to Be In dealing with their particular pasts, offenders—and indeed ex-­offenders— have an identity that is, on the surface at least, discreditable rather than being discredited (Goffman, 1969). That is, it is difficult for others to determine their ex-offender status by looking, and it is therefore in principle within their power to conceal or reveal. In practice however, the decision to reveal a conviction is unlikely to be wholly within their control. Having to go to court, prison or attend probation appointments is unlikely to escape the attention of family members. Equally, declaring any convictions or accounting for gaps in work history is likely to be an inevitable feature of any job application. In this, white-collar offenders are little different to other offenders, but it is nevertheless an unavoidable part of their ex- experience. A fundamental tenet of both Ebaugh’s discussion of role exit and existential sociological conceptions of the self is that through our actions we can attempt to determine who we wish to be, signalling our sense of self to the world. Indeed, much of role exit involves demonstrating that one has changed. Ebaugh (1984, 1988) cites the importance of ‘cuing’ behaviour for those who have exited a role, whereby the ex goes to lengths to demonstrate they are no longer in the previous role by signalling their

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change. Ebaugh (1988, pp. 150–155) was largely concerned with the way individuals dressed and otherwise changed their appearance (e.g. through cosmetic surgery) to emphasise their new lives and the rejection of their former role. However, we might also consider cuing behaviour more broadly. After all, we signal who we are not simply through our dress and mannerisms (although of course these are important) but also through what we do, how we spend our time, where we spend it, and who we spend it with. This performative aspect is important for attempts to manage situations and others’ definitions of who one might be (see for example, Goffman, 1969). The things we do, where we do them and who we do them with communicate not just who we are but, perhaps equally powerfully, who we are not. When one is exiting an undesirable role, such communication takes on a special importance. Ex-offenders will be keen to demonstrate that they are in fact, ex-offenders (Goffman (1961, p. 139) makes a similar point about the need for ‘degraded’ persons to perform reparative action). This raises the question of what an ex-offender ‘looks’ like. What do they do (and not do), and who do they do it with? A body of work has considered the importance of this signalling for offenders more generally (Lofland, 1969; Meisenhelder, 1977, 1982; Bushway & Apel, 2020; Maruna, 2012), although there has been scant consideration of the same themes for white-collar offenders (although see Hunter, 2015). Giordano et al. (2002) reported the well-established finding that marriage and employment lead to successful desistance from crime amongst offenders generally. However, they also argued that the prosocial benefits of marriage and employment were maximised when they were combined as a “respectability package” (2002, p.  1013). The importance of the social bonding prompted by marriage and employment can be conceptualised in terms of providing pro-social models of behaviour, in accordance with particular future selves that offenders wish to become and which are incompatible with further offending (Giordano et al., 2002).5 Of interest here, however, is what possession of such a package signals i.e. that the former offender has changed. Additionally, the power of the respectability package comes from its uniqueness relative to the rest of the offender’s life. For many offenders, a formal declaration of a relationship’s ­seriousness 5  The relationship between employment, relationships and desistance from crime is more complex than this of course. However, from the point of view of role exit, the following will suffice.

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or holding down work may be a first for them. Others know this and such therefore helps to provide a concrete measure of their change. This is not to make out that such change is easy for offenders, but to point out one way in which they may try to successfully establish a new self and demonstrate this to the world. Above all of course, the change must be believed by others and acknowledged as ‘real’, rather than mere lip service to a new role. In that vein, the more commitment a change is presumed (by an observer) to require, the more likely it will be taken as authentic (Bushway & Apel, 2020; Maruna, 2012). Part of the effectiveness of steady employment (for example) as a signal that someone is an ex-offender, is that maintaining a job over a period of time requires effort and commitment. For example, it typically requires reliability, interpersonal skills and a certain level of attainment at one’s place of work. As Maruna (2012) observes, educational qualifications serve to send similar signals about the bearer. Beyond any particular knowledge gained, they convey that one can commit themselves to a programme of study enough to gain official certification of its completion. Conversely, anyone can declare they have changed. This is a cheap and easy signal to send and therefore by its very nature less likely to be believed (Bushway & Apel, 2020; Maruna, 2012). For ex-offenders who wish to signal they have desisted from crime, employment and stable relationships may effectively communicate this change, but are perhaps most (or even, only?) effective where they represent something new and therefore communicate reformed character. This poses something of a dilemma for white-collar offenders, who are frequently in a rather different situation. One of the hallmarks of white-collar crime is the ‘respectable’ nature of those who commit it. While such respectableness is often overstated, it is the case that, when compared to other offenders, white-collar offenders are frequently older and more likely to be in stable relationships and be employed at the time of their offending (Benson & Kerley, 2001). Indeed, it is often their employment that is the context for their crimes. For the ex-white-collar offender attempting to demonstrate their reformed status, this has the potential to create something of a difficulty. For them, nothing about acquiring a job (for example) speaks to change in their life and therefore their transition from ex-offender. For offenders more generally, securing and maintaining employment at least represents a concrete measure of their change as a person.

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Without wishing to overstate the importance of being seen to have reformed (because, in keeping with offenders generally, most white-collar offenders do successfully desist from crime), there is evidence that white-­ collar offenders do undertake new roles that signify their reformed character. Some have cited religious conversion as being a fundamental part of their life story, going so far to as to form new careers based around their new-found faith (Hunter, 2015; chapter 8). Others attempt to draw upon their criminal pasts, even as they reform, drawing upon deviant identities to form a new, non-deviant, life (Hunter, 2015, chapter 7; Hunter & Farrall, 2015). This has been termed becoming a ‘professional-ex’ (Brown, 1991), and might be thought of as a form of partial role exit, where one leaves a role but still draws upon the knowledge and status it was imbued with (Brown, 1991; Maruna, 2001; LeBel, 2007). Brown (1991) studied the phenomena in the setting of substance misuse, where former users of drugs became drug councillors, drawing upon their own experience of change to help others quit. There are examples of analogous behaviour for white-collar offenders. Some of those convicted of fraud have become fraud investigators for example (Minkow, 2005). Similarly, former prisoners have joined or formed ‘prison consultancies.’ In this role they draw upon their knowledge as ex-prisoners in order to provide advice and support to those who are expecting to face a custodial sentence (see, for example, Prison Consultants, 2021). One of the dilemmas for those in possession of a ‘spoiled identity’ (Goffman, 1963) is knowing how and how much to reveal about one’s past. Ex-offenders assume—quite correctly—that disclosing their offending is likely to lead to judgement at best and the curtailment of opportunities and relationships at worst (Hunter, 2010; Button et  al., 2017). Adopting a professional-ex role neatly sidesteps this dilemma however, because it virtually necessitates a former spoiled identity, that must be disclosed in order to enhance one’s credibility. After all, what use is offering advice to people on how to survive prison if you’ve not experienced it yourself? Equally who better to detect fraud than someone who used to commit it? The ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ narrative has a pleasing inversion to it perhaps. Those who can achieve professional-ex status are therefore spared the worry that they will become discredited if people find out who they used to be. More generally, although professional-ex statuses involve drawing upon the old role in some limited ways, they also have the capacity to send a powerful signal that change has taken place. Nothing about finding work

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or having children fundamentally precludes continuing to offend (Giordano et  al., 2008). ‘Redeeming’ oneself though professional-ex activities would—on the surface at least—seemingly be mutually exclusive with continued offending, because the legitimacy of the ex’s new role is predicated on having successfully transitioned from deviance. Professional-ex roles and religious conversion may also benefit from being easily recognised narrative archetypes. The notion of the ‘wounded healer’, or the redemption of a ‘sinner’ by God are powerful cultural symbols that provide a ready-made account of one’s journey out of deviance. They therefore satisfy to offer a concrete demonstration of change that can barely be refuted. With respect to Maruna’s (2012) observations about the difficulty of a change being a proxy for how ‘real’ it is, professional ex roles may be somewhat more robust than religious conversion. Like claims of having ‘changed’, saying that one has ‘found God’ is a relatively cheap and easy signal to send and therefore less likely to be believed without further proof. Ex-offenders are likely to be aware of this (Hunter, 2015, chapter 8). From the point of view of the self, professional-ex roles and religious conversion help to create a coherent narrative of the life for the ex-­ offender, where past, present and future are in alignment. This is important for managing one’s moral career (Goffman, 1961, p. 150), but the advantage of these narratives is that they perhaps require less ‘work’ to tell. Rather than weave a complex narrative about how offending sits with regard to the sense of self, professional-ex statuses and religious conversion implicitly account for deviant pasts by making them ‘necessary’ for what comes later. A painful past can be reframed within the context of a life dedicated to a new self (Maruna & Roy, 2007). Conclusion White-collar offenders’ role exit is characterised by the realisation that their (non-offender) sense of self is at odds with who the world tells them they are. They are frequently in the position of having to try to exit a role they rejected in the first place. In doing so they find themselves subject to a level of scrutiny they have previously not experienced and that prompts a reflection on who they can be. Knowing how others see us, what our options are and understanding that we cannot go back to the life we had has the potential to be a profoundly upsetting experience. Certainly, this is how white-collar offenders convey it. Still, the sense of self demands that

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we push forward, committing each instant to a particular future self over others and therefore necessitating that choices be made. It is in making these choices that concerns over demonstrating the change that one has undergone come to the fore. It has been argued here that white-collar offenders lack the same options to demonstrate change that other offenders may avail themselves of. Possibly the biggest difference between them and non-white-collar offenders is in attempting to manage role exit. The importance of signalling change may be particularly relevant when there is a dilemma inherent in trying to reclaim the life you once had. You need to tell the world you have changed, but this is more difficult when such change is constituted in who you were before. This chapter has considered what we know about white-collar offender’s experiences in trying to leave the offending role behind. In thinking about the importance of demonstrating change however, we have a far better understanding of how non-white-collar offenders navigate their post punishment world. For example, in considering that white-collar offenders may be more likely to deny or qualify their offending, this may have implications for attempts to demonstrate that one is no longer an offender. Where an offender accepts their guilt (even if the offender role is rejected), then it is possible for them to initiate new activity post-­ punishment and conceptualise this as changing who they were. In this way, some white-collar offenders establish a new sense of self in the wake of their offence (Hunter, 2015). We do not know much about this process might work for those who deny any wrongdoing. Denying their offences puts them in the position of being unable to say, “Yes, I did that, I wish I hadn’t.” i.e. expressing the most basic manifestation of change. A further important aspect to demonstrating change is having such change certified by others (Meisenhelder, 1982). That is, the importance of having other people respond to the exiter as someone who has changed. This can serve as powerful affirmation of one’s efforts, and in some ways is the converse of the stigmatising social experiences reported above. We do not know much about how certification is experienced by white-collar offenders however, other than some cursory observations (Hunter, 2015). Future work would do well to consider these aspects of role exit from white-collar offending. It could additionally seek to explore the role of class in mediating the role-exit experience.

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Jett, J., & Chartrand, S. (1999). Black and White on Wall Street. William Morrow. Johnson, J.  M., & Kotarba, J.  A. (2002). Postmodern Existentialism. In J.  A. Kotarba & J.  M. Johnson (Eds.), Postmodern Existential Sociology (pp. 3–14). Rowman and Littlefield. Kerley, K. R., & Copes, H. (2004). The Effects of Criminal Justice Contact on Employment Stability for White-Collar and Street-Level Offenders. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 48(1), 65–84. Klenowski, P.  M. (2012). “Learning the good with the bad”: Are occupational white-collar offenders taught how to neutralize their crimes? Criminal Justice Review, 37(4), 461–477. Kotarba, J. A. (1979). Existential Sociology. In S. G. McNall (Ed.), Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology (pp. 348–368). St. Martin’s Press. Kotarba, J. A. (1984). A Synthesis: The Existential Self in Society. In J. A. Kotarba & A. Fontana (Eds.), The Existential Self in Society (pp. 222–234). University of Chicago Press. LeBel, T.  P. (2007). An Examination of the Impact of Formerly Incarcerated Persons Helping Others. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 46(1), 1–24. Levine, D., & Hoffer, W. (1991). Inside Out: An Insider’s Account of Wall Street. Berkley Books. Lofland, J. (1969). Deviance and Identity. Prentice-Hall. Manning, P. (1973). Existential Sociology. Sociological Quarterly, 14(2), 200–225. Maruna, S. (2001). Making Good. American Psychological Association Books. Maruna, S. (2012). Elements of Successful Desistance Signalling. Criminology and Public Policy, 11(1), 73–86. Maruna, S., & Roy, K. (2007). Amputation or Reconstruction? Notes on the Concept of ‘Knifing Off’ and Desistance from Crime. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 231, 104–124. Mason, K. A. (2007). Punishment and Paperwork: White-collar Offenders under Community Supervision. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 31(2), 23–36. Meisenhelder, T. (1977). An Exploratory Study of Exiting from Criminal Careers. Criminology, 15(3), 319–334. Meisenhelder, T. (1982). Becoming Normal: Certification as a Stage in Exiting from Crime. Deviant Behaviour, 3(2), 137–153. Minkow, B. (2005). Cleaning Up: One Man’s Redemptive Journey Through the Seductive World of Corporate Crime. Nelson Current. Morgan, S. (1999). Prison Lives: Critical Issues in Reading Prisoner Autobiography. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 38(3), 328–340. Oleson, J.  C. (2003). The Celebrity of Infamy: A Review Essay of Five Autobiographies by Three Criminal Geniuses. Crime, Law & Social Change, 40(4), 391–408.

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Payne, B.  K. (2016). Effects on White-Collar Defendants of Criminal Justice Attention and Sanctions. In S.  R. Van Slyke, M.  L. Benson, & F.  T. Cullen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of White-Collar Crime (pp.  603–621). Oxford University Press. Prison Consultants. (2021). Prison Consultants. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://prisonconsultants.co.uk/ Shaffir, W., & Kleinknecht, S. (2005). Death at the Polls: Experiencing and Coping with Political Defeat. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 34(6), 707–738. Shover, N., & Hunter, B. (2010). Blue-Collar, White-Collar: Crimes and Mistakes. In W. Bernasco (Ed.), Offenders On Offending: Learning About Crime From Criminals (pp. 205–229). Cullompton. Stadler, W.  A., & Benson, M.  L. (2012). Revisiting the Guilty Mind: The Neutralization of White-Collar Crime. Criminal Justice Review, 37(4), 494–511. Sutherland, E. (1983). White-Collar Crime: The Uncut Version. Binghamton: Yale University Press. Weisburd, D., Waring, E., & Chayet, E. (2001). White-Collar Crime and Criminal Careers. Cambridge University Press. Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books.

CHAPTER 4

When Certainty Cracks: Early Identity-­Change Work among Women Exiting High-­Cost Religion Bethany Gull

Introduction I walked into Mona’s third floor apartment on a warm summer afternoon. She smiled welcomingly, offered me a coffee, and told me to make myself at home. As I walked through her apartment, I complimented the colourful pictures that hung on the walls and the décor accents that defined the space. Her style was whimsical, earthy, bohemian, and comforting. She tipped her head to the side, gave me a knowing smile, and commented on my own rainbow-hued appearance: red coat, teal and blue backpack, purple laptop skin. “Bethany, you are a walking rainbow,” she said, and we both laughed. Mona’s cheerful demeanour and easy smile belied the deeply emotional, life-altering, sometimes traumatic experiences we were about to discuss: experiences I had already explored with many women, former

B. Gull (*) University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_4

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members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormon), during the summer of 2015. Each time I sat with a woman and listened to her stories I was moved anew at the thoughtfulness with which they shared their religious change journeys. For these women, the decision to leave the faith of their birth (only one interviewee was a convert to the LDS Church), a religion which has been alternately described in the literature as “high-cost/high-demand” (Iannaccone, 1992) and “quasi-­ ethnic” (Sandomirsky & Wilson, 1990) due to its distinctive doctrines, strong in/out group boundaries, high levels of in-group socialization, and extensive demands on members’ time, was a significant life event. Similar to those who exit orthodox Judaism, exiting the LDS Church can be viewed as a form of “ethno-apostasy” (Phillips & Kelner, 2006): one not only abandons LDS theology and church attendance but also their association with an entire community and way of life. Religious belief, belonging and behaviour within high-cost faiths intersect to create a complex web of interconnected identities and accompanying roles that collectively serve as a lens through which every aspect of life is appraised and experienced. In a pluralistic, globalized, and, many would argue, secularized late-­ modern world, high-cost religious exits such as those experienced by ex-­ LDS women often go unnoticed, or at least unappreciated, by large segments of society. We now have a seemingly endless library of possible identities from which to select, a fact both exhilarating and disorienting in its reflection of the “multiplicity of incoherent and related languages of the self” (Gergen, 1991, p. 6) now available to us. Shedding an identity that no longer works and adopting a more fluid, functional, or resonant one is not only possible but expected in this context. Yet, exiting a high-­ cost faith is a process that involves untangling many related (as well as seemingly unrelated) threads of self, identity, and role alongside the central process of re-imagining the spiritual/religious self formerly taken-for-­ granted. It involves changes in one’s conception of self and one’s system of morality, or “moral career” (Goffman, 1961). In one way, it is a thoroughly modern endeavour, shaped by the Enlightenment’s press to privilege reason and inquiry over feeling and belief. It is a process to choose for oneself the person and future one wishes to create. In another way, high-­ cost religious exiting evokes some of our most primal needs, those which have never changed and which mark us as uniquely human: the social nature of the self, the need for belonging and community, and the desire

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for a system of meaning within which to make sense of life in all of its loveliness and ugliness. The first step in transforming any identity involves a bit of “flirting with danger,” or a recognition that an identity one holds, and the role one occupies in conjunction with that identity, has become lacking or unsatisfying in some way. Ebaugh (1988) refers to this break with certainty as “first doubts,” an acknowledgement that in order to engage in role exit, one must first engage in a cognitive and emotional dance with uncertainty. In many circumstances, this recognition of doubt may not be earth-­ shattering. After all, we exit multiple roles and transform identities throughout our lives: student, uncoupled person, parent of young children, junior partner, etc. But for members of high-cost religious communities, such as the LDS church, taking those first steps into doubt can be the beginning of what Athens (1995) calls “self-fragmentation,” a lengthy and painstaking process of identity transformation that will touch on almost every aspect of their lives. While the process of role exit has been extensively studied in social psychology, less attention has been paid to roles and identities which emerge in relation to non-participation in a community or phenomenon. One way this oversight has recently been addressed is with Scott’s (2018) concept of “non-identity” in her research on the “sociology of nothing.” Non-identities such as ‘ex’-identities emerge through the conscious, reflexive process of differentiation between two groups that are seen to be incompatible; key to this process is that one of these social identities is often seen as abject or lacking in some way. This chapter will explore themes related to the initial stirrings, or first doubts, of high-cost religious role exit among twenty women, former members of the LDS Church. Two questions inform this analysis. First, what themes can we uncover in the beginning of high-cost religious identity transformation and role exit; second, how did these themes work as push or pull factors towards the decision to transform religious identities? Using Mead’s work on the self as a process and a perspective and Goffman’s writings on the management of stigma and discreditable identities, I will examine how LDS exiters first begin the process of redefining their religious identities. These exits took place is the United States, a country in the midst of a religious paradox: while a majority of Americans continue to profess religious belief and belonging, a rapidly growing number are following the longstanding trend towards secularization in Western nations and joining the ranks of the religious “nones” (Zuckerman, 2014) Additionally, 19 of the 20 participants lived in Utah, headquarters of the

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LDS Church and an area richly steeped in LDS culture, where LDS identity is embedded within a powerful social context as the dominant religious and cultural identity. I begin with a discussion of identity development from a symbolic interactionist perspective, then move to a discussion of religious identity, focusing on what has been written about religious identity change. I then explore the initial phase of high-cost religious exit through the experiences of disaffiliating and formerly LDS women. When asked to discuss the early factors that contributed to their desire to disaffiliate, three primary themes emerged: Doubting, or the emergence of “cracks” in religious identities; disengagement, or a pulling away from the religious identity and a reduction in its salience; and de-fellowshipping, or a desire to leave the religious community and find belonging and identity in new contexts. The chapter ends with a discussion of what these women’s exit narratives can tell us about high-cost religious identity change in contemporary society and suggest directions for future research in this area.

The Self and Religious Identity Mead (1934) believed that the self is both an ongoing, reflexive process and the product of that process which emerges within social interaction. The self learns to react to itself as an object and consciously works to meet the expectations and norms of individuals’ social milieux. We develop the ability to view the self as an object as we learn through language to take the role of others into account when evaluating our social actions. This is the process of self-objectification and the key to self-realization, or the recognition that we are, in fact, separate and distinct individuals. Mead recognized that as there is no limit to the number of generalized others with which the self can engage, there is no limit to the numbers of possible selves we can develop as we expand our social horizon. Goffman also recognized the malleability and multiplicity of the self, stating in Frame Analysis that the “self, then, is not an entity half concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. (1974, p. 573)” Drawing on his experience observing the transition-work done by patients inside mental institutions, Goffman (1961) developed the concept of the moral career. He saw that the self does not only emerge during interaction but is constituted in institutional arrangements. Goffman saw that the moral career of the mental patient could be broken down into three distinct phases: pre-patient, inpatient, and ex-patient. At

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each stage, the experience with the (mental) institution results in the expression of different moral states. The ex-phase, on which this chapter is focused, was only briefly addressed by Goffman. The provision of institutional arrangements, which gives us the raw materials of identities and instructs us in how to perform the associated roles, is particularly relevant to this analysis, as the identity/role being exited is an institutionally-­ constructed one. Goffman (1974) named the concept of a continuous character of self and our subjective sense of who we are the “self-identity.” It is this entity that organizes experiences and makes sense of them by collecting and ordering our life events into a meaningful personal narrative able to contextualize our role experiences into a more or less coherent whole. Yet, Goffman’s moral career concept suggests that this coherence can be violated and the narrative thread (at least momentarily) lost when the institutional supports for one’s sense of self are removed. Athens’ (1995) stages of dramatic self-change includes the initial “splintering of the self” when individuals undergoing a major life change begin to lose their sense of self-­ coherence. The self becomes divided against itself, and the “phantom communities” by which it takes stock of its thoughts and actions unravel. Confusion ensues. Although Athens’s model is specifically focused on traumatic events as catalysts to self-fragmentation, dramatic self-change can also occur over extended periods of time and under less overtly traumatic circumstances to similar results. Contemporary scholars refer to Mead’s (1934) “endless selves” as social identities. Identity theorists see self-verification as a key factor in the development of identity commitment (Burke & Stets, 1999). In identity theory, self-verification means that people act in a way that brings consistency to the meanings they hold about a situation and the meanings present in their identity standards. They want their self-views to be confirmed by others in a given situation. When our self-verification is unsuccessful, we experience our conduct as inauthentic and seek for ways to resolve this distress. Identities are said to originate from three bases: group, role, and person. Yet, all of these bases of identities are rooted in the social world and, thus, are appropriate for sociological exploration. Burke and Stets (2009) synthesized these bases of identity into a single definition: “The meanings associated with performing a particular role, being a member of a particular group, or possessing, displaying, or claiming particular characteristics that mark the individual as a unique person.” McLuhand (2018) uses this definition to show that multiple identities and bases of identities

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are interrelated and often change together. This is a key assumption behind this chapter: that the process of exiting a high-cost religion involves the re-alignment of multiple bases of identity and the transformation of multiple identities that are closely connected with and influenced by a person’s religious identity. Recent research indicates that religious disaffiliation and the construction of lives outside of organized faith is becoming increasingly common in Western countries. For instance, religious affiliation in Europe dramatically declined over the final decades of the twentieth century (Voas & Doebler, 2011). Voas and Crockett (2005) finds that religious belief in Britain, which is sometimes theorized to be present at similar levels to past eras, is in fact even lower than nominal affiliation with an organized religion. The United States is currently seeing a similar drop in religious affiliation due to the same cohort replacement patterns seen across Europe (Voas & Doebler, 2016). It has been estimated that around one-third of Americans will change religious identification over the course of their lives. Many of these changes involve subtle movements such as switching from one similar denomination to another, or simply “falling away” from the church of one’s youth in adulthood (Loveland, 2003). However, exit from a high-­cost religion often requires the reconstruction of a highly salient religious identity and the exit of a socially meaningful role (Coates, 2013). The “cost” in high-cost refers to the many personal and social costs associated with joining, belong to, and/or leaving these groups (Iannaccone, 1994; Gull, 2021). Many now-classic symbolic interactionist studies of identity have used the experience of religious conversion as an example of intense identity transformation in adulthood (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Strauss, 1997). Yip (2003) illustrates that for many in contemporary society, the verification of religious faith has moved from an external source, justification by the authority vested in religious institutions, to an internal sense of authenticity. High-cost religious adherents must negotiate a world in which this base of authority is shifting around them but not within their own faith community. This can result in the weakening of role commitment and cracks in “institutional arrangements,” as Goffman would say, as the self seeks to stabilize or justify these polarized positions. Likewise, de-conversion and disaffiliation can be an equally transformative identity experience (Brooks, 2018; Scheitle & Adamczyk, 2010; Wright et al., 2011). Examining high-cost religious exiting provides an opportunity to study highly salient identity change and can benefit

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scholars who study identity, religion, or both. It also allows for a more thorough exploration of the third phase of Goffman’s moral career, the ex-phase, through my focus on the “de-institutionalization” of religious/ spiritual identity.

Studying ‘Outcast Women’s’ Religious Change Journeys The data for this chapter are drawn from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in the summer of 2015 with members of “Outcast Women” (OW), a secret (visible solely to group members) women-­ identified-­only Facebook support group for doubting, disaffiliating, and formerly LDS women. At the time of the interviews, OW had an approximate membership of 200. Most of the group members were between the ages of 25 and 45 and lived in Utah, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the state with the largest concentration of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the United States. I initiated every interview with a series of demographic questions pertaining to the interviewee’s family of origin, current family, religious identification and involvement, education, and employment. An initial post in OW requesting interviewees resulted in 12 women willing to participate in the project. Subsequent participants, all members of OW, were suggested to me by this initial group. Nineteen of the women were white and one was Pacific Islander. All but one of the interviewees were born into the LDS church; this is different from the bulk of religious identity change or role exit explorations in sociological research. Here, the identity was an “ascribed” or “tribal” one (Goffman, 1963) which interviewees were born into and which they expected to maintain throughout their lives. Thus, while research into New Religious Movements (one type of high-cost religious group) often investigates processes of conversion and role creation (See Snow & Machalek, 1984 for an extensive review of this literature), this study focuses on those whose religious identity was inculcated in them from the very beginning. For the women in this study, there was no conversion process through which they developed their religious identity. Rather, their LDS identity helped to construct their self-­ concept and organize their identity hierarchy from childhood. In the following section, I explore these dimensions as they pertain to frameworks involving early acknowledgement.

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Cracks in the Framework: Acknowledgement of First Doubts Allowing oneself to doubt an identity of any sort involves opening up the possibility of alternatives: explanations, values, worldviews, lifestyles, and roles, to name a few. Members of the LDS Church are taught that there are two pathways one may take to uncover “Truth”: the personal and the prophetic (Uchtdorf, 2013b). The LDS faithful believe that they are entitled to direct revelation from God and divine confirmation as to whether a concept, either sacred or profane, is, in fact, True. LDS adherents are also taught that the leaders of their Church speak to and for God. Leaders’ words are treated as scripture. Taken together, these ways to uncover Truth can actually be seen as two parts of the same pathway; anything revealed through personal experience must be put aside if it does not fit with Truth as institutionally defined. The result of this system of “information verification” is that members are encouraged to question their personal understandings if they are out of sync with accepted doctrine and/ or practice. Identity verification must come from an approved external source rather than from inside the individual. This viewpoint is tidily summarized in a quote by LDS leader Dieter H. Uchtdorf (2013a): “Please, first, doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” Given this process of institutional truth verification, it may be said that the very act of acknowledging and/or professing religious doubts by LDS members involves a form of role distancing (Goffman, 1959). Like many high-cost faiths, the LDS Church socializes members to use words like “knowledge” and “truth” to refer to their religious experiences. Church members are taught to ritually “bear testimony” of their religious convictions during church meetings. Thus, the LDS profession of faith is both an intimate, private experience and a public, communal one. Mead (1934) stated that our morality is constructed as we internalize the values and beliefs of the generalized others in our social milieux. High-cost faiths provide ongoing, meaningful opportunities for the verification of religious identities, worldviews, and personal religious experiences. The sources of “first doubts” among the LDS women interviewed for this study can be grouped into three categories. Some interviewees stated that pressures of perfectionism, negative views of other LDS members, and a lack of concern by faith leaders first led them to question their religious commitment. These are what I term affective factors, as they are related individuals’ emotional experiences within their religious

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community. Others reported a broadening of their vision of community and with this broadening, an increased desire to incorporate persons with marginalized identities into their salvation narrative. These factors I have termed social horizon factors, which sociologist Emile Durkheim (1893) linked to our level of exposure to and familiarity with people outside of our close social circle. Finally, another category of first doubts involved questions about the LDS church itself: its doctrines, theology, leadership, and history. These I term belief factors, as they deal with the level of trust and certainty individuals have regarding the various components of their religion. Affective Factors From Cooley’s (2011) “sentiments,” which he saw as the force behind the construction of self and society, to Hochschild’s (1979) “feeling rules,” which give us socially-constructed guidelines around the display of emotions, sociology has long recognized the importance of emotion in social interaction. Cooley (2011) defined sentiments as “socialized feeling, feeling which has been raised by thought and intercourse out of its merely instinctive state and become properly human … [it] is the chief motive power of life.” The high level of emotional commitment associated with active participation in high-cost religions may, if experienced as burdensome, reduce the strength of in-group social ties and lead a person to begin to question their faith in an effort to reduce the emotional strain. One affective factor mentioned by a number of participants was that of perfectionism. Many of the women I interviewed expressed the belief that the LDS church set behavioural standards so high that the average member is unable to attain them in a healthy way. Martha stated that she felt: … culturally exhausted, I was exhausted by that checklist … family prayer twice a day, personal prayers twice a day, blessings at every meal, family councils on Sunday, family home evenings on Monday, just all of that checklist stuff. It was exhausting, and eventually I was just like, the kind of perfection that is required of Mormon women just kind of broke me.”

Brenna cited the expectations placed on mothers inside the LDS church as another example of the seemingly unattainable standards members were expected to meet: “It’s like this idolized, crazy thing that we’re all

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supposed to be … becoming a mom really, I wasn’t, I was not that mom. The culture around motherhood really pushed me out.” Other participants discussed feelings of rejection or isolation within what they expected to be a cohesive, welcoming community. Adrienne, who had experienced the excommunication of a close family member by church authorities, thought that she would find solace and support within her congregation. Instead, she stated that “there wasn’t a language of love, and religion wasn’t going to necessarily be something that I wanted in my life.” Amber experienced LDS culture as “judgy” and “image-­ driven,” but initially placed the blame upon herself for the discomfort she felt in her LDS skin. As stated earlier, LDS members are expected to “doubt their doubts,” limiting the confidence they place in personal experience and intuition. Amber tried to silence her doubts and attempted to “humble herself and figure it out, since the church was true.” For many participants, affective factors acted as a kind of sluice, giving them permission to take a critical eye to other parts of their religious life that may not be serving them well. We can see this in Jane’s description of the way her emotional unease within the LDS church led her to examine other aspects of her faith: I would say the first was that it just emotionally and spiritually didn’t feed me anymore. I wasn’t getting anything. I was working my butt off every Sunday because I played the piano, played the organ. So I just felt really used. And then I felt overworked. And then I thought, “What am I getting in return for this,” because it just was draining. So I would say, first of all emotionally, it didn’t serve me, and that led me to looking into the truthfulness of it, the truth claims, and just the logical feasibility of any of it.

In Jane’s description of her initial religious doubts, it is affective factors that were the first “cracks” in her high-cost religious identity. The high level of effort required of active LDS adherents was experienced by Jane as an overload, and she didn’t see the benefits accruing from these efforts. Once these affective cracks opened up a fault line in Jane’s religious identity, she experienced a shift in her religious verification system from external to internal (Yip, 2003). This shift opened up the possibility that other aspects of the LDS faith might also be up for examination.

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Social Horizon Factors Religious boundary-drawing is an important factor in maintaining a meaningful and cohesive religious identity. This is especially true of high-cost religions, which often feature rituals and covenants that demarcate those who may be appropriated into one’s community of care and those who are beyond that boundary. Many interviewees experienced a weakening of their LDS identity as they began to re-consider the categories of people who belonged inside of their community of care. Mead (1934) recognized that our potential social horizon is limitless as our abstract community can contain countless “generalized others.” Some respondents had never before given much thought to discrimination faced by racial or ethnic minorities. Others began to see the LDS church’s treatment of LGBTQ individuals as harmful and exclusionary. Many respondents saw this expansion of their social horizon as incongruous with current and/or former doctrines or practices of the institutional LDS church as well as with aspects of informal church culture, and identified this as an important factor in beginning to transform their religious identity. One extension of respondents’ social horizons involved familiarizing themselves with people of other (or no) faith traditions. Several respondents indicated that, growing up, their LDS identity was a taken-for-­ granted part of their self-identity. Shelly saw this begin to change as she talked with people from other faith traditions and realized that they felt just as strongly about their religious convictions as members of her own faith. This led to a growing sense that LDS theology was “exclusionary and rejected others’ faith experiences.” Melanie described how her understanding of who was deserving of inclusion inside her community of care changed over time in this way: As I got older and I was exposed to other religions and other cultures and realized how tiny the Mormon world is compared to the rest of the world, part of myself had to ask, is this really the one true church? It took me, obviously, several years before I finally chose that it wasn’t, but I just tried to negotiate that for a long time.

Another example of a widened social horizon can be seen in how many respondents spoke of their changed attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. Nora stated that her decision to support the marriage equality movement in the United States and other issues that directly affected

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LGBTQ people were the first cracks in her religious identity. Melanie began to be troubled by what she termed “exclusionary policies” involved in maintaining boundaries between the LDS faithful and everyone else: “I became more aware of how Mormon doctrines affected others. For example, temple ceremonies, they didn’t bother me that much, but I became more aware of how that affected others and the same thing with the whole gay and lesbian community.” The LDS church’s support of the 2008 campaign in California to pass Proposition 8, a ballot measure which defined marriage as a heterosexual union, activated the expansion of several interviewees’ social horizons to include members of the LGBTQ community. Amber had difficulty with the idea of a god who did not condone homosexuality, yet created gay and lesbian people and, in order to maintain their standing in the LDS church, expected them to live celibate lives. It was through the extension of care to these “outside” groups that many respondents began to question their place in the Latter-day Saints’ moral community. Jane also directly addressed the role of Proposition 8 in her development of first doubts. Her concerns with the way in which opponents of the ballot measure framed the effects of legalizing same sex marriage show her struggle to include LGBTQ persons within her social horizon even while she attempted to classify their behaviour as “sinful:” Right around the time when I was in adulthood, when I was re-examining a lot of those historical and doctrinal issues both, was Proposition 8  in California, which was a huge issue for me, mostly because I disagreed with the tone of the argument. I was concerned about the church being so heavily involved in politics and telling members what to do and what they needed to be involved in that. I was also concerned with the materials both LDS church and other groups were putting out on why homosexuality was evil. I was more okay with the idea that they could say and believe it was evil rather than all the weird things that they were saying was going to happen to the country and to the family if gay marriage were legal.

Even as participants’ social horizons broadened, many attempted to maintain their LDS identity. They expressed the fear of losing their community, losing the certainty of an all-encompassing worldview and “plan of salvation,” and their desire to hold onto the positives of their LDS identity. Yet as their acceptance of minoritized groups increased, they were often led to question the doctrines and teachings of the church itself.

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Belief Factors The third category of initial doubts involves cracks in interviewees’ actual theology or in their understandings of the origins and history of the LDS church. Since its organization in 1830 (or “restoration,” as the Church refers to this event), the LDS church has emphasized its identity as the “true and living church” of God on earth (Oaks, 2011). As a result, issues involving belief in LDS doctrines are thoroughly intertwined with questions about the accuracy of the official version of the LDS Church’s origin story. Kelly stated that doubts about church doctrines regarding the nature of God and the purpose of mortal life were the initial cracks in her LDS identity: I’d say the foundational claims and the definition of god. Claims being, I guess, purpose of life, and how life, the description of how everything works did not seem accurate to me. And I guess the foundational claim of Heavenly Father, the attributes that they, the Mormon church, describes Heavenly Father as being. That’s the most basic doctrine.

Others linked their initial doubts to claims to prophetic legitimacy by LDS church founders and early accounts of church history taught them by their leaders to reinforce the special and unique relationships said to exist between the LDS church and God. Jane stated, “Polygamy. Polygamy, polygamy, polygamy. Just the kind of the hero worship of [church founder] Joseph Smith to the point where he’s untouchable.” Melanie also referenced the relationship between belief in church doctrines and scripture and belief in church founders’ legitimacy: The fact that church history as Joseph Smith professes to have these records from Golden Plates and then as time has proven, certain translation of his, like the Book of Abraham, show that what he has stated in translation is not actually right. So again, how do I trust a man who’s been proven to be inaccurate in his translation?

Several interviewees voiced the difficulty inherent in separating questions about the cultural aspects of the Latter-day Saint faith from deeper theological questions. Many saw a direct link between church doctrines and aspects of church culture they experienced as limiting, exclusionary, or otherwise troubling, yet first sought to locate their discomfort in church culture rather than in the doctrines themselves. Brenna stated, “This

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[separating doctrine from culture] is a tricky thing because what … everybody’s, ‘Is it culture, or is it doctrine,’ you know? So … I think I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself stuff I didn’t like wasn’t doctrine, that it was culture.” Holly shared that “the idea of a patriarchal God was a real deal breaker for me” and linked the LDS belief in a male God to sexist cultural beliefs and organizational practices.

Leaving the Flock: Early Disengagement Work Once interviewees’ initial doubts began to be openly acknowledged, if not to others then at least to themselves, individuals began to disengage from their LDS identities. In structural identity theory parlance, the identity was reduced in salience, moving down in importance on their identity hierarchy (Stryker & Serpe, 1982). This acknowledgement initiated the transformation of multiple identities and roles, however, as disengaging from a high-cost religion involves the realignment of multiple aspects of the self. Therefore, key to beginning the exit process is beginning to disengage from one’s existing religious identity and its construction within a specific religious community. On an institutional spectrum, high-cost religions fall closer to those Goffman (1961) labelled as “total institutions.” This is because they prescribe many of their adherents’ activities of daily life (batch living); have a distinct and powerful hierarchical structure (binary management); actively construct the role of a “member in full fellowship” (role); and create an “institutional perspective” through which the church promotes the end goal of salvation and undermines the legitimacy of the self-perspective. Disengagement is partly driven by feelings of cognitive dissonance, or the discomfort resulting from conflicts between our beliefs, attitudes and actions (Festinger, 1957). In order to reduce this discomfort, we look for ways to either change our attitudes or beliefs, or change our behaviours to better align with our attitudes and beliefs. In the case of high-cost religious exit, it is the latter that I am focused on: How adherents begin to match their actions with their changing religious beliefs and attitudes. Disengagement can be seen in the ways in which interviewees linked their affective, social horizon, and belief-related doubts into a linear path leading to the desire to change their LDS identity. Rebecca’s description of the factors that began her LDS role exit is illustrative to the way many interviewees narrated their disengagement process. Her comments illustrate how those first cracks began to build until the meaning her LDS

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identity held for her changed from one of salience and comfort to something more problematic and in need of re-definition: Polygamy was always a big one for me growing up. Let’s see, then the disconnect between the faith and then how they would, when you go to church, how they treat people who don’t quite fit the mould. There’s a lot of mental illness issues in my family that my parents struggled with, my siblings, when I was a teenager and things like that, that as my parents were going through this, the church was not helpful, not understanding. Those little things, that was a chip away of the testimony, some doubts … then, that started making me think of patriarchal issues, feminism.

Holly describes her experience attending an LDS church-run college, Brigham Young University (BYU), after growing up in Canada, far away from the seat of LDS institutional power and culture in Utah. She narrates the way that cultural expectations at BYU added to her already “cracked” sense of certainty involving belief factors, resulting in a growing distance between her initial conception of her LDS identity and the one she was being asked to adopt at BYU: I was aware of [problems with] church history without it breaking my testimony. It really came down to really thinking about the inequality that goes all the way down to the core doctrines that was the most difficult for me … the cultural aspect was the way that everyone was expected to be so homogenous. You weren’t allowed to be diverse. You were expected to follow a script and stick to that script. If you varied from that script, then you were socially punished, more or less.

More than occurred in the descriptions that women gave of their first doubts, disengagement-related comments involved the beginnings of narratives that gave shape to their process of religious identity change. Respondents began to knit their affective, social horizon, and belief-­ centred doubts together to show a clear breakage between the (relatively) smooth, unblemished surface of their previous LDS identity and the yet-­ to-­be-adopted identity of “ex-LDS.” As Ebaugh (1988) mentions, being an ex-member of any social institution is very different from being a non-­ member—previous membership in a social category influences future experiences and affects the ways that individuals are treated in social settings. Part of the process of disengagement, then, is constructing a coherent self-narrative to provide to others to assist them in making sense of the

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exiter’s ex- identity, making the exiter open to interpellation by those without ties to the LDS faith.

Opening to Alternatives: Cognitive and Social De-Fellowshipping Identities are inherently social products and processes, forged during our interactions with individuals, groups and social institutions. When an individual begins to move away from an identity that has been instrumental in shaping multiple aspects of the self, they begin looking to other reference groups for the raw materials from which to construct their new identity. Shibutani’s (1955) definition of a reference group as “that group whose perspective constitutes the frame of reference of the actor” is of particular relevance in studying those beginning religious de-fellowshipping. It is the frame of reference within which individuals give meaning to their relationships, both personal and institutional, which shifts when one begins to doubt and disengage from a high-cost religious identity. Cooley (1983) was the first to outline the different functions served by our primary and secondary group ties. In outlining the process of high-cost religious identity change, it is clear that relationships in both of these groups may need restructuring. One not only breaks with members of their congregation, which provided the framework through which, among other things, community service, friendships, and children’s activities were enabled. One also realises that the norms of behaviour and underlying understanding of familial relationships may need to be realigned, new “fronts” arranged and new strategies of “impression management” undertaken if the relationships are to survive (Goffman, 1959). Fellowshipping into religious communities is an important component of inculcating not only belonging but also belief in new converts (See Lofland’s, 1977 study of the Moonies for an examination of this topic). Getting the new convert involved in service, worship, and volunteer positions within the congregation can go a long way towards making them feel like they are a part of their new faith community. When one de-fellowships from a high-cost religion, they are unravelling those knots of belonging tied over years of shared interaction and intertwined relationships. The women who participated in this project frequently spoke about this “unravelling” of their social networks which occurred in the early stages of their religious exit. Often, de-fellowshipping began before the future

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disaffiliate even knew for certain that she was, indeed, going to sever ties to her faith. Ebaugh (1988) referred to this early, often unintentional, signalling of religious identity change as “cuing behaviour.” De-fellowshipping may begin as an unconscious process, only becoming conscious and intentional once the individual has fully committed to the religious exit. The internal wrestle with religious doubts can quickly become a social event if an active member of the LDS faith decides to stop attending worship services for more than a couple of Sundays. As the LDS church has a lay clergy, many active members hold “callings,” or jobs within the congregation. Additionally, attendance is taken in LDS Sunday school classes, leading to an institutional record of skipped services. Mona was one respondent who described that, after the initial doubts and disengagement, she moved to de-fellowshipping by taking a break from attending Sunday worship services. Her private journey of religious identity change then became quite public. In narrating this aspect of her identity transformation, she linked it to future losses she would experience as her de-­ fellowshipping proceeded: My very best friend, she found out I missed three weeks in a row. That’s when you’re inactive. You’re on the list. She found that out and wrote me a huge, long letter. Then, both of her sisters … it’s—I felt like I lost a lot of friends that’d be forever friends. This friend had been at the birth of my first child. She was very, very dear to me. Still, we don’t have contact.

As respondents began to see their LDS identity as less salient to their sense of self and took tentative steps to disengage from the church, many of their connections with community members frayed in ways that impacted them beyond their religious involvement. Kelly described the way that these relationships began to change over areas of her life: You know, there’s those connections you make and the ways in which especially stay-at-home moms help each other—carpools, similar activities, you’re on the same soccer team, all of those kind of, like, built-in benefits of the community that you have just by seeing each other two or three times a week. Even if you don’t happen to be best friends with somebody, you’re included in, like, “Hey, these three ten-year-olds are all on the soccer team. I know your kid likes to play soccer. Do you want to be a part of this soccer team and we can carpool?” Those things that are kind of natural. Those completely dropped out overnight.

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As these quotes show, de-fellowshipping often brings with it a different set of emotions than those experienced during the periods of doubting and disengagement. It is a much more overtly social aspect of the initial disaffiliation process, one that caused participants to engage in a significant amount of active “impression management” in an attempt to “save face” with members of their LDS community (Goffman, 1959). Along with their internal shifts in religious identity, the external changes in how their LDS role was played—inactive church member, someone who no longer seems to hold the beliefs and values required of the LDS faithful— led them to be labelled in an altogether different social category and experience a status loss in their community (Link & Phelan, 2001).

Discussion While identity in contemporary society is understood to be fluid and changeable, the process of identity transformation is not always painless and simple. Certain highly salient identities, especially those linked to tight-knit communities with distinct subcultures, such as those inculcated within high-cost religions, function as quasi-ethnic identities and inform the development of other identities in a person’s hierarchy: woman, spouse, parent, friend, neighbour, etc. The initial “flirting with danger” involved with acknowledging high-cost religious doubt consists of three sets of factors: affective factors, or the emotional strain associated with high-cost religious life; social horizon factors, or the extension of the “abstract community” (Mead, 1934), and with it the community of care, beyond the boundaries of the religious group; and belief factors, or doubts about church scripture, doctrines and teachings. Often, these initial doubts followed a pattern among my interviewees, with affective and social horizon factors forming the first “cracks” in their religious identities and weakening their commitment to fully embracing this role, inducing these women to further explore their theology and the church’s history for justifications of these fissures. Once these cracks were present, participants often found themselves consciously or unconsciously disengaging from their religious identity in an attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance and bring their behaviour into line with their beliefs and attitudes. As the salience of their religious identity began to lessen, adherents found themselves de-fellowshipping from their religious community as the beliefs associated with and ties to that identity had been worn down through the initiation of the doubting

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process. Like Casey’s (2018) Muslims who were deemed “too American” to be properly Muslim, LDS adherents who profess unorthodox beliefs or engage in behaviours outside of LDS norms are often held at arm’s length by more devout Latter-day Saints. The search for new reference group standards and ideals by which to construct their changing religious identity has begun. Though its influence has waned in recent years in certain sectors of society, religion still exercises tremendous influence in many pockets of the world as well as due to the lingering influence of religious institutions on national cultures, politics, and identities. As Andrew Yip (2003) pointed out nearly 20  years ago, however, the basis of religious faith is shifting throughout the West from religious institutions to self-justification and authenticity. If the West’s “sacred canopy” (Berger, 2011) continues to fray, or become more akin to the individualized religiosity of “sacred umbrellas,” (Smith & Emerson, 1998) the number of people experiencing religious identity change will continue to grow. These changes, both individual and structural, will have profound implications for the ways that individual religiosity is expressed and internalized as well as the place of religion within the cultural and political arenas of Western societies.

Conclusion In this chapter, I examined the early exit experiences of a group of disaffiliating and former members of the LDS Church in order to further expand on the oft-overlooked ex- phase of Goffman’s (1961) moral career. Goffman himself spent little time on this phase, preferring instead to focus on the periods prior to and during socialization into a new moral system. Ebaugh (1988) took the ex-phase on in much greater detail, but using some generalised concepts which obscure the specific experiences of those exiting highly coherent groups with strong identity boundaries. By examining the “first cracks” in the certainty of high-cost religious identity, I identified three themes in the nascent ex- phase of post-LDS women’s religious change narratives: first experiences with doubting their religion’s truth claims, cultural constructions, or institutional arrangements; a process, at times gradual, at other times sudden, of disengaging from their religious identity and reducing its salience in their identity hierarchy; and lastly, the initiation of separation from their religious body and the instigation of a search for alternative reference groups.

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Studying the early religious exit careers of disaffiliating LDS women allows us to better understand the processes at work in high-cost institutional exits and identity transformations and the development of ex- identities. My findings indicate that this experience can be a time of dramatic self-change as exiters begin to redefine a cluster of salient relationships: self to significant others, self to community, self to society, and even, through the search for a new worldview in which to situate their understandings of their place in the universe, self to self. Much has been written in recent years about the declining role of institutional religions in Western societies and the rise or resurgence of spiritual and religious pathways outside of established religious bodies. These structural and cultural changes have profound implications, not only for how societies see themselves and the bases on which they interact on the world stage, but also for the lives of the individuals inhabiting those societies. This is what sociology, and symbolic interaction more specifically, bring us back to again and again: the relationship between large-scale social forces and the interpretative, meaning-­making work of the individuals existing within these milieux of social forces. The women interviewed for this study show that identity change is, indeed, a highly social process, and, despite the large repertoire of identities available to us in late modernity, the loss of a treasured identity is not easily or readily replaced.

References Athens, L. H. (1995). Dramatic Self Change. Sociological Quarterly, 36, 571–586. Berger, P.  L. (2011). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Open Road Media. Berger, P.  L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor Books. Brooks, E. M. (2018). Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints. \Rutgers University Press. Burke, P.  J., & Stets, J.  E. (1999). Trust and Commitment Through Self-­ Verification. Social Psychology Quarterly, 347–366. Burke, P. J., & Stets, J. E. (2009). Identity Theory. Oxford University Press. Casey, P.  M. (2018). Stigmatized Identities: Too Muslim to be American, Too American to be Muslim. Symbolic Interaction, 41, 100–119. Coates, D.  D. (2013). Disaffiliation from a New Religious Movement: The Importance of Self and Others in Exit. Symbolic Interaction, 36, 314–334. Cooley, C. H. (1983). Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. Transaction Publishers.

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Cooley, C. H. (2011). The Self as Sentiment and Reflection. Oxford University Press. Durkheim, E. (1893). The Division of Labor in Society, Reprint: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Ebaugh, H. R. F. (1988). Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. University of Chicago Press. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Reprint, New York, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Anchor. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Reprint, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2009. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press. Gull, B. (2021). ‘We Are the Women Our Parents Warned Us Against’: Identity Reconstruction and the Re-imaginging of Gender After High-Cost Religious Disaffiliation. Symbolic Interaction. Hochschild, A.  R. (1979). Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85, 551–575. Iannaccone, L. R. (1992). Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives. Journal of Political Economy, 100, 271–291. Iannaccone, L. R. (1994). Why Strict Churches Are Strong. American Journal of Sociology, 99, 1180–1211. Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2001). Conceptualizing Stigma. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 363–385. Lofland, J. (1977). Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. Irvington Publishers. Loveland, M.  T. (2003). Religious Switching: Preference Development, Maintenance, and Change. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 147–157. McLuhand, A. (2018). Generic Processes in Aligning the Multiple Bases of Identity: The Case of Becoming a Ministry Student. Symbolic Interaction, 41, 311–333. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society. University of Chicago Press. Oaks, D. H. (2011). The Only True and Living Church. The New Era [online]. Retrieved November 1, 2020, from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ study/new-­era/2011/08/the-­only-­true-­and-­living-­church?lang=eng Phillips, B. T., & Kelner, S. (2006). Reconceptualizing Religious Change: Ethno-­ Apostasy and Change in Religion Among American Jews. Sociology of Religion, 67, 507–543.

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CHAPTER 5

Women Leaving and Losing in Politics: Eulogy Work on a Public Stage Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott and Emma L. Martin

Introduction Kathleen Wynne stands facing her own resignation from politics in front of the crowd, wearing a smart, white blazer; the colour of the suffragette movement. She is slightly choked up as she delivers her speech, stepping down as the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party in Canada. She links her trajectory in politics with the path of all women and even breaks into song at one point, singing out, “we’re still standing,” paraphrasing the song “I’m still standing.” In this chapter, we examine the concession and resignation speeches of women losing in politics or leaving politics. These women are, in effect, performing the transition out of a major role in the public eye. Wynne publicly performs an exit from political life, an extreme career to say the least. In doing so, her departure speech functions as a form of eulogy work (van den Scott et al., 2015) where she frames her symbolic, social death as

L.-J. K. van den Scott (*) • E. L. Martin Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_5

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a good death. In this case, she does so by embedding her story in a narrative of social activism around women in leadership. Scholars have focussed on men leaving politics, either of their own choice or not. Often this is framed in the “becoming an ex” literature. There were fewer instances available to study women retiring from politics or losing elections. We find that in their speeches, women political losers, in contrast to men, establish their roles in a timeline of women in history. They frame their participation in politics as paving the way for other women later, carving out a place for themselves in history where their political identity will, in some sense, remain for posterity. In addition, they lean on history, emphasising that they were standing on the shoulders of women who came before them. This helps to aggrandise their own role in history as well. They recognize their families and supporters as key in their success in participating in moving history forward. They demonstrate their acceptance of the situation with reference to it being “time” in the timeline for them to step down or step back from politics, thus simultaneously accomplishing and resisting Ebaugh’s (1988) dynamics of disengagement.

Becoming an Ex in Public and Eulogy Work Helen Ebaugh (1988) pioneered the study of role exits. Sociologists have long used the concept of roles to describe the social expectations around certain parts we play in society. For example, the role of “mother” comes with certain connotations, behaviours, and responsibilities. Sometimes we leave the roles we have adopted over the years. This can be voluntary or involuntary. Athletes retire suddenly due to injury. School teachers become investment brokers. One can even apply this thinking to when obese people become thin. Goffman (1961, 1963) conceptualises role exits as transitioning out of a moral career. Each role we have involves a moral career—a trajectory with expected pathways, milestones, expectations, and social processes (Pescosolido, 2015). Role exits, then, involve generic social processes (Prus, 1987), shaped by social context (Goffman, 1961). That is, similar social processes apply to the various contexts of role exits but may look different according to the context. Ebaugh (1988) views leaving a role as a form of symbolic death, which has three processes: disengagement, disidentification, and dealing with role residual, the lingering feels of the past identity. We deal primarily here with the first element of symbolic death, disengagement. How do people leaving a role, in this

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case female politicians, publicly perform disengagement? In other words, what social processes are in play and how are they shaped by the context as people transition out of a moral career? Ebaugh is correct to refer to role exits as symbolic death. Others refer to a role exit as a social death (Shaffir & Kleinknecht, 2005; Theakston et al., 2007; van den Scott et al., 2015). There is a process of defeat, a grieving process (Theakston et al., 2007), and a sense of rejection accompanied by a mourning period (Shaffir & Kleinknecht, 2005). Role exits, in the case of a damaged identity (Goffman, 1963), represent a failure of the past (Ashforth, 2012), as well as a loss of master status (Rodgers, 2014). The less predictable the exit is, the more difficult the sense-making process is afterwards (Ashforth, 2012). The degree to which the role exit blindsides someone impacts their ability to reorient themselves (Bridges, 2003). When someone is forced out of a role, they may still have some agency in facilitating their withdrawal from the role. The less agency they have, the greater their challenge in coming to terms with a new identity (Rodgers, 2014). In short, facing a role exit means facing an identity crisis. While Goffman focusses on roles and context in his work Asylums (1961), he specifically considers devalued or damaged identities in connection with moral careers in Stigma (1963). Framing the role exit, or the symbolic death, in a positive light is part of the disengagement process as the person exiting a role attempts to reimagine and make sense of the situation—on the spot in the case of a public exit. Politicians, specifically, experience their public role as a master status (Byrne & Theakston, 2016; King, 1981; Stuart, 2008; Riddell, 1995; Shaffir & Kleinknecht, 2005). When a politician leaves office and gives their concession or resignation speech, they must perform making sense of a loss of master status, often on short notice. This can shake their confidence in their suddenly former master status of politician, which would increase the importance of framing their symbolic death as a good death. This separates their skill and prowess as politicians from their social death so as to not reflect badly as they transition into a new, less public role. Van den Scott et al. (2015) have examined similar moments of role exit in reality television. They coined the concept eulogy work to describe the emotional labour involved in the public performance of loss, particularly when that loss equates to a symbolic death, as when a participant is voted off of a reality competition such as Survivor or Dancing with the Stars. The kind of eulogy work those leaving the public eye perform varies according to the perceived source of blame and the amount of fame capital the

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departing person has. These people perform eulogy work, ultimately, to frame their death as a good death and to cast themselves in a positive light, given the exit. We argue this is a social process which is part of transitioning out of a moral career. It looks different on reality TV shows than it might in the context of politicians losing elections because of the social context (Goffman, 1961), however the process of framing a social death as a good death by mitigating its symbolic meaning remains consistent. Politicians, of course, have a great deal of experience performing personified emotion (Stuart, 2008) through the course of their careers. That is, controlling their emotions to project professional authenticity. Performing loss on a public stage, however, puts the departing politician in the position of framing their social death as a good death. We combine the concept of eulogy work with Helen Ebaugh’s (1988) focus on becoming an ex to fully understand the social processes involved in the public performance of symbolic, social death. Previous studies have focussed primarily on men leaving office. There has been significant work on how men cope with leaving the British parliament (Byrne & Theakston, 2016; Theakston et al., 2007) and how their families cope (Roberts, 2017). Each of these researchers finds that men struggle in leaving political office. In the same vein of examining role-­ exits, some have turned to men leaving the National Football League (NFL—American-style football) to study the end of a master status and public role exit (Rodgers, 2014; Turner, 2010). William Shaffir and Steven Kleinknecht (2005) present an excellent study of the involuntary departures of men leaving office. They echo and solidify the disparate findings mentioned above: that role exit is a social death, that departing politicians must publicly cope with their lost of master status, and that blame is central to how they distance themselves from the loss and frame their death as a good death. In addition, Shaffir and Kleinknecht find that the men in their study use deflection rhetoric to enact a process of disengagement (Ebaugh, 1988). Through deflection rhetoric, men both deflect responsibility for the loss and define a relationship to new involvements (such as a new job). Blame, as van den Scott et al. (2015) also found, shapes the way in which people perform eulogy work. Men focus on their generical qualities by using rhetorical strategies to negotiate their performance of self in that public moment of loss. In a rare study that focusses on women, Vanlangenakker et al. (2013) document the how and why of women leaving politics. They list four factors that contribute to women’s leaving parliament: p ­sychological/

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sociological logic, party logic, electoral logic, and parliamentary logic. They find that women are less likely to leave voluntarily than men, which makes sense given the socio-historic context in which we find ourselves. While this study contributes some important findings, it deals less with how women perform eulogy work in the instance of their publicly performed social death. This eulogy work is of great import as not only do eulogies frame the past identity and make sense of the loss, but also this framing works to organize the experiences and actions that occur after the exit (Davis et al., 2016). What of women and their performed exits from politics? We cannot achieve a full theory or well-rounded concepts only taking men into account. This chapter serves to offer a study of women’s eulogy work as they perform their social death and exit their political, master-status role in public. We identify ways in which women losers establish agency as a tool for framing their death as a good death, demonstrating how this is shaped by social context (Goffman, 1961). We then turn to their deflection rhetoric as they reify the timeline of women and voting in history, and their place in that timeline, defusing the stigma associated with loss (Goffman, 1963). We discuss how they perform this time-work in various ways that relate to the past, present, and future. We then examine their professed plans to continue on the in the public service sphere as a way of creating an afterlife.

Methods We examined 27 concession and six resignation speeches from 33 different women political losers. 19 of these were American, ten were Canadian, three were Australian, and one was British, from a range of ethnic backgrounds. We looked at a range of levels of government, from mayoral races to gubernatorial and provincial races, to prime minster and presidential races. We included a range of the political spectrum. Among the American women political losers, 13 were Democrats and six were Republican. Among the other countries, there were a mix of conservative, liberal, and independent runners. We included Betty Ford’s 1976 concession for American President Gerald Ford, and Kim Campbell’s resignation speech in 1993 as the Canadian Progressive Conservative party leader. After that the dates range from 2006 to 2019, with the bulk of them occurring in 2018 (12 speeches) and 2019 (9 speeches). Our analysis uncovers what is common across these geographic regions, political

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parties, and the gamut of municipal to federal elections. When we cite each speech, we give the speaker, the year, and the location and note if it is a resignation. We have also included an appendix with a table of who lost which races. We included all the speeches for which we were able to find videos or transcripts online. For the vast majority, we were able to find videos. We transcribed these. Using ethnographic content analysis (Altheide & Schneider, 2013), we then read and reread for themes. We took a consensus-­based approach in which we memoed for each other and discussed our analysis as it emerged inductively from the data.

Establishing Agency One of the first things women work to establish in their concession speeches is their own agency and that of their voters. This has a twofold effect. First, women breathe life into their future by grouping themselves with their voters through “we” language. The eulogy work stresses the agency of their voters, and their empowerment. If the voters are empowered moving forward, and the women are now part of a group of engaged citizens, then it follows that, despite the loss, the women continue to have a voice through participation in that group. Second, by highlighting their own agency, women lay the foundation for their own active role in advancing the history of women in politics by having run for office. “We” language commonly appears in concession speeches: “we all need to keep fighting” (Amy McGrath, 2018: Kentucky, USA), “we are not done” (Jenny Wilson, 2018: Utah, USA), “we just have to have faith” (Diane Black, 2018: Tennessee, USA). “We” language ties together those involved in their campaign, often in a militaristic way. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country. I feel pride and gratitude, for this wonderful campaign that we built together. (Hillary Clinton, 2016: Federal USA)

Hillary Clinton continues on later in her speech, “I am so grateful to stand with all of you.” With “we” language, women align themselves as part of the same group as their voters. These speeches, then, create an imagined community (Anderson, 1983) of actively engaged citizens, of which the losing woman is a part. This

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imagined community may be geographical or based on the soul of democracy or country. I wanna thank the hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians, that made it out to vote today. You had your voice heard. That is what democracy is all about, to each and every one of you that cast a ballot in this election. I will continue to work for you, and together we will rebuild, a brighter future, for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. (Alison Lundergan Grimes, 2014: Kentucky, USA) In Tennessee, and you’ve heard me say this before. In Tennessee we know right is right. We know wrong is wrong. We know truth is truth. We know God is God. And we know a life, is a life. And I hope that all Republicans in this state, and everyone in this room, and those that are watching on television right now will join me in fighting for those values. Because that, is what makes Tennessee, so special. (Diane Black, 2018: Tennessee, USA)

Both Alison Lundergan Grimes and Diane Black appeal to their geographic region as an imagined community, placing themselves firmly as members. Many stress the togetherness of their joint beliefs in the soul of their country or their democracy: And this campaign was… a real demonstration of the love we all have for each other. And let’s make sure we continue this, in front of the headwinds that we’re facing today. Let’s continue to show the rest of America, what good democracy looks like. (Christine Hallquist, 2018: Vermont, USA) Because this country is a union. Not just a family of four nations, but a union of people. All of us, whatever our background, the color of our skin or who we love, we stand together. And together, we have a great future. (Theresa May, 2019: UK Prime Minister Resignation)

It is not about the candidate; it is about the engaged citizens with civic responsibilities and duties. This is not unique to women’s speeches, but in their case provides heightened attention to the role of women in civic life and the importance of their ongoing participation after the election. The future life of this community, and the empowerment of its voters, works to minimize the social death and to create an afterlife for the losing women politicians in this community. As long as voters are empowered moving

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forward, so, too, are the women who just lost. Their voices are not quite gone yet—they continue to exercise the same privilege of agency as their communities. Future-talk, additionally, constructs a framework of ongoing historical import. They can then place themselves on this timeline to help frame their social death as a good death, as we discuss below.

Timelines and Time-work Women political losers not only identify themselves with the voters, but with activists who have fought for equality. In contrast to men, women work to establish their roles in a timeline of women in history. This is part of their deflection rhetoric and a gendered difference from the deflection work of men political losers. Women frame their participation in politics as paving the way for other women later, carving out a place for themselves in history where their political life will, in some sense, remain for posterity. They do this using time-work (Flaherty, 2003), an agentic manipulation of a temporal experience. By performing time-work, women can play with how they present and remember the timeline of women in politics. They can reinvent, in the moment, time that has already gone by (Christensen & Sandvik, 2020). By doing so, they aggrandize their own role in history as well. In addition to framing accomplishments with “we” language, women political losers perform time-work around the past, the present, and the future. The combination, they hope, assures their place in history. Past: Flexing, Reframing and Extending Women politicians are acutely aware of the conscribed nature of women’s rights to vote. Of the Western countries in this study, Australia was the first to allow mainstream women to vote, in 1902. This excluded Indigenous voters, however. In Canada, many women were finally able to vote in 1918, although Indigenous women could not vote until the 1960s. This was on par with the U.K., where certain women could also vote in 1918. The United States ratified the women’s right to vote in 1920, also excluding marginalized groups. Time-work around the past can take the form of listing past accomplishments and victories, or flexing, to deflect attention away from the loss-at-hand and onto this historical timeline. This is easiest for those who lost a race as an incumbent or resigned:

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I dedicated my time in congress to fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility. I have fought hard for the taxpayers, for the victims of sexual harassment, for our seniors, but most of all, for our unborn children. I have raised your voice in immigration, helping decrease fees in our parks and in our schools. I have stood up for our vets, and our men and women in uniform. (Mia Love, 2018: Utah, USA)

Kathleen Wynne references her contributions to restructuring the Canada Pension Plan, while Julia Gillard, the first woman prime minster of Australia, touts her work on international affairs. Heidi Heitkamp reminds listeners of her work on Medicaid. Others, including Kelly O’Dwyer, Kerryn Phelps, and Rachel Notley, focus on their sense of pride in the “legacy” they leave behind. By referencing past accomplishments, these women divert attention away from the loss-at-hand and encourage their audience to remember them as successful in their political careers. In addition to highlighting all their feats over their careers, women political losers reframe the past. Heather French-Henry reframes the loss as a success in other ways: There is winning in many things than just gaining a title, ladies and gentlemen. There is winning in the journey, there is winning in the friendships you make, there is winning in the conversations that we have had across the great Commonwealth of Kentucky. (Heather French-Henry, 2019: Kentucky, USA)

Most, however, reframe the loss in terms of the giving a voice to the people; So I entered this Senate race with two objectives. One, was to return a Senate seat, to the people of Utah. One that had been held for more than forty years by one person. And my second objective was frankly pretty simple. It was just to make a difference. And just to have a voice for the people in this community, who sometimes feel that they do not have a voice. And I can tell you, that objective was met. (Jenny Wilson, 2018: Utah, USA)

Women work to illustrate that their party remains intact and use “we” language to assume membership as a lay-person in that organization, as Kim Campbell does, or in a group, as Nicole Malliotakis does; We may not have won this race… but we have made our voices, heard. (2017: New York City, USA)

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This frames the now-finished electoral race as a success, regardless of the loss, and deflects attention from the personal social death: Now my friends, Albertans have hired us to lead a constructive and effective opposition. (Rachel Notley, 2019: Alberta, Canada)

Not surprisingly, the most common form of time-work in relation to the past that women political losers perform is extending the timeline. They highlight the history and journey of women in politics. This includes stressing the power of women to endure in the face of adversity as they work to advance the role of women in politics. Mia Love, for example, was attacked by the media in what she calls a “horrible” election. Despite the fact that her “ethics, [her] record, [was] lied about, tarnished, and repeated over and over again on TV right in front of our children,” she persevered (2018: Utah, USA). Hillary Clinton makes similar comments, “I’ve had successes, and I’ve had setbacks. Sometimes really painful ones” and yet she pressed on (2016: Federal Election, USA). Julia Gillard faced internal divisions in her party, and yet she can point to her successes. Many take the time to give extended thanks to those who came before them, such as Rachel Notley and Christine Hallquist. Some losing incumbents highlight that they were the first woman to serve in that role, such as Julia Gillard. Others draw directly on historical timelines to emplace themselves on that timeline: I think we can look back at the past with rose coloured glasses. My dad today when I took him, he and my mom to vote, he was talking about how his mom talked so much about not having been able to vote until she was thirty or so, and he said it’s just like yesterday, he remembers that so there have been fights throughout our history. (Kathleen Wynne, 2018: Ontario, Canada) Standing beside my grandchildren that morning, I was reminded of my grandmothers, who grew up in a time when a woman could not even vote, in Newfoundland and Labrador. Let alone run for office or lead a government. Ten months later, in October of twenty eleven, I became the first woman, to win a mandate, as premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. (Kathy Dunderdale, 2014: Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Resignation)

Nicole Malliotakis combines her role in the timeline of women in politics with that of immigrants:

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Because I believe, this New York, the one that my parents came to as immigrants. And that it is becoming increasingly difficult to make it in the city of New  York… And we can ensure, that millions of others have the same opportunity as I had… today, I had the opportunity to walk, and vote with my parents, who came here, as immigrants not knowing the language not having any family not having any friends, and yet in one generation their daughter, was running to be mayor of the city of New York, the city that they love. (2017: New York City, USA)

Women political losers position the timeline of women, and immigrants in the case of Nicole Malliotakis, to take precedence over the current loss-at-­ hand. This has the dual benefit of placing themselves on the timeline, rendering their social death the act of a martyr for a cause, as well as simultaneously grouping themselves with other women by using “we” language, to mitigate the social death. They are both disengaging from the lost race (Ebaugh, 1988) and engaging with history and the timeline of women in politics. Present: Together and Apart from the Past The present moment on the timeline is tricky because this is the moment of the women losers’ own social deaths. They overtly follow Mead’s argument that the past exists in the present only through the lens of the present (Flaherty & Fine, 2001) by recasting the past in terms of present accomplishments. Rhetoric around the past dually works to separate the past from the present, segmenting off the present as more advanced than the past, while also connecting the past and present in an ongoing timeline of continued struggle and advancement of women’s role in politics. Turning first to separation of the present from the past, women political losers perform time-work when they delineate present accomplishments specifically against the backdrop of the past. Those who lost as incumbents or stepped down for whatever reason turned to accomplishments of their time in office: It has been the defining passion of my life, that every Australian child gets a great opportunity at a life of work, and the dignity that comes with work, gets a great opportunity for the education that they should have. (Julia Gillard, 2013: Federal Election, Australia)

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That’s why, we’re building roads, and transit, and water systems and schools and hospitals everywhere in this province. That’s why your child, can get his or who-her tuition covered, if it’s hard for you to pay. And that’s why your baby’s prescription is free. Because we’re investing in his or her healthy start. And that’s why your kids, that’s why your kids can go to full day kindergarten. And it’s why, if you’re in a, in an abusive relationship, there are more supports in place for you. That’s why there’s more care for your mum and dad who need it in their homes. Government exists to do the things, that we can’t do ourselves. And that job is never done. (Kathleen Wynne, 2018: Ontario, Canada)

Kelly O’Dwyer, Kerryn Phelps, Rachel Notley, and Theresa May follow suit; they list their accomplishments in office as present-day successes that elevate this moment and themselves over a past they have improved upon. Katie Hill even points to her final act in office as a present success: voting for the impeachment of Donald Trump “on behalf of the women of the United States of America” (2019: US House of Representatives Resignation). Those who lost a race as a challenger more specifically framed the events of the election as successful in the present: We may not have won this race… but we have made our voices, heard. (Nicole Malliotakis, 2017: New York City, USA) It’s the woman who fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who neither nor, neither know victory nor defeat. That’s what today is about for me. That’s what today is about for New Jersey. (Kim Guadagno, 1993: Federal Election, Canada) I am very proud of that. We took a chance to change the narrative in political races and while we came up a little bit short, I have to tell you we still got over 600,000 votes. Right, in the end? (Heather French-Henry, 2019: Kentucky, USA)

These women reframe their loss as a successful act of democratic and civic engagement, shaping the present moment as a sort of win—and a separation of the past. They encourage the moment of that speech to stand in for a protracted time of engagement, while shedding the sense of loss of the election and all they may have done before.

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At the same time, while women bracket the present as a stand-alone moment of celebration of accomplishments, they also must connect the dots on the timeline of women in history in order to secure their accomplishments as relevant in the grander scheme of things. They construct the present as their moment to shine on a timeline with a deeply connected past and a hopeful future. By stressing their agency, they can even include themselves as the timeline slides past this present moment, into the future: And let me begin by saying to every girl, and every young woman, watching tonight. I believe in you and never stop believing in yourself. I hope that we have shown you that in your life anything, is possible. And y’know sometimes, sometimes it can feel like you take two steps forward and then one step back. But may you never, ever stop taking those steps forward. (Rachel Notley, 2019: Alberta, Canada) We [women] will not stand down, we will not be broken. We will not be silenced, we will rise and we will make tomorrow better than today. Thank you, and I yield the balance of my time for now, but not forever. (Katie Hill, 2019: US House of Representatives Resignation) And to all the little girls, who are watching this: Never doubt, that you are valuable, and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams. (Hillary Clinton, 2016: Federal Election, USA)

These women losers reframe the loss as a moment of agency and, most importantly, as a moment to celebrate on the timeline of women in politics. Women can come away from these speeches feeling empowered to try their hand at politics. Time-work around the present recasts the past as both further from the present, in that there have been changes and advances, and as inherently connected to the present on a timeline of women in politics. Future-talk solidifies this timeline. Future: The Timeline Negates Social Death Time-work around the future completes the image of the timeline of women in politics, from the suffragette movement to women running for political office, to women holding the highest political positions. Even in countries, such as Australia and Canada, where women have already been

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prime minister, extending the timeline is still important. With that timeline continuing forward, those women become important icons or markers in the sustained fight for equality of women. The journey does not end with their having served in those roles, particularly if their concession speech works to reframe their loss, or stepping down, as historically important in moving history forward. Julia Gillard’s speech embodies this sentiment as she extends the timeline forward, long into the future: The reaction to being the first female prime minister, does not explain everything about my prime ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my prime ministership… What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman, and the woman after that, and the woman after that. And I’m proud of that. (2013: Federal Election, Australia)

Hillary Clinton, who lost the U.S. presidential election in 2016, connected to the future in similar ways as Julia Gillard by connecting her actions with the future successes of women: I know, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling. But someday, someone will and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. (Hillary Clinton, 2016: Federal Election, USA)

Several political losers framed the present as the beginning, invoking the future as the true locus for political change which depends on the present moment. Christine Hallquist, Cynthia Nixon, and Kerri Claire Neil all respectively use the phrases, “this is not the end, this is the beginning,” “[it] is just beginning” and, “this is only the beginning.” Turning attention toward the future sets up their actions as part of the prerequisite for the coming better future. Women losers gift the future to the next generation, while continuing to use “we” language to include herself in an ongoing future fight. “We all need to keep fighting for a better future,” as Amy McGrath puts it (2018: Kentucky, USA). Diane Black tells her listeners that the young people who volunteered “are the future” (2018: Tennessee, USA). Katie Hill expresses her conviction that she will not let her experience scare off other women in the future. Olivia Chow addresses young people directly, saying, “I say to our young people, our city needs you” (2014: Toronto, Canada). By turning attention to the future, but continuing to use we language to claim agency, as discussed above, women losers are refusing to disengage with their role in politics, despite being in the midst of a public social

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death. They work to mitigate that death by invoking a future that involves themselves working with others: We’ll be working to make housing more affordable for ordinary families, by building more of it. We’ll be working to make our transit system better by continuously building, to a plan, that makes sense. And we’ll be working in this city to make our streets safer. (Jennifer Keesmaat, 2018: Ontario, Canada)

One way to accomplish this is to reframe the election as being about a social movement, not about the candidate herself: This election has never been about me. It’s about all of us. All of us here. All of us coming together to make progress, on a lifelong journey, to end child poverty, and achieve equality. [Authors’ Emphasis] (Olivia Chow, 2014: Toronto, Canada) This is too important: this election was never about the candidate. It was always about the importance for the future of the state that we all love. And our children and our public schools and our environment and our health care, and our economy… this election again is about Florida, the future of Florida. That’s what we were fighting for, it was never about the candidate. It’s about the state. [Authors’ Emphasis] (Gwen Graham, 2018: Florida, USA) It’s about building a progressive movement all across our state and across our country that lifts the sights of our citizens just a little bit higher. (Donna Edwards, 2016: Maryland, USA)

These women distance themselves from the election and at the same time direct attention to an ongoing movement, in which they will still participate. Many women are able to perform an intricate dance of both continued engagement with public life, but also disengagement from the specific role they are leaving. In this sense, they do acknowledge the social death in one arena, but simply transfer their efforts back to involvement with the people. For example, while Katie Hill states that the fight will go on, and she will be involved in that fight, she also elaborates that she will “move on to one of the many other battlefields” (2019: US House of Representatives Resignation). Also, Hilary Clinton embraces her position on the timeline and uses that to encourage other young women. She uses “we” language to demonstrate continued commitment to working with the people in the future. She will live on, and yet she will leave the role of president to

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someone else. Her social death is a good death, however, because she has paved the way for young girls in the future. The future is, therefore, a key hinge-­point for women losers in the dual engagement and disengagement with politics and political life.

Still Workin’ Turning to their professed plans of remaining active in the public arena, women political losers simultaneously accomplish and resist Ebaugh’s dynamics of disengagement by planning to remain active with politics and their political life after losing, and by reframing the social responsibility of the political position. Women often deflect political death emphasising their preparations to continue their civic responsibilities in their social lives. As mentioned previously, the importance of women losers’ ongoing engagement after the election neutralizes the depth of the loss and creates an afterlife of activism. They do acknowledge the social death in one arena, but simply transfer their efforts back to involvement with the people. Losing women reframe citizenship responsibilities as responsibilities she will continue to hold, as civic duty relates to all engaged citizens including politicians, not only politicians. This reframing occurs in concession speeches as the losing woman owes this effort back to the community that she now finds herself a part of again without title. She intends to give back to the community that supported her with and without the election results: I love this state. And I believe that I did great things for our state, and I still believe that we can still, I can still, our family can still be a part, of making things better in this state. But cha know, sometimes God has a different plan. And I’m blessed in my life that I’ve worked hard, to give back to the state of Tennessee. And that won’t end tonight. That does not end, just because I was not elected. As long as I have a breath in my body, I will continue to give back to the state that I love. (Diane Black, 2018: Tennessee, USA)

Heather French-Henry details this owed effort in apolitical terms of fighting for those in the community who have also engaged in civic responsibilities. The shared civic duties that activate communities do not rely on election results: Above and beyond any title that I could ever have, I will always be the daughter of a veteran, that will never expire. There’s never a term limit to that title, and our 300,000 illustrious warriors across the state will always

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have me in their corner. Because if there’s one population of people that we need to continue to fight for, it’s those who have fought for us. (Heather French-Henry, 2019: Kentucky, USA)

Stacey Abrams speaks of a lived commitment to civic responsibility. This means that the commitment is based on one’s continued experience of the effects of those civic actions, not based in title and position: And I will not waver in my commitment, a lived commitment, to work across party lines, and across divisions, to find a common purpose, in protecting our democracy. (Stacey Abrams, 2018: Georgia, USA)

Beyond creating a sort of afterlife, losing women politicians take on the role of emotion management of and for the voters. With a focus on individual agency, women commit to still being involved in service to society, thus extending a feminised role of caring for and taking care of others into politics and then beyond. Working within the community and through community engagement, women remain politically attuned and visible, thus mitigating their social death. This is starkly in contrast to Shaffir and Kleinknecht’s (2005) finding that men retreat to spend time with their families, rather than extend a role of caring in public: And I sincerely wish you all the best as our mayor. All of us here stand ready to help you. As you get to work, on making Toronto, a great city. We will give you a hand. (Olivia Chow, 2014: Toronto, Canada) I will always be grateful, and I will stand with you in the hard work that lies before us, in creating a great city, that is for absolutely, everyone… We’ll work on these things because we know they’re what we need in our city, but we also know, that they are what the people of Toronto want. (Jennifer Keesmaat, 2018: Ontario, Canada)

With a pseudo-political afterlife, a candidate emphasizes how she will then be kept alive through the momentum of the historical project of the emancipation of women: So, let’s keep that momentum going. We all have a role to play. Every single one of us. And as the song says, and I’m gonna paraphrase; [singing] ♪ we’re, still, standing ♪ [Laughter] [Cheers]. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Merci. Merci. (Kathleen Wynne, 2018: Ontario, Canada)

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While this caring props up feelings of togetherness and unity, women remain committed to the fight for future well-being which they consider (now that they have lost the election) more important than the fight for political position. This fight again reframes the social responsibility of the position by demonstrating that this effort is necessary and vital for all citizens in a community to engage in, not just those with a political title. This chapter ends with an excerpt from Mia Love’s speech which epitomises the collective narrative effort of women to transcend their symbol, social death. Good news is, I’m not going away. But now I am unleashed, I am untethered, and I am unshackled. And I can say exactly what’s on my mind. I have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. I will continue to do that. I have sworn to protect life at all stages of development, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I will continue to do that. I will continue to raise conservative values while taking people into my heart and into my home wherever I go. Best of all, I don’t need a title or ­permission to do that … So I can actually say the things that I believe will make some good positive changes in our country and I don’t have to worry about who’s gonna be okay with it, and who’s not going to be okay with it. (Mia Love, 2018: Utah, USA)

Conclusion Political loss represents a public symbolic and social death. Women who lose political elections demonstrate an impressive array of deflection rhetoric, as do men. However, their different strategies speak to the distinct historical context of women and their relationship to public life, voting, and running for office. Women establish their own agency in their concession speeches. “We” language includes themselves, despite their loss, in a broader political movement. In addition, by virtue of having agency, they point towards their own empowered engagement with the political process. Their own agency is important because they forcefully establish a timeline of women and their history and having agency demonstrates their participation in that timeline. Of course, these concessions speeches are still political, rhetorical devices and the “we” they use may be more or less inclusive. Nevertheless, by describing past struggles, contemporary successes, and hopes for the future, women place themselves on the timeline. This presents their symbolic, social death as a good death, a noble death on the overall trajectory of women in politics. In addition, women

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political losers, unlike their male counterparts, mitigate their death by committing to a future in public service, creating an afterlife for themselves and continuing to take on a caring role in the public arena.

Appendix Abrams, Stacey Bennett, Cathy Black, Diane Campbell, Kim Chow, Olivia Coffin, Alison Neil, Kerri Claire Dunderdale, Kathy Edwards, Donna Ford, Betty French-Henry, Heather Gillard, Julia Graham, Gwen Heitkamp, Heidi Hill, Katie Horwath, Andrea Keesmaat, Jennifer Love, Mia Lundergan-Grimes, Alison Malliotakis, Nicole May, Elizabeth May, Theresa McGrath, Amy McKinney, Cynthia McMahon, Linda Nixon, Cynthia Notley, Rachel O’Dwyer, Kelly Phelps, Kerryn Ward, Kelli Wilson, Jenny Wilson-Raybould, Jody Wynne, Kathleen

2018 United States, Georgia Gubernatorial Election 2017 Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Cabinet Minister Resignation 2018 United States, Tennessee Senate Election 1993 Canadian Federal Election 2014 Canadian Toronto Mayoral Election 2018 Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Provincial Election 2018 Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Municipal By-Election 2014 Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Resignation 2016 United States, Maryland Senate Election 1976 United States Federal Election, for President Gerald Ford 2019 United States, Kentucky General election 2013 2018 2018 2019 2014 2018 2018 2014 2017 2019 2019 2018 2006 2012 2018 2019 2019 2019 2018 2018 2019

Australian Federal Election United States, Florida Gubernatorial Election United States, North Dakota Senate Election United States House of Representatives Resignation Canadian Ontario Election Canadian Ontario Municipal Election United States, House of Representatives Election United States, Kentucky Senate Election

United States, New York Mayoral Election Canadian Green Party of Canada Leader Resignation British Prime Minister Resignation United States, Kentucky General Election United States, House of Representatives Election United States, Senate Election United States, New York Democratic Primary Election Canadian Alberta Provincial Election Australian Federal Election Australian Federal Election United States, Republican Primary Election United States, Utah Election Canadian Minister of Veterans Affairs & Associate Minister of National Defense Resignation (letter) 2018 Canadian Ontario Provincial Election

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Shaffir, W., & Kleinknecht, S. (2005). Death at the Polls: Experiencing and Coping with Political Defeat. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 34(6), 707–738. Stuart, K.  L. (2008). Emotional Labour and Occupational Identity: Passionate Rationality in the New Zealand Parliamentary Workplace (PhD), Massey University. Theakston, K., Gouge, E., & Honeyman, V. (2007). Life after Losing or Leaving: The Experience of Former Members of Parliament. School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. Turner, R. W. (2010). NFL Means Not for Long: The Life and Career of the NFL Athlete (PhD), City University of New York. van den Scott, L.-J. K., Forstie, C., & Balasubramanian, S. (2015). Shining Stars, Blindsides, and “Real” Realities: Exit Rituals, Eulogy Work, and Allegories in Reality Television. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44(4), 417–449. Vanlangenakker, I., Wauters, B., & Maddens, B. (2013). Pushed Toward the Exit? How Female MPs Leave Parliament. Politics & Gender, 9(1), 61.

CHAPTER 6

Identity in Reverse: Exploring ‘Broken Typifications’ and Calibrating ‘Depth’ in Interpretive Inquiry with Ex-Straightedgers Jason Torkelson

Introduction A tradition of interpretive inquiry into chosen identities that are taken to be distinctive, radical, or spectacular—by either affiliates or observers—has taken shape in recent decades, particularly in subcultural studies. Indeed, the meaning systems gleaned from participating punks, goths, indie rockers, straightedgers, ravers, and electronic dance enthusiasts (among many other affiliations and identification constellations) have anchored the analysis or received critical contextualization in numerous influential studies (cf. Widdicombe & Wooffitt, 1995; Muggleton, 2000; Haenfler, 2006; Hodkinson, 2002; Fonarow, 2006; LeBlanc, 1999; Olaveson, 2004). The treatment of identity in these works has been situated within debates over

J. Torkelson (*) University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_6

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its depth and (in)stability (see Bennett, 1999) in a post-World War 2 West where many emergent identities became understood as fundamentally voluntary, potentially temporary, and now part of a broad process of serial elective identification (see generally Giddens, 1991; Bauman, 1992, 1996). Although the surrender of (ostensibly extreme) elective identities is widely acknowledged or even posited as pervasive, it remains the case that relatively little empirical attention has been paid to the meanings that might more uniquely reside in these types of identities after their relinquishment. This at least partly stems from a frontward bent in predominant theories framing the field, and considerable social science generally, of reflexive modernity and cultural postmodernism. Both perspectives emphasise contemporary identification where it is continuously negotiated and unfolding (e.g. Giddens, 1991; Bauman, 1992; see also Maffesoli, 1996). Similarly, Ebaugh’s (1988) landmark investigation into voluntary identity exit using Mertonian social role theory—which continues to inform identity transition across diverse contexts (see e.g. Drahota & Eitzen, 1998; Shaffir & Kleinnknecht, 2005; Simi et al., 2007)—is itself likewise generally cast in forward-moving frames like imagining alternatives, role anticipation, role residuals, as well as turning points like trauma, burn-out, and last straw scenarios. Goffman’s (1961) related concept of “moral career”—in which a “first phase” “pre-patient” career, for example, can only be subjectively realised following hospitalisation—perhaps most pointedly hinted that understandings of former identities ought to be unique, and even commonly so. Yet, the fuller phenomenological implications of the “post-patient” or “ex” standpoint have continued to lag in empirical inquiry. “Third phase” reverse (re)constructions of past identities may potentially be especially significant where they are likely to be less constrained than “second phase” self-stories, such as those Goffman found in the “in-patient” world of the total institution (see Goffman, 1961). Furthermore, third phase identities may assume multiplicities of forms in contemporary times, where serial elective identification is increasingly the norm. In this chapter, I draw on some key concepts from social phenomenology (Schutz, 1967; Berger & Luckmann, 1966) and narrative identity (Ezzy, 1998; Somers, 1994; Ricoeur, 1991) that connect with predominant conceptualizations of serial elective identification (Giddens, 1991; Bauman, 1992). I use these to directly explore aspects of identity, identity depth, and identity disposition that might best be accessed by subjectively

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“looking back.” Highlighting retrospective sense-making processes, I indicate potential avenues for further interpretive investigations into identity from a reverse standpoint. My data came from 44 in-depth interviews with North Americans who exited straightedge, a youth-oriented subculture based upon a strict lifetime pledge to abstain from intoxication. In straightedge, identity exit is an unambiguously marked and typically significant event (Torkelson, 2010; Haenfler, 2006). My interviews focused on ex-members’ reflections upon both straightedge and its relation to other identifications of choice across their life histories. Straightedge is just one example of a substantive chosen identity individuals may relinquish, though the long-documented general salience of straightedge identity and starkness of leaving straightedge (Torkelson, 2010; Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006; Williams, 2006) arguably make it an exemplary focal point for this inquiry. As Berger and Luckmann (1966, p.  157) describe of the individual who “switches worlds”, “if the processes involved in the extreme cases are clarified, those of less extreme cases will be understood more easily”. I crucially used “active” interviewing methods (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995), whereby informant and interviewer jointly establish the terms of the interview. In this case, ex-straightedgers were asked to imagine exchange with their (perceived) former straightedge self. This was vital to establishing a dynamic that could most fully tap into: (1) how retrospective (re)interpretations of identities like straightedge might sediment into forms distinctive to hindsight, or best access what I call broken typifications, and (2) ways certain relinquished identities may similarly enable subjects to usefully calibrate, compartmentalize, or interconnect with other identity spheres when prompted to reflect back upon their broader subjective identification history. My analysis of the interview data revealed how retrospective reflections on certain surrendered identities may shed unique light upon the discrete identities themselves, schemas individuals occupy in relation to identities, as well as how identity “depth” and “disposition” are negotiated in contemporary milieux which are increasingly characterized by multiplication, change, and cultural omnivorousness. The concept of serial elective identification, whereby individuals engage in and relinquish increasing numbers of identities through their lives, can be substantially traced to specific cultural transformations that germinated in the mid-twentieth century. As these processes continue to expand, this invites the interpretive study of elective identification in reverse, through a fuller, retrospective gaze.

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(Serial) Elective Identification The shape of identification is a longstanding bedrock in sociological theory. Among even varied thinkers, a strand of consensus exists where identities are broadly conceptualized as direct givens in premodern times and still fairly fixed descriptors through the development of organized modernity (Durkheim, 1893; Weber, 1922; Parsons & Shils, 1951; Giddens, 1991; Bauman, 1992, 1996; Baudrillard, 1994). Following the Second World War, however, it is generally understood that a different form of identification began materializing in the West. These were times where consumption wove its way into everyday life, and into identity as a reflection of belonging. With the emergence of “flexible accumulation” (Harvey, 1990), an elective component to identity took centre-stage, as individuals now had substantial space to self-fashion expressions—and counter-­ expressions—within post-War society’s explosion of signs, commodities, and communities. Many later twentieth century theoreticians, despite potentially deep-seated antagonisms, have agreed that such an elective component to identification has been increasingly central to Western life. Identity and social belonging evermore involve how one perceives and navigates their way through a continually expanding torrent of options (Baudrillard, 1994; Bauman, 1992; Beck, 1992; Bourdieu, 1984; Giddens, 1991; Jameson, 1991; Harvey, 1990). These identities individuals now move through have occupied a central place in social science research, cultural critique, and even popular discourse. Yet, the possible relevance of past chosen identification forms has not received the attention their more active manifestations or movements have. The de-emphasis on past forms is at least partly attributable to a forward-looking bent shared in certain predominant theoretical mappings of post-War identification in much empirical social science and popular cultural studies. In this vein, two primary camps claim heavy influence. On the one hand, some draw upon Giddens’ (1991) concept of reflexive modernity to view individuals as continuously revising self-understandings, by selecting their way through available identities in pursuit of entrenchment amidst the destabilization of traditional identification schemes (Giddens, 1991; see also Beck, 1992). On the other hand, claims of cultural postmodernism emphasise ambivalence, transience, and hybridity now thought possible as individuals are seen to float among—and through—ultimately

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heterogeneous and rapidly shifting cultural forms (Bauman, 1992, 1996, 2000; see also Maffesoli, 1996; Baudrillard, 1994). Both approaches recognise previously held identification phases. Yet, each risks obscuring the potential significance of identification forms individuals have moved on from by privileging forward movement. The quest for ontological security (Giddens, 1991) largely locates the project of identity in envisioned futures or an emerging present, which deemphasises prior identities. “[T]he future is thought of as resonant with possibilities” (Giddens, 1991, p. 77) to the subject, and “the future is continually drawn into the present by means of the reflexive organization of knowledge environments” (ibid., p.  3). Likewise, the postmodernist deconstruction of authenticity and focus on fluctuating consumption possesses little concern for taste preferences left to the past’s ephemera. Insofar as these frames—if just tacitly—govern inquiry into identity, where relinquished identities, identification phases, or degrees of retrospective gaze might nonetheless be uniquely significant, aspects of what (an) identity may mean and its implications for understanding how subjects traverse contemporary elective identification may risk being missed.

Broken Typifications: Looking Back Upon Surrendered Identity and Schemata Through the Narrating Self Foundationally key for retrospective interpretive inquiry into these identity movements is the constitution of subjective meaning, in terms of both classificatory schemes (Zerubavel, 1997) and the processes of nominating—and rescinding—affiliation. Here, key concepts from social phenomenology like “intentionality”, or the reflective effort required to “typify” experience into cultural concepts accrued from an individual’s past, present, and envisioned future, which comprise their “meaning-context” (or schemata), can be instructive (Schutz, 1967; see also Husserl, 1982 [1913]). From this standpoint, subjectively held identity involves multitudinous interpreted moments, actions, or situations that an individual typifies in terms congruous with whatever identification configurations are significant within their presently held reflective “meaning-context”. Put another way in part, where and insofar as a chosen identity is salient, experience is typified through and action oriented toward whatever schematic and social interactional parameters correspond to it. As Schutz (1967)

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notes, on the matter of accomplishing voluntary action, “what does exist is only an Ego, which, together with its motives, comprises an unbroken becoming” (p. 67). Paramount for engaging with identities that are relinquished here are possible shifts in the subject’s reflective paradigm (or “meaning-context”) and the forms through which such phenomena are accounted for. Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) concept of “alternations” between old and new realities mediated by different sets of significant others is particularly illustrative where it is posited it to result in the “retrojection into the past of present interpretive schemas…and motives that were not subjectively present in the past but that are now necessary for the reinterpretation” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 160; see also Mead, 1929). Regarding the possibility of accounting for (an imagined version of) the past self’s standpoint, Schutz (1967) noted complementarily “the self-explication of my own lived experience takes place within…meaning-contexts developed out of my previous lived experience. In these meaning-contexts all my past lived experiences are at least potentially present to me…I can potentially observe the lived experiences which they have built up.” (p. 105). Sociological work since then has focused on the constitutive relationship between lived experience and autobiographical narrative, whereby actors construct meaningful stories about their lives via available sociocultural repertoires (see Ezzy, 1998; Somers, 1994). DeGloma’s (2014) analysis of transitions fastened between opposing “worldviews” where the self becomes “temporally divided” is particularly noteworthy. These broader insights can be usefully extended and applied to the interpretive study of the chosen identities of recent times, and the more diversified standpoints that may follow their surrender. This applies to how actors may differentially emplot identity categories and attendant meaning systems as well as uniquely account for these in retrospective narratives that can only be actualized from perceived degrees of distance (see also Ricoeur, 1991). Identity schemas can either be significantly lodged within one’s “meaning-­context” during active identity manifestations or potentially scalloped out of it to move past the boundary of subjective affiliation in alternation. This causes a break in the typification of experience, which can be examined using conceptual ideal types. On the one hand, there are simply possibilities of confluent typifications, or characterizations that hold form following relinquishment. More significantly for this analysis, there are the possibilities of broken typifications where reflections upon a subjective identity, schematic understandings once attached to it, and the place

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of these in personal narratives are no longer interpreted/articulated through the reflective paradigm or “meaning context” that governed while the identity was (most) actively held. My concept of broken typifications may help to identify and explain changes that do not fit into the active, forward-looking theoretical frameworks in which contemporary elective identification has been understood. This may potentially extend the range of meanings the interpretive analyst can glean from any referent identity.

Calibrating Depth: Looking Back Upon Touring and Travelling the Contemporary Milieu Beyond a focus on any singular identity referent, more general hindsight constructions of identification history may reveal how subjects (have) approach(ed) identity “depth” or “disposition”. Here, drawing upon Bauman (1996), Sweetman (2004) distinguishes two typologies that correspond to the processes of identification posited in the central frames of reflexive modernity and cultural postmodernism, respectively. Associated with cultural postmodernism, one’s disposition might exhibit a “tourist” sensibility—promiscuous, fickle, possibly even carnivalesque—in which individuals embrace the ephemerality or partiality available in identity options on offer (Bauman, 1992, 1996, 2000; Baudrillard, 1994). Or, one might tend toward a “traveller” sensibility aligned with modernist concerns for knowing, authenticity, and fixity (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992), even up to retaining the interiority—the differentiating assertion of “I am”—idealized in the modern subject’s emergence (cf. Durkheim, 1893). In Sweetman’s (2004, p. 91) words, “where the tourist accepts, acknowledges, and openly celebrates the superficial, postmodern environment, the traveller seeks—and claims—authenticity on the basis of greater depth in involvement—whether real or imagined—with various stop off points on his or her itinerary.” The contributing implication of the argument is that by occupying the same space—a cultural environment where increasing arrays of identification options are navigated—individuals are freed to gravitate toward either disposition as much as they are to engage discrete identities. Some may use these as “travelling stops” while others simply “tour through” them if it meets their sensibilities. These dispositions have generally been treated in isolation when prospectively applied to how individuals account for

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their identities. The departure made in the present study, then, is to consider how, within retrospective accounts, these sensibilities might be represented on phenomenological levels, and where they might coexist, be compartmentalized, intersect, or give way to one another across time. Before proceeding to the data, I more fully detail the identity anchoring this study which individuals almost comprehensively approach via a travelling disposition: straightedge.

Straightedge Straightedge emerged as a drug-free movement against rampant intoxication in early 1980s punk culture. “Straightedge” became an identity for sober-minded punks to positively affiliate when it was coined by seminal Washington DC hardcore/punk band Minor Threat and a code of behaviour through the band’s anthem “Out of Step” where vocalist Ian Mackaye proclaims, “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink…at least I can fucking think!” (Minor Threat, 1983). The letter “X” developed as an enduring marker of identity during these times when straightedge punks of all ages began drawing large black ‘X’ symbols on their hands to show pride in being drug-free in response to policies at punk rock clubs that used such markings to distinguish those below drinking age. The continued relationship between hardcore/punk music and straightedge cannot be overstated, and straightedge continues to be practiced in relatively autonomous community both online and offline (Williams & Copes, 2005; Williams, 2006; Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006). At its core, straightedge is understood as a “personal choice” (Haenfler, 2006) requiring a lifetime of strict abstinence from intoxication. Once assumed, identity salience is typically high and precepts can possess almost a religious fervor for some; slogans like “True till Death” and tattoos affirming the permanence of straightedge identity are common (Atkinson, 2003; Wood, 2006; Haenfler, 2006). As Williams (2006, p.  78) notes, “straightedgers identify themselves in contrast to mainstream culture, [and] many construct rigid boundaries”. Pathways in and out of straightedge can vary somewhat. However, entrance into straightedge most frequently involves youth boundaries against a larger culture understood to glorify intoxication, and perceived conventional parents and peers therewithin. Friendship circles can play a role in prompting affiliation in certain instances, and involvement in straightedge community becomes galvanizing for many in any case. In

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addition, for some, negative experiences with drugs and alcohol are a factor (see Torkelson, 2016; Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006). The process of leaving straightedge may be accomplished by simply relinquishing identity on its own, but overwhelmingly involves the incorporation of intoxicants into one’s life to some degree or another (Torkelson, 2010, 2016; Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006). Perhaps most importantly for this analysis, there is strong evidence to suggest straightedge identity schemas influence how adherents typify experience, action, and orient themselves in various social situations. Scholarly and documentary work consistently shows straightedge lends many adherents a strong sense of self, community, and entrenchment, which they positively contrast against their cultural backdrop (Haenfler, 2006, Wood, 2006; Kuhn, 2010; Williams, 2006; Peterson, 2009). These processes can endure in forms for those who affiliate into their 30s and 40s (Haenfler, 2012, 2018). A substantial number of adherents elect to incorporate ancillary attachments into their straightedge identities, such as activism, contrarian ethics, spirituality, and secondary abstinences like veganism, avoidance of promiscuity, caffeine, prescription medication, among others (Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006; Torkelson, 2010). Regardless of individual preferences, straightedgers are frequently compelled to assume positions on these (and other) issues, which can frame their worldviews in manners not necessarily readily intelligible to outsiders (Peterson, 2009; Haenfler, 2006). Despite the potential strength of affiliation, many do eventually exit straightedge and move into other identification spheres, a highly significant and generally irreversible process called “breaking edge” (Torkelson, 2010, 2015; Haenfler, 2006; Wood, 2006). In extreme cases “edge breakers” can be treated akin to religious outcasts in community contexts (Haenfler, 2006). The status of being ex-straightedge then provides an unambiguous indicator of identity ex-hood. My analysis explores retrospective reflections upon leaving straightedge, focusing on the identity schemas participants associated with straightedge and their relations to any other identities they nominated in their identity life histories.

Recruitment and Interview Procedures I conducted 44 in-depth, in-person “active” (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995) retrospective interviews with ex-straightedgers in the USA and Canada between 2007–2013. I used snowball and convenience methods since

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there is no systematic way to sample ex-straightedgers. I recruited most respondents via hardcore/punk music internet messageboards associated with various localities. Many messageboard users volunteered for interviews; others referred qualifying individuals. Some additional respondents were recruited via word-of-mouth. The final sample was relatively geographically diverse within North America,1 garnered through several distinct chains, which offsets some shortcomings in snowball sampling (Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981). The interviews lasted 70 minutes on average. I transcribed them all, assigning pseudonyms to respondents. The mean age of respondents was 27, within a range of 18–43. Every interviewee previously identified as straightedge. All reported intoxicant usage in “breaking edge”. Some respondents still felt involved in music communities associated with straightedge to varying degrees, while others described more fully moving on from these as well. These considerations did not appear to influence how respondents spoke of straightedge specifically in retrospect. The interviews were semi-structured and frequently conversational (Denzin, 1989). However, the bulk of presented data stemmed from lines of questioning directly aimed at how respondents conceived of straightedge as a cultural artifact from ex-hood, their current understandings of meaning systems they occupied while straightedge, what straightedge now meant to them as a part of their narrative life history, and how they weighed (movement through) straightedge relative to other identities. “Active interviewing”, where informant and interviewer partake in establishing the terms of the interview, was crucial to accessing some of these issues (see Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). In particular, informants frequently made subjective recollections of straightedge in terms of depth and as a salient frame for understanding self at some point in their lives. This provided benchmarks against which respondents were asked to compare straightedge with other identities or identification phases across their entire life history from past to present. Respondents were also prompted to place their perceived former and current selves into dialogue via these benchmarks in light of exiting straightedge. This served as a means of accessing differential accounts of both straightedge itself and the wider meaning systems or “meaning context” (Schutz, 1967) interviewees 1  Urban localities respondents resided: NYC, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Winnipeg, Oakland, and state-level residences: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, Iowa, North Dakota.

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occupied while participating in straightedge (as they now understand this). Due to these active dynamics, some presented findings are exchanges rather than isolated quotations, especially in the second section. Interview schedule conversation prompts included: “Was straightedge real to you then”?, “Now?”, “What would you say to your straightedge counterpart if s/he was sitting here right now?”, “What would your straightedge counterpart say to you if s/he was sitting here right now? “There are a lot of different types of groupings (cliques/style communities/subcultures/music cultures) people might affiliate with, do you currently or have you in the past identified with any aside from straightedge?”, In what ways are these groups/distinctions similar to or different than straightedge?”, and “Are there any ways you feel you might be better equipped to discuss your time as straightedge after-the-fact as compared to your time as straightedge?”

Straightedge Identity in Retrospect: Differentially Animating Affiliation and Schemata A small minority of ex-straightedgers expressed a belief in holding general confluence regarding their understandings of straightedge on both sides of affiliation. Almost all described degrees of subjective continuity with at least some perceived facet of self they developed while embodying straightedge. Somewhat in this vein, and reminiscent of Ebaugh’s (1988) “role residuals”, straightedge was still largely described as having seeded various aspects of respondents’ later life politics, self-concepts, and understandings of connective experience (see Torkelson, 2010, 2015, 2022). Retrospective views of straightedge also had their own, distinctive form. Informants generally exhibited strong awareness of a shifted meaning system, and therefore often ably accounted for alternation (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The overwhelming majority directly believed they were tapping into an interpretation of (their former relation to) straightedge that was different—in some regards, fundamentally so—by virtue of their specifically occupying an “ex” status. For instance, as 23-year-old New Jersey graduate student Billy bluntly put it, “I understood straightedge differently after I broke edge”. Likewise, in considering his understandings of what straightedge was, 30-year-old New Jersey accountant Joey proclaimed, “I think that I learned more from breaking edge than I did from being edge”. Despite being a full decade past his time of

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affiliation, 28-year-old Pennsylvania resident Marcus even asserted feeling more reflective about straightedge nowadays. Indeed, within the immediate context of our interview, he said: It gives me both sides of the coin to think about/.../I’m considerably more serious about it [straightedge] now, considerably more informed now, not having been straightedge for a decade. So yeah, it’s definitely given me a better perspective…not being straightedge.

Marcus’s case shows how being “ex-” straightedge can enable new understandings unavailable to one’s counterpart at the time of affiliation. At the same time, some other participants hinted toward facets of straightedge identity, culture, or related meanings that might elude their present accounts by virtue of their no longer being oriented toward straightedge. Raul, a 29-year-old Pennsylvanian social worker, concisely illustrated this side of potential break in standpoint: If you’re still in it [straightedge], you can’t reflect on the end of it/.../Now I can like kinda look back with hindsight and kinda realize what was going on with me at the time. But I also think that there’s something that I don’t have now that I had then that would be much more authentic to talking about it.

Such a bifurcation of meaning systems, particularly where it was believed to access motivations and narratives unavailable to the past self (see also DeGloma, 2014), indeed foregrounded two primary—though frequently overlapping—forms through which straightedge was uniquely accounted with hindsight. First, the meanings of straightedge itself as a cultural artifact or facet of individual identity history were cast into new lights, which the informants believed were better accessible from the perspective of disaffiliation and distance. Second, respondents accounted for the related schematising “meaning-context” (Schutz, 1967) they described being oriented toward while accomplishing straightedge from (what they saw as) a more fully past standpoint. The comments of 32-year-old Philadelphia professional Jim provide a baseline illustration of both. In this excerpt, we see the retrospective emplotment of straightedge identity and the new narrative meanings that can be attached to it (see also Ricoeur, 1991). Jim also differentiated

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between external descriptions of straightedge as a social phenomenon and his own former understandings from inside straightedge: I [now] think it’s largely a suburban phenomenon because of boredom, and straightedge is like a backlash...I think if you’d ask me then I wouldn’t be able to give any more than a vague answer about it [straightedge] being important for me personally or physically, like health-wise. I [now] think it was more important as like being a part of, having a peer group.

Donny, a 27-year-old Minneapolis restaurant worker, echoes Jim’s (re) characterisations in that he too now sees his straightedge as having been motivated by group belonging. However, with respect to form, Donny’s narrative goes further in highlighting ways a number of interviewees were able to explicitly centre the lived experience of their formerly being oriented toward straightedge identification during the time of affiliation. Consider here Donny’s description of straightedge identity as a former inwardly held reflective meaning system. Like many others (see Haenfler, 2006), Donny described once attributing exceptional distinction to straightedge, and when I asked him if he believed this aspect of straightedge was real to him at the time he said: It’s not like you got up and had a worship service or something, but it [straightedge] was like something that you were...Everyday that’s what I was. I was very exuberant about that at that age. JT: How about now? Umm, no. Honestly, it [straightedge] just seems like some sort of immature club/.../Its [was] just a way to validate yourself instead of being a nameless, faceless part of something...You can even compare it to something like an eagle scout. It’s not the coolest thing in the world, you have to work a long time to get there, that’s a lot of time cub scouting.

Where respondents came to envision, assume, and/or assess perceived differences in reflective meaning systems like this during interviews, it helped to reveal their broken typifications. Indeed, Donny’s account, like Jim’s, shows him scalloped out of the reflective “meaning-context” through which he had previously typified his internal experiences and to which he had oriented his action. In his comments, we see broken typifications both upon his former straightedge meaning system and straightedge itself as a cultural artifact where he now catalogues it as akin to other—presumably mundane—affiliations like “cub scouting”.

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Some participants described more outwardly-directed intersections of their former identity schemes. Thirty-one-year-old Washington DC philosopher Thrasymachus reflected upon his former experiences in general as having been “filtered through straightedge categories” that he applied to other contexts. For example, here he voices a belief  he imposed these upon others to the deterioration of past personal relationships. Like others, Thrasymachus also differentially described straightedge identity and general schema when re-emplotting his motivations for affiliation: My experience, my observations of what it did to my relationships, and the way that I tended to judge other people in this kind of knee jerk way…was filtered through straightedge categories/…/[Straightedge was] this movement that I could identify with, or a set of ideas that were alive within a youth culture that I wanted to be a part of…It had an immediate visceral reality for me because I self-consciously oriented myself by reference in large part with its spirit, the spirit of its requirements. JT: Now? I reject the ideas that I then was so attached to. I’m not straightedge anymore. I think it’s a kind of infantile compensatory affectation that makes sense for me to have been drawn to and makes sense for a lot of people to be drawn to with similar circumstances.

Finally, in addition to potentially recharacterizing straightedge as an identity referent, facet of life history, or set of schematic parameters, differential accounts of remaining straightedge adherents or extant straightedge culture emerged. For example, Jay, a 25-year-old Toronto undergraduate, described how he now sometimes views those currently holding straightedge identities in light of his own experiences of leaving straightedge Its funny to think about it retrospectively, cause like at the time it [straightedge] was like this perfect message that came to me that allowed me to find this group of people/…/ I have other friends who are still straightedge…and it just seems like they’re stubborn. They’re stubborn, and they don’t wanna deal with it…Its just so much of their identity that they can’t walk away from it, or even face that, and they still have a lot of aggression if you try to talk to them about that kinda stuff. That unwillingness to re-evaluate, its just like such a terrible thing in general I think.

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Branching from Straightedge: Distinguishing Depth, Touring and Travelling While straightedge was resoundingly recounted as a substantive facet of identity history even in retrospect, it was certainly not a comprehensive identity while it was held. All respondents described engagement with other chosen identity spheres of some form when prompted, both while straightedge and at other points in their lives. Since straightedge was generally still understood as coherent and understood via a “traveller” disposition by informants, this provided a conversational anchor point from which to frame and calibrate other identities and identification dispositions during the interview exchanges (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Denzin, 1989). At its most basic level, many respondents were simply aided by how they now differently understood straightedge as an identifiable stage in their serial identity history from “ex-hood”. Characteristic of this was 27-year-old Winnipeg caterer, Claudette: You go through so many phases, and I hate to say that straightedge was a phase, but it was. I mean it was a really good stage and it was really good for me—I’m glad I was straightedge…. But it’s definitely something that I just grew out of and went to the next stage.

When reflecting outward from the “travelling” stop of straightedge, respondents often ably articulated perceptions of “depth” and “disposition” across their identity histories, and in general. Marcus, the Pennsylvania resident, demonstrated how personal experience with an affiliation like straightedge could serve as an evaluative base for framing depth. He discussed his affinity for the hardcore band “The Cro-Mags”, torchbearers of a Krishna Consciousness movement that intersected 1990s iterations of straightedge (see Wood, 2006). In this excerpted exchange, Marcus not only utilized his former experiences as a measuring stick to parse, or even profess to see in the first place, what he took as depth, but also asserted a belief that his own tastes appeared unduly flat to outsiders who did not possess similarly substantive involvements in their musical identity biographies. Marcus said: You tend to learn about other types of cultures when you are in a subculture I’ve found. A lot of people will just listen to radio music…I’ll know about all that kinda music they know about, and they wont even grasp hardcore or

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punk…You’ll listen to a band like The Cro-Mags and they’ll [dismissively] say “its like a headbanging Marilyn Manson music” or something. And it’s funny to listen to people be so naive about something like that, and you [by contrast] understand…their culture…You learn about other cultures besides just the one that you’re in. JT: Just so I get you here, you feel that it’s been able to help you see the minutiae or like the details of other possible things? Absolutely. JT: Where people on the outside can’t possibly grasp how deep it can go? Go pick five people at this bar and ask them about Krishna or something like that…They’ll probably just label it as some dudes that stand at the airport who hand out pamphlets. While, I went to see The Cro-Mags, the guy who headed the club was Krishna, so you learn about that kinda stuff…and then hip hop, and hardcore, and metal…Ya know, cultures.

These comments represent the baseline depth/non-depth frame through which many participants distinguished identification spheres, as our conversations branched away from straightedge. Where Marcus only applies non-depth to others, some respondents effectively classified pieces of their own identification histories as more ordered by ambivalence, even though these were often by nature more difficult to articulate (see also Muggleton, 2000). For example, the Minneapolis restaurant worker Donny, who no longer sees straightedge as an exceptional distinction, weighed a loose hybrid constellation of leisure pursuits to which he had taken a “tourist” approach—pop punk music, skateboarding, BMX biking—against how he simultaneously understood himself as straightedge. Specifically, Donny recalls not subjectively lodging these as part of any coherent identity project like he once did straightedge; rather, they were “just life” and did not make him believe he was “anything”. In junior high I was way into…what I think of as pop punk…we [also] liked to skateboard and BMX…but that wasn’t something that was related to anything/…/It’s a thing, but it’s not something that made you anything. JT: What might have made these other distinctions similar to or different from straightedge? There was no club name for it. There’s no…constraints on it…It was not exclusive…It was just life instead of like a direct message.

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While Donny only spoke of depth/non-depth in terms of his own compartmentalized past, and Marcus’ excerpt strictly attributes non-depth to others, the 25-year-old Brooklyn advertising agent Aaron provides a pointed example of how recollecting straightedge as a substantive identity period could enable respondents to perceive depth in other possible cultural affiliations and persons specifically. Consider the development of this exchange when Aaron discussed his post-straightedge interests: Gosh, I’m into a lot of different things at this point. Like I listen to a lot of different hip-hop. I like to write pop songs with my friends, and on my own time I’ve gotten involved with computers, advertising, gaming…I mean there’s a million different things… JT: So any of these other distinctions that you’ve thrown out there, are there any ways they are similar to or different from straightedge? A lot of them are very similar…Like hip-hop for example…I’ve met many people…that identify or align themselves strictly with that. One of the last roommates I had, he’s rapper, and its really all the guy cares about. I mean he smokes everyday because of hip-hop. He writes rap. He spends a lot of his free time in the studio. He’s dressed to fit the culture. There’s no way he could really be more dedicated to that ya know. And to pick something that’s a little less music or pop culture oriented, the people I work with now in advertising…they’ve taken all these things beyond hobby or beyond job or career, to lifestyle…I just don’t dedicate myself to any of those things as much as I [once] did.

In the vein of Aaron’s final comment, many respondents used the frame of depth/non-depth to explain personal change. Simon, a 29-year-old New Jersey Human Resources worker, reported being a fervent consumer of straightedge hardcore/punk music and active scene participant in his younger years, but said that his participation in musical cultures has significantly changed since that time. When I asked Simon if he still participated in the hardcore music scene he said, Not so much…It’s so like typical, I’m [now] like super into indie rock…I like electronic music and ambient metal—I’ve always liked metal…I have friends who are still in [straightedge hardcore] bands currently, so I’ll go see those bands when they come around, specifically, but if they’re not playing I don’t care/…/ JT: What makes say indie rock as an affiliation similar to or different from straightedge?

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It’s just music; it’s something I enjoy doing as opposed to a lifestyle. Even though I read music blogs and am into music, I can always put that stuff on the backburner and just like listen to music and enjoy it.

Though the tempering of Simon’s participation in music cultures with age is a familiar finding (Haenfler, 2006, 2012; Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012; Fonarow, 2006), his distinction between once approaching hardcore/ punk as “lifestyle” and later indie rock as “just music” reflects how larger dispositional shifts and continuities in identity histories were often contextualized. For many, a fuller continuous “traveller” sensibility was voiced. Regarding continued traveling, 31-year-old Brooklyn graduate student J-Dub, told me he once found fixity in the straightedge and hardcore community. J-Dub described always searching out feelings of connection to defined community in his current life, and exhibited a continued traveller sensibility when discussing his transition into computer tech start-up community: At any given point in my life…I definitely think of myself as being part of communities. I think when I was like 16 or 17 I was definitely seeing myself as being a local New York hardcore kid, going to local hardcore shows, I was involved in that… I was very involved with the local vegetarian hardcore kids…When I lived in Europe…almost all the people I got to know were people in the hardcore community…At this point Id say that the people I hang out with are in a community…Its a local tech start-up community/…/ Everyone is friends with everyone and everyone works on start-ups. To me, in many ways it’s the same type of insular community that I’ve always found myself in. It’s not one that is ostensibly about style.

As another example, 28-year-old Upstate New York librarian Navin also continued to seek entrenchment in his post-straightedge life, but in a more individualized form. Similar to both Simon and J-Dub, Navin asserted that hardcore/punk music “shows were your social life” and a place where “you’d really feel you were amongst friends”. Navin, however, told me he did not currently feel involved in any community. When we discussed whether anything in his present life might nonetheless conjure the feelings he associated with his music scene involvements when straightedge, he responded:

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Ummm, catching fish (laughs). I don’t wanna say that’s taken over my life…Last year I bought a large boat. I fish all winter long, I go to Lake Ontario for salmon. It consumes my time; it consumes my money, almost everything about me now. Maybe I have an addictive personality, but I get into something…all of my resources are put into it…

Life after straightedge took many forms, as Navin’s primary identification with his current passion as a fisherman well illustrates. Other respondents simultaneously contextualized movements toward—at the least, degrees of—tourist sensibilities when looking back upon transitioning from straightedge. For instance, 32-year-old Nashville librarian Micah, who notably compared his former time as straightedge to his current marriage, also told me he had since begun exploring a variety of new cultures like EDM and Goth, and that he now spent time as a DJ showcasing original “gothy techno kind of hybrid” music. Micah digressed into the evolution of his personal style when describing these shifts, which he noted had become increasingly promiscuous and less aimed at fixity since the time he was straightedge: As I kinda changed…I would borrow from skateboarding, I would borrow that look; I would borrow from the punk rock scene; I would borrow from hardcore. I would borrow from all different kinds of fashions or alternative culture fashions that incorporated and kind of ended up leading up to the way I dress now. So yeah, I just got back from Northern California, and this shirt is very California to me…I’ve got whatever…Its a mish mash!

Perhaps going further, 28-year-old Brooklyn make-up artist Johni recounted a pronounced traveller orientation to the intersection of style and identity in her formative years, but suggested that this had given way to a tourist sensibility. Her description of her approach to identification in the sphere of style in particular demonstrated a more comprehensive shift in disposition. Johni also strikingly exhibited sensitivity toward understanding where her abdication of consistency in stylistic identity might foster ontological insecurities (see Giddens, 1991) when she characterized it as “a very scary place” for others. She described both sides: It [was] very much about identity, I mean there’s no easier way to outwardly say “I am a part of this” than with your clothing, because that’s how we always judge each-other is externally, and that’s the whole concept behind the X’s on the back of your hands…

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JT: How do you dress now then? It depends. For me, as a storyteller, fashion is just an extension of that. It depends on who I want to be on that day, and I think that’s a very scary place for a lot of people to live. But I have a wide variety like, I’ll be Gothy and weird one day and Ill have the shit to wear for that, and I have the stuff that I like that’s a little bit softer and more feminine and a little less edgy maybe. But my fashion sense…it changes based on what I’m into at that time. I allow myself to be a bit more of a chameleon for that…

Discussion: Identity in Reverse This chapter used the example of straightedge, a chosen and frequently salient identity, to explore how the interpretive study of contemporary elective identification might be extended via a reverse gaze. Retrospective in-depth interviews showed that ex-straightedgers were often highly reflective with regard to possible shifts in their accounts across the boundary of identity affiliation. The standpoint of retrospection generally influenced their understandings of straightedge as a cultural artifact, the meaning systems related to straightedge they were once oriented toward, and how straightedge was narratively lodged into their identity histories. Straightedge provided interviewees a useful base from which to subjectively calibrate identity depth in other spheres and contextualise their general identification dispositions throughout their life. Ultimately, the case of straightedge shows how inquiry into past identification forms may usefully complement inferences that are more conventionally gleaned from active iterations of identity. There are numerous possible implications for interpretive inquiry into and understandings of contemporary serial elective identification. Perhaps most centrally, these data highlight that identification can be profitably studied in reverse, and that chosen ex-identities may be well represented on phenomenological levels in instances. Beyond the specific purchase interpretive methods have held in subcultural studies in recent decades, the meanings actors attach to their practices, self-concepts, and communities have long informed social research agendas: from the work of Max Weber (1922) through frameworks established by vanguard symbolic interactionists (Blumer, 1969; Stryker, 1980). Though undoubtedly possessing its own specific features, straightedge is an identity, like many, to which individuals associate, adhere with related sensibilities, construct community or envision (dis)similar others.

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Schematic tensions and changes that may be contained in such affiliations have generally been considered strengths where scholars have documented them (see Hodkinson, 2002; Haenfler, 2006; LeBlanc, 1999). Calls for interpretive scholars to redouble their efforts to attend to the diversities of perspectives that might reside in chosen identities or subcultures continue to emerge (see Hannerz & Tutenges, 2021). In this regard, my concept of broken typifications may cast into new light subjective facets of life history, schema, or foreground distinctly retrospective meanings attached to any affiliation. This brings into view a greater possible range of meanings of referent identities. If chosen identities ultimately do possess a limited ‘shelf life’ for affiliates in contemporary times, it may be useful to assess configurations of schema in reverse at various points in the subject’s life history. This may be especially important, however, come the period following the identity’s expiration date. Deeper in this vein, changes to what Schutz (1967) called one’s reflective “meaning-context” need not be confined to any single moment or act of turning away from a subjectively held identity. Meanings—like the salience of any affinity or elective affiliation—are continuously susceptible to reflective reassessment that can vary immensely both contextually and qualitatively over time, where accounts an interpretive analyst might gather at any single moment can differ with none necessarily being more valid than another. Narrative self-understanding can shift under cultural and interpersonal influences at any point, and these changes may reconfigure characterisations of the past (Bruner, 2004; Ricoeur, 1991; Giddens, 1991; see also Schutz, 1967), regardless of the question of remaining with versus leaving an identity. Findings do, however, underscore how comparative framing across the boundary of subjective change or transition— here specifically, disaffiliation from elective identity—can configure interpretive stances toward how self and even social time itself is represented (DeGloma, 2014; Ricoeur, 1991; see also e.g. Meanwell, 2013; Flores, 2016; Winchester et al., 2017). Subjective ex-hood clearly ordered how my informants understood themselves and believed their relation to straightedge to be; this was undoubtedly consequential for how straightedge was retrospectively described in identity histories and in accounts of straightedge as a cultural artifact. On the potential distinctiveness of post-straightedge accounts, it might be tempting to attribute this to a strategic profanation of the past to keep the present self “sacred” (e.g. Goffman, 1956). While this principle certainly applies, it merits note that straightedge as an identity category was

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still almost comprehensively recounted as having depth. This occurred regardless of whether participants believed their “ex” account to be unique, professed to understand their time as straightedge in a new light, or even vocally rejected facets of their former affiliation. The collected reverse accounts of straightedge seemed to exhibit a measure of substance that retained some of its own weight outside any imperative to achieve— or revise former straightedge affiliation to fully suit—current autobiographical narrative authenticity. This retained substance was so strong that it appeared to reliably key how ex-affiliates from a now  fair diversity of post-straightedge life paths calibrated depth and disposition in other identification spheres. This points toward an additional intersecting complication—and possible additional reason for much of the general hesitancy until now in gathering reverse accounts of identity—with respect to how informant reliability has been critiqued regarding authenticity. While chosen identities are held, some will exaggerate to emulate form while others reject categorical labels that might otherwise be salient because they find alignment with them—via labels or performing “typical” tropes—to be a marker of personal disingenuousness (see especially Clark, 2003; Muggleton, 2000; Thornton, 1995; Widdicombe & Wooffitt, 1995). Such active terms of identity, no matter which way they may break on this front, are certainly no more or less valid than past reflections charted in this analysis. Ex-straightedgers’ accounts in retrospective terms, however, notably appear quite forthcoming, candid, and even laced with degrees of humility at times. Collected data may indicate a degree of diminished compulsion to narrate oneself with a veneer of authenticity when speaking retrospectively upon former elective identities, especially where this may not factor into reinforcing a current account of self. Autobiographical accounts of identification history gathered from a reverse standpoint may additionally  help to empirically foreground how subjects calibrate identity depth, or see identity dispositions roughly akin to reflexive modernity and cultural postmodernism as applying within their (re)constructions of their lives. The “tourist” and “traveller” dispositions have tended to be treated as conceptually discrete in much prior empirical work. The arguable dearth of attention to date may partly rest in the difficulties of bridging on-the-ground narratives with identity conceptualisations that originated from—and find most purchase in—debates over whether an epochal transition into a postmodern economy and culture has transpired. In research applications, this has generally resulted in

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identity disposition being countenanced to the specificities of discretely studied fields/identities or various analysts’ epistemological decisions. Yet, these data gleaned from autobiographical retrospection suggest that both identity dispositions can be fairly simultaneously represented, give way to one another in discrete domains across time, or even coexist compartmentalised at various phases of individuals’ lives and in their perceptual schemes. Both available dispositions may potentially apply to aspects of how subjects negotiate contemporary identity, and that the joint representation of these could be profitably pursued ahead through additional reverse inquiries or other modes of empirical engagement beyond this chapter’s focus. Methodologically, it must be stressed the activation of dispositions as abstract as those posited by reflexive modernity and cultural postmodernism was achieved through interview conversations that centred upon a singular contextualising referent to which respondents (once) held a “traveller” orientation. It appears that such a baseline could effectively build requisite interview nomenclature to weigh other spheres of identification. Here, my findings depart from Muggleton’s (2000) influential research into cultural affiliation, style, identity multiplication and movement, still the most comprehensive interview-based study concerned with depth and disposition in serial elective identification to date. In light of this analysis, Muggleton’s sampling criterion targeting individuals who merely held alternative or ostensibly spectacular styles perhaps foreordained his conclusion that contemporary subjects understand depth and change in individualistic terms while rarely attaching specific values to specific identity referents. My study’s foregrounding of a singular affiliation which respondents approached via a “traveller” disposition, by contrast, invited the development of the sort of nomenclature required for the interview subject to assess potential differences in depth and disposition in their identification history. Many ex-straightedgers indeed ably used straightedge to assess substantive depth (or lack thereof) and contextualise the meanings of identification both generally and in their reconstructions of their elective identity autobiographies from the past up to the present. Finally, it is important to consider the extent to which these findings are generalisable beyond “youth” identity forms, life course positioning, or the broader field of youth (sub)cultural studies. Recent studies indicate that elective (sub)cultures like straightedge are increasingly multigenerational and can shape identity transitions well into middle age (Bennett, 2006, 2013; Davis, 2006; Haenfler, 2012, 2018; Hodkinson, 2011;

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Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012). Likewise, many who experienced and identified with the 1960’s generation as youths—the first to have now led closer to fuller lives within post-war cultural transformations—continue to draw upon youth-developed elective boundary forms when narrating their present self-concepts in older age (Torkelson & Martínez Sanmartí, 2019). Thus, while some elements of straightedge may pertain to specific dilemmas of (transitioning from) youth, it is also possible that certain patterns of (ex)identification mapped out here are becoming  more broadly relevant. Particularly as the number of identities individuals engage with in their lives has been increasing since post-War times, it may be especially important to consider identification in both active and past forms. Still, it remains not entirely clear to what extent these patterns would apply to other national contexts, discrete identities, constellations of identification sensibilities, or life course phases. Further inquiry is needed to lend firmer foundations, complicate, qualify or expand upon to the speculations developed in this analysis. Nevertheless, attention to relinquished identities may especially prove significant in future research, where both the volume of chosen identities, and dispositions toward them, appear increasingly multiplicitous. Dedication  This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Patrick J Carr.

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CHAPTER 7

From Free to Exoneree: A Narrative Analysis of Ex-treme Identity Processes as Expressed through Autobiographical Accounts of Exonerees Kristen Discola

The vast majority of people have never experienced wrongful conviction and exoneration, nor have they known individuals who have experienced such events. There are no established standards to the identity1 of a wrongfully convicted individual or exoneree. The identities have not been institutionalized; they are nonnormative. For most, such a turn of events in one’s life is unimaginable and we would not know what to expect of ourselves if suddenly within such a situation. How would our identities shift? How would we make sense of the situation? And, after exoneration, 1  In the current work, I use the terms ‘self’ and ‘identity’ interchangeably, despite differences in the way these terms are used in some symbolic interactionist literature.

K. Discola (*) California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_7

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how would we come to incorporate the experiences of wrongful conviction and exoneration into the biography that constitutes our sense of self? A great deal of work exists within the field of narrative criminology (see for example, Maruna, 2001; Presser & Sandberg, 2015; Presser, 2008, 2012). Such work aims to elucidate the meaning-making processes that offenders engage in, uncovering the subjective truth about their experiences before, during, and after the commission of criminal acts. Recently, this field has broadened to include exploration of the victim narrative so that we can better understand how crime affects the lives, experiences, and identities of those who are victimized (for example, see Brison, 2002; Discola 2020; Discola 2021; Hourigan, 2019; Langer, 1991; Meyers, 2016; Pemberton et al., 2018; Trinch, 2007; Walklate et al., 2018). The current work builds upon this research agenda, investigating a unique circumstance in which the narrator is identified as both a criminal and a victim: those who have been wrongly convicted and exonerated.

Exonerees as an Ex-treme Identity Individuals who are exonerated after a wrongful conviction provide an interesting vantage point from which to investigate identity processes related to the ‘ex-’ phase of the moral career. ‘Exoneree’ is a relatively rare ex-treme identity. It is non-normative (Wrosch & Freund, 2001), in that it is unexpected, significant, and unguided by established societal rules and expectations that typically structure experience. And it is formed within what Goffman refers to as a ‘total institution’ (1961). The identity shifts that surround the experience of being wrongfully convicted fit well within the category of ‘traumatic identities’ (Discola, 2020). Traumatic identities are those identities that are deeply distressing and assigned to an individual suddenly, against his or her will. Typically, individuals move between identities in a normative manner. We transition out of identities related to our youth and early educational processes into identities connected to our higher education, careers, growing families, and passions. Throughout the life course, we move into and out of identities based on hobbies and interests we develop and roles we adopt at work, in our families, and in the wider community. It is relatively rare that an individual assumes an identity for which he or she had no expectation, desire, or intention of adopting. When a set of circumstances beyond our control forces us into an undesirable identity, we must reconstruct our sense of self in order to create meaning.

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Wrongful conviction undoubtedly results in such a dramatic and life-­ altering shift in one’s identity by disrupting the life story, leaving the individual feeling misunderstood, helpless, and disconnected from the social world. These individuals are stigmatized by their categorization within a group with which they do not identify. They are viewed by society as criminal, but they do not view themselves as criminal. Despite their innocence, they are prison inmates and therefore open to the stigma that is associated with convicted criminals. After exoneration, these individuals have the opportunity to reclaim control over their shattered lives, disengaging from their identities as prison inmates. But how do they renegotiate their identities as they enter the ‘ex-’ phase of the moral career, as exonerees? After release from prison, what sort of narratives do they construct in order to create meaning around their experiences? Initial research on traumatic identities has focused narrowly upon co-­ victims (individuals who have lost a loved one to homicide) (Discola, 2020). The current work expands upon this line of investigation by utilizing the typology of narratives shown to emerge after loss to homicide to better understand the identity processes of the wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. For exonerees whose narratives are explored here, publishing an autobiography served as a step in the process of transition from the ‘in-’ to the ‘ex-’ phase, from a person who was viewed as a criminal to one who is now seen as having been wrongfully convicted and exonerated. This chapter is an exploration of their narratives.

Investigating Identity Through Victim, Survivor, and Transcender Narratives Meaning-making through constructing a narrative around one’s experience and delivering it to a receptive audience is an essential aspect of the healing process following trauma (Janoff-Bulman & McPherson Frantz, 1997). But the construction of such narrative is much more than that. After trauma, the construction of narrative helps the narrator to regain some semblance of order and connection to a predictable social world (Crossley, 2000). And it is through storytelling that we form, negotiate, validate, and maintain our sense of self (Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992). The construction and revision of narrative to create meaning is particularly likely in cases in which there has been “a breach between ideal and

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real, self and society” (Riessman, 2002, p. 219). Both types of breach are especially relevant to the current study. As with criminal victimization, wrongful conviction and exoneration cause disruption to the life story that have direct and long-term effects upon identity. The sense of severance between life prior to, and following, a false conviction and exoneration can be ‘bridged’ (Brison, 2002) through narrative. In this investigation, I explore narrative as a window into identity processes. Recent research identifies three narratives that emerge in the wake of traumatic, non-normative identity transitions.2 These narratives are known as victim, survivor, and transcender narratives and they can be used to understand the corresponding identities that individuals adopt after extreme trauma. There are several defining features of these narratives, including differences in focus, tone (including emotion, moral quality, and language) and purpose. For the current investigation, the most relevant feature is purpose, which is best understood by examining the narrative’s focus and emotional language. Given the deep and indelible connection between identity and narrative, one can explore the narratives one constructs and delivers in order to better understand his or her identity and vice versa. Focus The narrative’s focus is the main feature that differentiates victim, survivor, and transcender narratives. The victim narrative is inwardly focused. It is directed at self and the effects of relevant events upon the experiences of, and outcomes for, the self. Such narratives emphasize the devastation and traumatic outcomes the narrator faced (and still faces). The survivor narrative has a more broad, outward focus. In such narratives, the devastation and trauma experienced by the narrator is depicted as a catalyst for bringing about positive change to the lives of others similarly traumatized.

2  Recent research has investigated victim, survivor, and transcender identities (Discola, K.L. (2020) Redefining Murder, Transforming Emotion: An exploration of forgiveness after loss due to homicide. London: Routledge) and narratives (Discola, K.L. (2021) Emerging Narratives in the Wake of Homicide: Victim, Survivor, and Transcender. Journal of Victimology and Victim Justice, 3(2), pp.  202–218.; Hourigan, K.L. (2019) ‘Narrative Victimology: Speaker, Audience, Timing’ in Fleetwood, J., Presser, L., Sandberg, S. and Ugelvik. T. (eds) The Emerald Handbook of Narrative Criminology. pp. 259–277.

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By contrast, the transcender narrative is so broad in focus that the self is no longer the center of attention within the narrative. Instead, the narrative is constructed in an act of service toward a wider community. It is created and delivered as a testament, to be used as fuel to embolden a worthwhile campaign for positive change. Emotion The emotion that peppers narrative establishes tone and gives the story life. Strong emotions can capture an audience’s attention, sway opinions, and help the audience to understand the experiences of the narrator, as he or she has interpreted them. Victim narratives weave negative emotions throughout the story. These include powerlessness, hopelessness, rage, hatred, and resentment as well as a desire for revenge. Such emotions are often connected to the identity of the narrator. That is to say, the story does not solely relay the events of the past and the corresponding emotions, but also indicates that such negative emotions became connected to the narrator’s sense of self. On the other end of the spectrum, transcender narratives are filled with positive emotions such as hope, pride, excitement, powerfulness, compassion, and love. These emotions are broadly focused, indicating that the narrator feels positively toward people within their close social circles as well as those who have wronged them and those with whom they have never been in contact. Between the victim and the transcender narrative lies the survivor narrative, with its characteristic neutrality, impartiality, and general sense of indifference. In such narratives, any previously felt negative emotions have been released or quelled, but the broad positive emotion seen in transcender narratives is also not present. Purpose All narratives serve a function. Each has a distinct purpose as it is delivered to an audience. Some narratives serve the function of allowing for the narrator to gain a sense of community, of being heard, and of having their experiences validated. Others serve as a means of provoking a response in the audience, promoting change, raising awareness, or giving heart to a common cause.

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The victim narrative functions as a coping mechanism. It is a source of expression for the narrator whose motivation is to be heard, understood, and/or validated, or what Armour called a ‘declaration of truth’ (Armour, 2003, p. 534) in her research focused upon narration as a means of coping after loss to homicide. Such a construction of narrative is a part of the healing process after trauma and may include detailed recounting of wrongdoing, justified anger, and grave injustice. The transcender and survivor narratives have a more broad purpose. They are constructed as tools for bringing about positive change. The difference between the two lies in the scope of such change. Transcender narratives are built to serve as testaments to underscore the need for wide-­ spread change and to showcase the healing that can come in the face of trauma or adversity. As Armour (2003) suggests, such narratives are constructed to benefit others. They could therefore be thought of as testaments to ‘living in ways that give purpose.’ Survivor narratives are similar to transcender narratives in that they have the purpose of promoting change beyond oneself, but the focus of such change is more narrow. Instead of aiming for broad, societal change, the survivor narrative is constructed in support of individuals who have had similar experiences as the narrator. Such narratives are focused on meaning making as a means of what Armour (2003) referred to as ‘fighting for what’s right.’ Moral Quality The moral quality of a narrative is made clear by the emotion presented within it and the language used to paint a picture of events. By including emotion throughout a narrative, the narrator emphasizes his or her moral stance, at times highlighting innocence, sympathy-worthiness, or blameworthiness of various characters. For example, in recent research it was shown that victim narratives were likely to emphasize intentionality of criminal offenses (Discola, 2021). Transcender narratives, on the other hand, rationalize, justify, or normalize acts that could be construed as criminal or wrong. And survivor narratives remain impartial, communicating a sense of neutrality and dispassion.

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Methodology The research question explored in the current work is: After exoneration, how do wrongfully convicted individuals make sense of the disruption to their established identities and integrate their experiences into their self-­narratives? In order to investigate this question, I engaged in a content analysis of autobiographies of the wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. Autobiography as Narrative Narrative analysis grew from the insights of symbolic interactionism (see Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934; Stryker, 1980 [2002]) and is well suited for investigation of identities of the wrongfully convicted and exonerated or several reasons. First, based on symbolic interactionist theories, we know that identities are products of language. In order to understand experience, one must consider language and discursive structuring, as it is through narration of one’s life story that we construct and continuously negotiate meaning (Crossley, 2000). Second, wrongful conviction and exoneration are cognitively structured as historical events within individuals’ life stories, shaping how they see the self, those who played a part in the conviction, and the social world in general (Crossley, 2000). Autobiographies of the wrongfully convicted and exonerated are particularly valuable for studies of identity because they encapsulate long stretches of time (often multiple decades); are revised and edited before being made public; and are created with a specific purpose and intended message for a defined audience. Exploring narrative itself allows for insight into much more than the events as they occurred historically. From narratives we can also gain a deeper understanding of the way the narrator makes meaning of experience and incorporates events into their life stories (Riessman, 2002). An autobiography is one way in which identities are performed and displayed publicly. The construction of identity through narrative has the power to increase the narrator’s sense of certainty, order, control, and predictability (Burke & Stets, 2009). As traumatized individuals revise narratives of events from the past, they can create meaningful divisions between sections of their life histories, and it is this sectioning off of experience which allows the trauma to become a catalyst for a redefinition of self (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2001). Finally, autobiographies are meaningful narratives for investigation because they have a particular audience, tone, and focus. Because

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narratives are constructed as a form of self-expression, they can be viewed as a sort of social performance (Goffman, 1974). The narrator makes purposeful decisions about the language he or she will use (and not use) in order to convey a certain impression of self to the audience (Presser, 2008). However, narratives may have motivations that stretch beyond a simple performance of self. Narratives may have a stated purpose, such as raising awareness or stimulating change, and often take a moral stance. In constructing and delivering narrative, the narrator aims to bring about a desired effect upon the audience. He or she conveys the story in a manner that elicits a certain reaction from the audience based on a shared interpretation of events. As such, narration involves a sort of selective reconstruction of reality. This manner of reconstructing reality in narrative form is particularly relevant when the events being interpreted and shared are especially complex, troubling, or traumatic (Riessman, 2002). The autobiographies of the wrongfully convicted and later exonerated have an inherent moral quality. By considering the moral tilt of the narrative, we can illuminate its purpose and best understand the narrative as a meaning-­ making tool. Sampling Strategy The unit of analysis in this study is the narrative itself. My sampling process is best described as theoretical sampling, given the highly specific inclusion criteria employed and the addition of two narratives for theoretically relevant comparison. Theoretical sampling is well suited for this type of research because it allows for targeted analysis of narratives from within a small, select population and inclusion of cases that may disconfirm initial findings. Narratives were chosen based on two criteria. First, the narrative needed to be a published book written in English. This language criterion increased validity, because linguistic and cultural nuances within books translated from other languages would undoubtedly be misunderstood or missed altogether. Second, the narrative needed to be an autobiography, authored by the individual who experienced the wrongful conviction and exoneration. This criterion eliminated anthologies and books that were biographical but not autobiographical. This narrow focus upon narratives created by exonerated individuals, rather than including books written by others about the experiences of such individuals, allowed for consideration

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of exonerees’ expressed motivations for constructing and distributing such work. In order to locate potential narratives fitting these criteria, I performed a Google3 search using keyword combinations such as “autobiography exoneree” and “book falsely convicted.” I also searched websites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Thriftbooks using similar keyword combinations. From the resulting sample, I randomly assigned five autobiographies to members of my research team: myself and four research assistants. I later added a sixth book to the sample in order to include a narrative written by a female exoneree and involving a case occurring outside the United States to see if similar patterns would emerge. Finally, I added a seventh book for theoretical comparison because it was co-authored by the victim and exoneree in tandem. The final sample of 7 books were authored between 2003 and 2018 and offered a wealth of similarity and difference to allow for meaningful comparison and analysis (Bozella, 2016; Fritz, 2006; Hinton, 2018; Johnson, 2003; Knox, 2013; Scott, 2015; Thompson-Cannino et al., 2009). Intercoder Reliability Before coding began, my research team read a series of relevant background texts. We discussed how we anticipated narratives unfolding within our sample, building a basic coding sheet based on previous work. We then read one chapter of an exoneree’s autobiography, each coding this chapter independently, and then discussed emerging codes, child nodes we anticipated growing from parent nodes, and any discrepancies we noted between our codes. All discrepancies were minimal and relatively trivial, indicative of a high level of intercoder reliability. Once I was satisfied that all members of the team were coding in a consistent manner, we each embarked on the reading and coding of separate books. We read one chapter at a time, reading the entire chapter through, summarizing the overall patterns, then rereading the chapter with more focused attention on coding. We met periodically to compare our data and discuss any memos we had written. Throughout this process, we found 3  Google is widely known in modern culture as a broad and dependable search engine, accounting for over 86% of online searches in 2019, according to Statista. 2020. Global market share of search engines 2010–2020. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/

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similar patterns in our data. When all five initial books were coded, one research assistant and I took a deeper dive into those texts. We summarized and compared the five books while I analyzed two additional books, chosen because they were theoretically unique.

Overall Patterns of Exonerees’ Narratives The narratives in this sample move in a non-sequential rhythm. Many open within the ‘pre-’ phase of the moral career, during arrest, conviction, or sentencing, effectively capturing the reader’s attention and offering a glimpse into the direction of the narrative, then turn back to detail the author’s life just before, or well before, arrest and conviction. Others open within the ‘ex-’ phase, at a time far beyond the exoneree’s release, also effectively capturing the attention of the reader and foreshadowing what will come in the text. Early in each book, the author showcases his or her dive into a traumatic identity as s/he enters the ‘in-’ phase of the moral career, by constructing what, at first glance, resembles a victim narrative (discussed below). Each author struggles through periods of hope and despair. There is a lack of ability to make sense of the experience. Eventually, the authors create meaning out of their new circumstances and find ways to draw upon their past identities to cope with their new realities. These instances of accepting their new positions in society as convicted criminals demonstrate the process of ‘settling down’ (as Goffman [1961] describes) within the in- phase of the moral career. They regain hope through God, by focusing upon those who love them from beyond prison walls, or in service to other inmates. For example, Cotton says, “If this was my life- if I was going to spend the rest of my days in a North Carolina prison- I had to figure out a way to live it.” and, “Bars or not, I had to make something of myself.” Hinton begins an inmate book club in hopes of making other death row inmates feel connected, giving them something to occupy their minds, escape their imprisonment through books, and expand their way of thinking. Similarly, Scott teaches inmates origami and other creative outlets: “One of the ways I amused myself (was) teaching other inmates... games and tricks I’d learned as a child.” And Fritz creates a prison garden and tutors inmates to help them obtain their GEDs. These endeavours are ‘removal activities’ (Goffman, 1961, p. 309) that provide these individuals with opportunities to escape the weight of their current situations and environments, at least temporarily. As Goffman states, engaging in such

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activities serves as a barrier between the self and the social environment and “can be seen not merely as a way of getting out but also as a way of giving meaning to being in” (1961, p. 314). As shown to be the case in mental hospitals, by adopting these non-stigmatizing role-identities within the prison walls, these individuals were able to create and maintain “some distance, some elbow room, between (themselves) and that with which others assume (they) should be identified” (Goffman, 1961, p. 319).

Intense, Negative Emotions: the ‘in-’ Phase of the Wrongfully Convicted Inmate At first glance, all narratives in this sample could be misidentified as victim narratives based solely on their description of intense, negative, other-­ directed emotion that are emphasized heavily as the authors detail the ‘in-’ phase of the moral career: living life as an individual wrongfully convicted. As seen in the narratives of co-victims of homicide in previous research (Discola, 2021), the description of the experiences of the wrongfully convicted resemble victim narratives, because they are permeated by language that is value-laden, indicative of intense negative emotion, and that communicates a strong moral stance. For example, Cotton says his rage “ate at (him) like a cancer”: “My blood was boiling. The heat spread over me, my muscles tensed with anger.” Throughout her autobiography, Knox describes emotions that are raw, intense, and negative. She says, “I’d never felt so much hatred” describing her “deep, black anger.” She labels her emotions as “fuming,” “furious,” “enraged,” and “seething.” She describes how her “stomach burned with resentment” toward the media and the individuals who lied, manipulated, or made mistakes that led to her conviction. She says she felt “completed betrayed,” “paralyzed,” “violated,” and “indignant.” Fritz also constructs his narrative using intense negative emotional language. He speaks of needing to “purge (his) soul of the emotional poison that has been embedded deep inside (him).” He says, “Thoughts of supreme contempt and outright disgust filled my head.” He describes how he slept most of the day to try to “survive the loneliness, agony and despair.” Alongside his rage, Fritz describes resentment and desire for retaliation toward those who wronged him. He says, “Why should I make it easy on these dirty bastards after they filed the death penalty on me for something I didn’t do?...If I go down for this...they are gonna have to pay for illegally

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convicting me.” Similarly, after his arrest, Hinton begins to hate everyone, the person who invented the chains hanging heavily around his waist, the transport guards, etc. He says, “I was full of a hate too big for that little cell...I would get my revenge.” When Hinton is convicted and sentenced to death, he describes how his rage begins building, a “boiling black hatred” “bubbling below the surface.” He expresses a desire to kill his prosecutor: “I had never felt such darkness in me. I couldn’t control my thoughts. Every hour of every day, I imagined how I would kill (him).” The accounts of each of these narrators, as they experience the ‘in-’ phase of wrongful conviction, are what Goffman refers to as ‘moral experiences’: “happenings which mark a turning point in the way in which the person views the world” (1961, p. 168). Not only were their ideas about the world in general shifting, so too were their conceptions of self.

Struggling to Create Meaning and Remain Connected to Self During the ‘in-’ Phase of the Wrongfully Convicted Inmate The narratives in this sample each showcase a struggle to maintain hope in the face of great upheaval during the ‘in-’ phase of being a wrongfully convicted inmate. Once a religious person, Johnson says, “Religion has become my enemy, because faith is the purest form of hope, and hope disgusts me more than anything else.” Fritz has moments of intense positive emotion that are continually daunted by harsh reality checks and overwhelming disappointments. Peppered throughout the narrative, we hear of Fritz’s fleeting moments of excitement, joy, and peacefulness. In a few instances, he writes about dancing around his cell in exhilaration, describing a joy that flooded his soul and made him feel like he could fly. For example, when he hears that The Innocence Project would take on his case, he says, “my heart flutter(ed) like a kid on Christmas morning...I was so excited I nearly peed my pants.” Despite these fleeting positive moments, Fritz’s narrative contains continual references to his contempt and resentfulness. He says his “anger nearly consum(ed) (him).” Similar to the waffling we see in Fritz’s narrative, Knox describes an emotional tug-of-war between her desperate attempts to hold onto hope and the intense negative emotions she feels throughout her ordeal. She says she “veered between hope and despair” and that she was “afraid of the spiteful, miserable bitterness” she felt. Despite the intense negative

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emotions she describes, Knox “held tight to optimism” early on and, at times, she was “blinded by hope.” She says, “Optimism had been my way of life” but explains that it “had not saved (her).” She says, “I refused to become so cynical and angry that I felt spite, but my natural hopefulness was flagging...It was terrifying to hope- and impossible not to.” Bozella also waffled between hope and despair. He says, “For twenty-­ six years, I had made hope my safe haven within hell. I knew that to stop believing was to stop being...Conditioning myself to be optimistic, to hold on to a positive attitude, took time and perseverance, but my mind had developed the muscle it needed to keep a firm grip.” However, despite his desperate attempts to hold tight to hope, Bozella’s narrative is filled with intense, negative emotions. He says his experience, “turn(ed) (his) heart to ice” and that being falsely accused “was an anguish (he) couldn’t bear, like a public declaration that (he) was a vicious animal.” Similarly, when Hinton is told he will be convicted, his fear emerges but he still maintains a positive outlook and an expectation that everything will work out in his favor. When convicted, Hinton says, “right before Judge Garrett affirmed and read aloud the official death sentence, I told them what I hoped to be true- God would reopen this case.” As his narrative progresses, his fear grows and his hopes get dashed when his family cannot afford experts for his case: “(T)here was a darkness pushing up against my hope that I couldn’t keep at bay...The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.” He says, “grief and a cold madness that defied words floated in the grime and filth that we were all coated in (on death row). Hell was real, and it had an address and a name. Death Row, Holman Prison. Where love and hope went to die.” Rather than evidencing a victim narrative, these initial intense and often overwhelming negative emotions are critical to fulfilling the purpose of both survivor and transcender narratives (discussed below). In earlier work focused upon co-victim of homicide, it is shown that in transcender narratives the original event is “only discussed as the impetus for subsequent action, and the offender, the criminal act, and the direct victim are peripheral or secondary within the plot of the narrative” (Hourigan, 2019). Here we see that it is through the tensions that arise between the narrators’ sense of self prior to wrongful conviction (during the ‘pre-’ phase) and that which emerges in response to the harsh realities of false imprisonment (during the ‘in-’ and ‘ex-’ phases) that survivor and transcender identities are built, solidified, made public through narrative, and used to

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spark change. The inclusion of raw, negative emotion is therefore an important aspect of survivor and transcender narratives.

Transformation of Identities: Moving from the ‘Pre-’ Phase to the ‘in-’ Phase of the Moral Career Not surprisingly, each of the narratives in this sample details a dramatic shift in identity between the narrator’s prior sense of self (the ‘pre-’ phase of the moral career) and that which grew out of the experiences related to wrongful conviction and incarceration (the ‘in-’ phase of the moral career). Johnson says, “Anger is not a trait I was born with. It began in prison, and it grows each day...I am so angry that complete madness cannot be far away.” He continues, “I begin to accept that I am hopeless and vengeful; it is just a matter of time until I become violent.” While imprisoned, Cotton wrote to his mother saying, “This place is turning me into a madman, turning me into someone I don’t want to be.” And Fritz despairs that he “felt so all alone and separated from the world (he) once knew”: “As I hunkered in my bunk, I thought about how much I had changed. I was not the man I used to be.” Similarly, Scott says, “no matter how peaceful or passive you might now be, such a living hell could soon change your mind, as you begin to consider violent retaliation and confrontation.” And Bozella opens his book by saying, “being locked up is about being officially rejected, returned like defective human merchandise to be inventoried, catalogued, and hidden away.” He calls his false conviction “the day my life disappeared.” He later says, “I hated the way I could feel the anger seeping in, like a dampness in the walls. This wasn’t who I was or how I wanted to be, but neither prayer nor my small library of motivational books were helping this time.” When reflecting upon her experience of being “redefined unjustly” with her wrongful conviction, Knox says, “The real me had been lost. It seemed as though people were putting me in a costume that trapped me even more than the iron bars I lived behind.” She describes herself as “different” from what she once was and says, “I’m scared to lose myself. I’m scared to be defined as what I am not and by acts that don’t belong to me. I’m afraid to have the mask of a murderer forced on my skin.” She explains how her life has been “irrevocably changed” when it was suddenly bifurcated:

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My life cleaved in two. Before the verdict, I’d been a wrongly accused college student who was about to walk free. I was about to start my life over after two years. Now everything I’d thought I’d been promised had been ripped away. I was a convicted murderer. I was less than nothing.

Hinton shares a similar experience. He says, “I wondered who I would be when this was all over- how could I be the same person? Would there be anything left after the trial? And what if they actually found me guilty? What then?” In transport to prison he says, “I was cargo. I was less than human.” When he arrives, he initially cannot understand the tension and odd behavior of the guards and prisoners, until he realizes that the guards are protecting the other prisoners from him. He says, “I realized that they all thought I might attack. The regular inmates were being protected from the death row inmate. I was the scariest person in that prison.” He says, “I was now the worst of the worst. A human not fit for this life...I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. How did I suddenly become the most dangerous person in the jail? He says he “felt empty and hollow,” saying, “I was hungry to be a human again. I didn’t want to be known as inmate Z468. I was Anthony Ray Hinton...I felt like eventually I would hollow out so completely, I would just disappear into a kind of nothingness.” Cut off from their prior identities, and from the outside world that supported and validated them, these individuals transitioned into their new realities behind prison walls. Humbling moral experiences with prison staff led to role dispossession and the slow, and often psychologically painful, movement into the ‘in-’ phase of stigmatization. As in other ‘total institutions,’ these inmates were experiencing the effects of the antagonistic, hostile stereotypes that mark the relationship between prisoners and prison staff. As Goffman describes, this process begins “a series of abasements, degradations, humiliations, and profanations of self” that ultimately lead to “radical shifts in (inmates’) moral career(s)” (1961, p. 14). Within such environments, these individuals cannot sustain their previous conceptions of self. A final note is worthwhile here. There is a distinct similarity between the cleavage of self before and after wrongful conviction and the cleavage of self that is caused by criminal victimization. In fact, the crime victim who co-narrated one of the books in this sample describes such an experience of division between her life prior to, and following, her victimization. After her rape, she says, “I was no longer me. The girl in my mind, the picture-perfect student who would be getting married soon...was sucked

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down by that black hole.” She says she came to “scarcely recognize” herself and describes her existence post-assault as “this half life” in which she was “totally numb inside.” She says with regard to the time just before her assault, “those hours were already part of something else that seemed to drift further and further out of reach: before- a perpetual yesterday before this night ripped a hole in my life that I tumbled into, bottomless and dark.” At the trial, when her name is misspoken by the judge, she says it “didn’t bother” her: “He could’ve called me anything. ‘Jennifer Eileen Thompson’ didn’t really exist anymore.” This indicates that the sharp division that becomes clear between the identities of individuals prior to, and following, the experience of wrongful conviction is similar to the experience of crime victims in regard to the division between their identities prior to, and following, the experience of criminal victimization, demonstrating a similarity in identity processes following these two forms of trauma. It is interesting to note that the cleavage is between the individuals’ identities pre- and post-conviction. The same sort of divide is not seen between the individuals’ identities pre- and post-release, as may have been expected. That is to say, the identity shift that is emphasized in the life stories of exonerees occurs when their prior identities are stripped away and they are forced into the identity of an ‘inmate’ (between the ‘pre-’ and ‘in-’ phases of the moral career). There is no comparable focus within these narratives upon the shift out of these identities and into those that relate to being exonerated (between the ‘in-’ and ‘ex-’ phases of the moral career).

Constructing Survivor and Transcender Narratives: Moving from the ‘In-’ Phase to the ‘Ex-’ Phase of the Moral Career The publishing of autobiographies for such pro-social purposes as are seen in this sample (discussed below) is similar to Goffman’s description of the mental patient “practi(cing) before all groups the amoral arts of shamelessness” by devoting the self to “the social cause of better treatment of mental patients” (1961, p. 169). The stigma associated with being a criminal is related to the ‘character’ of the individual (Goffman, 1963). The wrongfully convicted are therefore likely to feel shame during the time when they are identified as criminal. Upon release, the narrators who

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authored the books in this sample lay bare their stories, for the entire world to witness, thereby transforming the shame felt while in the ‘in-’ phase of being a convicted criminal to the shamelessness associated with the relief from stigma that accompanies the ‘ex-’ phase of being an exoneree. Once released after exoneration, the previously held stigmatized identity of convicted criminal can be shed. As time passes, exonerees are not likely to be linked to this previously held stigmatizing identity in their ‘daily rounds’ (Goffman, 1963, p. 90). They therefore have some freedom to manage information and decide in social interactions if they will engage in self-disclosure or concealment. However, early media coverage of conviction is likely to have tainted the identities of these individuals within the social worlds to which they are re-entering, post-exoneration. For some time, one’s wrongful conviction may also maintain a quality of “known-­ about-­ness” (Goffman, 1963, p. 49) because of media coverage of both conviction and exoneration. Once media coverage of the infamy and subsequent exoneration subsides, they may no longer be seen as public figures. They could therefore ‘pass’ in most social contexts by changing their names, moving to a new location, etc. Despite having the opportunity to withhold discrediting information about his/her history, the narrators of the books in this sample have chosen disclosure, in a very public manner, through the publication of their stories. They have chosen to disclose potentially discrediting information, placing themselves squarely, and visibly, into the identity of exoneree. Perhaps, given the public nature and extensiveness of the events, they feel they cannot deny their biography, so instead they embrace it. To deny their realities during wrongful conviction would be to deny the self that has emerged. Instead, these narrators incorporate their experiences into their current conceptions of self. In doing so, these narrators become representatives of the previously stigmatized, and their publications become “exemplary moral tale(s)” (Goffman, 1963, p. 25). Through their writing, and the dissemination of that writing, these narrators have assumed a sort of ‘professional’ role (as described by Goffman, 1963) and the narration of their stories dominates a large proportion of their lives, and identities, post-exoneration. Through their publications, we come to know them and their experiences. The story defines them. Despite great similarity within the narration of the experiences of wrongful conviction and imprisonment, the books in this sample diverge from one another when we consider how the authors give meaning to the

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narrative itself upon reflection during the ‘ex-’ phase. The books could therefore be separated into two classifications, survivor and transcender narratives, based on the purpose of each.

Constructing Survivor Narratives The most meaningful difference between survivor and transcender narratives as it relates to the construction of narrated identities after exoneration lies in the purpose of the narrative, whether explicitly stated or implied. Although Fritz’s, Scott’s, and Knox’s narratives resemble victim narratives in terms of their characteristic negative emotion, these are better classified as survivor narratives because they each are constructed and disseminated with a clear purpose of raising awareness in support of others who have faced wrongful conviction. These are not stories delivered solely for the authors’ voices to be heard (as is the case for victim narratives). Rather, they are meant to serve as testaments in order to spark change to systems that are unjust and ineffective. This purpose is clearest in the author’s notes, afterwords, and epilogues. For example, Knox’s narrative is intended for people to better understand the truth of the experiences of those wrongfully convicted. The telling of her story is part of her own healing journey. She says, “Writing (this book) helped me work through what happened to me” and “believing that if I told my story with absolute candor, the truth would persuade not just the Italian court but the court of public opinion.” However, Knox’s desire to be heard is not just self-serving. Her afterword ends with a paragraph about her intentions to “give back.” By the time of writing the book’s afterword, Knox is unsure how she will accomplish this goal but says she is “pretty sure it will have to do with telling people’s stories.” She ends the afterword by saying, “I have found my purpose: to help other innocent people be able to shout, as I did, ‘I’m free!’” This indicates that she constructed this narrative not only to fulfil her own need to “be heard” (as in the book’s title) but also to help others like her to also have their voices heard. Herein lies the difference between a victim narrative and a survivor narrative. Scott also indicates that through this writing he hopes to shed light on his experience and the reality of a “legal system gone horribly wrong.” He hopes to show people “what prison jail life is really like.” Scott describes his narrative as “the actual events and very real circumstances we have lived with daily for more than a decade and a half of abusive and

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unreasonable injustices perpetrated by the very people whose oaths are to protect, serve, (and) defend.” He describes the American justice system as “broken,” “an ultimate form of prejudice, bigotry and religious intolerance all rolled into one big, stinking pile of rotting garbage, the major stench emanating from the bowels of the nation’s countless jails and prisons, seeping out into ‘polite’ society like a deadly environmental pollutant.” He describes the prison environment as “the most evil and onerous conditions, harmful restraints, needless and cruel restrictions, mistreatments, inhumane abuses, denials of basic survival needs, and neglect, up to and including actual torture and life-threatening circumstances.” Throughout the book, he details countless acts of “calloused, careless and criminal misconduct by the (prison) staff.” Scott speaks directly to his reader. He says, “The very best advice I can give you about prison life, of course, is to avoid it at all cost.” Similarly, Fritz’s book opens with a statement about the book being “a true account of the injustice, turmoil, and suffering that (he) endured during (his) wrongful conviction and incarceration,” foreshadowing the “brutality and horrors of prison life...the heartache and anguish.” He says in the prologue that he hopes his memoir “will serve as a guide for other unjustly convicted men and women and their families who have suffered, and to the unsuspecting individual who might be arrested tomorrow on fabricated evidence.” Like Scott, Fritz describes the work of the police department as a “half assed so-called investigation,” his trial as “nothing more than a two-ring circus filled with lies and deception promulgated by a ringleader hellbent on getting a conviction,” and those on the side of the prosecution as his “enemies...treacherous masters of deception.” Rather than being tales of the lives that have emerged after exoneration, as is the case for the transcender narratives in this sample (discussed below), these narratives are about the trauma of wrongful conviction itself, to be shared in service of others who share a similar fate or experience. As such, they are survivor narratives.

Constructing Transcender Narratives In contrast to survivor narratives in this sample, which were constructed with the purpose of raising awareness with regard to the agony of wrongful conviction, transcender narratives were created with a purpose that extends far beyond those who are falsely imprisoned. Transcender narratives in this sample were constructed in order to be used as a tool for the

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betterment of society as a whole. For example, upon his release, Johnson becomes a founding board member of the Georgia Innocence Project. His passion for this program grows from his experiences with the Prisoner Legal Counseling Project, a prison program through which he was able to find hope while imprisoned. Through this new program, he intends to offer similar hope to others who suffer at the hands of an unjust system that he believes “tears at the very core” of society. In service of others, Johnson spends his time doing interviews and conducting spiritual speeches at several churches. He says, “Even now, as a free man, my own journey toward justice continues to play out every day.” Hinton also sees himself as a “voice for justice.” He says, “I’m the poster boy for all that is broken in our prison system. I want to end the death penalty. I want to make sure that what happened to me never happens to anyone else.” He says to the other death row inmates, (W)hen I get out of here...I’m going to tell the world about how there was men in here that mattered. That cared about each other and the world. That were learning how to look at things differently...I’m going to tell my story, and I’m going to tell your story. Hell, maybe I will even write a book and tell it like that.

Here we see that Hinton’s focus is not only on raising awareness to serve those who are falsely convicted, but also a testament to the humanity of those men and women who are rightfully convicted. His is a story of compassion for all. Similarly, Bozella’s story became his testament, suggesting to others who were struggling that if he could make dramatic change, so could they. Using his story in service of others became one of Bozella’s proudest accomplishments. He says, “Telling people my story is the best way I’ve found to turn bitterness into hope.” He decides to focus his energy on his passion for boxing, “so I could use my skills and my story to help give struggling young people the direction, discipline, and passion they needed to succeed in life.” When he initially became involved in boxing, he had not realized that the changes he was making were “not just incremental, but monumental.” He says, “Boxing became my peace, my salvation, my pain reliever, and my strength. I used it to get rid of my anger, to purge all the hurt and pain and frustration boiling up inside me.” Through boxing, he came to realize that, “contrary to what (he) had heard all (his) life, maybe (he) wasn’t worthless” and he hopes to pass on this skill and coping

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mechanism to those in the next generation: “I looked at all those young faces, those laughing, earnest, goofing, scared faces, and I had to wonder if there was time to catch them, to protect them, to motivate them.” These four books are prime examples of transcender narratives. They are stories of hope and healing, despite great devastation and trauma. As was found with regard to the transcender narratives of co-victims of homicide (Discola, 2021), the transcender narratives of exonerees also make the purpose of their narrative clear and unequivocal: the betterment of society as a whole. The narrators have dedicated their lives to constructing and delivering these stories as a way to create change and encourage or embolden advocates in the crusade for justice. In doing so, these narratives tell a story of compassion and forgiveness. Forgiveness In transcender narratives, the initial negative emotions felt by the author come to be quelled as the authors go through the process of forgiveness. The intense negative emotions eventually come to no longer fit the emerging identities of the individuals constructing transcender narratives. These emotions create a dissonance within them that must be dealt with. For example, Hinton says, The knowledge (of my desire to kill McGregor) hit me like a sucker punch to my gut and brought me out of my swirling thoughts. It scared me. This wanting to kill. I wanted to murder him the way he had murdered my life. I wasn’t a murderer.

He later says, I was on death row not by my own choice, but I had made the choice to spend the last three years thinking about killing McGregor and thinking about killing myself. Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many choices as (others) had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

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Hinton’s narrative is a tale of forgiveness above all else. Within the first ten pages of the narrative, Hinton shares how he eventually comes to feel about his prosecutor, McGregor: I don’t hate you. But for a slight moment during the trial, I was beginning to hate you, I really was, but I thank God that it came to me that I can’t make it into heaven hating nobody…I love you. You might think I’m crazy for telling a man that I love him that’s done prosecuted me and is trying to send me to the death chair, but I love you...I’m praying for you real hard. Ever since I seen you, you’ve been constantly in my prayers, and I’m going to continue to pray for you.

Hinton goes on to explain how he prays for the bailiffs who “lied on the stand” as well as the judge and the DA. He describes how he comes to feel about the jury who convicted him: “I feel sorry for those twelve people that found me guilty…I ain’t mad at them...I’m always going to pray to God that he forgives them.” He continues: “Might sound crazy, but I got joy- even with leg irons on me.” Such positive emotions, especially as they relate to those who wronged the narrator, are indicative of the transcender narrative. Hinton’s general compassion for others becomes most clear when he befriends the men on death row and takes steps to make the experience of those inmates better. Hinton connects to the other inmates, seeing them as more than their heinous acts. He tries to get them to talk so that they will not feel alone. He learns their names, forms an inmate bookclub, makes them laugh, and shares his learning from the law library each week. Each time someone is executed he makes noise so they know they are not alone: “I banged on the bars so he would know that he mattered. That he was not alone. In the end, I think that’s what we all want. To know we matter to someone, anyone.” Hinton focuses on the sameness he finds between himself and the other men, including those who had brutally killed men like himself, simply for the color of their skin. He says, We were all the same here. We were all discarded like garbage and deemed unworthy to have a life…We weren’t monsters; we were guys trying to survive the best we could...It didn’t matter who was black and who was whiteall that kind of fell away when you lived a few feet from an electric chair. Right now, we had more in common than not. We all faced execution. We all were scrambling to survive. Not monsters. Not the worst thing we had

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ever done. We were so much more than what we had been reduced to- so much more than could be contained in one small cage.

Hinton shares how his mother taught him “to have compassion for everybody” and describes how he extended compassion to an inmate he befriends: Henry, a member of the KKK. He says, “I have compassion for you. I’m sorry your mama and your daddy didn’t teach you the same.” Henry was sentenced to death for lynching a young black boy. Hinton says, (Henry) had been taught to hate us and fear us so much that he thought it was in his rights to go find a teenage boy and beat and stab and lynch him just because of the color of his skin. I had no anger toward Henry. He had been taught to fear blacks. He had been trained to hate.

Here we see that Hinton views Henry as a victim of sorts, placing blame upon his life circumstances rather than on Henry himself. This is also characteristic of the transcender narrative. When Henry’s father dies, all the inmates pass food down the row to his cell. Hinton says, “Nobody interrupted the chain of comfort as it wound its way up and down and around the row until it reached Henry. We all knew grief. We all knew sorrow. We all knew what it was like to be alone. And we all were beginning to learn that you can make a family out of anyone…(the guards) were also a part of this big, strange family on death row.” Here, Hinton is highlighting commonality, understanding, and sameness between himself, the other inmates, and even the guards he once felt deep hatred toward. Hinton also explicitly mentions forgiving several individuals who had taken part in his wrongful conviction. After his release, he says he forgives the prosecutor: Someone taught him to be racist, just as someone taught Henry Hays. They are two sides of the same coin...I forgive Reggie. I forgive Perhacs and I forgive Acker and I forgive Judge Garrett and every attorney general who fought to keep the truth from being revealed. I forgive the State of Alabama for being a bully…I forgive because that’s how my mother raised me...I look for purpose in losing thirty years of my life. I try to make meaning out of something so wrong and so senseless...how we live matters. Do we choose love or do we choose hate?

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He says, “I chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in my heart. They took thirty years of my life. If I couldn’t forgive, if I couldn’t feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of my life. The rest of my life is mine.” All four transcender narratives explicitly discuss forgiveness of those whose actions led to the authors’ wrongful convictions. Johnson describes forgiveness within his narrative when he says, “Something is different today...the demon is gone. I am not angry at all...I take inventory of myself and discover with joy that I am a whole.” He says, “You can’t let bitterness eat at you, because in the end it will destroy you...I have no hard feelings against anyone.” He later comes to use his story as a model of “the power of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.” Cotton’s is also a tale of forgiveness and healing. He eventually comes to see himself and the two women who were assaulted as three victims of the same perpetrator. He says, “All three of us had been victims of the same rapist, in a way.” In fact, on their dedication page he and his co-­ author make a clear statement about the purpose of their book: “For all those whose voices may never be heard- the victims- on both sides of wrongful conviction.” Regarding the two women who falsely identified him, Cotton says, “At one point, early on, I had a lot of anger toward them. But in time, I realized they had been through something and made a mistake.” When he meets one of these women, his co-author, Thompson-­ Cannino, he says to her, “I forgive you. I’m not angry at you...All I want is for us all to go on and have a happy life.” Cotton says, “I had had eleven years to think about what had happened to me, years in prison where I made a decision to let go of the anger and frustration…Anger would have just kept me stuck, as if I’d never left prison...What good is anger going to do me?” In fact, near the end of the narrative, the reader is told of a telephone exchange in which Cotton and Thompson-Cannino express love for one another. Cotton and Thompson-Cannino eventually become “good friends” and travel around the country sharing their story. During their travels, they find themselves in a sketchy part of an unfamiliar town, and Cotton guides Thompson-Cannino to safety. She says to him, “I was really scared back there,” to which he replies, “Don’t you know that I’d never let anyone harm a hair on your head?” The narrative ends with Cotton saying to Thompson-Cannino, “Get home safe.” These quotes are clear evidence that Cotton’s narrative is one of ‘benevolent forgiveness’ (forgiveness that involves not only a release of negative, other-directed emotion but also the

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emergence of positive, other-directed emotion, as defined by Discola, 2020), also characteristic of a transcender narrative.

Focus Upon Past, Present, or Future (the ‘Pre-’, ‘In-’, or ‘Ex-’ Phases of the Moral Career) One could consider the various identities these narrators move through as identities related to past, present, and future. Their past identities are those that preceded the wrongful conviction (ex. student, fiancé, employee, law-abiding citizen) and constitute the ‘pre-’ phase of the moral career. Their present identities are those of the wrongfully convicted, as inmates or convicts, constituting the ‘in-’ phase. And their future identities are those that emerge in response to their experiences, as they bridge the gap between their past self and who they will become once they take on the identity of exoneree, within the ‘ex-’ phase. As shown in previous work with co-victim of homicide (Discola, 2021), survivor narratives focus upon the present and transcender narratives focus upon the future. This distinction becomes meaningful here as well, as it aligns well with Goffman’s ideas of the ‘in-’ and ‘ex-’ phases of the moral career. A clear indication of the distinction between the narratives in this sample that are survivor versus transcender narratives therefore lies in the timing within the narrative of the identity transition from wrongfully convicted individual to exoneree, that is to say, from the ‘in-’ phase to the ‘ex-’ phase of the moral career. Each narrative has an early focus upon past identities (the ‘pre-’ phase) and moves into discussion of present identities (the ‘in-’ phase). Depending on whether the book is a survivor or transcender narrative, the narrative shifts to future identities (the ‘ex-’ phase) either at a mid-point or the end. Survivor narratives conclude with this event, whereas in transcender narratives this event is only a turning point in the tale, and the narrative extends far beyond the authors’ release, as they incorporate their identities as exonerees into their larger life stories. Survivor narratives are almost entirely focused upon the ‘in-’ phase of the moral career. Discussion of the larger purpose, characteristic of the ‘ex-’ phase, is a small fraction of the larger narrative, mainly discussed in the front matter and epilogues. Knox’s narrative is 446 pages in length, but it is only the final two pages that are focused upon her exoneration, release, and freedom. Scott’s and Fritz’s narratives also chronicle their experiences in prison, rather than life after release. It is not until the 26th

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chapter (of 29 chapters) that Scott is released (after which time he is reincarcerated), and Fritz’s release takes place on page 452 of his 456 page narrative. This is evidence that these narratives are not meant to focus upon the aftermath of exoneration or what comes from the traumas endured (the ‘ex-’ phase). Instead, the narrative is focused upon detailing the trauma of wrongful incarceration itself (the ‘in-’ phase), and that story is then used as a testament in service of similar others through publication. In contrast, in transcender narratives in this sample, approximately half of the book is focused upon the wrongful conviction and incarceration: the ‘in-’ phase of the moral career. The other half focuses on the ‘ex-’ phase: the healing, forgiveness, and dedication to service of a greater good about which the author becomes passionate. For these authors, the details of their wrongful convictions and subsequent experiences in prison and within the court system are background for what become stories of forgiveness, compassion, healing, and a dedication of their lives to serving a greater good. After the point in which authors move into discussion of their passion for helping others, negative emotions are no longer relevant to the stories. Those experiences are the backdrop, included in the narrative in service of a greater purpose. Similarly, those who wronged these individuals are no longer a part of the story once the individuals are exonerated. Instead, the story becomes focused upon those the author serves by sharing his or her narrative.

Laying a Foundation for Identity Transformation: Incorporating the ‘Pre-’ Phase of the Moral Career It is interesting to note that the transcender narratives in this sample begin with a detailing of the life struggles the narrator faced prior to the false conviction (the pre-’ phase). As was shown with regard to transcender narratives of co-victims of homicide (Discola, 2020), such struggle and challenge may be the foundation of the transcender narrative. One’s general self-sentiments may be influential in the development of a trancender identity, and such identities may have roots in previous experiences of facing significant challenges or enduring trauma. Johnson describes a difficult and tumultuous childhood in which his race played a factor in all outcomes. He says that when he attempts to “find meaning for (his) incarceration” his “mental television replays scenes

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from (his) childhood.” Cotton also speaks of discrimination and unequal treatment: “(I)n the back of my mind, I knew that if the police in this town wanted to keep me, they would find a reason.” He is hesitant to think that everything will work out for him because “(t)hat’s not the way it is in some Southern towns. At least not for everybody.” He says, “The rules were different if you were a black man. What the cops and the DA and the victim said mattered, and what I said, didn’t.” He hints at the challenges he faced as a young person, speaking of his sole transportation being “a thirty-inch Schwinn” and of dropping out of school in the 9th grade in order to financially help his mother, who he describes as “a strong black woman utterly powerless when someone else was making all the rules.” Early on, Hinton describes what the world looked like for a black man: “I couldn’t get a job without a car, and I couldn’t buy a car without a job, so I was stuck, and I was so tired of being without, of wanting, of struggling to make a dollar.” He describes a lack of money and opportunities generally: There weren’t many options for me after graduation. No scholarship. No college. No opportunities other than those I could make for myself. Hell, we didn’t even have ten dollars extra to pay for my class ring when I graduated...Good jobs were few and far between.

Hinton refers to “impossible dreams” of “a life where a man could be rewarded for his hard work without putting his life at risk...law school or even business school.” These dreams had fueled him in childhood but had become “too painful” to continue dreaming. He says, “I knew that if I had been born someone else, I would have gotten a scholarship and gone to college…and that knowledge hurt so much I had to put that dream away.” He emphasizes the lack of available jobs in his town, detailing his decision to work in the mines. This decision came with significant risk to his health and general safety. He says: I saw men dying before they even got a chance to retire- watched them struggling to breathe from lungs that were full of a sickness that didn’t have a name...I didn’t want to die in the mine or sweat coal for the rest of my life or have the mine grow in my lungs until it choked everything out, but what else was a guy to do when he was ready to work and earn his way in the world? Working for minimum wage in a fast-food joint where white people

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still didn’t want to see that a black man might be touching their food didn’t sit well with me either. The sad truth was, the best way to go up in the world was to go down into the mines. And the more dangerous the job, the better it paid.

He talks about how he “hated every minute of it,” and how it felt like he was “climbing into (his) own coffin every day.” When Hinton’s life story takes a sudden twist and he is taken away in handcuffs, he indicates his generally positive and trouble-free mindset regarding his future; his response to the misidentification is a simple, “everything is going to be ok.” He does not interpret the event as a problem. With these early aspects of his narrative, he shows the reader that he has an established way of seeing the world, like a transcender. Throughout the narrative, he continually returns to the love of his mother and the lessons he learned from her influence. It is the worldview he developed under her guidance during times of great struggle and relative disadvantage that lays the foundation for the manner in which he constructs meaning out of the tragedy that is his false conviction and incarceration. This positive, general outlook, even in the face of great trauma, is the hallmark of the transcender narrative. Bozella shares a narrative that is similar to Hinton’s in that it highlights the struggle and trauma that he faced as a black boy and man. Bozella describes his former self as a boy he felt “sorry as hell for,” an “unwanted kid who had taken a foolish turn down the wrong path.” He describes a childhood of abuse and struggle: “As far as I was concerned, the streets treated me better than my supposed family did.” He describes the impact of losing his mother and being sent to live in a group home: “I wailed when social services delivered me to a group home. I cried like there was no tomorrow.” He soon began skipping school, using drugs, and committing petty criminal acts. He describes the emotional toll of his brother’s murder, “When I lost Ernie, I lost more of myself. You can make yourself a stone, but life can still chisel away at you, and this blow splintered me into too many sharp pieces to sweep up and put together again.” During the ‘ex-’ phase of exoneration, these authors construct a transcender narrative by building the foundation from the very beginning of the book, showing the reader the trauma and transcendence that has become part of the fabric of their lives. It is these losses, struggles, and challenges that are essential in allowing the transcender identity to emerge

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after exoneration and it is through such narratives that their identities are shaped during the ‘ex-’ phase of the moral career. For the survivor narratives in this sample, such early character development is not a focus of the narrative constructed in the ‘ex-’ phase of the moral career. Knox’s autobiography clearly demonstrates this difference in character development, as the early life she describes stands in stark juxtaposition to that of the four transcender narratives. The early sections of Knox’s narrative set the stage for what is best described as an uncomplicated life of relative privilege and simplicity. She speaks of her mother, who provides a safe and loving childhood for her, “Her empathy and advice always made me feel on safe ground. I didn’t really get in trouble in high school, but I knew that if I did, she would support me through the situation. ” Later in the narrative, Knox says that before her arrest she “had never suffered” and she didn’t know “what tragedy was.” She said it was “something (she) would watch on television. That didn’t have anything to do with (her).” She describes her former self as “naive” throughout the book and refers to how her “Seattle upbringing had left (her) unprepared for the cultural structures of (her) new environment.” She describes what she perceives as minor mistakes and misjudgments she made, noting that she was ignorant to the fact that those choices would eventually become problematic for her. She says, “I kept ending up in situations I didn’t want to be in,” “I didn’t pick up on some obvious clues.” For example, Knox says with regard to her decision not to attend a memorial service, “It didn’t occur to me that people would later read my absence as another indication of guilt.” By highlighting her small mistakes Knox paints a picture of a young, immature, naive college student, who is unsure, overly trusting, and easily influenced. These aspects of Knox’s narrative lay the foundation for the reader to understand the specific circumstances of how her naivete resulted in her wrongful conviction. Knox’s lack of struggle or trauma early in life did not lay the foundation for the development of a transcender approach to giving meaning to her experience of transitioning into a traumatic identity during the ‘ex-’ phase. Instead, she details all the falsehoods that pile up against her and the injustice of all the inaccuracies, mistakes, and untruths that ultimately incriminate her. From the beginning of the narrative, Knox builds herself into an innocent, ignorant character and therefore creates the moral claim that she is not to be held responsible for her choices and their grave consequences. Whether it is as transcenders or survivors, the authors in this sample develop themselves as characters in their narratives who are moral,

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blameless, sympathy-worthy, even heroic. Such a portrayal has been shown to create impactful, wide-spread, and lasting effects (Meyers, 2016). By developing the character in this way, the author ensures that the reader does not perceive the character as an impure victim, and thereby risk the story being unheard, misunderstood, or distorted. Developing a character with whom the reader feels a connection, and whom the reader perceives as innocent and sympathy-worthy, can have very powerful consequences (Walklate et al., 2018).

Conclusion Autobiographical narrative allows us to empirically view the ways in which an individual interprets events and the consequences of those events in terms of how they affect the individual’s sense of self and one’s place in the larger social world (McAdams, 2006). By exploring such narrative, the current work sheds light on the process through which exonerees connect wrongful conviction, imprisonment, and exoneration to their larger self-­ narratives. It shows how some individuals leverage their ex-treme identities to create meaning out of trauma, by constructing what could be described as survivor and transcender narratives. A focus on wrongful conviction offers a unique perspective from which to explore narrative constructed following extreme trauma because of the sudden, unexpected, and all-consuming nature of the event and because the impact extends to all areas of life. The experiences of exonerees are widely publicized and account for large portions of their life stories. This work shows that, at least for those who publish autobiographies, exonerees transition back into ordinary life after exoneration by incorporating their traumatic identities into their overall life stories. Their experience becomes the basis for activities and passions. And it is through the creation and dissemination of autobiographical narrative that they perform and display their ever-evolving identities. The narrative itself comes to serve a greater purpose, to give meaning to tragedy. This exploration offers insight into ex-treme identity processes as well as the identity processes related to trauma generally. Given the narrow focus of the current work on autobiographies of the wrongfully convicted and later exonerated, it would be worthwhile for future research to broaden the scope of this line of inquiry to include other traumatic identities as well as other forms of narrative, including spoken narratives and those that are shorter, such as blogs or social media posts. It would be

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interesting to compare the results of the current work to similar narratives delivered within different cultures and languages as well as narratives of those who find themselves within other ex-treme identities. It would also be valuable to interview the narrators themselves, to investigate their ideas and perspectives regarding their identity transformation and the process of developing, revising, delivering, and reflecting upon autobiographical narrative. Such work could further illuminate how ex-treme identities are negotiated through narrative.

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(Eds.), The Transformation of Meaning in Psychological Therapies (pp. 91–106). Wiley. Johnson, C. C. (2003). Exit to Freedom. The University of Georgia Press. Knox, A. (2013). Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir. Harper. Langer, L.  L. (1991). Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. Yale University Press. Maruna, S. (2001). Making Good: How Ex-convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives. American Psychological Association. McAdams, D. (2006). The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society. University of Chicago Press. Meyers, D.  T. (2016). Victims’ Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights. Oxford University Press. Pemberton, A., Mulder, E., & Aarten, P. (2018). Stories of Injustice: Towards a Narrative Victimology. European Journal of Criminology, 16(4), 391–412. Presser, L. (2008). Been a Heavy Life: Stories of Violent Men. University of Illinois Press. Presser, L. (2012). Getting on Top Through Mass Murder: Narrative, Metaphor, and Violence. Crime, Media, Culture, 8, 3–21. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (Eds.). (2015). Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime. New York University Press. Riessman, C. K. (2002). Narrative Analysis. In A. M. Huberman & M. B. Miles (Eds.), The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion (pp.  217–270). Sage Publications. Rosenwald, G. C., & Ochberg, R. L. (1992). Introduction: Life Stories, Cultural Politics, and Self-Understanding. In G. C. Rosenwald & R. L. Ochberg (Eds.), Storied Lives: The Cultural Politics of Self-Understanding (pp.  1–18). Yale University Press. Scott, H. (2015). Falsely Convicted and Tortured in Texas. Apt Press. Stryker, S. (1980 [2002]). Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structured Version. : Blackburn Press. Thompson-Cannino, J., Cotton, R., & Torneo, E. (2009). Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption. St. Martin’s Press. Trinch, S. (2007). Deconstructing the ‘Stakes’ in High Stakes Gatekeeping Interviews: Battered Women and Narration. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 1895–1918. Walklate, S., Maher, J., McCulloch, J., Fitz-Gibbon, K., & Beavis, K. (2018). Victim Stories and Victim Policy: Is There a Case for a Narrative Victimology? Crime Media Culture, 00, 1–17. Wrosch, C., & Freund, A.  M. (2001). Self-regulation of Normative and Non-­ normative Developmental Challenges. Human Development, 44(5), 264–283.

CHAPTER 8

Caring for and Containing the Hateful Other: Schools’ Strategies to Deal with Students with Neo-Nazi Convictions Christer Mattsson

Introduction This chapter is based on a retrospective case study of three teenagers who were radicalised and became members of a neo-Nazi organization around the turn of the millennium. They grew up in the same area, went to the same school, and belonged to the same skinhead gang. The case study focuses on their reflections on their schooling and the ways in which the school intervened to counter their radicalisation. As part of the case study, the teachers who carried out the interventions were interviewed, and here I examine their accounts of the cause and effect of the interventions with the experiences of the three former neo-Nazi students. The school in the study is located in an area in southern Sweden that has a long tradition of extreme right-wing mobilisation. At the time of when the events described

C. Mattsson (*) Segerstedt Institute, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2_8

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in this case study were occurring, the area as well as the school featured prominently in the media due to extensive problems with violence, racism and neo-Nazism. If you wanted to get a teacher to freak out, you just had to do a Hitler salute or say that the Holocaust never happened (Rickard, former neo-Nazi).

There are probably few things that are as shocking, whatever the context, as a person celebrating Nazi Germany, denying the Holocaust, and describing racism in positive terms and as part of the natural order of things. When this occurs within the framework of the school as an institution, it gives rise to additional problems. Besides the fact that expressions such as these may breach Sweden’s lagen om hets mot folkgrupp (law on agitation against a population group),1 they are also contrary to the curriculum’s aim of promoting an acceptance of the equal value of all people and a view of knowledge that is based on the scientific approach to the subject area of history. Countering racism and xenophobia have been part of the democratic task of Swedish schools for the entire post-war period. This task has had different priorities and its foundations have varied during that time. But above all this task has been about much broader issues than Holocaust denial and openly racist statements (see, for example, Arneback & Jämte, 2017). One aspect of this task that has been brought to the fore in our time concerns talk of us living in or moving towards a post-truth society. This means a society in which there is reduced trust in science and the society’s institutions, in combination with the dissemination of rather extreme and racist conspiracy theories that have consequences for how people behave towards each other and relate to the institutions of the society (Iyengar & Massey, 2019). This is most likely having an impact on schools and education in general and, in particular, on the democratic task of schools. Against this background, it may be seen as worthwhile to return to previous experiences of schools’ strategies to deal with the most extreme forms of racist expressions at the time around the turn of the millennium, when there were teenage skinhead gangs in many places in Sweden. 1  In Sweden, a ban on hate speech was implemented by a Government Bill in 1948. The referenced law is found in Chapter 16 Section 8 of the Swedish Criminal Code. This legislation has been referenced multiple times by various school in relation to their handling of racist extremism.

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In this retrospective case study, the focus is on one school, which in the study is called Loholm School. Loholm School developed various educational strategies for dealing with students who expressed extreme views in the form of denial of the Holocaust and neo-Nazi sympathies. These forms of expression created conflicts within the school and one of the strategies for curbing them was to establish a special class unit, which in the study is called the Safe Space. Through the use of the Safe Space, students who were deemed racist were physically segregated from the other students. I was interested in how the actions of the students and the school’s response to them became a dilemma for the school’s internal operations. A dilemma between the democratic requirement to include all students, and how to include students who aggressively distanced themselves from democracy and expressed extremist identities. My study was guided by the following questions: 1. How do students who have been active in neo-Nazi movements talk about their experiences of their schooling and the strategies used to manage their views and behaviours? 2. How do the teachers who taught these students describe their educational strategies? 3. What conclusions can be drawn for future educational strategies in dealing with students with extremist and anti-democratic views? This chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, I provide an account of the previous research in the field and the theoretical point of departure for the study along with a brief description of the study’s methodology. This is followed by an account of the empirical material on which the study was based, and finally I provide a concluding discussion.

Segregating those Without Self-control: Previous Research Removing some students from their normal classes has a long tradition, with various arguments in favour of it having been advanced at different points in time. Regardless of what instigated this kind of segregation of students or what the arguments were for doing so, it has had an enduring and overarching purpose, which Hjörne and Salsö describe as: (2008, p. 37)

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… the sanitisation of the normal classes and the improvement of those children who are difficult to teach in a beneficial (for them) school environment with a set aim to heal educationally.

Karlsson (2012) points out that these special classes are in contrast to the ideal of one school for all and the school’s work to impart fundamental values. This is because students in these groups are marginalised and deprived of the opportunity of equivalence. They are deprived of the opportunity to express their experiences and needs in a non-stigmatizing environment along with other students, thereby shaping their identities. Furthermore, Karlsson (2007) concludes that both inclusion and exclusion are common features in the organising of special classes in that the students in these classes often find themselves in an ordinary school but physically placed in another space—something she believes contributes to the students not being clear about where they belong in the social environment of the school. Karlsson goes on to argue that what differentiates special classes from, for example, a special school, is that the students in special classes are categorised as carriers of a behavioural problem that needs correction. It is therefore behaviour and not cognitive ability that constitutes the problem. According to Karlsson, being categorised as a student with a behavioural problem is something that has a tangibly negative impact on the student’s capacity to develop a positive identity. By focusing on the student’s behaviour, the gaze is shifted from the school’s forms of work to the student’s individual deviations—something which in turn individualises an educational problem. Severinsson (2010) showed how students who were placed in special classes tended to become clientified in the sense that the staff were utilising a strategy in which they exercised both control and care. This means that teachers are working with a care focus, building relationships of trust with the students through which the students can feel safe and acknowledged. However, this care is more focused on controlling the behaviour of the students and encouraging them to reflect on the strategies they can utilise in order to be allowed to leave the separated special class and return to the normal class. This in turn assumes that they subordinate themselves to the problem constructs ascribed to them by the school and the society, and that they accept the help that is proffered. Consequently, they must accept that they are the cause and, at the same time, the solution to their own problems. Servisson further concludes that the activities in special classes are rarely able to result in a return to a regular class.

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Carlsson and Nilhom (2004) conducted a conceptual study of the relationship between the execution of the school’s democratic task and inclusion. In this study, they describe a relationship between strong and weak inclusion in relation to different models of democracy. They point out that every model for exercising power in a democracy attempts to strike a balance between the system’s capacity for strong leadership, clear accountability, engaged citizens, and efficiency. Strong leadership, they say, often has a good capacity to demonstrate efficiency, but may have a detrimental effect in terms of citizen engagement and vice versa. In all models of democracy, there is a balance between the need to reinforce and tone down these capabilities based on shifting contextual circumstances, and each model should therefore be dynamic. The capacity for dynamism in this balance is what determines the strength of democratic governance. Translated to the school’s work with inclusion as part of its democratic task, they argue that it is fundamental to this task to increase participation in the discussion about how to achieve inclusion. In their view, inclusion and the foundations for fostering inclusion are dynamic, but because of the way in which the discussion about inclusion is conducted, there is a tendency to perceive inclusion instead as something more static. This is because the strategies used to achieve inclusion tend to persist even when the conditions change. Carlsson and Nilholm conclude that this is largely dependent on inclusion having been used as a positive term but there having been only a weak willingness to explore what is required in one’s own activities to provide inclusive education. One important observation they highlight is that in this context the school’s special education task tends to become someone else’s responsibility. This means that it is not only the students who are the objects of special education interventions who risk being excluded, but also the activity that is intended to include them as such.

Between the Vision and the Achievable The case of the neo-Nazi students concerns the special education field since the school chose to see the problem as a special education problem with a segregation solution. In special education, there have long been discussions about what inclusion means and how it can be achieved. These discussions have been conducted from a number of different perspectives with various implications for how students’ difficulties are understood and treated. Haug (1998) makes a distinction in this field between two

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dominant perspectives. The first is a compensatory perspective on participants which involves an individualisation of the student’s failings. The assumption is that this individual failing can be compensated for by analysing the causes of the student’s deficiency and then implementing apt measures. Skidmore (2005) regards the compensatory perspective on participants as a psycho-medical paradigm in which deviations and diagnoses dominate and guide special education practice. The second dominant view, according to Haug (1998), is a democratic perspective on the participants. This shifts the emphasis from the individual’s failings to how the society is organised and its structures. At the heart of this perspective is the right to participate in the organisation of society and the school as a force for change in this. However, Haug points out that the right to participate cannot be reduced to being physically present, but that the student must be given opportunities to help shape their participation in educational practice in schools. In line with this, Skidmore (2005) observed a trend in special education moving from the psycho-medical paradigm towards a sociological and ultimately an organisational paradigm. The big shift was from special education being based on the individual to being based on the sociological and structural, that is, that the individual is primarily shaped by society and the individual’s deviations from the norm are understood as consequences of society’s influence and society’s discourses of normality. In a study of the organisational paradigm, which may perhaps more readily be understood as an implementation of the sociological paradigm, Skidmore examined how schools convert notions about students’ difficulties in school at an organisational level. With this perspective, the organisation of the school is understood as a response to the failings that students experience in relation to factors that lie outside the school’s and the individual’s capacity to influence. In other words, there is no clear link between the causes of the problems and the organisational solutions that are implemented. Nilholm (2005) added a third view that he called the dilemma perspective. His point of departure was that the two previous perspectives could be deemed to have failed, each in their own ways. The compensatory perspective tends to brand the individual and maintain structures of inequality in the society, while the democratic perspective, as Skidmore observed, is utopian and unrealistic in its implementation. The dilemma perspective does not propose that special education problems—with inclusion and exclusion and the associated conflicting objectives of different interest groups—can be resolved in a fixed or lasting way.

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The Safe Space at Loholm School Loholm School was a junior high school with a long tradition of racism and antagonism between different groups of students. At the time of the study, the school had several hundred pupils. Just after the turn of the millennium, this situation escalated when a group of students began acting out their skinhead culture at school and causing strife with staff, the other students, and the parents and guardians of the other students. The school then decided to set up a special class that they called the Safe Space. In total, about ten students were part of the Safe Space class for more than two years and all belonged to a skinhead gang. The Safe Space was located in temporary premises in the form of hired modular buildings. This was done in order to physically separate this class from the school’s main buildings, but keep it within the school premises.

Establishing the Safe Space One of the students in the Safe Space class was Matilda. She talked about growing up in a troubled home environment marked by abuse, poverty and neglect. Matilda encountered difficulties early on in being part of the group in preschool—difficulties that accelerated during primary school and escalated during high school. Even outside of school, she had difficulty finding friends who would accept her. There was, however, a local skinhead gang in which she was welcome if she conformed to their clothing style and forms of expression. From being a quiet girl who had done her best to be invisible, Matilda began acting out during high school. At that time, the Safe Space had already been set up and Matilda tells us that she was told from one day to the next that from now on she would be having her lessons in the Safe Space. Ingrid, one of the teachers who was responsible for the special class, describes how it came about. [I feel that it was a very good school…] There were problems, as there are at all schools. But we were quite good at dealing with the problem. And I think the best time at Loholm School was when we brought together those corridor loiterers [the skinheads], as we called them. /…/When we brought them together and had them in their own small class. At that time, we had twelve in this class. The school was functioning great then. That was when we had them in a special place, those who were the disturbing elements. And when they came into us and were with us, it was quiet in the school. /…/ [when we had them] out there, they were in our … custody. And then

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things got calmer at the school. /…/ [And then there were other students who also] liked Nazism, neo-Nazism and all that, many who were well behaved and did very well in school. Who were in the ordinary classes—but they still had these opinions and went around scribbling [racist graffiti] and [putting up] stickers and… So they didn’t distinguish themselves in any other way than just that. /…/ But because they didn’t distinguish themselves in any other way, we couldn’t take them by the ear and convey them into our class.

Ingrid talked about how the school initially lacked the capacity to respond to and manage a group of students with strongly racist views who, in many cases, openly sympathised with neo-Nazism. She described how it was the students’ views and behaviours that prompted the establishment of the special class and their placement in it, and how the Safe Space provided safe custody. Extreme views and behaviours were not sufficient grounds for placement in the Safe Space. It was also necessary for the students to have compensatory needs, such as difficulties participating in their ordinary taught classes. There were apparently students who sympathised with neo-Nazism, those who were responsible for graffiti and putting up stickers, who they could not be ‘taken by the ear and conveyed’ into the special class, since they had the capacity to keep up with the teaching and thus lacked a compensatory need. The opposite also seems to have been true, since it was possible to be placed in the Safe Space primarily due to difficulties in keeping up with the teaching in ordinary classes. But this fell outside the remit of work for the Safe Space, as Ingrid went on to explain: We also had two girls you know, and even those girls just went along with it sort of, there. /…/ That was of course Matilda and then there was also Jossan. /…/The impression I got was that those girls when they came to us, that they didn’t really fit with us. No, they came to us because they were playing up and neglecting their schoolwork. And then, when the guys were there talking about what they thought about this and that [expressed neo-­ Nazi views], these girls just went along with that. I don’t think that there was anything genuine there. And then they disappeared from us, because they started behaving themselves in school. They probably didn’t think it was much fun out there with us. In that little gangster world…

Ingrid states that Matilda and Jossan didn’t really fit in with the special class because they did not hold outspokenly racist views like the boys.

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Instead, according to her, they were there primarily because they had been acting out and neglecting their school work, that they weren’t participating in the teaching of their ordinary classes. The Safe Space was created, so it seems, as a special class to deal with undemocratic views and behaviours. But it wasn’t possible to discount the requirement that the student had to be failing to participate in the teaching in their ordinary classes. The Loholm School had considerable difficulties in working for democratic inclusion, and in order to deal with the problem they utilised the compensatory needs of racist students to remove them from contexts where the school felt that they were unable to control them. For Matilda, her placement in the special class led to both a reinforcement of her participation in the local skinhead gang and further difficulties in keeping up in the classroom. According to her testimony, her placement in the special class contributed to her becoming part of a neo-Nazi organisation and to failing in all subjects except one. She says: The school, the school pushed me out into that environment and really handed me over quite harshly, to that environment. In just one decision by moving me from my ordinary class, because I was too difficult to deal with. Moved me out into a barracks, where you had three of the school’s biggest Nazis who had their lessons [there]. /…/ it was really not okay to study for something [when you were a student in the Safe Space], so, if you even tried to read a textbook, they just sat there and threw erasers and pens at your head, and laughed and, said that no, that’s like just not on. /…/And so you were like forced to keep having that hard outer shell, I mean, that approach that you had, or how should I say. It was, after all, part of who you were, or who you became, or, yeah. You couldn’t like … But if you did something that was outside those rules, then you would, like, get to hear about it. Like for example trying to study a bit and succeed in school, that was really … It just didn’t exist on the map. Being a good girl and getting good grades in school would not have like worked really very well in, in that environment. Mm. So it did affect my everyday life, my life.

The special class Matilda attended was an organisational response from the school to a perceived problem of accommodating a group of racist students into a larger group of students who were being disrupted by them. It was not, therefore, about Matilda’s compensatory needs, nor her right to democratic inclusion, but about the organisation of orderly schooling for the students whom Matilda and the others in the Safe Space might disrupt. Matilda also underlines Ingrid’s testimony that

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participation in the Safe Space required Matilda to ‘put on her hard shell’, that is, to fall in with the racist cant. In this sense, it seems that the Safe Space reinforced the problem of racism at the school, but that this could be permitted as long as the racist students were kept separate from the others. The need to maintain order at the school became even clearer when Nils, who was a teacher in a practical subject and worked with safety at the school, reflected on the same situation. However, Nils said that it was not in the classroom that the main problems arose, but in other areas: So, my memory is that it really wasn’t … You might imagine that there would be lots of acting out, and being like rowdy, but … if you think about being in the classroom… So these young people [the racists] were not, they weren’t in any other way different than any of the others. That was my experience. They were in fact part of normal classes. /…/ Because these [the racist students] were like in different classes, so when they were with their class, that class functioned fine. The, the teaching was, was as usual. Even as usual, I mean that, you always have rowdy students, or some student who pushes the boundaries and such, but it was not always these particular students. I didn’t feel that the problem at school was just during class time; instead it was in the corridors, or when they got together, and were a gang in … Yes, in the junior common room, and so on. Or, when it was noted that they started to hang out outside school, or became more of a, maybe a homogeneous group, then, because they like got together.

It seems, according to Nils, that the problem was not in the classroom and during lessons, but rather in the rest of the school time and on breaks. Out of the school’s hundreds of students, the skinhead group was a small group: in lessons they were not represented in all classes and where they were present, they were few in number. In the classroom, as Nils recounts, the racist students were included and did not pose any major problems. On the other hand, according to Nils, the situation during breaks created a big safety and security problem that demanded action. The location of the Safe Space in separate premises further strengthened the school’s organising of the problem towards a segregation, which included physical spaces around corridors and junior common rooms which were difficult to control during breaks.

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Outside the Safe Space There were some students who shared the same values and were members of the same skinhead group as those who were placed in the Safe Space, but who were able to manage their schooling in general and therefore were kept in a mainstream class. For example, John grew up in a home environment that was vastly better than Matilda’s. He lived alone with his father and experienced a lack of acknowledgement from him, but was able to discipline himself and manage his schoolwork. Distrust of immigrants and minorities had been deeply entrenched in the environment in which he grew up, and John discovered early on that his views were the basis of discussions and confrontations with teachers. These discussions led him to feel that he was seen as stupid: [when] immigrant gangs cause trouble, cause a commotion and behaved badly, then you start to despise them [and what] they are doing. And when you talk about it, when you mention it to someone at school, like a teacher, all you hear is that you are stupid and that these are idiotic views. And that we shouldn’t think that way. You quite simply get branded as dumb. As if you were a real nutcase. And then it only confirms this suspicion you have, that there’s something not quite right. When people say things like that, when I experience the world in a certain way, when they say I am simply stupid, I think it only reinforces the feeling that something is wrong. When you are constantly being told you’re stupid. /…/ Then you just get more and more anti those who say that. And teachers, and school principals and social workers, they represent society. So it is society that you are opposed to.

John continued to describe how the school threatened to report him to the police if he listened to white power music. He still feels that he was regarded as both stupid and criminal. I remember a specific incident when there was a teacher who was supposed to … He wrenched my CD from me, and he was going to seize it and inform on me in some fucking way. Just because I was listening to this with a friend, according to him it was disseminating some kind of material. Instead of like, actually talking, about what it was. So he was going to report me, he said that he would… That what I was doing was criminal according to him. And it was just like he was nailing me to a cross, because of doing something that people do every day. Listening to music. It feels ridiculous somehow. I mean, you don’t create any good relationships with students by treating them like semi-criminals. /…/ Obviously you’re going to get a

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negative attitude and become paranoid when someone treats you as if you … I mean, I’m actually a student. It’s not like you had to inform on me for something, like …

John coped with his classes well and was therefore not placed in the Safe Space, but most of his friends were in that class. It grew difficult for him to feel any trust in the teaching staff, and he had to choose between loyalty to the teachers and to his friends in the Safe Space. Although John was not physically excluded, he was also not socially included in his ordinary class, as long as he continued to express racist views. The distrust that was established during his early years of high school grew into a lasting distrust of society, which continues to this day. However, Kent, who taught John in civics subjects and was the teacher who threatened to report John to the police, describes a different experience of the classroom situation. In his view, much of his teaching was ruined by, among others, the group to which John belonged. Kent says: What happened was that these students who had these opinions ended up, regardless of what we were teaching them, because it was such a big part of their consciousness, so they really took over lessons. They went looking for these discussions and wanted to challenge us adults the whole time. I also remember that we had some students with an immigrant background and that there were conflicts between these students and them. /…/ It didn’t matter what you were teaching about, it always got turned around into all the problems that had arisen in society because of us taking in too many immigrants./…/ We tried to connect with these students and link many more adults to them, make sure they were able to get their grades and be welcome in regular lessons.

Kent describes how he understood the purpose of the Safe Space. He saw it as an attempt to build relationships of trust with these students in a separate space and then offer them re-entry into the classroom, when they were able to meet the demands and expectations that existed for mainstream classes. Kent uses, as Skidmore (2005) expressed it, an inclusive language and an exclusive practice. Inclusion becomes a rhetorical guiding idea that cannot be ignored, but the educational practice leads to exclusion. The teaching staff have different memories of what was problematic and also of what were the causes of the problems. It must be regarded as probable that these experiences are associated with the roles they had at the school. Kent, who taught in civics subjects, explained how racism

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arose in every conceivable moment. Nils was responsible for safety and security issues and remembers the disturbances in the corridors, while Ingrid was one of those responsible for the Safe Space and has that institution as her frame of reference. However, none of them talked about the problems that the racist students may have experienced. The students were spoken of as those who created problems while they themselves were those who solved the problems.

Clientification in the Safe Space When the Safe Space class was not sufficient to control the situation, Loholm School took further steps to control the disturbances that arose around the racist students. Rickard says that he was a skinhead and a devout neo-Nazi, raised in a home marked by mental illness and neglect. He was seen as a leader with high status among the other students, even those outside the skinhead group—which is something that all the informants in the study have recounted. Rickard claimed that he found it difficult to keep up with his classes and that his values and behaviour regularly got him into trouble with the school’s staff. He was among the first to be placed in the Safe Space, but was able to maintain his social relationships with his friends in his old class who were not racists. He also had a girlfriend who he describes as a ‘swot’, a very diligent student. Rickard says she gave him access to social circles other than those in the Safe Space. However, he ended up in a verbal conflict with a teacher during which he threatened to hit her. This led the school to report him to the police and it was decided that staff from the school would contact Rickard’s girlfriend’s parents and the parents of her friends and warn them about Rickard. He says: I was in love with a girl who went to the same school, and I really, really liked her. And then I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore, because that teacher had called up everyone I knew, called their parents, and said that I was bad company. So suddenly I was completely without friends, except those who didn’t give a damn. It was of course pretty difficult./…/ You know that if you end up in a group of five idiots [referring to the Safe Space], it doesn’t take long until you are the sixth.

In the interview, Rickard expresses despair that he was unable to control himself and that he was excluded from the positive social circle he had.

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It is difficult to understand and evaluate at this distance what it was that made the school take such apparently strong exclusion measures as they did. Of course, there was always an underlying logic in creating peace and order in the school and the establishment of the Safe Space having had that result, even if it had detrimental consequences for the students who were placed there. Besides the Safe Space having created a certain degree of peace and order at the school, in the classrooms and the corridors, another explanation that emerged was that the staff accepted this unit. Similar to the conclusions of Severinsson (2010), the staff of the Safe Space appear to have acquired a positive status in educational terms, in relation to both the students in the unit and their colleagues. This was based on the Safe Space’s staff being the ones who were able to create peace and order among the young people in the group being taught there, and at the same time being the ones who had the resolve to care for them. Ingrid tells the story of a situation with Rickard: The situation that I remember the best/…/ I did a lot for Rickard. I was at home and picked him up when he was at home and sleeping, when he didn’t come to school. Well, then I called him… And then he had missed the bus. And if the bus has left, it is three hours before the [next] bus arrives. So I was really there for him, even though he had those views that he had. /…/ And so there was anyway this one time when I was at home and picked him up because he had slept in. And he had his black jackboots on. And those black boots /…/ he wasn’t allowed to have them in school. So then the quarrel started already at home in his yard. When he comes out and I’m standing outside, because I didn’t go in, waiting for him, he has his black jackboots on. So I said, “Rickard, you have to go in and change your shoes, because you aren’t allowed to have those at school”. Well, “I’m going to wear whatever the fuck I want to at school”. “Right then, I’ll be on my way,” I said, “In that case you can stay home today, because you won’t be getting into my car with those boots on.” And that was that, yeah—and then we argued there for a bit. But he went in and changed anyway. And he had his jacket on, and I didn’t think so much about it, but he had that ‘Mein Kampf’ with him under his arm the whole time, I didn’t see it at the time.

Rickard lived in a home where he was neglected and found it difficult to motivate himself, for example, to get up in the mornings and get ready for the school day. Ingrid picked him up on numerous occasions and Rickard knew that it was quite a long way for her to drive. He got caught up in a difficult negotiation with himself, as Ingrid gave him attention and

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made an effort for him to get to school, while the school was a place where his exclusion was more tangible than it was when he stayed at home in bed. He chose to resist by putting on the boots that were banned by the school. This strategy failed when Ingrid threatened to withdraw her helping hand and emphasised the difference between the school banning the boots on its premises and her banning them in her car. Rickard gave in but smuggled ‘Mein Kampf’ under his arm instead. Ingrid continues: But then we get to school in any case, and then we go in and sit down. And the others are sitting there, there weren’t very many there that day. Perhaps there were four or five. And they’re sitting in the room there, and we say, “Now you go and sit in your seat,” I said, “Now we’re running a bit late, so just quiet down now, because we’re going to do some maths now”. “Maths!? I’m fucking not doing any fucking maths in this class of retards!”. And then gets up and overturns all the desks, hurls the chairs and flings stuff around in there. So I say to the other students, “You can take your break—go outside”. /…/Well … And he kept knocking things over and carried on like that—but the book, ‘Mein Kampf’, was safely under his arm the whole time. In an absolute rage, he was. So I just placed myself in the doorway, so I said, “You Rickard, you tell when you’re done”. [Ingrid says she has been warned by BUP (Child and Youth Psychiatry) that Rickard could become dangerous if he is hard pressed] But then a day like this comes, and well I think, “What am I going to do now? No, I’ll be damned… “. So I pushed him up into the corner inside the classroom, and went this close to his face [measures a few centimetres between her right thumb and index finger]. And stood like this, and said: “Look here, who the hell do you think you are? If you think I’m afraid of you, then you’ve really screwed up. Because I’m not the least bit afraid of you. Now get going and clean it up,” I said, “Right now.” Then the tears came. So he looked at me, “Sorry, Ingrid”, and he said, “I’ll clean up”. From that time on his relationship and my relationship turned around completely. He protected me at all times. [Later when] He ended up in hospital because of drunkenness, for alcohol poisoning. Who did he call? Well, he called me. He was at the police station and got booked for assault—who did he call? Well, he called me.

Ingrid describes how Rickard was resisting the system that had excluded him from his original class, first at home when he was picked up and then in the Safe Space. When he refused to do maths in the ‘class of retards’, it triggered a fit of rage with manifestly violent elements. Faced with busting his way out of the Safe Space, he was forced to subordinate himself to the system. Crying, he accepted Ingrid’s comfort; at home he wasn’t going to

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get any, his girlfriend had been taken away from him and ultimately all that remained for him was to be comforted by the staff in the Safe Space. For a period of time, Rickard and Ingrid became dependent on each other and a kind of equanimity arose between them. Rickard needed sympathy and care from someone or somewhere, and Ingrid had a professional role in being the one Rickard finally turned to for support and the person who could control his mood, behaviour and racist comments. The relationship between them became part of Rickard’s clientification, which would continue for many years after leaving the Safe Space. Both still have very positive pictures of each other and the relationship they developed. They were both part of a system and with a mutual dependence on each other’s roles, but the human kindness that developed between them appears to be as permanent as it is genuine.

Life after the Safe Space It is difficult to know how the school’s approach to these three students influenced how their later lives developed. As young adults, these three ended up living very different lives. John and Rickard made a career together in the neo-Nazi movement but went their separate ways shortly after they turned 20. John chose to leave the movement when he had had enough of the violence, alcohol and drugs. He did not feel that the movement could lead to anything good, but he remains convinced about its ideology. He has left Sweden and lives a middle-class life with a family in a large city. He claims that without his family he would go back into the movement. He talks about how he was influenced by his time at Loholm School and how the ideas have remained, as well as his distrust of society in general: Yeah, my ideas have not fundamentally changed. That there is something that’s against me. But my interests have changed. I mean, I have no interest in pursuing it. That I have no interest in getting engaged in that cause. Because I have other things in my life that are much more important. [The way in which society treats people like us means that] you feel miserable, and you have no feeling that you have something to lose, so you maybe gravitate to such… That you might want to provoke… I cannot say what I might have done, so to speak. I think that you become despairing if you think too much about it. That you just … I don’t know… There are probably people

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who can probably do absolutely anything, if they feel desperate and under pressure.

John does not trust society, but neither does he see anything to gain by becoming engaged in the movement again. In his view, the movement is mostly a forum for provocation and desperation, a desperation that he no longer feels but for which he blames society. Unlike John, Rickard liked the violence in the movement more than the ideology. After a while, he left neo-Nazi circles and joined a criminal motorcycle gang and made his living as a debt collector. He describes how he got used to being an outsider from the ‘normal’ culture at school. It was only when he was expecting his first child that he decided to change his lifestyle. He got help to buy his way out of the motorcycle gang, changed his identity, and moved to another part of Sweden. He went back and got his grades in compulsory school and upper secondary school and after a while got a job as a foreman. Today, he thinks back to his time in the Safe Space, the skinhead groups, neo-Nazism and the motorcycle gang as something that shaped him into the person he wants to be. I am who I am thanks to all of that there. I mean, it’s no coincidence that I’m working as a leader today because I got a lot of experience of that when I was moving in those circles of course. So that yes, it’s one of the pillars of the basis, so to speak, that I am who I am. It’s because of what I’ve suffered or what I’ve done and it… that’s the kind of person I was. So I don’t regret anything. And then I had periods, I had a lot of fucking fun too. And then there are some things, some acts that you regret, that what the fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have beaten him up so damn much.

Rickard continues to talk about various crimes he has committed, which he regrets, many of which he has never been sentenced for. He appreciates his life today and has no desire to return to a violent or subculture life, but he believes that at that time there really was no other path for him to go. Matilda got out of the skinhead gang and neo-Nazism much earlier than John and Rickard. In her last year at Loholm School, Matilda got an offer to be part of another form of special education intervention. For ethical reasons it cannot be named or described in detail. The main function of this intervention was to alleviate the unrest at the school by letting different students with different backgrounds, i.e., those with racist views, those with immigrant backgrounds, those with learning difficulties, and the

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‘swots’ take a course together on the Holocaust. Matilda describes how she was very reluctant to take the course because she was always ashamed in front of the ‘smart’ students. She was ashamed of her clothes, her language, that she had no grades and she was ashamed of her abusive parents. She chose to take the course because it included a trip to Poland and Matilda had never stayed in a hotel, even less been outside Sweden. According to Matilda, in the course the teachers and the other students ended up treating her like any other student and slowly but surely she started to see herself from another possible perspective. …I was part of [the course on the Holocaust] and it wasn’t that I stopped being a Nazi because I was part of that course, because it’s a process of changing the way you think, and being able to think in a new way and so on. It is a very long process but, but it meant that I was able to go into another context and to try out being another person there. Because when other people see a person who, … I mean, has a certain role and you just change, you just change environment and the same people look at you, it ends up being that you still have to be that person even if you don’t want to be, because other people see you as that person and then you become that person. It’s bloody difficult for a lone individual to just change like that and remain in the same context. So when I was in [the course on the Holocaust], I dared to try out some other approaches… that is, how a person is, like. And then I got the chance to change from the Safe Space, where I was with the worst of the worst of the guys, to go into a regular class and be able to change that role, even though it was at the same school. But it was with a lot of support from like adults and friends in the new class that meant that it worked. If I hadn’t had that support, it just like wouldn’t have worked.

After going into a new class, Mathilda talks about how she started changing the way she dressed and stopped hanging out with the skinheads. At the end of the term, she contacted her form teacher and asked her to go with Matilda to social services. Matilda asked to be placed in a foster home in another town. She had to get away from the abuse at home, the skinheads in the town where she lived and attend a regular class, to be able, as she says, to become a regular girl without extreme opinions or an extreme identity.

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Concluding Discussion The study explored how Loholm School negotiated a very difficult balance between democratic inclusion and students who did not accept democracy. In their backgrounds, the reader can sense that there were bigger and more urgent problems for them in their home environments; but nevertheless, they were acting in a deeply racist and neo-Nazi manner during their secondary school years. This was anchored in their home environments and in the long history of right-wing extremism that has left its mark on the town over generations. The school chose to implement an organisational response to deal with an acute conflict between the racist students and an environment that did not accept their behaviour. This organisational response was anchored in the compensatory psycho-­medical discourse, which requires social rehabilitation before integration is possible. Through this response, the racist students were seen as individuals with behavioural problems, who, for the time being, were not ready for democratic inclusion. Their stories did not tell whether there was a strategy to return the students to their mainstream classes at some point, but the talk among the educational staff revolves around the need to create peace and order at the school. Peace and order meant that teachers and students who experienced unpleasantness from the poorly behaved, racist students had their interests satisfied in that the disruptive students were placed in the Safe Space. In the interviews, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental diagnoses were spoken about on several occasions as the underlying causes of the behaviour of the racist students. It is clear that at this time the school was guided by the psycho-medical and compensatory discourse. The students in the Safe Space were perceived to be difficult to teach with little capacity to control their own behaviour due to neurodevelopmental functional diversity. The situation probably did not have a solution there, and then and looking back it is even more difficult to have any idea of what ought to have been done. On the other hand, it would have been beneficial to view the situation from what Nilholm (2005) denotes as a dilemma perspective. The Safe Space was presented as schooling adapted to the individual in which good relationships between staff and students were to be established, which would make the students feel safe and able to return to mainstream classes. Through this talk, the Safe Space was able to appear like an inclusive environment, even though it was uncommon in practice for anyone placed there to return to their ordinary class. The damage caused by segregation in the Safe Space and other

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similar measures persisted long after the students left the Safe Space and Loholm School. In line with Nilholm’s reasoning, I believe that the dilemma perspective does not offer a fixed solution to an ongoing problem, such as the recurring racist subcultures at Loholm School. The students in the Safe Space were in most respects a socio-economically very disadvantaged group living in domestic circumstances in which parents and guardians failed in their duty of care, or there was outright neglect. From the perspective of the rights of the child, few, if any, defended their interests, their right to participation in mainstream schooling, and the conditions that would allow that. They were offered closer relationships with staff in the Safe Space, who fulfilled the function of controlling and comforting them— what Severinsson (2010) called clientification. Within the limited scope of this study, it is not possible to draw more precise conclusions about how a dilemma perspective could have struck a balance between the desire of the students in the Safe Space to be included and the desire of the other students, as well as the staff, to avoid being upset and disrupted by them. However, a forward-looking conclusion can be drawn. In order to be included in the democratic community at the Loholm School, members were required to be democratic and subordinate themselves to the form of democracy that was offered—in that case, a fairly rule-based democracy without any significant features of deliberative democracy. In the allegedly emerging post-truth society, with all its conspiracy theories, it can be anticipated that schools will be put to the test concerning how democratic inclusion can achieved. The consequence of being excluded, not being taken seriously, and as reported in this study, feeling that one is seen as stupid, undermines the trust in society on which democracy is founded. Most likely, Loholm School, or any other school, would not set up a special class like the one in the Safe Space today. However, the difficulty remains of including students who have little faith in the school’s democratic task, without seeing them as examples of individual deviant behaviour. In the talk about opinion corridors and who gets to participate in the public conversation, the victim cloak taken on by right wing extremist parties is sometimes spoken of in a condescending manner. Whatever may be the case with these victim cloaks, it can be taken as very likely that some of them were sewn twenty years ago in educational initiatives like the Safe Space. If the school lacks the ability to handle students with little or no faith in democracy within the ordinary and inclusive classroom community, we can anticipate an amplification in the number of

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anti-democratic and conspiratorial young adults. John’s experience of Loholm School reinforced a deep distrust of society, a distrust he says he would be willing to translate into action provided that it did not harm his wife or children.

References Arneback, E., & Jämte, J. (2017). Att motverka rasism i förskolan och skolan. Natur & Kultur. Carlsson, R., & Nilhom, C. (2004). Demokrati och inkludering—en begreppsdiskussion. Utbildning & Demokrati., 13(2), 77–95. Haug, P. (1998). Specialpedagogiskt dilemma: Specialundervisning. Swedish National Agency for Education. Hjörne, E., & Säljö, R. (2008). Att platsa i en skola för alla. Elevhälsa och förhandling om normalitet i den svenska skolan (1st ed.). Norstedts akademiska förlag. Iyengar, S., & Massey, S.  D. (2019). Scientific Communication in a Post-truth Society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, 116(16), 7656–7661. Karlsson, Y. (2007). Att inte vilja vara problem. Social organisering och utvärdering av elever i en särskild undervisningsgrupp (Doctoral thesis, Linköping University). Karlsson, Y. (2012). Barns aktörskap och identitetsarbete i en särskild undervisningsgrupp. Utbildning & Demokrati, 21(3), 35–52. Nilholm, C. (2005). Inkludering av elever “i behov av särskilt stöd”: Vad betyder det och vad vet vi? Örebro University, Department of Education. Severinsson, S. (2010). Unga i normalitetens gränsland: Undervisning och behandling i särskilda undervisningsgrupper och hem för vård eller boende (Doctoral thesis, Linköping University). Skidmore, D. (2005). Inclusion, the Dynamic of School Development. Open University Press.

Index1

A Acts of commission, 7, 21, 22, 29, 31 Acts of omission, 6, 29 Agency, 12, 13, 20, 21, 32–34, 83, 85–88, 94, 97, 98 Autobiography, 15, 37, 40, 41, 125, 133, 137–139, 141, 146, 159, 160

132, 133, 140, 141, 144–148, 155–160, 178 Concession speeches, 14, 86, 94, 96, 98 Continuity narratives, 23, 26 Conversion narratives, 22, 23, 26 Criminal justice, 38, 40–42, 45, 47 Criminal victimization, 134, 145, 146

B Becker, H., 2, 3, 9, 10, 12 Behavioural problem, 166, 181 Biographical repair, 25, 26 Broken typifications, 15, 103–126

D De-fellowshipping, 14, 62, 74–76 Deflection work, 88 Democracy, 24, 25, 87, 97, 165, 167, 181, 182 Desistance from crime, 49, 49n5 Disengagement, 7, 8, 10, 14, 34, 62, 72–76, 82–84, 95, 96 Disengagement work, 72–74 Dis-identification, 7–9, 13, 19, 20, 22, 32, 34, 82

C Career, 1–10, 14, 15, 20, 33, 35, 38, 40n1, 42, 47, 51, 52, 62, 63, 65, 77, 78, 81–84, 89, 104, 119,

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 J. Hardie-Bick, S. Scott (eds.), Ex-treme Identities and Transitions Out of Extraordinary Roles, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93608-2

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INDEX

E Ebaugh, H.R.F., 1, 2, 5, 7–14, 20, 34, 38, 42–45, 48, 49, 61, 73, 75, 77, 82–84, 91, 96, 104, 113 Education, 15, 65, 91, 132, 164, 167, 168, 179 Educational practice, 168, 174 Elective identification, 104–107, 109, 122, 125 Eulogy work, 14, 81–99 Exclusion, 166, 168, 174, 176, 177 Ex-identity, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 19–21, 42, 61, 74, 78, 122 Existential sociology, 13, 20, 21, 32, 33, 45–46 Ex-offenders, 13, 14, 38, 40–52 Exoneration, 131–134, 137, 138, 147–149, 155, 156, 158–160 Extremism, 164n1, 181 F First doubts, 9, 14, 61, 66–73 Flores, D., 21–26, 32–34, 123 G Goffman, E., 1–5, 7–10, 13, 15, 20, 33, 38, 42, 47–49, 51, 52, 60–66, 72, 74, 76, 77, 82–85, 104, 123, 132, 138, 140–142, 145–147, 155 Good death, 82–85, 88, 96, 98 Guilt animating, 21, 26–31 static, 29–31 I Identity, 1–7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 19–23, 26, 31, 33, 34, 39–46, 48, 51, 60–78, 82, 83, 85, 103–126, 131–161, 165, 166, 179, 180 Identity change, 15, 59–78

Imagined community, 86, 87 Impression management, 14, 74, 76 Inclusion, 69, 138, 144, 166–168, 171, 174, 181, 182 Intoxication, 105, 110 Iraq War, 21, 22 L Latter-day Saints (LDS), 14, 60–62, 65–78 Leaving politics, 81, 82, 84 Lifton, R. J., 21, 26–34 M Maruna, S., 43, 44, 49–52, 132 Mead, G. H., 61–63, 66, 69, 76, 91, 108, 137 Meaning, 1, 3, 7, 8, 14, 15, 19, 21–23, 28, 31, 33, 46, 47, 61, 63, 72, 74, 84, 103, 104, 107–109, 112–115, 122, 123, 125, 132, 133, 136, 137, 140–144, 147, 153, 156, 158–160 Military veterans, 19, 22 Moral career, 1–5, 7–10, 14, 15, 20, 33, 35, 38, 42, 52, 60, 62, 63, 65, 77, 82–84, 104, 132, 133, 140, 141, 144–148, 155–160 Moral identity, 20–22, 26 Moulder, F., 11, 12 My Lai massacre, 27, 29 N Narrative criminology, 132 Neo-Nazi students, 15, 163, 167 O Ontological security, 107 Outcast Women (OW), 65

 INDEX 

P Personified emotion, 84 Phenomenology, 13, 14, 104, 107 Political elections, 98 Prison, 15, 22, 27, 32, 37, 38, 41, 43n2, 48, 51, 133, 140, 141, 144, 145, 148–150, 154–156 Punishment, 29, 40–42, 53 R Racism, 164, 169, 172, 174 Radicalisation, 15, 163 Reframing, 88–91, 96 Religion, 59–78, 142 Religious disaffiliation, 64 Resignation speeches, 81, 83, 85 Responsibility, 8, 12, 13, 21, 26–31, 33, 34, 82, 84, 87, 89, 96–98, 167 Role dispossession, 145 Role exit, 1, 2, 7–10, 12, 13, 15, 20, 33, 34, 38, 42, 45, 47, 48, 49n5, 51–53, 61, 65, 72, 82–84 S School, 15, 75, 82, 89, 92, 95, 157–159, 163–183 Schutz, A., 104, 107, 108, 112, 114, 123 Self, 1, 4–6, 8, 11–13, 15, 19–35, 37–53, 60–65, 67, 72, 74, 75, 78, 84, 105, 107–109, 111–114, 123, 124, 131n1, 132–135, 137, 138, 141–147, 155, 158–160 Self-control, 165–167 Self-narratives, 29, 73, 137, 160 Side bets, 9 Situational determinism, 20, 21, 32 Social death, 81, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93–98

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Sociology of nothing, 6, 8, 15, 20, 33, 61 Status passage, 2, 7, 8, 10 Stigmatization, 10, 145 Straightedgers, 103, 110, 111 Subculture, 3, 14, 76, 105, 113, 117, 125, 179, 182 Symbolic interactionism, 2, 10, 13, 20, 137 T Teachers, 15, 82, 163–166, 169, 172–175, 180, 181 Time-work, 85, 88–96 Total institution, 4, 10, 72, 104, 132, 145 Trauma, 11, 19–35, 104, 133, 134, 136, 137, 146, 149, 151, 156, 158–160 Turning points, 4, 6, 9, 34, 104, 142, 155 U Unbecoming, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 20–22, 33, 34 V Victim narrative, 132, 134–136, 140, 141, 143, 148 Vietnam, 11, 21, 26–29, 31 W White-collar offenders, 13, 37–53 Women’s political speeches, 14, 81, 82, 85, 87, 93, 96, 98 Wrongful conviction, 131–134, 137, 138, 142–145, 147–149, 153–156, 159, 160